About the Project

Historical Context

In this map, I am interested in mapping Russian language use over the former republics of the Soviet Union (1922-1991). The former Soviet republics include Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus, Russia, Ukraine, Moldova, Armenia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Azerbaijan. The USSR was a multilingual country and 130 languages were spoken natively. [1] Russian, however, was the dominant language and the language of the center. Although Russian was not an "official state language" until 1990, it served as the language of interethnic communication (Russian: язык межнационального общения) in the USSR. Russian enjoyed varying statuses of importance in the USSR. In the early years of the Soviet Union, the main language policy was Korenizatsiya (meaning "nativization" or "indigenization", literally "root-ification" in Russian). As part of early Soviet nationalities policies in the 1920s, Korenizatsiya allowed more freedom for the republics to exercise more cultural sovereignty. In 1922, it was decreed that all nationalities in the Soviet Union had the right to education in their own language. In the 1930s, Joseph Stalin mostly reversed the Korenizatsiya policy by reducing its practical effects and introducing de facto Russification. At this time, the center began to promote Russian more as the "language of interethnic communication." There was relative freedom to language during Soviet times, but the Communist Party was concerned about the possible links between regional language freedom and nationalist tendencies in the republics. For this reason, education and other cultural practices were sometimes restricted in regional languages.

Modern Relevance

Following the dissolution of the USSR in 1991, post-Soviet countries underwent processes of de-communization and de-Russification to differing extents. Newer school curriculums began to emphasize English as a foreign language rather than Russian. But Russian remained an important language in countries such as Belarus and Ukraine, most likely because Belarusian, Ukrainian, and Russian are closely related languages in the East Slavic language tree. There are a high proportion of Russian speakers particularly in eastern and southern Ukraine, and the "language issue" has become a political slogan/debate which Putin has taken advantage of. In this instance, the "language issue" refers to the question of the obligation of the Russian state to protect or reclaim Russian language speakers in Ukraine. The debate gained heightened significance following the Euromaidan Revolution in Ukraine in 2014, the resulting Russian annexation of Crimea, and the beginning of the Russo-Ukrainian War in the Donbas region of Ukraine. Vladimir Putin uses the language issue as a pretense for Russia's involvement in Ukraine. In an article posted to the Kremlin’s website in July 2021, Putin wrote about how language similarities unify Russian and Ukrainian people. Putin uses language policies in Ukraine as a pretext for conflict, saying in 2021: “All the things that united us and bring us together so far came under attack. First and foremost, the Russian language.” [2]

Map Analysis

In this section, I argue that Vladimir Putin's violation of the border between Russia and Ukraine is not justifiable by the "language issue."

Vladimir Putin's statements about the necessity of protecting Russian speakers in Ukraine made me wonder if the Russian language situation in Ukraine is unique among post-Soviet countries. To look at this, I created a map detailing the percentage of native Russian language speakers inside post-Soviet countries. The data is largely drawn from country census data. Because the Soviet Union no longer has a legal status, there is no centralized place to find data about every post-Soviet country. So, the data comes from a range of census time periods, from 2001 to 2014. See more notes on the data below.

A summary of findings from the map: Ukraine stands out on the map as having several provinces with high proportion of Russian speakers. Russian is also generally widespread in Belarus and Kazakhstan, but not with as dense proportions as in Ukraine. Small but concentrated areas of Russian speakers exist in specific regions in the Baltic countries (73% in Ida Viru, Estonia; 88.9% in Daugavpils, Latvia). Low proportions (often less than one percent) of Russian speakers are found in Georgia and Armenia. The region of the Caucasus with the highest proportion of Russian speakers is Abkhazia (9.1%), a partially recognized state and formerly a region of Georgia. Russian peacekeeping forces entered Abkhazia in 2008 after violence erupted between Abkhazians and Georgians. Since 2008, the Parliament of Georgia has declared Abkhazia a Russian-occupied territory.

The extent of Russian language speakers does not determine diplomatic alliance. When it comes to supranational organizations and collective security, the post-Soviet countries are not uniform. Out of the post-Soviet countries, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania are part of NATO, while Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan (and Russia) are part of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), an intergovernmental military association in Eurasia. Meanwhile, Georgia held a nonbinding referendum in 2008 where 77% of voters supported NATO accession. Within the Baltic states, there are wide differences in Russian language use. Within the CSTO, a country like Kazakhstan has more native Russian speakers than Armenia. Armenia and Georgia seem to have similar levels of native Russian speakers, but they have different supranational military preferences. [3] In short, the presence or absence of Russian language speakers does not determine a country's politcal and military affiliation in the post-Soviet region.

In short, I argue that Putin's argument about protecting native Russian speakers in Ukraine is weak because Russian language use is not a reliable indicator of a country's supranational affiliation in the post-Soviet region. His justification for violating Ukraine's borders from 2014 to 2022 (and ongoing) is not well-supported by the "language issue". Indeed, there are several regions in the Baltic states where provinces have higher levels of native Russian speakers than in regions in Ukraine, and the Baltic states are all part of NATO. Russian language, therefore, is not a determiner of a country's affiliation with the Russian state. Marco Puleri, a anthropology scholar of Ukrainian studies, has written extensively on how Russian has evolved into a world language, one that doesn't obligate its speakers to a certain country or government. [4] Looking at the map, multilingualism is a feature of several countries of the post-Soviet region. In the case of Russian, multilingualism is often associated with imperial and Soviet times. Going forward, multilingualism may play a different, democracy-building role in post-Soviet countries. In particular, the idea of a country based on a nation of ethnic or linguistic homogenity is losing its salience. Other principles (such as democracy, freedoms, and human rights) may replace previously unifying features of the nation-state.

Notes and further work

There are many ways that countries survey their citizens on language use. In many cases, I use "native language" provided by the census. However, "native language" might not always reflect the actual language use in society, since the language spoken at home might be different from the native language, and the language of business can be different from the language spoken at home. Relying on "ethnic Russians" is not always a reliable way for determining Russian language use because ethnicity and language do not always map onto each other. Ethnicity can also be difficult to define and relies on people to self-identify. Ethnicity and nationality are beginning to separate out in places like Ukraine, where "Ukrainian" can be used as both a civic term and an ethnic term. It would also be possible to approximate language use by looking at the language of radio and television, newspapers, or other media. In the future, I hope to incorporate more up-to-date data. I believe the 2020 censuses in many countries were disrupted by COVID. In Russia and Ukraine, recent censuses have been disrupted by the war. Certain countries prioritize census data collection more than other countries do, so the data is not uniform throughout. I also anticipate that actual Russian language use in regions has fluctuated a lot over the past year, as many Ukrainians and Russians have been displaced. It would be very interesting to know more about the flow of refugees around the post-Soviet world at this precarious time.

Data Sources

Estonia ("Ethnic Russians"): Census Website - 2014

Latvia ("Language spoken at home - Russian"): 2011 Census Website

Lithuania ("Number of Russians"): 2011 Population and Housing Census

Belarus ("Mother Language - Russian"): 2009 Census

Ukraine ("Native Language - Russian"): 2001 Census

Moldova ("Mother Tongue - Russian": 2014 Census

Georgia ("Native Language - Russian": ? Census XLSX

Armenia ("Native Language - Russian": 2011 Census XLSX

Kazakhstan ("Native Language - Russian": 2009 Census PDF

Bibliography