It is likely that the creators of Slavic writing, Cyril and Methodius, would have difficulty comprehending the present-day realities in which Slavic languages exist.
Today, according to UNESCO, one of the Slavic languages – Russian – has fallen, in terms of international influence, from fifth place, where it stood for many decades prior 1991, to somewhere between 6th and 8th place. Of course back in the day of Cyril and Methodius, the Russian language had yet to be mentioned. The brothers created written language for the Slovenes, Bulgarians, Czechs and Croatians.
The Eastern Slavic tribes were rather disconnected then, and the breakthrough of the Russian language from almost nonexistence to one of the top languages of the world can only inspire respect. However, the trend today is such that the status of the Russian language as a world language is abating – it is gradually transitioning into the ranks of one of the big, widespread and yet regional languages. On the other hand, those who claim Russian is dying are only deceiving themselves: people often mix up the number of people who were once forced to study Russian and the number of people who really speak Russian. For example, in the largely Slavic Eastern European countries during the socialist era Russian was mandatory in schools and universities, but that does not mean that they spoke Russian. “Take ten people from those countries. In the best case, seven cannot speak Russian and two simply do not want to. In the worst case, seven don’t want to and two simply can’t,” says Yuri Prokhorov, Rector of the Pushkin State Institute of Russian Language, explaining the situation with Russian in the former socialist bloc.
Thus, measuring language knowledge according to the number of people who once studied it is not the correct approach. Incidentally, Cyril and Methodius preferred to develop language not for those who knew or studied it (in that era it was Latin, but it was known only by the educated minority) but rather for those who speak it. They always insisted that most Slavic peoples were not going to write or speak Latin, and thus they needed their own way of writing, which in the end resulted in the Cyrillic alphabet for Eastern Slavs.
It is also true that the number of people studying Russian has substantially decreased, but the number who speak Russian remains disputable. When the USSR declared that approximately 1.5 billion people speak Russian, this assertion had no relation to statistics. It was political. Today, according to the Pushkin State Institute of Russian Language, as many as 300 million people actively communicate in Russian and another 150-170 million study the language. Not everyone agrees with these numbers, but they are grounded in statistics.
Another historical turns takes us back to the linguistic era of Cyril and Methodius: the Cyrillic alphabet which they created competed with Latin. It was forbidden during the lifetime of the brothers and after their death as well. As a result it took root only in parts of the Slavic world – in Bulgaria, Serbia and Kievan Rus. But Cyrillic writing lost out to Latin among the Slovenes, Croatians and Czechs.
Today history is repeating itself but in a new competitive environment. The number of people studying the Russian language is decreasing but the number speaking the language is on the rise. This apparent paradox can be explained by the fact that, with the large Russian communities now present in various countries around the world, speaking Russian becomes economically prudent and advantageous.
As a result, in places where people earlier did not or did not want to speak Russian, now they are beginning to communicate in Russian, and not only businessmen but government workers as well. It is needed and it has benefits. After all, Russian tourists have begun actively exploring the world. Russian-speaking managers have now been hired by hotels and tourism agencies in many countries.
Starting sometime after 2002, a sharp rise in interest in studying Russian has been seen even in Eastern Europe (the leaders here are Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Balkan republics) and Germany. At the Pushkin Institute in Moscow the largest number of Russian language students are Poles and Hungarian businessmen. Over the past year at this university, which was specially created for training foreign Russian language specialists, students from approximately 75 countries have taken clasess. These are not just language specialists but also lawyers and businessmen, i.e. those who can work in their own countries using the Russian language. One can commonly meet students from Turkey, Austria, Bulgaria, Slovakia, Poland and Germany. And, as many philologists and linguists have noted, the existences of economic motivation to know the Russian language is perhaps the best and most effective means to popularize language and culture.
But in those countries where Russian was always commonly spoken, in the former Soviet republics, the reverse trend has been observed. There the Russian language is suffering from political policies. The “persecution of the Russian language” which some local media claim in the CIS and Baltic states does not match with reality – in actuality people in these countries actively use Russian and study it in school. But the elites of these countries are rejecting it – this is a form of self-affirmation for these newly independent states. This however can also be understood, as in a number of CIS countries as much as 40% of the population does not seak the national language.
So in the new competitive language environment of the 21st century, there has been a drop in the number of people studying Russian. But the number of people using it in communication has risen. The Russian language is once again in demand in the world. And what is important is the fact that those who study it are doing son on their own free will. So it seems that the need for the Russian language is contingent on interaction. Such a rational approach has led to a reduction in the ideological discomfort once caused by Russian and makes it ever more popular even in places where it was once rejected. Such a historic opportunity for Russian philologists, it seems, is also a gift for their forebears Cyril and Methodius.
Vladimir Emelyanenko
