The Language Police
A frequent flashpoint for anxieties over status and contamination is the Russian language itself. Or rather, the Russian language and its perceived competitors. Language can easily become a proxy for both internal and external politics, as was certainly the case in the Soviet Union. The USSR was a multinational and multilingual state, home to native speakers of more than a hundred different languages spanning multiple language families. Though technically not the "official" language, Russian was the lingua franca for all federal and inter-republic communication, and more often than not, Russian was essential for career advancement. Each of the fifteen constituent republics had their own primary national language, while also recognizing numerous minority tongues. Russian was also taught widely throughout the Eastern bloc as part of the mandatory school curriculum; the extent to which students in, say, Poland or Czechosklovakia valued their Russian skills certainly varied, but there was the presumption of Russian as the most likely common tongue among the Soviet Union and its Eastern bloc allies.
By the 1980s, English was in increasingly high demand in the big cities of the Soviet Union, though lack of travel opportunities and limited contact with foreigners made the development of proficiency difficult. Like almost everything else, this situation changed with the end of Soviet Power. Suddenly, it seemed, English was everywhere. English was essential not just for working with the Americans and the British, but because of its rise as a global language throughout the twentieth century. The writing was on the wall, and it wasn't in Cyrillic.
In the newly-created Russian Federation, English seemed to be everywhere. Would-be English instructors hawked language lessons in an astonishing range of advertisements, from handwritten flyers taped to walls to relatively sophisticated television commercials. The high-speed adoption of capitalism was accompanied by numerous, ugly-sounding English terms "fyuchersy" (futures), "vaucher," popular books were "best-sellery," and soon young Russians were exclaiming "vau!" (wow). English and English-sounding names attached themselves to new consumer products and stores (Moscow briefly had a truly terrible fast-food joint called "Burger Kvin"), and English proficiency offered a gateway to better careers. This is not to say that everyone learned English, or learned it well, but that, in the big cities at least, the chances that a foreigner could get assistance in English vastly improved over the next two decades. When Russian producers (sorry, "prodyusery" adapted the British time-travel police procedural Life on Mars in 2012, its policeman protagonist wakes up after an accident to find his is a Soviet militiaman in 1979. At one point, he is part of a team confronting a potential American spy, so he casually switches to English to ask the man questions. His colleagues are stunned: in what world does a Soviet cop know English? By 2012, an English-speaking policeman might not be common, but it would be unsurprising.
The backlash against English and Anglicisms was virtually instantaneous, and also understandable. The proliferation of English and English-derived words, as well as the increased use of Latin letters, far outpaced the general population's familiarity with the language. What could be a clearer sign of loss of status and cultural colonization than the rise of foreign language use, accompanied by the transformation of one's own language into something increasingly less comprehensible? English was becoming insufferable at the same time it was becoming essential. Meanwhile, the other former Soviet republics were adopting laws enshrining their national languages (which usually did not include Russian). The narrative about the threat against the Russian language practically wrote itself.
“Менеджер” (menedzher) is an old Slavic word first attested in The Lay of Igor’s Campaign
Russian had been declared the Soviet Union's "official" language only a year before the country ceased to exist. The Russian Federation's leadership began to address the language issue almost immediately after the Soviet collapse, with Yeltsin establishing a Federal Council on the Russian Language in 1991. Two years later, the new Russian constitution affirmed that Russian was, indeed the national language. but this did little to allay concerns about the language's status and future. The Federal Council was reconstituted by Putin in 2000, making it the second time that a new president made the Russian language a priority from the beginning. The result was two successive bills entitled "On the National Language of the Russian Federation," which would eventually be signed into law by Putin in 2005. Initially, the bill banned both obscene language and excessive foreign borrowings, but the final version left out the obscenity clause and contained a watered-down statement about unnecessary foreign words.
The foul language restriction became law in 2014, banning swear words in the media, public performances, while requiring books containing "non-normative language" to put warnings on their covers. This was part of an important shift in public policy, at a time when a wide range of restrictions were implemented in the name of "protecting the children" (prohibitions on discussions of suicide, the law against "gay propaganda," increased censorship of the Internet), and less about protecting the country's purity from pernicious foreign influence. Still, as is the case with many post-Soviet cases of conservative social engineering through legislation, activism and government initiative on the local level would pave the way for eventual national laws. As early as 1997, Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov ordered all public signs that contain English to have the Russian words printed twice as large as their foreign equivalents. This was after a previous law from 1993 failed to make much of a difference. English was not the only target: In 2021, activists and politicians were denouncing the use of Tajik and Uzbek on Moscow metro signs.
In 2019, Putin addressed the Presidential Council on the Russian Language, informing them that "war" had been declared on the Russian language by "inveterate Russophobes" and "aggressive nationalists." The Council Chairman, who happens to be named Vladimir Tolstoy, went further:
The war waged against the Russian word and the Russian language in the so-called civilized world makes it possible to consider it a powerful and formidable weapon, which means that this weapon must be in full combat readiness. Russia has achieved truly breakthrough successes in the military sphere and in ensuring its defense capability in recent years, but much remains to be done in the cultural sphere, most importantly, in fine-tuning the control of these processes.
Unsurprisingly, it is the war in Ukraine that seems to have motivated new rounds of concern and prohibition. Just one month after the 2022 full-scale invasion, the leader of Russian-occupied Crimea declared that it was time to "cleanse" the Russian language of Anglicism now that the West is indulging in an orgy of Russophobic hostility against Russia's language, spirituality, and culture. That this call was coming from Crimea was particularly symbolic: annexed by Russian in 2014, Crimea was a symbol of an awakened Russia's resolve to redress historical "wrongs," reassert its regional and global authority, and affirm the strength and value of Russia's culture.
In this regard, as in virtually all other matters of public expression, the rhetoric and policy on language after February 2022 has built on the already increasing suspicion of foreign (particularly Western) connections, in the name of security, patriotism. and the fight against Russophobia. In 2023, the classroom time devoted to English in grades five through seven was reduced. The agenda behind this move could not have been more clear: the hours freed up from studying a foreign tongue now devoted to "The Spiritual and Moral Culture of Russia." The initiative met with mixed reactions, as many parents still saw English proficiency as an important skill for their children's future.
Also in 2023, the Duma began consideration of a bill that would prohibit the use of English words in some signs and advertisements, and require that any words in Latin letters be accompanied by their Russian equivalent, but in a larger font. The bill was debated and revised for two years before finally passing in June 2025, in a somewhat watered-down form. The provisions themselves are less important than the rhetoric surrounding them. According to the executive order Putin signed in conjunction with the law,
Russia successfully counters efforts to limit the use of the Russian language, to ‘cancel’ Russian culture, ‘including Russian literature,’ to discriminate against Russian media outlets, and to impose ideological frameworks that contradict traditional Russian spiritual and moral values
At a June 5, 2025 meeting of the Council for State Policy on Promoting the Russian Language and Languages of the Russian Federation, Putin announced the creation of a national "Day of the Russian Language." Council Chair Yelena Yampolskaia welcomed both the new holiday and the new law, even as she regretted that the law was not as strong as she would have liked, calling the Russian language "a sacred matter for every citizen of Russia." The ideological framework of the project was undeniable: "The approach of my colleague and me can be called patriotic." Yampolskaia even asked the president to "address [his] message to every first-grader on the first page" of the forthcoming unified national reading and writing textbook:
On September 1, most of them will hear your words read aloud by their teachers, parents, or grandparents. But a little later, children will read your words themselves. I am certain that pride – the feeling that the President of their country has addressed them personally – will undoubtedly remain, making the start of their school life even more momentous.
It is certainly a sign of the times that a debate that began with genuine disorientation in the wake of the USSR now ends not only with a relatively draconian law and a state holiday, but with a display of fealty that identifies the power and beauty of the Russian language with the words of Vladimir Putin himself. More important that the growing cult of personality, though, is the new clarity with which the state is approaching the language question. The war in Ukraine has been continually framed as a battle for Russia's identity: first, by denying the identity of Ukraine as anything other than a regional variation of Russia and Russianness; second, by insisting that any display of Ukrainian nationalism or anti-Russian sentiment is the result of insidious Western manipulation; and third, by reinforcing the already powerful notion that Russia is a fortress under siege hostile, foreign forces. The seizure of Ukrainian territory is expansionist at the same time that it is a retrenchment, through insisting that this foreign adventure is not "foreign" at all. Everything foreign has become suspicious, language included. Russification begins at home.
Next: Agents of a Foreign Power