Russification: Encyclopedia II - Russification - History

Russification - History

One of the examples of Russification was replacement of the Polish language by Russian in areas of Poland-Lithuania after the Partitions of Poland. It intensified after the 1831 uprising and, in particular, after the January Uprising of 1863: in 1864 Polish, Belarusian and Lithuanian languages were banned in public places; in the 1880s Polish was banned in schools and offices of the Congress Kingdom.

A similar development was in Lithuania: its Governor General Mikhail Muravyov instituted a complete ban on the Latin and Gothic scripts and Lithuanian printed matter and as well ban of public speaking in Lithuanian. Mikhail Muravyov was reported as saying about Belarusian and Lithuanian lands: "What Russian bayonet didn't accomplish, the Russian school will" ("что не доделал русский штык—доделает русская школа.") This ban was resisted by Knygnešiai, Lithuanian book smugglers. It was lifted only in 1904. Lithuanian and Polish schools were closed; teachers from other parts of Russia, who did not speak these languages, were moved in to teach. The campaign of promoting Russian Orthodox faith over the Catholic one (by closing down Catholic monasteries, officially banning the building of new churches and giving some of the old ones to Russian Orthodox church, banning Catholic schools and establishing state schools with teaching of Orthodox religion instead, requiring Catholic priests to preach only officially approved sermons, in case of marriage of a Catholic and Orthodox person requiring Catholic to change his/her religion, requiring Catholic nobles to pay 10% of profits additional tax, limiting the amount of land a Catholic peasant could own, etc.) is also usually viewed as part of Russification campaign. As well, after the uprising many manors and great chunks of land were confiscated from those nobles of Polish and Lithuanian descent, who were accused of helping the uprising; later these properties were given or sold to Russian nobles. In a similar way some villages (ones, where there were many supporters of the uprising) were repopulated by ethnic Russians. Vilnius University, where the language of instruction had been Polish rather than Russian, was closed in 1832. Lithuanians and Poles were banned from having any public jobs (including those of teachers, doctors, etc.) in Lithuania; thus educated Lithuanians were displaced to other parts of the Russian Empire. Most of these actions as well were stopped due to Russo-Japanese War; others took a longer time to be reversed (e.g. Vilnius University was reopened only in 1919, after Russia had lost control of the city).

Still another example is Ems Ukaz of 1876, banning the Ukrainian language.

In November 1914 the Finnish press published the Russian secret program for a complete Russification of Finland.

After the 1917 revolution, the intellectuals of several Central Asian countries and Tatarstan established new standards for the local languages. In many cases they substituted the Arabic alphabet with adapted versions of the Latin alphabet, usually inspired by the Turkish alphabet.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "History", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki