Russification
[1] Russification was at times pursued by the governments of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union, either as a goal in itself or as a consequence of policies aimed at centralisation and modernisation.
[3] The Russification of Uralic-speaking people, such as Vepsians, Mordvins, Maris, and Permians, indigenous to large parts of western and central Russia had already begun with the original eastward expansion of East Slavs.
Written records of the oldest period are scarce, but toponymic evidence indicates[4][5][6] that this expansion was accomplished at the expense of various Volga-Finnic peoples, who were gradually assimilated by Russians; beginning with the Merya and the Muroma early in the 2nd millennium AD.
[7] After the Russian defeat in the Crimean War in 1856 and the January Uprising of 1863, Tsar Alexander II increased Russification to reduce the threat of future rebellions.
Russia was populated by many minority groups, and forcing them to accept the Russian culture was an attempt to prevent self-determination tendencies and separatism.
[14][15][16][17][18] After the 1917 revolution, authorities in the USSR decided to abolish the use of the Arabic alphabet in native languages in Soviet-controlled Central Asia, in the Caucasus, and in the Volga region (including Tatarstan).
That is, these cultures should be transformed to conform with the Communist Party's socialist project for the Soviet society as a whole but have active participation and leadership by the indigenous nationalities and operate primarily in the local languages.
On the one hand, it had been an effort to counter Russian chauvinism by assuring a place for non-Russian languages and cultures in the newly formed Soviet Union.
A process of "national-territorial delimitation" (ru:национально-территориальное размежевание) was undertaken to define the official territories of the non-Russian populations within the Soviet Union.
[29] In 1937, Faizullah Khojaev and Akmal Ikramov were removed as leaders of the Uzbek SSR, and in 1938, during the third great Moscow show trial, convicted and subsequently put to death for alleged anti-Soviet nationalist activities.
[citation needed] After Stalin, an ethnic Georgian, became the undisputed leader of the Soviet Union, the Russian language gained greater emphasis.
But other factors also came into play, including the size and formal political status of the group in the Soviet federal hierarchy and the prevailing level of bilingualism among parents.
The pattern was probably similar, if less extreme, in most of the non-Russian union republics, although in Belarus and Ukraine, schooling in urban areas was highly Russianized.
The new rule was accompanied by a statement that Russian was a "second native language" for all Soviet citizens and "the only means of participation in social life across the nation."
Some exceptions appeared to involve cases of historic rivalries or patterns of assimilation between neighboring non-Russian groups, such as between Tatars and Bashkirs in Russia or among major Central Asian nationalities.
[52] Protests and petitions against the bill by either civic society, groups of public intellectuals or regional governments came from Tatarstan (with attempts for demonstrations suppressed),[54] Chuvashia,[52] Mari El,[52] North Ossetia,[54][55] Kabardino-Balkaria,[54][56] the Karachays,[54] the Kumyks,[54][57] the Avars,[54][58] Chechnya,[50][59] and Ingushetia.
[65] This is attributed to a gradual phasing out of indigenous language teaching both in the cities and rural areas while regional media and governments shift exclusively to Russian.
[54] Chechen and Ingush are still used as languages of everyday communication to a greater degree than their North Caucasian neighbours, but sociolinguistics argue that the current situation will lead to their degradation relative to Russian as well.
[75] With the release of the latest census in 2022, results showed a catastrophic decline in the number of many ethnic groups, particularly peoples of the Volga region.
Education in Russian was unpopular amongst ethnic Azerbaijanis until 1887 when Habib bey Mahmudbeyov and Sultan Majid Ganizadeh founded the first Russian–Azerbaijani school in Baku.
A secular school with instruction in both Russian and Azeri, its programs were designed to be consistent with the cultural values and traditions of the Muslim population.
[81] Eventually, 240 such schools for both boys and girls, including a women's college founded in 1901, were established prior to the "Sovietization" of the South Caucasus.
Its direct result by the mid-twentieth century was the formation of a supra-ethnic urban Baku subculture, uniting people of Russian, Azerbaijani, Armenian, Jewish, and other origins and whose special features were being cosmopolitan and Russian-speaking.
The Northern part of the German province of East Prussia was annexed by the Soviet Union to RSFSR after World War II becoming the Kaliningrad Oblast.
While the former German population was expelled or deported to the Soviet Union for forced labor, a systematic settlement of the Kaliningrad Oblast with Russians, Belarusians, and Ukrainians took place.
A month after the removal of the Latvian National Communist leader Eduards Berklavs All-Union legislation was implemented in Latvia by Arvīds Pelše.
Imperial Russia faced a crucial critical cultural situation by 1815: Large sections of Russian society had come under the foreign influence as a result of the Napoleonic wars and appeared open to change.
According to Russian estimates, by the start of the 20th century, around one-third of the inhabitants in the territory of Congress Poland participated in secret teaching with use of Polish literary works.
Most of these actions ended at the beginning of the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905, but others took longer to be reversed; Vilnius University re-opened only after Russia had lost control of the city in 1919.
Following the 2014 Russian annexation of Crimea and the emergence of unrecognized Russian-backed entities in Eastern Ukraine, a subtle[clarification needed] form of Russification was initiated, despite these areas being predominantly Russian-speaking.
