Language planning in the former Soviet Union: the case of Estonia

Abstract

Estonia's Situation, with large populations speaking Estonian and Russian, is extremely heterogeneous. The historical record shows that such linguistically heterogeneous states that Consolidated their rule in the late nineteenth and the twentieth centuries — especially those that were subject to colonial rule — have had great difficulty in altering their language situations to achieve official hegemony of a single language, what is here called language rationalization. This is due to new international Standards of human rights, entrenched bureaucratic interest in the former language ofrule, and the fact that officials of contemporary states have a greater need to communicate with ordinary people than such officials did in earlier centuries. A number ofsociolinguistic trends suggest that Estonia is on thispath oflate development, asfew Russians have learned Estonian, and as English is beginning to play the r ole of a lingua franca between Estonia1 s two national communities. Despite such trends, the newly sovereign states of the former Soviet Union may, due to the special Soviet legacy and the economic conditions of its collapse, succeed in language rationalization where many other states that received sovereignty in this Century havefailed. Thispaper explores that legacy andanalyzes the economic trends in order to show the possibility, despite minuscule resources allocatedfor language planning, for the successful rationalization of Estonian in (today's heterogeneous) Estonia.