Russian Language in the CIS

Window on Eurasia examines the role of Russian in former Soviet republics based on the findings of a Eurasia Foundation report, Russian Language in the Newly Independent States, which divides the countries into three groups.

The first group of countries – Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine – are places where Russian remains a major component of public and private life, but at the same time and perhaps because Russian is so widely used, there is little interest in or support for expanding its role via the educational system.

The second group, which includes Azerbaijan, Georgia, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, is characterized by relatively low use of Russian – half of less of the current generation knows it and even fewer of the younger age cohorts — and the more or less rapid exclusion of that language from many sectors of public life.

And finally, the third group – Armenia, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, and Tajikistan, are countries where the populations look positively on the use of Russian and would like to see Russian retained or even expanded in the educational system and even public life more generally.

(Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan were not included.)