Linguistic russification in the Russian Empire: peasants into Russians?

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to question the traditional view of tsarist language management as a conscious, consistent and long-lasting policy of linguistic russification and denationalization and to consider the actual policies, their context, and impact. Drawing on recent historiographies, I will show that the Russian administration had no unified language policy: its strategies varied significantly across time periods and geographic regions and were mediated by political, ethnic, religious, and class concerns. When russification policies were adopted, the key aim was to establish the dominance of Russian as a high language over Polish, German, and Tatar. At the same time, the authorities never created a comprehensive primary education system and, as a result, failed to spread Russian to the majority of non-Russian peasants. Ethnic elites adopted Russian as an additional language, yet this adoption did not increase their loyalty to the empire: the key outcome of russification policies was the mobilization of emerging national movements.