Russia, Education of Ethnic Groups

The state policy in Russia regarding the education of ethnic groups was highly controversial during the last century. In prerevolutionary Russia, ethnic languages were banned in public places, and public education was available mostly in Russian; but the revolution of 1917 was followed by a period of indigenization. Thus, by 1934, schools offered education in the primary grades in at least 67 of the languages of the Soviet Union, and members of large ethnic groups were entitled to at least one year of primary education in their mother tongue. When the policy began to encourage Russification, the choice of language in education was delegated to parents and the number of schools teaching in languages other than Russian began to decline. By the end of the ...