The Karelian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic provides a unique opportunity for an examination of Soviet linguistic policy. Part of the difficulty in the analysis of the development of Soviet languages has been the lack of a control language or suitable basis for comparison between a language in its Soviet and non-Soviet environment. While it is impossible to determine how a language would have developed had there been no revolution or had it not been in the Soviet Union, some very general observations seem clear. The example of Turkish and Azerbaijani is instructive in this respect. The entire orientation of these two languages has changed drastically since their respective revolutions, particularly in the replacement of the Arabic alphabet by Latin and Cyrillic respectively, the handling of traditional arabisms and Persianisms, and the sources for neologisms (Western European languages and native roots for Turkish and Russian for Azerbaijani). There are, however, very few situations where a realistic comparison can be made between different versions of the same language, for the language abroad may represent only an emigre community or may exist in totally different circumstances, such as Iranian Azerbaijani, or the Soviet language may itself represent only a rump, such as Soviet Yiddish.

Wotic is one of the Balto-Finnic languages. In the nineteenth century, there were about 5000 speakers of this language. It was spoken between Leningrad and Estonia, in the area which is known as Ingermanland. Before the Second World War, their number was already drastically reduced (a loss of about 80–90% of the speakers). In 1939, their number was between 500 and 700. Even this small number of people who still spoke the language was spread out in a number of villages. Finnish, Estonian, Hungarian and Russian researchers who tried to note down some materials in this dying language even found dialectal differences between Eastern Wotic (spoken in the village which is called in Russian Itsepino), and Western Wotic which was spoken in several villages (for instance Korvettula, Mati, Velikino, Undova etc.)

It is very difficult to translate fully the above verse from the great Persian-speaking poet Bidil without violating its spirit in the context of the Central Asian (and other Iranian areas) culture. The spirit of the verse is not so much fatalism about life itself but is one of cynicism derived from power-lessness over one's fate. This verse is often uttered by the Central Asian intellectuals in response to questions about their relationship with the Russians and sharing of power in the Soviet bureaucracy. It does not communicate resignation. It describes the reality of the USSR, an awareness that a Central Asian is powerless to change circumstances to those favoring his/her well being and spiritual instincts. It camouflages the underlying resentment toward the dominant group, the Russians, who have the monopoly of the means of violence and who have not hesitated to use these means against the Muslim population of Central Asia on numerous occasions during the past hundred years of their rule there.

I

Zu dem historischen Erbe, das die Sowjetmacht im Jahre 1917 antrat und mit dem sie sich auseinanderzusetzen hatte, gehörte nicht zuletzt das ungelöste Nationalitätenproblem — in rückschauender Perspektive sicherlich eines der säkularen Probleme der russischen und sowjetischen Gesellschaft. Die bolschewistische Partei hat es bei der Entwicklung ihrer Programmatik stets reflektiert, und Lenin verfügte im Gegensatz zu Marx und Engels über ein vergleichsweise feines Sensorium für die politische Bedeutung der Nationalitätenfrage. Vor dem Hintergrund der späteren Erfahrungen (vor allem im 2. Weltkrieg) erscheint die Entwicklung der sowjetischen Nationalitäten in den 20er Jahren als eine Periode der nationalen Konsolidierung: Die Politik der Bolschewiki setzte hier Kräfte frei, die lange Zeit unterdrückt waren und nun eine enorme Dynamik entfalteten. Die Mobilisierung der sowjetischen Nationalitäten verlief dabei übrigens weitgehend parallel zur allgemeinen Bildungs- und Kulturpolitik. Der zügige Aufbau des Bildungswesens, die Verbreitung der Kulturtechniken und der Medien etc. hatte allerdings mehr noch als im eigentlichen Russland neben der sozialen Mobilisierungsfunktion eine national-kompensatorische Bedeutung. Dieser Nebeneffekt war keineswegs erwünscht und die immer stärkere funktionale Ausrichtung der Bildungspolitik auf das Industrialisierungsprogramm machte sie zunehmend zu einer als eher hinderlich empfundenen Begleiterscheinung. In den 30er Jahren dienten die ehemaligen “Randgebiete” des zaristischen Russland vornehmlich als Rohstofflieferanten einer zügig aufgebauten Industrie im europäischen Teil der Sowjetunion.

The purpose of this paper is to compare briefly the situation of national minorities in Europe before and after the Paris Peace Treaties of 1947. More particularly, to contrast the League of Nations system of minority protection with the lack of a similar system within the United Nations framework, and recent attempts to remedy this shortcoming.

La politique des nationalités, appelée communément la question nationale, préoccupe le parti bolchevique depuis son congrès de Bruxelles-Londres de 1903. Elle a connu une certaine évolution, liée aux circonstances politiques, pendant la longue période qui va de 1903 à 1980. Le parti bolchevique a toujours poursuivi une politique de centralisme étatique et de russification, reprenant à son compte celle qui était pratiquée du temps du tsarisme, dont la devise était “Russie une et indivisible.”

The title is indicative of the outcome of the federative experiment in Eastern Europe between Ukraine and its strong neighbors Muscovy, Poland, and the Ottoman Empire. It should be pointed out at the outset that the idea of federation was adopted by the Ukrainian state not for the sake of federation but as a deterrent against strong neighbors, who despite serious setbacks continued to interfere with Ukrainian sovereignty. This was in effect the only option left to the Ukrainians considering the internal and external developments prior to and after the death of Hetman Bohdan Khmelnytskyi.

The 1970 census returns of the Soviet Union provided scholars with additional information about a hitherto little studied ethnic group, the Soviet-Germans. These figures not only broke the Germans down according to the regions and republics in which they lived, but also revealed how many still claimed German as their native language. A comparison of figures for 1959, 1970 and 1979 indicated the number making this claim had decreased considerably.

A statistical analysis of publications in the Belorussian language during the last decade reveals an ominous decline in the number of titles and imprints. This has been accompanied, however, by a parallel increase in Russian-language publications in the BSSR. These factors seem to indicate an attempt by policy-makers to homogenize the Soviet population at the expense of Belorussians, and perhaps other nationalities as well.

In November 1858, the moderate journal, Russkii vestnik, printed a letter drafted by P. Kulish and signed by N. Kostomarov, Marko Vovchok, M. Nomys, T. Shevchenko, as well as the author.

Since the signing of the Final Act of the Conference on Security in Europe (CSCE) in Helsinki on August 1, 1975, the communist parties of Eastern Europe have been confronted with growing human rights movements from diverse individuals and groups. In the Soviet Union, so-called Helsinki Watch Committees were founded in 1976, in order to monitor the implementation of the Helsinki human rights provisions and those of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In Czechoslovakia, the human rights movement was coordinated by the publication of “Charter 77” in January 1977, which, like its counterpart in the Soviet Union, asked its government to comply with the Helsinki human rights provisions signed earlier by the Prague government. “Charter 77” has been signed by more than a thousand individuals, many of whom have been arrested or terrorized by the Secret Police. In Poland, the “Committee for the Defense of the Workers” (KOR) was founded after the June 1976 uprising of Polish workers in Ursus and Radom. The Committee's purpose was to provide legal and financial aid to those workers subjected to the Party's repression and physical terror for having participated in the June uprisings. KOR also criticized the government's violation of fundamental rights, such as the right to work, freedom of expression, and the right to participate in meetings and demonstrations. Again in 1980 during the Polish workers’ strikes, KOR under the leadership of Jacek Kuron assisted the strikers. They denounced the decline of the Polish Communist Party's credibility and the complete collapse of communication between rulers and the ruled. Even Hungary and Rumania have experienced the emergence of individuals and small groups who either want their governments to observe the human rights provisions, or who support human rights movements in other eastern European countries.

One of the most important sources of demographic data concerning the Soviet nationalities is the official Soviet census reports. Considering the sensitivity of the nationality problem in the USSR today, however, how thorough and dependable are the published results of the Soviet censuses regarding the more than 100 Soviet nationalities? In January 1980, a preliminary and partial report on the 1979 enumeration was issued, and until the full reports are published, probably in a year or two, it is the best source of information concerning the current numbers and distribution of the Soviet nationalities. These figures have already been and will be used for comparisons with the 1970 census reports and projections, as well as for other analyses and computations. But how reliable are these most recent statistics? Can they be taken on face value as accurate, thorough reflections of the ethnic scene in the USSR in January 1979, when the count was taken?

Studies of southern and eastern European ethnic groups in the United States often become submerged in the ongoing argument of assimilation vs. cultural pluralism. As a result, underlying factors affecting the persistence or dissolution of a particular group are obscured or ignored. Social, historical, cultural, religious, political, and economic aspects of ethnic differences are useful targets of analysis. However, much of the research on ethnicity is devoted to documenting the loss or retention of specific cultural traits such as language, religion, or custom. Thus, two distinct though related problems emerge: 1) a tendency to “rate” ethnic groups in terms of degree of assimilation or cultural distinctiveness; and 2) a reliance on cultural indicators as the sole measure of ethnic persistence.