What do we hear?

The Minister of Culture stood up for the Russian language

In Khabarovsk, at a meeting of the presidium of the coordinating council for culture under the Ministry of Culture of Russia, Minister Alexander Avdeev, discussing issues of tolerance and the fight against xenophobia, said, among other things: “Largely because of these migration processes, people have become worse at speaking Russian. This is already visible not only in everyday language, but also in the language that we hear on radio and television."

Quoted by many news agencies, this phrase caused a lively response, since there has long been a field of particular tension around visitors from near and far abroad and their ability to fluently master the “great and mighty”: in January, the State Duma rejected a bill proposing to oblige immigrants to take a test on knowledge of the Russian language. The deputies were afraid that this would not improve the language, but that there would definitely be more bribes. However, the problem has not been resolved. The Federation Council again comes up with a proposal to introduce compulsory Russian language training for migrants - and to stimulate the process, those who have received a certificate should be given a work permit not for a year, but for two. But it is not clear who will train them, the employer or the state, whether they will be examined here or at home, when receiving a visa? Is it not necessary to teach the language to everyone or those who work in teams on construction contracts and do not appear in the city individually?

That is, there is a problem, they are discussing it, but they don’t know how to solve it. Moreover, the matter is not only about visitors from Central Asia and Transcaucasia located outside Russia, as the director of the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology Valery Tishkov believes. “We have Russians who don’t know Russian. According to the latest population census, there are about 5 million of them,” he told Vremya Novostey. We are, of course, not talking about illiterate schoolchildren, but about those Russians for whom Russian is not their native language.

But Minister Avdeev most likely did not mean to touch upon these complex aspects of migration policy. He simply wanted to emphasize that “all nations and nationalities of Russia should feel safe and confident, so that there is no inter-ethnic tension and tolerance towards each other’s cultures prevails.” “One of the threats of the 21st century is the threat of nationalist extremism, the weakening of interethnic tolerance,” Avdeev noted. “In our country we must and can avoid this.” But it’s very disappointing that, according to the head of the Ministry of Culture, we “have already begun to write not very competently, not to mention the use of indecent words, which is generally shameful for Russian culture and the Russian language.”

The minister tried to reveal the reason for this shameful phenomenon: “People began to travel more, people began to move more actively in search of work, better climatic conditions, a better future for their children. Not only the composition of the population, but also linguistic cultures are subject to such pressure.”

But since the second issue discussed in Khabarovsk was “the range of state and municipal services provided by cultural and leisure institutions of the Russian Federation, and the mechanism for their financing from budgetary funds,” then, in essence, a solution to the problem has already been found. It lies in the equal provision of those same cultural services throughout the entire territory and to all segments of the population - both on the Internet and through regular tours of musical and theatrical groups. And then we will not only see with our own eyes improvements in everyday language, but even in the language that we hear on radio and TV, we will discover positive changes.

Gleb MYSHKIN