The present volume aims “to investigate the latest shift in Russia's ethnolinguistic policy through a critical-discursive lens” (3), focusing on language-ideological debates as its primary object of analysis (4). This shift was allegedly triggered by Putin's declaration at the meeting of the Council for Interethnic Relations in Yoshkar-Ola in July 2017: “To force someone to learn a language that is not his mother tongue is as unacceptable as reducing the level and time devoted to teaching Russian” (1). This discursive event is the starting point for a case-study of the Republic of Tatarstan, with its two official languages—Tatar and Russian. After Putin's declaration and ensuing change of the republic's legislation, Tatar lost its status as a mandatory subject in Russian schools, with serious consequences for the already unbalanced Russian-Tatar language use.
Within a framework of Critical Discourse Studies, the monograph analyzes the discourse of federal policymakers, parliamentary debates on language-in-education policies in the Russian Duma and regional State Council of Tatarstan, and the public debate on the compulsory study of the titular language in Tatarstan, with regard to the ideologies used in these three selected types of discourses. The author analyzes only Russian-speaking sources that may provide a one-sided picture of the debates on bilingualism and generally does not translate Russian examples and citations in English, which makes them incomprehensible for non-Russian-speaking readers.
The language use in multilingual regions is often unbalanced and even less harmonious (Belgium, South Africa, Canada, Ireland, Papua New Guinea, Mexico, Belarus or Ukraine). In this context, Russia, with approximately 277 languages, offers a fertile ground for the study of language ideologies and policies. Russian language policy always wandered between idealistic support and imperial suppression of language diversity: the establishment of national schools and the development of grammars of the unwritten languages of the empire first in the nineteenth century and as a state-supported project after the October Revolution, vs. banning printing books in Belarusian or Lithuanian after 1863, or the consistent Russification policy in the Soviet Union after 1938. These turns reflected changes in state ideologies (liberalization vs. imperial ambitions). Regrettably, the author neither inscribes her research in a grander historical and areal-linguistic context nor offers a deeper analysis of Russian language policies in her “Historical outline” (59–80) and “Hierarchy of languages, hierarchy of identities” (101–46). An elaboration of the specifics of the “Case of Russia” concerning language ideologies and policies would show that these are typical of imperial constellations; what stands out is the unique project of creating a writing system for unwritten languages and a school education system in all languages of the USSR (1917–1938). This (largely failed) utopian project shapes linguistic research in Russia as well as the language ideology of liberal intellectuals to this day.
In the “Brief overview of existing research” (9–14), the author merely refers to second-rate studies instead of fundamental research by Vladimir Alpatov, Vladimir Neroznak, and Andrei Kibrik's school that examine language policies based on empirically verified language use. Including recent works of Tatar authors on Russian-Tatar bilingualism (Alsu Garaeva, Nailia Fattachova, Dzhamilia Mustafina, Liliia Nizamova, Daniia Salimova, Maslina Shakurova, Nailia Sharipova) would also be useful. Moreover, the author does not mention ongoing, long-term research projects at the Institute of Linguistics or at the Vinogradov-Institute of Russian Language that also contribute to the current debates on multilingualism and language ecology. In reply to Putin's declaration of July 2017, representatives of these institutions made official statements in the media. At a meeting of the Presidential Council on the Russian language, Vladimir Alpatov, head of the Scientific Research Center for National Linguistic Relations at the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Linguistics, proposed a new comprehensive federal law on the foundations of state language policy. Thereby, he criticized the existing contradictions and deficiencies of the current legislation, citing the example of Tatarstan and the distribution of teaching hours in Russian and Tatar. The inclusion of such politically relevant discursive events in the present study would provide a multifaceted and more balanced picture of the debates under scrutiny. Finally, the monograph does not provide an updated bibliography on language ideologies research in the US (where Michael Silverstein launched the discipline in 1979) and western Europe, and neither does it refer to the current leading journals in the field.
