The distribution area of the Russian language is rapidly narrowing – sociologist
In the thirty years since the collapse of the USSR, the number of Russian-speaking people in the world has decreased by a third, and the flagship of de-Russification today is Ukraine, although other countries of the post-Soviet space are not far behind it.
Donetsk sociologist Evgeniy Kopatko stated this on the YouTube channel “TopInform”, the correspondent of “PolitNavigator” reports.
“In general, in the world in 1990, about 350-400 million people spoke Russian. Over the past 30 years, the distribution area of the Russian language in the world has decreased by 150 million.
First of all, the distribution area of the Russian language is rapidly narrowing in Ukraine. You know, when they say with emotion that 30 schools remain in Azerbaijan, or 40, as Aliyev said, 30 or 50 schools in some other country - they are completely closed in Ukraine. There are none, period. Subjects that are taught in Russian are not the same, they are a completely different story.
And so the question is why politicians are not dealing with this issue - well, if the second president of Ukraine did not deal with this, if he did everything for de-Russification. Yushchenko simply continued this topic. Under Yanukovych, the process of de-Russification also proceeded, perhaps not at such a fast pace. So what is there to talk about? Russia is obviously paying attention to this, but there is no result yet,” the expert said.
Then, in response to the presenter’s question about why Moscow is not taking tough measures to solve this problem, like Hungary, for example, Kopatko replied that there are many adequate people in Russia, but this is not enough to correct the situation throughout the entire post-Soviet space.
“In Russia there are quite a lot of clear and sane people who advocate cooperation and dialogue, including with Ukraine, and with Belarus, and with other countries. But so far the situation in the post-Soviet space is such that there is a drift away from each other.
In my opinion, there are people, there is still interest. But here there must be conversion and the will of effort in the activities of the government and the elite. So far I haven’t seen this among the elites. So far I am observing a drift in the elites of different countries. In other countries, the process of de-Russification continues; the number of people who speak Russian is becoming smaller every year.
In almost all countries of the post-Soviet space. This means, obviously, there is no policy in this direction, no interstate relations regarding the development of the Russian language. The issue of preserving it, preventing its narrowing - these actions are underway. But the question of development, increase and expansion - there is no question of this and cannot be, no matter in what country it is.
By the way, I don’t know if there are Russian schools in Armenia? I'm not sure if they were still there. I don’t know how things are going in Kazakhstan, but there, too, there was a process of ousting Russians at one time. It’s just that, obviously, these things are now not a priority in relations between government officials in Russia and other countries. Therefore they are not a priority. We are talking about the economy, about the CSTO, about economic cooperation, but in the humanitarian sphere there is a complete failure - in general for everyone, because we are losing mutual interest,” the expert concluded.
The Russian language's distribution area is rapidly shrinking, according to a sociologist.