ABSTRACT
This chapter shows what makes the Soviet language situation a challenge to policy makers; how the Soviet leadership has tried to change mass linguistic behavior; where its principal language policies have succeeded and failed; and what policy options exist for the future. The language situation of the Soviet Union is one of the most complex in the world. Language planning has various goals. Language planners have attempted to control the statuses, roles, and functions of languages in society; they also have made plans for preserving or reforming the vocabularies, sound systems, word structures, sentence structures, writing system, and stylistic repertoires of languages. The resolution of language problems in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics is made more difficult by the legacy of gross inequality among languages. In spite of obstacles to comprehensive language policy making that history has revealed, the leaders of the Soviet Union have attempted to do more than ignore or merely cope with their intricate language situation.
