Languages in the Soviet Union
Among the languages in the Soviet Union were hundreds of languages and dialects from different language families .
In 1918 it was decreed that all nationalities in the Soviet Union (USSR) were allowed to teach in their mother tongue. Depending on the language, the Cyrillic , Latin or Arabic alphabet was used. After 1937, all languages that had introduced the Cyrillic alphabet from 1917 onwards used this alphabet. It was easier for language minorities to learn to write Russian and their mother tongue. In 1960 the education laws were changed and Russian became the dominant language in education.
Distribution and Status
The USSR was a multilingual state with over 120 native languages spoken. East Slavic languages (Russian, Belarusian and Ukrainian ) dominated in the European part of the Soviet Union, while the Baltic languages ( Lithuanian and Latvian ) and the Baltic Finnish language Estonian were used in the Baltic areas. Armenian , Azerbaijani and Georgian were spoken in the Caucasus . Various Uralic languages were spoken by minorities in northern Russia .
Under the USSR Constitution, it was forbidden to discriminate against people because of their language. The de facto status of the languages, however, varied.
The USSR officially had no official language for most of the time . Russian was defined as the language for communication between peoples ( Russian язык межнационального общения ) and in fact fulfilled the role of an official language.
The languages of the fourteen other union republics had a different status . Unlike Russian, they only played a small role at the national level (they were seen on the national coat of arms and on banknotes, for example). Their actual use varied from republic to republic.
The Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republics and other areas of the USSR lacked official autonomy and their languages were apparently not present at the national level (and often not even in the urban areas of the republics themselves). They were present in different ways in the training.
Some languages with few speakers, e.g. B. Livisch , was not used in education or publications.
Various languages of other nations, such as German , Korean, or Polish , were spoken in larger communities in the USSR and in some cases were present in education and publications, although they were not considered a Soviet language. On the other hand, Finnish , which is not considered a language of the USSR, was an official language in Karelia . Also Yiddish and Romani were recognized Soviet languages.
See also
literature
- Bernard Comrie : The Languages of the Soviet Union. Cambridge University Press 1981, ISBN 0-521-23230-9 .
- E. Glyn Lewis: Multilingualism in the Soviet Union Aspects of Language Policy and its Implementation. (= Contributions to the sociology of language . Volume 3 ). Mouton, The Hague 1973, OCLC 582203764 .
- Vasiliy Il'ich Lytkin, Viktor Vladimirovich Vinogradov: Языки народов СССР - YAzyki narodov SSSR . to German: Languages of the Peoples of the USSR . tape 3 . Nauka, Moscow 1966, OCLC 493325217 .
- Struggle for word and writing. Russification in Eastern Europe in the 19th – 20th centuries Century. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2012, ISBN 3-525-10122-8 ( vr.de [PDF] reading sample).
Individual evidence
- ↑ In the early 20th century, there had been a discussion over the need to introduce Russian as the official language of Russian Empire .
- ^ Bernard Comrie: The Languages of the Soviet Union. The Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge, 1981, p. 31.