Politics of the Russian Language Beyond Russia

Russia increasingly emphasises the importance of ‘soft power’ for securing its foreign policy interests. Recent research has paid more attention to Russia’s intentions rather than to the receiving end of its cultural and public diplomacy. This volume addresses this gap and explores the specifics of both Russian language promotion and its acceptance in a number of case and country studies, including Ukraine, Germany and Ireland. The authors discuss the legal status and the practical use of Russian for communication or media use, both in the ‘near’ and the ‘far abroad’, examining the politics of the Russian language, the role of the Russian Federation in influencing these politics and the challenges that the promotion of Russian faces in particular contexts across the globe. They discern a fairly instrumental approach towards Russian language promotion. With its strong focus on the former Soviet space, language promotion aims at preserving cohorts of Russian heritage speakers, who are conceived as quasi-natural agents of Russian influence in the neighbourhood. By contrast, the willingness to engage with Russia’s language promotion is seriously diminished by the ideological loading of culture and language in Russian discourses, like those on the ‘compatriots’ and the ‘Russian World’. By declaring the active use of Russian as an expression of political loyalty, Russia almost excludes utilitarian approaches to the learning of the language. Moreover, the book documents a rather traditional understanding of culture with essentialist and static features. Instead of seeing culture as an autonomous free space for negotiation of political possibilities, Russia’s culture and language promotion rests on narrowly codified high culture.