ABSTRACT
The fall of communism had far-reaching consequences for the language situation in Russia. The present chapter seeks to interpret the background for this development. It will be pointed out that Standard Russian, russkii literaturnyi iazyk, 1 is based on a restricted diastratic variety of Russian, namely the vernacular of the educated Russian aristocracy. Before 1917, just a tiny elite of Russian society was in command of the standard language. A problematic gap in communication between the rulers and the semi-literate or illiterate population occurred after the Bolshevik coup in 1917. Several attempts were made in the 1920s and early 1930s to reform the standard language in order to bring it closer to the ‘living speech of the broad masses’. These attempts failed, however, and when, in the 1930s, the regime restored Russian cultural values, the pre-1917 standard language was canonized as the only acceptable variety of Russian. This Soviet Russian standard language persisted until the end of communism in the late 1980s, when the abolition of censorship changed the language situation in a way that confused and disturbed many in Russian society.
