Language and Educational Practices in the Territories of the Western Russian Empire Governorates in the 19th Century: Searching For National Standards

Abstract

Languages played a crucial role in the nation-building processes of the 19th century. It is impossible to investigate these processes not taking into consideration the imperial phenomenon. The aim of this article is to analyze and compare peculiarities of language and educational practices that characterized the development of the Jewish and Polish communities in what is referred to as the «Western outskirts» of the Russian Empire. The elimination of the Polish educational institutions was accompanied by the elaboration of options for including the Polish youth into the common imperial context through the educational system, and through the system of higher education in the first place. However, the Polish language maintained the status of the language of record keeping, court proceedings, and daily communication until the November Uprising (1830-1831), which significantly complicated the task of the local Poles’ assimilation.The article hypothesizes that competitive surrounding that was created by the Hebrew and Yiddish supporters, who were aligned with the followers of the Russian language oriented assimilation project, fostered the crystallization and norm introduction of both Jewish languages, which was happening with simultaneous development of their literary standards. The project on the establishment of the Jewish teacher training institutions with elements of secular education, the Russian language and the Russian management proved to be inviable as it failed to conform to Jewish traditional religious education.The methodology of the research: the article uses the comparative method to draw comparisons between language and educational practices of the representatives of the Polish and Jewish communities of the Southwestern and Northwestern territories during «the long 19th century», the elements of constructionist methodology enables the author to investigate the role of language marker in the implementation of the Polish and Jewish national projects. Instrumentarium of a so-called «new empire history» allows considering a destructive influence on national languages development in the nation-building process. The outlined methodology also testifies the presence of the novelty elements in the suggested material. Starting from the middle of the 19th century the communicative dominance in the Russian empire was given to the Russian language. Other languages occupied their local niches, which largely limited their usage and functioning. The efforts of the authorities to reduce the communicative area of the national languages usage and to diminish their status had the perverse effect. The oppression only encouraged the creators of national «projects» to make every effort to standardize, expand the spheres of language usage, to actively use them as languages of literature and science. Questions related to the consolidation of the status of state languages in the newly created nation-states after the destruction of one empire and under new political circumstances in the context of another empire need further studies.