Language Policy Dilemmas in Modern Russia

Political dilemmas arising in a multi-ethnic state in the priorities of language policy context are always acute political issues. The difficulty of balancing the language policy is at the heart of the conflict of interests of different ethnic groups. Frequently, their interests are directly opposed, and the interests of the elites run counter to the interests of the ethnic groups, which creates a set of intractable dilemmas. The authors believe that we face a set of such dilemmas in modern Russia. Throughout the 20th century, the political leaders and elites of the Russian Empire, the USSR, and then the Russian Federation followed diametrically different approaches to the issue of languages. Recent years have witnessed purposeful activity of the Russian Federal center to develop a certain unified concept of language policy to form a common civil identity. However, the measures taken by the Federal center - in particular, the transition to the optional study of regional languages at school - meet with certain resistance from the regional ethnic and national elites for whom they become matters of principle. Regional elites would resist erosion of regional identities, which occurs also through the mechanisms of language policy. Another factor in this political process is associated with the ratio of ethnic groups with certain interests in different regions of Russia (we can often observe the following situation: ethnic majority and Russian minorit.В статье рассматривается специфика языковой ситуации, особенности функционирования и взаимодействия языков в многонациональной Республике Татарстан