Etno-Linguistic Conflicts in the Post-Soviet and Eastern Europe Space

Abstract

After the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, post-Soviet and Eastern European countries as a whole have emerged as a contested linguistic space, where emotional exchanges over language-related issues and disagreements over language policies – supported by Russia in a covered manner – have led to riots and even military conflicts and secession. In some cases (in Crimea and in Eastern Ukraine) Russia acted in an overt manner by coming to help the Russian-speaking people. Russia was giving legitimacy to military intervention by using clear statements, by both the Russian government and medias, which asserted that ethic Russians and the use of the Russian language were under threat. My working hypotheses argue that one of the Russian asymmetrical way to act toward post-Soviet and Eastern European countries was to influence the Russian language status and policies by supporting pseudo human-rights movements and referendum for Russian to be declared second official language, or by offering military help to Russian-speaking people in order to obstructing regional security at the border of European Union and NATO. In this study I will consider data (press, official documents and academic papers) from six post-Soviet and Eastern Europe states (Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova) regarding the evolution of the Russian language status and linguistic policies applied, in order to demonstrate the asymmetric Russian tactics to support inter-ethnic tensions, to divide societies and to increase social exclusion among communities.

Note: Downloadable document is in Romanian and English.

Keywords: Russian language, inter-ethnic tensions, etnic conflicts, regional security, agressive linguistic policies

JEL Classification: A10, A30