ABSTRACT
Focusing on the functioning of Russian in Armenia, this chapter beigns with a brief historical overview. The first Russians settling in Armenia at the end of the 18th century were members of the Molokan religious community. Migration waves from Russia continued in the 19th century and throughout the Soviet period. Nowadays, Russians form the second-largest minority in this almost mono-ethnic state, although they make up just 0.4 % of the total population. However, the legacy of the Soviet Union is not yet completely obliterated, and 95 % of Armenians are sufficiently competent in Russian. Moreover, 2 million Armenians reside in the Russian Federation, and Russian is their first language. In the post-Soviet period Armenians that immigrate to the U.S.A., Scandinavia and other countries, join Russian-speaking émigré communities and use Russian as a lingua franca among ex-Soviets. With the Armenian diaspora outnumbering those who live in their mother country, many families are transnational. These families maintain intercontinental connections in Russian. What used to be the language of the Armenian cultural and scientific elite in the Soviet period has turned into a language of migrants and business people.
The chapter will primarily focus on the sociolinguistic functions of Russian and the legal acts that support the linguistic rights of the Russian-speaking community, including those which the government ratified on the international level. The state language policy, with respect to Russian, presupposes its influential role in the Armenian system of education; moreover, Russian continues to be widely used in science, culture and sports. Armenia’s ties with Eurasian economic organizations require high levels of Russian language proficiency. The chapter shows that Russian is used differently and for different purposes in everyday life in various layers of society. Whether Russian will preserve its current vitality in the future, will be determined by geopolitical, economic and cultural factors and will depend on political and demographic processes.
