Publications
This article traces the evolution of the debate on the balancing of federal and regional competences in regulating the use of minority languages in Russia’s education system. Taking into account relevant law and judicial practice, as well as developments in center-periphery relations since 2017, the article argues that the federal center has been increasingly depriving Russia’s republics of the ability to self-regulate in the education sphere – particularly over the question as to whether they may require the compulsory study of republican languages (recognized as co-official with Russian) in schools located within their administrative borders. These processes can be located in the context of the centralization of the education system and a corresponding reduction of multilingualism in Russia’s schools. This can, in turn, be seen as part of an underlying drive to promote national unity through uniformity, through the dilution of the country’s linguistic and cultural diversity and a concurrent emphasis on the primacy of the Russian language. The article further argues that the Russian education system’s centralization has been ongoing: while it has intensified since 2017, the trajectory of the jurisprudence shows an earlier movement towards a concern for ‘unity’ that anticipated it.
This article analyses changes to the language policy in Russia in 2017, and their effects on the state (national) languages of Russia’s republics within the education system. In July 2017, Russian President Vladimir Putin gave a speech at the Council on Interethnic Relations, addressing the language rights of the Russian-speaking population and stressing the existing limit of the power of Russia’s 22 ethnic republics to introduce compulsory study of their official languages. The President’s statements provoked widespread prosecutorial inspections in the republics’ schools and a new round of public discussion about language policy. Public discontent in Tatarstan, Bashkortostan and Komi led to protests against both ethnic Russians and the native speakers of languages recognised as co-official with Russian (‘state languages of the republics’). The authorities of some republics publicly disagreed with the position taken by the federal government. In other republics, however, the President’s speech did not trigger any public discussion. In many republics, it looks like the regional authorities will ultimately accept the decision of the federal government and speakers of republican languages will not actively defend their languages. Effectively, the balance of rights of the federation and the republics for the establishment of state languages, achieved in the 1990s, was violated.
This chapter describes an analysis of the implementation of the distribution of powers to organize training for people with disabilities in the different constituent entities of Russia based on legislation and law enforcement practice.
This collective monograph presents the views of researchers and experts in the field of education and law on the issues of multilevel governance of education. Researchers and practitioners reflect on which principles the system of education should be built, which public institutions influence it, and what consequences the transfer of authority between different levels of government brings. Russian authors consider the results of recent reforms of redistribution of powers in the sphere of education, the impact of such redistribution on individual issues in the sphere as well as specific regional cases of redistribution of powers and cooperation. The monograph is supplemented by analytical annexes, which represent how different powers are redistributed in the sphere of education in Russia.
The monograph is intended for those engaged in educational research, especially in comparative regional studies, and for experts in the field of public administration, constitutional, administrative and municipal law.
