Members of several Russian ethnic groups staged a demonstration in Warsaw on September 10 to remember ethnic Udmurt scholar and activist Albert Razin on the anniversary of his death by self-immolation in 2019.
Participants, including representatives of Tatarstan, Buryatia, Yakutia and Cherkessk, was holding posters created by political refugee Nafis Kashapov, who describes himself as a representative of the “Tatarstan government-in-exile”.
“Only after the collapse of Russia can nations speak their mother tongue,” read one of the posters. The slogan was written in Russian, English and Tatar.
Razin died after setting himself on fire outside the regional parliament in Izhevsk, the capital of Volga region in Udmurtia, on 10 September 2019.
In his hand he held a banner that read: “If my tongue disappears tomorrow, I am ready to take my last breath today.”
At the time of his death, he was an extraordinary professor, a recognized scholar of Udmurt, and an active participant in the national Udmurt Kenesh movement.
Razin, 79, was among a group of local experts who signed an open letter in June 2018 calling on the Udmurt parliament not to support a bill that would have abolished the compulsory teaching of indigenous languages in regions and republics where non-Russian ethnic groups thrive. represented.
Officials insisted that the change is not aimed at destroying linguistic diversity, but will help save some languages from extinction by speeding up the process of approving spelling standards.
But activists saw it as an existential threat to their cultures.
The protesters in Warsaw aimed to draw attention to a controversial language policy that banned students from taking final exams in any language other than Russian.
In 2019, the Commissioner evaluated the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe that the opportunities for Tatars in Tatarstan to gain access to the study of their language and culture remain quite limited, even though Tatar is also the official language of Tatarstan. The commissioner told RFE/RL at the time that he was surprised that the unified state exam in Tatarstan was only offered in Russian.
In this context, a provision enshrined in the Russian Constitution in 2020 made Russian the language of the “state-forming people” of Russia. This amendment by President Vladimir Putin was seen by experts and activists as strengthening the dominance of both the Russian language and Russian identity.
A member of the Belarusian opposition who attended the demonstration in Warsaw told RFE/RL that Razin’s suicide was a protest against Russian “imperialism”.
“People have learned about the tragedy of the Udmurts and all other peoples who have the misfortune of being under the rule of imperial Moscow,” said Vyachaslau Siuchyk of the Belarusian opposition movement Together.
“That’s why I considered it my duty to come to the event announced by the League of Free Nations. Moscow has long ago severed all ties between nations that should unite,” he said. “There should be no place for this evil empire in human civilization.
Kashapov said that the Tatars, Bashkirs, Chuvash and other non-Russian people inhabiting Russia are in the same tragic situation as the Udmurts when it comes to language.
“Russia is destroying their languages and culture. But the collapse of Putin’s regime is inevitable. Streets, constitutions, educational institutions will be named after Albert Razin,” Kashapov predicted.
Ibragim Jaganov, a representative of the Circassian National Movement, told RFE/RL that language is the “storehouse” of every nation.
“When a nation loses its language… (it loses) its identity, he said.
Raisa Zubareva, a Sakha independence activist in Yakutsk, said she understood Razin’s actions and how much he was aware of the full depth of the tragedy, while also feeling hopelessness and great pain for the Udmurt people.
“We now understand that only dismantling, only disintegration and only independence will save our nations from this monster that will swallow nations whole,” she said.
Based on data from the Ministry of Education, between 2016 and 2023, the proportion of schoolchildren learning exclusively in their native language fell from 1.98 percent to 0.96 percent.
At the same time, the number of pupils learning exclusively in their mother tongue fell from 292,000 to 173,500, even though the number of children in schools increased by 3.2 million in those seven years.
