Chuvash Language in Chuvashia’s Instruction System: An Example of Educational Language Policies in Post-Soviet Russia
Publisher: ECMI Volume: 33 pages, pdf Description: This article presents the situation of the Chuvash language in the education system of the Republic of Chuvashia and its evolution since the end of the Soviet period. The analysis relies on several sources: governmental statistics, observations on the ground, interviews with teachers and school officers, and a sociolinguistic survey among secondary and upper secondary school students. The data show that most of the gains for Chuvash, achieved by the language policies in education in the early 1990s, had already been neutralized 10 years later. Since the mid-2000s Chuvash-language instruction has steadily decreased, and seems to have lost the weak support it had from the Chuvash authorities.