ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the gains and losses chiefly from the point of view of the Soviet Muslim peoples as nations seeking to modernize, and as ethnic groups wishing to preserve their distinct cultures and traditions. Some communities were in fact developing into nations with their own literary languages. Lenin’s generous linguistic policy, which formed the core of his nationality policy, derived from a rather narrow view of non-Russian nationalism. It is difficult to pinpoint with accuracy the shift toward Russian and away from the national languages. As the Stalin period began to thaw under Khrushchev, the Soviet cultural scene came alive and linguistics and socio-linguistics, as the Soviet linguist Avrorin put it, ‘got back on their feet’. The Russian language continued to be the focus of official attention in the first years of perestroika, in spite of the fact that glasnost had blown the linguistic scene wide open and the initiative was rapidly passing to the nationalities.
