THE FUTURE OF THE LANGUAGES OF THE FINNO-UGRAIAN PEOPLES OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION

Abstract

This article attempts to predict the future condition and development of the languages of the Finno-Ugric peoples. The problem of language forecasting is not a priority area of linguistic studies. Some researchers are skeptical about the very possibility of predicting the development of a language as unforeseen extra-linguistic factors can affect it and accelerate decelerate its development. The Russian history saw a lot of such factors: the language building during the post-revolutionary years, repressions of the 1930s, struggle against “nationalism” and “panfinism”, liquidation of national schools, policy of building a “new historical community - the so-called “Soviet people” with Russian as a single language, various educational reforms, etc. In the Russian Federation, the Finno-Ugric peoples mostly reside in the five Finno-Ugric republics of Karelia, Komi, Mari El, Mordovia and Udmurtia and in the two autonomous districts of Khanty-Mansi (Ugra) and Yamalo-Nenets. The Finno-Ugric peoples living in the latter districts are small nations and will not be discussed in this article. There are also numerous Finno-Ugric diasporas in Bashkortostan, Tatarstan and some other Russian regions. All of them differ by the following two demographic criteria: the ratio of Russians to the titular population and the number of state languages in the republics in question and the existence of laws governing those languages. This study, which is based on papers written by various linguistic scholars from both the Finno-Ugric republics and foreign countries, statistics and population census results, allows us to conclude that the process of giving the national languages the status of a state language had virtually no impact on the change in the language situation, nor did it slow down the language shift towards Russian - rather, it accelerated that shift. Such alarming situation with national languages should encourage linguistic scientists and authorities to pay special attention to the problems of planning, forecasting and preserving those languages.