Michael Getz

Date of Award

2013

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Social Sciences

First Advisor

Hicks, Barbara

Keywords

Language Policy, Regionalism, Russian

Area of Concentration

International and Area Studies

Abstract

The dissolution of the USSR created an institutional vacuum in which the Russian Federation was formed. During this process, the ethnically defined republics of the nascent federation lobbied for greater sovereignty, partially on the basis of their national distinctness from the Russian ethnicity. Ethnic elites and political entrepreneurs advocated cultural revival movements as a means of assuring the protection of national identities from the forces of cultural assimilation prevalent in a modernizing society. One element of these efforts is the development of national languages, which can be promoted by implementing language policies that address the use of native languages in education, politics, mass media, and other public domains. This study takes a comparative approach to examine different strategies the ethnic republics of Russia have used to establish language revival movements and to elaborate on the relationship between language and the politicization of ethnicity in center-periphery relations. Findings indicate that different republican approaches to language policy implementation can be categorized based on levels of multiculturalism, and that national identity ideologies condition federal response to these measures.

Rights

This bibliographic record is available under the Creative Commons CC0 public domain dedication. The New College of Florida Libraries, as creator of this bibliographic record, has waived all rights to it worldwide under copyright law, including all related and neighboring rights, to the extent allowed by law.

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