Was Russian Language Dominant in the Soviet Union? - Cold War DOCUMENTARY
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- Опубліковано 4 лют 2022
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Our historical documentary series on the history of the Cold War continues with a video on the language laws in the USSR, as we look at the russification in the Soviet Union and if the Russian was the dominant language in the country.
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The Swedish school in Ukraine was located in the village of Zmiivka/Gammalsvenskby in the south of Ukraine, not far from my hometown. It was founded in the 18th century by Swedish immigrants from the territory of present-day Estonia. The Swedish king visited the village about 10 years ago.
This is amazing further information, Eduard! Thank you for clarifying!
How nice
As a Swede I need to go there once the current situation dies down
@@TheCleansingx sadly our swedish language is dying out down in Ukraine. It's a true shame.
"Gammalsvenskby" literally translates to "old swedish city/town"
In Bulgaria we were obliged to study Russian at school. It was really compulsory. I studied Russian myself until 1991 - twice a week...
It was a surprise for me to meet the people of Albania who taught Russian at school. Its teaching ceased in the early 1960s, after the Soviet-Albanian split.
Was it difficult learning Russian, or was it easy? Russian and Bulgarian being both Slavic languages.
@lati long When my family left Poland in 1987, elementary school students started learning Russian in grade 5. I had a semester of Russian myself before we left.
My parents told me stories of how before I was born they traveled to other East Block countries like Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Bulgaria on vacation and used Russian to communicate with the locals.
I have a friend who is about 60 years old. When he was a student, he studied Russian. Ten years ago, he tried to teach me to speak Russian "comrade". It seems that in his time, most Chinese learned Russian.🧐🧐🧐
@@user-cx1ki8li4t Thank you very much for the info.
One thing to add about Belarusian - after 1918, there were efforts to both standardize and russify Belarusian. Some standardization was perhaps needed, but what was kept removed Polish influences and added more Russian elements. So, the Belarusian spoken by the grandparents of kids growing up in 1930 might have been very different. The same happened in Russia to standardize Russian and change some of the alphabet. Four letters were eliminated from the Russian alphabet in 1918, and some of those changes were imposed on Belarusian. And in Ukraine right now, the Russian occupied areas are removing those letters from signs in Ukrainian. It seems very much like a battle to keep Ukrainian and Belarusian follow Russian. My great-grandfather switched to more of the Moscow Dialect of Russian because it was the prestige language. The attitude during that time was speaking the dialects and even Belarusian was sounding like a country bumpkin. I think there's still that view by Russians about anyone speaking Ukrainian.
I think Ukrainian is far more beautiful a language than Russian, and I speak English, Persian, and French.
@@MaryamofShomal thank you. I agree. I was born in Canada (but ancestry from western Ukraine) and currently live in Vinnytsia, Ukraine. I also speak French, and did try learning Persian for a girlfriend some years ago....there's a certain genteel "mushyness" to all the languages you mention, except English; a soft rythm to them which I find very pleasing. Russian is easier to learn because of the huge body of material but it strikes my ears as excessively harsh and coarse sounding...not unlike the missiles that land here sometimes (I know I'm biased but I think it's forgivable in the circumstances).
My girlfriend is from north east Ukraine, she says that Ukrainian was considered"мова села" as she's learnt it and speaks it now after steppe pigs came and occupied her town.
@@vaclavskarda4415 Steppe pigs being the hordes of Muscovy?
My husband grew up in Poland during the 70s and 80s. You bet he had to learn Russian! Matter of fact, he got so good at Russian that he did part of his college entrance exams in Russian.
Polish and Russian are quite similar. I have never studied Polish for purpose, but when I have worked with fully Polish crew, I have caught up lots of phrases and could answer my colleagues in Polish language. Not fluently, but we could communicate easily. I am of Russian origin, born and raised in that part of Lithuania where nobody ever spoke Polish.
Can you make a video, of why Lithuania was the only country in USSR never visited by USSR leaders apart from Gorbachev in 1990 ?
Joke answer, afraid to get shot by the Lithuanian version of the forest brothers.
Insightful video as always - could you do one on the history of the Soviet Republic's sub-units, e.g. Abkhazia and South Ossetia vis-à-vis Georgia, please?
Yes! So timely too.
I love the Soviet administrative divisions on a Saturday night with a glass of wine. Sadly I'm not kidding
@@skeetrix5577 Quite! Dad and the used to talk about this.
Whilst Mr Gorbachev knew that he could not prevent the Constituent Republics from leaving the USSR (Both the Stalin and Brezhnev Constitutions allowed this. Note I am fully aware that this right was theoretical! As Moscow would never allow such a thing to happen!).
However he was determined to prevent the further breakup of the Constituent Republics by allowing the Autonomous Republics the right of succession. Of course this mainly would have affected the Russian Federal Soviet Socialist Republic.
As the majority of the Autonomous Republics in the USSR were to be found inside the RFSSR.
However as you note they were also found in Georgia etc.
Propagandized autonomy in last decade of USSR (probably seen downfall and anticipating collapse of it began "divide to conquer" strategy)
Thanks very much for that episode, it was very interesting for me, an amateur linguist.
Pretty much every linguistic body within the ussr was of prescriptivist nature, ie they were deciding which language forms were “valid” and which weren’t. In case of tajiki, they Arabic loan words (remember, tajiki is a Persian language, of indo European origin) were largely replaced with Russian forms.
The Russification of non soviet languages (like Polish) accelerated as well
Glad you enjoyed it!
17:08 even today many Kazakhs in Kazakhstan (especially in the cities) do not speak Kazakh on a confident level
21:47 language differences continue to make rural-urban divide even stronger
Same in Kyrgyzstan 🇰🇬 😪 😢
@@derche4005 Yup. Pretty much, except it also effected white people. Belarussian is literally becoming extinct and the Russian language is now labelled by both Russian and Belarussian flags.
@@saulgoodmanKAZAKH The more I learn of the oppression suffered by others in the Soviet bloc, and by stories of erasure and forceful changing in other countries throughout time, I gain newfound pride in how my own people and country have resisted Russian, German and other's attempts to wipe our small population and culture out. Despite foreign rule for about 800 years, we still retained our language, which is one of the closest to what linguists say the ancestor of all Indo-European languages could have sounded like, and our traditions, which, despite having Christian influences, still have a clear shining pagan core to them.
I root for the people of central Asia to cast away foreign malicious influence, remove the power-mad authoritarians from their governments, revive their languages and cultures and once again enjoy being a unique and interesting people without the shadow of Russia to lean over them. I also wish for self-determination for the Tatars and Siberians of Russia, that even if they wish to stay in Russia, at least they could get as much autonomy as possible.
@@joujou264 Lemme guess, Lithuanian?
@@googleaccount93 Nope
"Then Stalin happened"
Sums things up quite well.
*sad Old Bolshevik noises*
*the Moustache makes an impromptu appearance*
As you show a lot of nice and interesting historical footage of street live in the Soviet Union including public transport, maybe you could create (a) future episode(s) about the public transport system in the Soviet Union. It has some political aspects for sure like construction of railway lines, but maybe, there might have also been laws about which mode of transport had to be used. E.g. in GDR, there was the rule that railway transport has to be regularly chosen when distance is bigger than 50 km. Maybe, there were some rules like that in SU. Thanks a lot for your videos in general ☺️
Ty for all your work in putting these videos together. Informative, clear and I live the video backgrounds.
Thanks for watching!
That part about the necessity of having a common language for a potential conscript army reminds me of something I heard about another state that failed to do this prior to WW1: Austria-Hungary. They had the issue of Austrian officers barely able to communicate and give orders to their soldiers who spoke either Serb, Czech, Hungarian, German, Croatian, Romanian, Slovak, Slovene, and very few spoke Austrian if at all.
Austrian?
austrian speakers are almost like cryptids
I thought Austrians spoke German?
@@badluck5647 an atempt at a joke
@@badluck5647 it’s not the same German as is standard in Germany but yes 😂
>Be someone
>Soviet citizen
>Finishes all my intense training to become a Spetsnaz soldier
>Ready to fight for the USSR and her allies
>Told a minute later after i'm finished that the USSR is no more
>Officer tells me that there's no reason continue on
Imagine being that soldier and learning you've wasted all of that time only to learn the country you're ready to defend and fight for is no more. Feels bad man.
Have you heard of Afghan veterans movement?
I forget his name but there was a cosmonaut who was a Soviet citizen when he was sent to the space station Mir and when he returned he was a Russian citizen.
You should do a beyond series that goes through the repercussions of the USSR break up.
Coming from rural kyrgyzstan i can say this videos accuracy is awesome
Glad you enjoyed it!
How's life there?
13:20 Russian became compulsory in 1938
13:56 avoid translating documents
14:14 military necessity
14:36 build communism in a single state
14:54 promote unity
21:21 urban-rural split
I want an episode about the attitude of France toward minority languages such as breton, basque, occitanian and corsican languages. To this day, it hasn't ratified the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages.
The attitude was mostly that everyone should just speak French, but I think the decline of regional languages in France started way earlier than the Cold War.
@@user-mp8rq9in7l the decline dates back to around the 18th century but it was a relatively slow decline until Napoleon actively took measures to speed it up
There are local initiatives to revive them now. They're not really supported by the government but a lot of local officials are subsidizing these initiatives
@@videonofan I wish them luck, but I'm very skeptical how much success they'll have without independence.
Thanks
I enjoy all of your videos, but this was especially interesting! The insights about their reasoning behind language changes in the different time periods was something I hadn’t heard before
Glad you enjoyed!
Its always Christmas when Cold War uploads!! ❤
I am Belorussian and I approve of this message.
Is that you, Lukashenko?
In 70s and 80s finding a ukrainian school in Kyiv was almost impossible. Vast majority of schools taught in russian, and even though ukrainian language was officially part of the curriculum it usually wasn't taught, reason being lack of teachers. Even supposedly ukrainian schools did a lot of the curriculum in russian, simply because there was no teachers who knew ukrainian well enough to teach kids.
Higher education was 100% russified, ukrainian wasn't even an option in entrance exams, all the lectures were in russian and all the tasks had to be submitted in russian. It was similar in Kharkiv and most of the other cities in Eastern, Central and Southern parts of Ukraine.
There is a book called "Education in Soviet Ukraine" by John Kolasky aka Іван Коляска, canadian-ukrainian communist who went to study in, well, soviet Ukraine in '63. Dude even got kicked out of Communist Party of Canada for what he wrote there.
The urban/rural split is such a common trope in history. Reminds me of the German speaking cities and Slavic or Baltic speaking farmlands of East Prussia - areas which are now independent ethnostates after the expulsion of the Germans after WWII.
Kaliningrad is hardly an independent ethnostate, nothing else comes to mind corresponding to that description. Or Poland moving a good distance to the west after that war.
@@kalle911 He was probably referring to us in the Baltic states. Not sure why he'd classify us as "east Prussia", no scientific or historical body does so. And the term "ethnostate" seems strangely loaded in that comment, though apologies if that wasn't intended. The vast majority of old world countries are ethnostates by design, as some are centuries long domineering countries with a clear dominant ethnicity (France, UK, Portugal, etc.), and others are countries formed by the desire for self-determination during the national awakenings of the late 19th century. Countries not created with an ethnic basis are those that have had the heavy hand of colonialism mangle them, like all of Africa and the middle East. In our case, the change from Germans in the cities to purely Balts throughout the whole land (not really, Latvia and Estonia have considerable minority populations, especially Russians) is a return to before the northern crusades. An analogue could be, natives in the new world somehow wresting control of their ancestral homelands and throwing the settlers out.
@@joujou264 @Get out I'm referring to how Germany was cut back to the Oder and most of that area that had been Germany became Poland - but Prussia extended all the way to Memel, which is now Kleipeda in Lithuania. The Kaliningrad Oblast was Königsberg. But well before that, the Teutonic order controlled cities across the Baltic, and even Tallinn, Estonia was a Germanic city called Reval. Through most of that time, the area east of the Oder and along the Baltic coast, maintained Baltic or Slavic populations in the country, with Germanic people in the cities. I don't mean to call those areas ethnostates as a derogatory term, but it is loaded, since ethnic Germans were forcefully expelled from the cities that had previously been within Germany and are now in Poland, Russia, and Lithuania, so that people of those ethnicities could replace them. After WWII, ethnic identity and national identity understandably became a major geopolitical force, and remains so today. You can see it now in the breakup of Yugoslavia.
Wow. Such a well researched video.
Kudos from a Kazakh born in Kazakh SSR
Hey! Thanks for the awesome video. May I please ask you, could you provide the resources that you used for the video? I am doing a research on this topic, and would greatly appreciate your help!
Status on languages when Lenin remembers me what we call in Spain "Linguistic inmersion", in which classes are given in the territorial language and only the national language is given as a subject, and in Catalonia works good, as they talk Spanish as well as in the rest of the country. I don't know how is learned in the Val d'Aran territory, as they have Occitan, Catalan and Spanish as their languages
This is a great series. Please do a video about Lao civil war and the American involvement, also videos about Vietnam war and South Vietnam.
What Stalin did for Russification is strange given he was himself Georgian.
He was never a citizen of Georgia. He was only an ethnic Georgian. He was born in Imperial Russia and died in the Soviet Union.
@@MWENDA-vv5im He was born in Gori which is in Georgia.
@@crose7412 I stand by what I said. Please try to understand the difference between nationality and ethnicity.
@@MWENDA-vv5im I do understand the difference, however, you didn't reference it.
@@crose7412 Fair enough.
Imagine living in a “country” with hundreds of very different languages.
We need a vid on the Soviet housing.
Until recent history that was the norm. The linguistic centralisation of countries is a modern trend that started in the industrial revolution.
The ushshanka show has several.
@@neues3691 Most countries weren't large enough to have but a few languages, and these were usually of the same family.
Being an Indian, I don't even need to imagine. We have hundreds of languages spoken in our country. 22 of them are scheduled languages, and many of them have their own unique writing system. I think only Papua New Guinea has more languages than India, though I may be wrong.
@@Harsimran_Singh_27 PNG and Australia have something like a thousand spoken languages though a basic pictorial written language
Brilliant video, I'd never thought about this before, but its a great point. So glad that you made this video! As one fellow UA-camr to another, keep up the great work!
Glad it was helpful!
@@TheColdWarTV Of course it was, all of your videos are top-quality! Wish it was about when I was studying the Cold War 10 years ago!
local languages are always suppressed wherever you go, like in North Africa, there was a bilingual Arab-French policy in Tunisia and denigration of Berber speakers by mocking their tattooed parents, like my grandparents.
Even in France, as late as the middle 19th century, a majority of the population didn't speak "French." The French and the Japanese among others, literally beat and terrorized young people into speaking the national language (the language of their capitol regions)-nation-state-builders will want to impose language standards. Here in the USA it wasn't a problem-the Brit settlers simply exterminated or marginalized the native populations and mixed slaves of different origins so they had to adopt English to communicate among themselves. The children of US immigrants wanted and today still want to learn English, they never established linguistic territories here like the Berbers in Algeria and Morocco, right?
@@billcunningham9256 In Morocco and Algeria the different Berber dialects are at least recognized, but in Tunisia, they are not. The regime after the independence even used the word Chleuh, which is a Berber tribe as an adjective to describe uncivilized or savage people.
@@benkamelmayssem5780 That's probably why people like me would not even know there were Berber communities in Tunisia.
@@billcunningham9256 we are non-speakers and according to the DNA studies the majority has north African origins, I have my test results in a video on my channel.
As a Vietnamese guy who's dating an Algerian woman, I always make parallels:
that the Vietnamese (and other Yue peoples) are to China what the Berbers are to the Arabs.
This has a lot of parallels with how languages went into decline in other empires, continuing in newly-independent states. Notably the decline of the Irish language and native languages in Africa.
Strange thing that some of national minorities even resisted introduction of communication in their native languages. For instance some 1/3 of Byelorussians didn't speak Belorussian in early 1920-ies and some Kuban Cossack were against learning standardized Ukrainian since it was very different from their own local dialect. Not to mention that local nationalism in former Russian Empire wasn't prominent, gaining very little seats in Duma in 1905. There was something called "rossiisky" identity which doesn't really mean identifying with Russian as nation or language (russky), rather to the state. RSFR even had rossiisky in it's name rather than Russian, and RSFR for some time had less national institution and autonomy compared to other republics (until 1930 that is). This identity lead to some German interrogators confused when questioning Ukrainian and other defectors in 1941, because some of them mention their hopes of Germans liberating Russia.
Very interesting as always. I think it is important to mention events of 1978 in Georgia while discussing Soviet language policies and politics.
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1978_Georgian_demonstrations
Very informative and interesting. About the video itself: you're killing me man! What are you cutting to a 3/4 angle for??? Who the heck is that guy talking to and what is he looking at?? A second ago it was the viewer! I suppose it's because your editor thinks 🤔 you are boring? Or is it to actually ruin the continuity of your presentation - because it does.
A good general video covering most of the policies, even if not touching on the Baltics and Soviet Moldova (odd ones out?:) If I may, from direct personal experience on the so-called optional study of Russian and on the Russian language in the army, as well as on one concrete language:
1. The idea that language "options" would exist and be conveyed to the parents (forget about pupils/students, they were "underage"), even if those options would be present in laws, was ab initio foreign to the USSR. No one would ever discuss any "options" with anyone, language or otherwise. Do you think my parents were given options or they'd ask, if they knew? They didn't even know of options, and my mother was a teacher herself. I will accept that I haven't asked my School Director (Principal) about it these days, though she is alive and we are still in touch. Options? That's not the best way to put it. Options existed on paper, but were possibly unknown to the educators and were never voiced, I'd say that's closer to what actually happened.
P.S. on options - I had a wonderful teacher of the Russian language and enjoy its knowledge thoroughly, it makes me "richer" in, I dare say, intellectual way.
2. Only on Soviet Moldova (Soviet part of Moldova) the only Latin language "republic" in USSR - it was transitioned by USSR from Latin to Cyrillic, even if ultimately allowed to speak its language, as a constituent of USSR. In reality, "speak human!" is what my mom was told, for example... The towns did have "Middle Schools" that people suspected were mixed Russian-Moldovan (Sred'naya Russko-Moldavskaya Shkola) to promote Russian language. Suspicion is not a fact, but middle schools were not "middle", they were from the 1st-ToTheLast10th grade and full time with Russians, who never could crack one word in the local language. Imagine navigating that without being forced "by circumstances" to learn Russian. At the countryside, that wouldn't happen, as the Russians did not "migrate" (were brought in) after WWII to the rural areas. That does mean that the "Moldovan" language was the local "constituent" language on paper, but it was only spoken when Russians were absent. This is how "linguistic legislation" differs from reality. And delo-proizvodstvo (official paperwork) would shift to Russian, if a Russian speaker was there, in towns it was almost entirely in Russian, no questions asked. There is a good book in German, by Klaus Heitmann, 'Sprache und Nation in der Republik Moldova" that describes why linguistic identity was a national identity in Moldova and that explains why it was dangerous for USSR. For a good comparative analysis, with caveats, now a separate language is "dangerous" in Ukraine for Russia... By the way, as of the independence, there is no "Moldovan" language in the Moldovan schools, the "maternal" language studied according to the unified state curricula is Romanian (see how the other, "official", part of Moldova - the one with the capital city, administration, etc united with Wallachia and created Romania meanwhile, electing a Moldovan prince as the 1st king of Romania at the beginning of that process. God forbid anyone mentions that even today in the Russian media or recognizes that Moldovan is Romanian, in Kremlin driven media. Why, I wonder (well, not really)?)
3. As I commented to another user here, the issue of the Russian language in the army remained a real problem until the 80s, especially in cases of conscripts from Central Asia and Caucasus, so the argument with the "language for army" being "reasonable" was often turned upside down by the reality itself. I lived or worked or visited some parts of USSR. Nope, Russian did not ensure uniformity in the army. Hence, one can ask herself/himself if that was a mere justification in a unified and mono-thinking, mono-party political "singularity", while the Russian was conveniently present there from empire times. You know, imperialism can have many facets, who said it MUST be necessarily capitalist? (pardon my caps).
My Czech best friends parents all know Russian because they were forced to learn it at school Ask anyone in Czech Republic if they know Russian that was born just after WWII and they will all say NO, even though they were taught it in school.
"forced to". Today, we are forced to learn english
In 80s Yugoslavia, now Croatia i was forced to learn English and French and to be good about it, My little sister English and Italian. Russian would be peace of cake instead Italian since we are in same lenguage familly.
My best childhood frend had English and German. Do not complain about one easy lenguage.
@@aranos6269 I live in Split, Croatia. In my fifth grade(1985) English was compulsory, in sixt grade French was aded. English lasted until first year of university, French until eight grade elementary, at least in my case, other schools had German, Italian or Russian as second lenguage. If i where bad in any of them then i would not be accepted in any good middle schools and that would mean no furder education. French was killing me, i had very bad relationship with French teacher, hatred was mutual. 20 years later i went to Alliance Francaise to give French second chance and i finished two semestres.
@@hennagaijin7856 ...and Viking languages.
By forced you mean you had to learn a foreign language? Oh my God, how could they do that, is inhumane to teach people a foreign language.
Can you do life in Central Asia under Soviet rule, Baltic States under Soviet rule, Cuban Revolution and the missile crisis, Grenda, Falkland Wars, El Salvador civil war, Crack epidemic, Korean airline got shootdown, Black Panther Party in the 60s and 70s Cuban Boatlift, and Soviet-Afghan war etc
Interesting! Thanks
Glad you liked it!
As some one who's family immigrated from USSR from Modern day Uzbekistan from what I know until Stalin's Death everything about languages was normal and every nationality spoke as it wanted, After Krusov's reforms he started the "Russofication" of the USSR which meant bringing the Russian languages and culture to every corner of the USSR, thats why my grandparents speak Uzbek since they were born in the 30-40's and my parents speak mainly russian (the were born in the 60's), The Russification period happend mainly to the large citys and republics capitals, so you will see more Russian speaking people from places like Tashkent, Douchambe, Kiev, Minsk and Baku and less from the less developed villages and areas of the USSR.
Where in Uzbekistan is your family from? In my experience, it was all about big city / small city.
My grandparents don't speak any Uzbek (they were born in 1938 in Tashkent), while their friends of the same age who lived in Urgench, although being Russian, spoke Uzbek (they left for Russia in 1990s, so now they probably forgot everything)
@@olegkirovskii2720 my family lived in Tashkent, my grandparents were born in the 30's and speak uzbek and tajik,
My parents were born in the 60's and speak russian.
While If I meet immgrants from samarkand and Buchara they mostly speak the native languagh
This is very wrong. Stalin was the one who initiated the russofication of the USSR, not Kruzhov. Lenin had the idea that every ethnicity should be allowed to express itself in its own culture and language while stalin saw ukraine and all other republics as small "children" of russia. He was the one who started to tear down ukrainian, belarusian and many other language schools and replaced them by forcing children to learn russian. The thing Kruzhov did was to do nothing about it. Kruzhov hasnt done any "reforms" at all. He is majorly known for his idea of communal apartments, which are seen in every former republic. Laws that Lenin passed for the protection of the ukrainian, belarusian and all other languages were removed by stalin himself.
@@Jewboy522 even tajik. Interesting how different people are)
@@Jewboy522 I heared that people in old central asia spoke "chagatei " with turko persian dialekt and modern usbek identity came with the soviet union?
Had this Question from long time, Thank you
They taught Russian in school but also the language of the country and sometimes you also had an option of another language, such as German. And if you look at formal documents you would see both languages. Books were also readily available on both languages and from writers of Russian descent and the descent of the country. My mom learnt Russian, Latvian and German in school. If you were from a small village well it depends on the availability of teachers. In the west now there are plenty of schools that have more resources available to them cause they are in populated areas and plenty of schools that don't have the resources cause they are not so populated.
So Stalin, who was from the Georgia Republic, decreed all citizens of the USSR, become more Russian.
Which is why Israeli commentator, Yakov Kedmi, claims that Lenin hated Russia but Stalin loved Russia "in his own way".
@@edmundlubega9647 If you study the biography of Kedmi, you will understand that this is one of the most unreliable people who cannot be trusted.
My grandmother-in-law, born in Pskov Oblast in North-Western Russia, was eventually sent to Riga, Latvia in early 1950 (she was in her early 20s then). This was a program of "raspredeleniye" (distribution), that foresaw that the graduates of Soviet high schools would be given a limited choice of places where they were about to work. The granny wanted to go somewhere to Siberia, but at those years only borderland republics were foreseen - a politics of crawling russification at work. She was lucky to get Latvia, because the she was the best student of here year.
At the time, Lavtia was re-occupied for not more than She says that initially there was a program to teach Russians Latvian. But then, as she says "Khruschev came and rolled the program out".
Another story was told to me by an ethnically Russian physics professor, born in 1930 and raised in, afaik, Kyrgyzstan. At the mixed ethnic school he attended, he was to learn both Russian and the local language, but the teacher of Kyrgyz was very lack on that. He was giving every Kyrgyz a 5 = A and every Russian a 4 = B, no matter the level. The future professor never learned the language.
A third story was told to me by my granddad - he brought it from Mordovia, where he's been sent to by his University. A local teacher was complaining that she had to study her local language at school, which she considered useless and would've preferred to learn French instead.
I dated a woman that was from Baku and she didn't speak any Azeri. She moved around a bit growing up within the Eastern Bloc and always had schooling in Russian.
More than 100 ethnicities ? This is also the case in the contemporary federation.
I know a lady from East Germany and she said that she had to learn Russian in school but primarily spoke German.
During the cold war, Mongolia was called the 16th Soviet country. They began to use the Russian charactern. I'm learning Mongolian. Now, many people suggest that I learn the teaching materials of Russian characters first, because it's more scientific. The Russians have studied Mongolian and made new learning rules. At the end of each teaching video, the teacher will rewrite the words with Russian charactern . I found that Russian charactern are indeed easy to remember. But my purpose is to study ancient Chinese history. Mongolian charactern and their ancestors play an important role in this，If I learn Mongolian through Russian character ，I can't succeed
Hehe now when a Mongol screams he screams in Cyrilic
The country is switching to the Mongolic script, though, so hopefully that will help the Mongol people in safeguarding or restoring some of their culture and traditions (at least the ones that aren't harmful).
As far as I know, they're shifting back to the old script by 2025.
@@ianhomerpura8937 Does not matter they had Cyrilic
@@VojislavMoranic I think they will use both
In a way this actually helps to contextualize the Ukrainian (maybe) War at the moment, thank you David.
Its actualy one of the biggiest factors in it, surprised if you are a westerner, it would be the first time id see someone from the west understanding the big picture for as why the conflict exists today.
@@IVAN-zm8pz Look at his profile pic, he must be Polish
I spent 2 years in Donbas and Dnepr regions in 1997-99. The language issue was a big deal then, and it is definitely a factor in the ongoing conflict. That region primarily speaks Russian, but most Ukrainian news outlets were in Ukrainian language. As a result, the local population consumed a lot of news and TV broadcasts coming from Russia. The differential in media consumption and resulting differential in political views was a major contributor to the current conflict. Hostility broke out in 2014, but the underlying contempt had been building for a long time.
Kinda sad if you think about it.
@@brycechristensen2296 *Dnipro
The conflict started because Russian nationals crossed the borders and established Proxy states run by Russian. That's the main reason why there was a war in Donbas before the invasion or 2022.
Censuses is the standard plural for English. But census is also the plural of census in Latin.
How did I never notice the little Vault Boy in the front there?
I think it is an important fact that although there was a concerted effort to convert scripts of the constituent republics to a cyrillic script, the Georgians and the Armenian soviet republics were the only two that managed to hold on to their scripts throughout the process.
Can you do the 1968 USSR invasion into Czechoslovakia?
when will you conclude the cliffhanger yall left on the videos on operation gladio, its been 8 months
I like how the host ends these video's. My compliments to all those who made this video a reality.
Thank you for another very informative episode. As far as the plural form of census goes, I'm leaning toward censuses, but I don't know myself lol.
God be with you out there everybody. ✝️ :)
In the last years in Belarus the policy of derussification was intensified by the sole president of the country.
Language of interethnic communication ? A bill about the officialisation of this was rejected a while ago in the Republic of Moldova.
To latinisation the russian language ? This could be interesting and unusual.
why ?
I can readily transcribe Russian phonetically into Slovak.
It's better to keep cultural diversity. Why should everyone use the same alphabet ?
The force of Russian language in the Soviet Union was not much different than force of the state language in the Western democracies. In France - Breton, Occitan and Basque are almost extinct now. In the UK there pupils were beaten by teachers for speaking Welsh or Scots Gaelic. In the US native American languages and Hawaiian are also almost extinct. There are dozens more examples
At the least the British have reversed that trend and they devote a lot of time and money to encourage Weish natives to speak Welsh. Sadly the French still discourage the use of Breton and Basque.
Your comment is not biased enough. Today one has to have an anti-russian pro-west bias. Let's not forget segregation policy in the US also. By itself this destroys the myth about what the USA were fighting for.
This video is about the Soviet Union, is something bothering you?
@@aleksanderwielopolski8205 The channel is about cold war. So it's absolutely logical to compare Soviet Union with western countries.
@@Dave_Sisson The French are masters in assimilation and centralisation. There is no breathing space for SNPies
In Kazakh SSR, Kazakhs were second-class citizens. Kazakh schools were a rare thing. My grandma remembers a moment when she was insulted for speaking Kazakh language in a bus. In Kazakhstan. After that she decided to raise her children in Kazakh only in spite of all restrictions. Speaking Kazakh language was prohibited in Russian schools (nearest Kazakh school was 250 km away).
Is Kazakh still spoken and written?
@@jaegerguy yes. It is very strong now. Kazakh language is continues to grow. Russian is becoming less and less daily in KZ.
But USSR was anti imperialist
-Tankies
And your grandma is based.
It seems that this was the time when Kazakhs were also minority in KSSR. I remember some geography textbook stating 33%. But then birth rate of Kazakhs exceeded immigration..
I live in France and what I can say is that the USSR was a paradise for local languages compared with France. Turkey also had an anti-local languages policy. So can we say that Warsaw pact countries were less tolerant than Nato countries during cold war, as far as local languages are concerned ? Well it depends on the country but I think we can say that USSR was in fact much more tolerant than 2 big Nato countries like France and Turkey. It would be also interesting to study the USA policy towards native American languages during cold war. I think we can say the US government did not help those languages as much as the Soviet gov helped local languages.
A few comments: 1) Prior to 1917, only Rabbies were required to speak Russian. The shtetls' language was Yiddish, including schools. Everyone was literate, the tradition of jewish education was going back millenia - but it had nothing to do with ideas of communism. Traditional Yiddish schools were all closed in 1930 (assuredly in Belorussia). Children had to go to new schools and learn using new textbooks in Russian, full of communistic rhetoric and "Lenin lives, Lenin will live'. 2) The "official" primary school's textbooks were only in Russian... for a very long time 3) Translating and publishing school textbooks in local languages was sooo slow, took so long time, that it was not finished even by 1989. Often, by the time the textbooks were properly translated and published, locals already lost their languages, only old people could talk it. 5) After collapse of USSR, many natives of Siberia could return to their original lifestyle, settled along rivers in traditional style, a family per every 50km of riverrun, earned their livelihood in traditional way, only occasionally coming to "civilisation" to exchange fur on ammunition and gas. But ... they use only Russian language, even in families. Their original languages are gone forever.
Well, in a lot of former Soviet republics with languages very different than Russian, quite a few people understand enough Russian to help you get around and converse.
Excellent episode. Thanks for delving into this subject which is so often ignored by monolingual English-speakins media. Diolch yn fawr iawn - hynod ddiddorol.
That last sentence in your comment. What language is that written in?
@@TheCimbrianBull Welsh. I speak Welsh (Cymraeg), as well as English. You can google translate it, but is means, "Thank you very much - exceedingly interesting".👍 There is much which is smiliar in the history of how Welsh was treated in the British state, with how non-Russian languages were treated in the Russian Empire and then the USSR. We can see affinities.
@@SionTJobbins thanks for the answer!
13:36 I feel like Cyrillic and Latin should get together and make a baby, instead of all this pointless switching back and forth between two equally inadequate alphabets.
There is only one language the Latin alphabet actually fits neatly, that's Italian. The rest of us are forced to corrupt it a thousand different ways. Cyrillic has a marginally better inventory of letters, but is still difficult to switch to because of the conflicting use of similar letters.
There must be a way to create a hybrid that is unambiguously legible to users of either, right?
I mean I'm not seriously expecting anyone to actually do it, but it would make a cool background element for some sci-fi cyberpunk type TV series or movie, or even video game, I reckon.
Натисніть кнопку "дзвіночок". Нажмите на кнопку "звонок". Please press the bell button. Pulsar el boton de campana. Klingelknopf drücken, bitte.
Больше языков не знаю....
How about communication within the Warsaw Pact? Specifically in the military, did they have a standard set of Russian words to communicate between troops of different nationalities?
NATO had more languages than English
Russian was taught all across the Warsaw Pact nations, usually as first foreign language. In the GDR, for instance, Russian was compulsory from 5th grade onwards, starting already in 1949/50. Now, learning a language in school doesn't mean that you actually speak it somewhat fluently later on, but it meant that they could rely on a basic knowledge of Russian everywhere, and being able to speak Russian was advantageous (or necessary) for higher-tier officials.
If you were a conscripted guy who only wanted to do two or three years that you had to do you were fine not speaking Russian, but if you had any aspirations of becoming an officer etc you had to speak it, to a satisfactory level at least (of course more was better). That and quite often other language, like German French or English. It wasn’t the USA, the bi or trilingualism wasn’t something rare
I would think that communications between units of different countries would mostly happen at the high command level. Many higher ranking military personnel in Block countries attended Soviet military academies and probably knew some Russian. Interpreters should not be difficult to find if that wasn't the case. I don't believe Pact was involved in any wars as an alliance and for training exercises everyone just followed the pre-made plans.
There are Videos of GDR Pilots and Radar Ground Crew speaking to each other in russian with obvious german accent. So it was at least trained in the air force to be compatible with all of kind of soviet radar crews.
Your hash tags seem to be off, they’re reflecting the Algerian war episode
I went to school in the 60s and 70s in Scotland and you would bet the belt for speaking Scots repeatedly, unless it was Rabbie Burns and I doubt anyone was taught in Scots Gaelic.
I always debate to myself how much turning a multinational, multiethnic and multilinguistic empire into a more centralized nation with a shared sense of culture and history. I speak English, French, (both due to a being a mixed binational, biracial, and bicultural person) and Spanish, and I am learning Italian and Catalan as well as plan on learning Maghreb Arabic (and may try more in the future). All these languages and its mother country have interesting relations with politics and history.
English became a national language in the UK through London's increasing dominance and centralization before becoming an international language throughout the former British Empire, and then it's most successful former colony, the US, through its overwhelming political, military, economic and cultural dominance since the 1950s turned it into the de facto international language of science, trade and culture.
French due to France's political, military and cultural dominance over Europe for centuries become the language of the elites of Europe, be it the royal courts, the aristocrats, inteligencia, etc. In France, there was also a brutal crushing of most regional languages and dialects, with my grandmother telling me it was illegal to speak the local dialect in the schoolyard. However, this also allowed when school became mandatory in the 1880s for a greater sense of national unity. Until the 1950s, more than a century since France became secondary to Britain in the world, French was the language of elites, and still has a big rule due to its former empire.
Spanish (where it's even greater) still has many regional variants in Spain, which has led to preservation of more regional cultures and a semi-federal system of power. Of course, in Latin America due to time and mixing of indigenous and Spanish cultures as well as other immigration has led to different accents and expressions. Catalan despite efforts for crushing it in the 19th and 20th century, has stayed alive and is now flourishing in the culturally Catalonian regions in Spain and France. Luckily, the EU allows even more autonomy for this culture and allows people to cross borders easily.
Arabic though there are national and regional variants, has allowed a shared sense of culture throughout the Arabic world allowing science, arts, ideas and religious changes to spread easily due to a common standard international version. And the Arab language was spread in the 8th and 9th centuries.
Excellent video 📹
Recently, 2021, I read that Kazakhstan is going to use the Latin script instead of the Cyrillic script.
How strange.
Thanks! Very good video as always. I just want to point out, that the Cyrillization in the late 30s wasn't just some kind bureaucratic process, but went hand in hand with large scale purges as the first-generation intellectuals of smaller nations of Russia had been the main promoters of these newly-made Latin alphabets and these people were now accused of nationalism and arrested, deported and murdered.
My mother had to study Russian at school in the 1950s, in highschool and I think also university, but did not remember a word of it. Fortunately, I studied French and English , but my peers that studied Russian could barely speak it, although English was a piece of cake to learn. I am Romanian. I am not saying there are no Romanians that can speak Russian well, just that many of us were not interested in learning it, and given a choice would rather study English.
Yes
Before being overly critical of Russia, let us remember that we have had several attempts at "English only" education, Even in California, they banned bilingual education for several years. Now bilingualism is encouraged, but the focus still is on English education.
The Soviet policy on minority languages and culture, whatever its shortcomings, was far more progressive than that found in Western countries particularly those of the former British Empire.
@@randomweirdo4467 What does that have to do with language policy?
The problem, that most peasants in Russian before revolution, had no education. Even my grandmother that was born in an intelligent family haf only four classes. As usual this classes were or at home or at a church school . And the alphabet that for example have most Asian republics was russian , because they even had no at their own ,or it was almost forgotten. The exception were Baltic rebublics and few Caucasian where was ancient culture and elite .
I think the Soviet government did deliberately blurred the multi-nationalist nature of the country to the outside world. They loved the outside world thinking the country as ‘Russia’. For example I did observed some 1930s / 50s Intourist posters showing some idealized regional scenes of Odessa Ukraine and Batumi Georgia etc, and the captions at the bottom of the posters say ‘USSR (Russia)’.
Can u do a asian nations situations in cold war era and the proxy wars of us and ussr
He seems to moving chronologically and since he is currently covering the 60s, I assume Vietnam is approaching.
@C D: Vietnam didn't suddenly "happen" in the 1960's, which is what people in the English-speaking world almost always assume; it rather started at the end of the Second World War.
The Vietminh would be the precursors to the Mujahideen later on.
@@Suite_annamite He already covered the war with France and the events that lead up to it.
ua-cam.com/video/lb2TlE0tpIo/v-deo.html
I wonder when will come out a about the situation in Cuba in the 1950s and about Castro.
"And then Stalin happened" - that's an understatment!
That's a line that ranks tight up there with "nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition"
Language seems to be used for nationalism in places like Ukraine or Kazakhstan but given that most of them speak to seem Russian in the big cities and whenever I encounter them on UA-cam or while travelling, I think it must have become the dominant language throughout most of the USSR.
In places like Ukraine and Kazakhstan there was famine that reduced local population and later the state would forcefully resettle people from central Russia that eventually led to Russian language becoming dominant in those areas. Also, the government would send graduates to work places after their studies, and while they were usually sent somewhere near their place of studies, they could also be sent somewhere far away.
But in Republics where local language was strong Russian didn't became dominant for example in my country Georgia. 1970s there was an attempt at removing Georgian as a sole official language from the constitution of Georgian SSR, this caused mass demonstrations in 1978 and as a result Georgian language retained the previous status. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1978_Georgian_demonstrations
Interesting, thanks for the replies. I do remember Kazakhs at uni mentioning about how they felt aggrieved with the nuclear testing in the country.
@@cbrtdgh4210 In Kazakhstan, Kazakhs were a minority from 1930-s until the 1990-s. Higher education was in russian only, and most of schools were Russian schools as well. Majority population in cities were Russian, and in some rural areas in northern and eastern Kazakhstan too. Official languages of Kazakh SSR were Kazakh and Russian, but, in fact, only Russian language helped you. There were less than 100 Kazakh schools in Kazakhstan in 1970.
In West and parts of Central Ukraine Ukrainian is the dominant language, but most people in these areas can still speak Russian because of the Soviet legacy.
I hear you say teaching in Burjat and Karelian languages stopped in 1958. What was the purpose of maintaining ‘autonomous’ republics inside the Russian ‘Federation’ for those ethnic group's after teaching in their languages ceased?
At the time they were only autonomous in name, and since that was the case there was no need in changing anything, since it'd only mean a name change.
In case of Karelian republic I suppose it was crucial to show neighboring Finland how much they cared for karelians. And before 1956 Karelia was not just autonomous, but a full Union Republic. Also many people though became almost fully russian-speaking, still cared a lot for their national identity. And i guess the main reason is just the inertia of the territorial adminidtration. In modern russia there is still an autonomous jewish district on Far East, with no jews living there (like at all). And they still have street signs on Yiddish there
@@joluoto Karelia was downgraded from Socialist Soviet Republic (SSR) to “Autonomous” Socialist Soviet Republic (ASSR) and Tuva was upgraded from “Autonomous” Olblast to “Autonomous” Republic.So the Soviet Union had a lot of policies to keep up the pretense of autonomy for minorities.
@@user-le4tl5fw7c Jewish people are about 1% of that area after most emigrated to Israel in the 90s and 00s.
Video idea: how was race was viewed in the USSR?
Had a 1 quarter UW course on the many ethnicities in USSR
1988
taught by a Jewish anthropology prof from Leningrad
As Latinisation of the Turkic languages has been brought up, in the post-Soviet period (1991 on), only two of the fifteen former Soviet republics have done away with their Cyrillic alphabet in favor of the Latin alphabet: Moldova (given that the Bessarabian territory was a part of Romania prior to WW2/Great Patriotic War; some in both Romania and Moldova want the latter be formerly reunited with Romania), and Kazakhstan (which like Turkey under Kemal Attaturk, decided against Arabic script as the Turkic languages are very rich in vowels sounds; Arabic is constant rich, thus the Arabic script was found wanting by Attaturk and thus went to adapting the Latin alphabet for use with the Turkish language).
Thank you for the video. It's very interesting to see esome ideas from the different point of view that I was taught at school and then, in college.
The point is that I have been born and raised in Russian-originated family in Lithuanian SSR. As I am child of early 1980s, I can still remember some things in Lithuania of those times. As far as I remember, in city of Klaipeda (formerly, Memel) there hasn't been such thing as language discrimination before 1991. Bilingual signs, people of both Lithuanian and Russian origins used to work together. Communication language of staff has been usually selected as per origin of national majority in the staff. So, for example, my parents didn't have to speak lithuanian at all, as majority of their colleagues were Russian-speakers. But my aunt used to work among staff where the majority were of Lithuanian origin, so even during the USSR time she spoke Lithuanian very good.
Some areas in Lithuania, such as Kaunas or Panevezys were 100% Lithuanian speaking. One ex-military officer that used to serve next to Kaunas told me, that he had to learn the local language because local people didn't want to speak or learn Russian language. They would not sell you anything in a shop or any food-serving facility if you didn't speak any Lithuanian :)
i like david !
So fascinating and yet sad for those in the Soviet Union who spoke other languages and slowly lost their identity.
One fun fact that's somewhat related to this. The teacher I had for biology and chemistry in high school was from Bulgaria. While it obviously wasn't a part of the Soviet Union, he could speak both Bulgarian and Russian. Idk if it was because he had Russian roots of some sort, he learned Russian out of interest, or if Russian was required or somewhat required for those living in the Soviet bloc.
Russian was compulsatory from the 3rd year in school. However bulgarian and russian are very close so it's pretty easy to learn. I was not good in russian but I can read freely and understand 90% when spoken.
@@MrDarpatov That explains it. One time, there was something in our chemistry text books about a Russian chemist and included something in Russian. He was able to read it perfectly.
👍👏
. More than 100 nations? More like 500.
I’m a coin collector. I would love a history of Soviet coinage and its political message.
It’s important to note that Ukraine did not have *Ukrainian* language schools, even though Ukrainian orthography and literature had been in existence for quite a while…and the situation for Ukraine got worse under Stalin.
That's not true. When I was in my 5th grade (1981) we had some pen-friends from Ukraine precisely because of they also started learning Russian in the same time.
But of course many of them already knew it (even if they were from "more ukrainian" countryside).
Ok I've told my comrades to press the bell button in Cryllic
And now every language is becoming anglisised. People need to be prouder of their culture and heritage.
And now in Belarus everyone speaks only Russian.
14:43 - 14:45 nice contradiction
God that was good dude....a side of the Soviet Union I've never seen.
You could take a look at the Soviet Esperanto movement. How it went from being sort of supported but not really to completely banned and its leaders shot in the Great purge.
Yes, it was.