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UDC 323.1
HISTORY OF LANGUAGE
POLICY IN CENTRAL ASIAN COUNTRIES
Khalikulova Hulkar Yuldashevna,
Associate Professor at ALFRAGANUS UNIVERSITY
e-mail: xalikulova81@mail.ru ORCID: 0000-0001-7680-197X
SUMMARY
The article below provides a brief description of the triad
of reforms in Central Asia of romanization. At the same time,
special attention is paid to the goals and interests of both
the political elites who initiated language reforms, as well
as their supporters and opponents. The article analyzes
the implementation of language policy and the transition
to the Latin alphabet in Central Asia. An analysis of this
problem indicates that the leadership of the Soviet Union
is pursuing the task of switching to the Latin alphabet,
providing a contradiction to the policy of «indigenization.»
A clear confirmation of the negative consequences of the
processes in this area was the conduct in Central Asia;
they serve as excellent indicators of the degree of freedom
or non-freedom of society from state control and from the
manipulation of public opinion by political elites.
KEYWORDS:
language policy, Uzbekistan, rights,
ethnic minorities, diasporas, national cultural centers.
INTRODUCTION
In the 20th – early 21st centuries in Central Asia, during
a compressed period of time by historical standards, the
Latinization and Cyrillization of the alphabets of local
languages was carried out, and in two cases, also the
re-Latinization of writing, that is, a return to the Latin
script. These language reforms were, to a greater or
lesser extent, part of the world trends of the eras in
which they were carried out, or a response to such
trends. The reforms left behind many consequences in
various spheres of public life; but first of all, the change
in graphic principles entailed serious changes in the
languages themselves: the creation of modern literary
languages and changes in the lexical composition of
languages - due to the introduction of a large number
of neologisms (Sovietisms, internationalisms, etc.) and
natural and/or forced transformation into archaisms
words that were previously widely used.
There are situations in history when the interests of
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various political and social forces coincide. This is how
they coincided in the case of the Latinization of the
languages of the peoples of Central Asia, carried out in
the 1920s and early 1930s. But despite the coincidence
of interests, the participants in the process saw different
goals.
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
The Union Center needed a translation into Latin script
for the following reasons. Firstly, because Latinization
fit into the general context of solving the national
question and did not in any way contradict the policy of
«indigenization.» Already in the first post-revolutionary
years (1918–1924), the central union authorities took
measures to expand the functions and improve the
status of local languages and weaken the position of
the Russian language as a single national language.
Naturally, this required the creation of a written standard
for local languages. Secondly, Latinization contributed to
the rapprochement of the peoples of a huge state, but at
the same time, along with the border drawn in physical
space, it established a border in the space of the written
word. Thus, it separated all «Soviet» peoples from all
«non-Soviet» peoples - no matter how close the latter
were to the former in linguistic and cultural terms, that is,
it served the political goals of the authorities. Thirdly, for
quite a long time the leadership of the Communist Party
seriously expected the October Revolution to develop
into a world revolution and prepared for this.
The question of the Latinization of the Russian
language was even raised and considered - for the sake
of the victory of the world revolution, the ruling party was
ready for this too. The fourth reason, ideological, was that
at that time there was an open struggle against religion,
and here the reform was very useful. After all, it was
carried out primarily among the Tajiks and Turkic peoples
of the Volga region, Central Asia and the Caucasus who
professed Islam. The Latinization of alphabets meant
the undermining of the position of Arabic writing, and,
consequently, of those people and institutions that from
time immemorial were associated with its teaching and
dissemination - Islam and Islamic clergy. Finally, there
were two more reasons, not the most significant, but it
was precisely them that the authorities sought to focus
public attention on: the technical advantages of the Latin
alphabet in printing and teaching and the inability of
even the reformed Arabic alphabet to reflect the unique
phonetic structure of a number of languages.
The political elites of the Central Asian region were
of particular interest, seeking to consolidate their power
in the newly formed union and autonomous republics.
They needed language reform insofar as it contributed
to the creation of more clearly distinguishable contours
of new ethnic identities, giving legitimacy to new state
formations and their first established borders. At the
same time, from the point of view of the possible impact
on these identities, the Latin alphabet, unlike Arabic and
Cyrillic, seemed neutral politically, ideologically, and
ethnoculturally. Also in the Central Asian republics there
was a sincere desire and not only among the elite, but also
among part of the population, especially young people,
to quickly overcome a significant cultural gap, and the
experience of Albanians, Malays and Swahili seemed
to indicate that the Latin alphabet really helps in this.
ANALYSIS АND RESULTS
Generally speaking, the idea of switching to the
Latin alphabet was neither completely new nor adopted
suddenly and at once. Back in the second half of the 19th
century, the Azerbaijani educator Mirza Fatali Akhundov
developed a project for a new Turkic alphabet based
on Latin and Greek script. The first practical attempt to
introduce a Latinized alphabet was made in Yakutia: it was
prepared in 1917, and officially adopted in 1920. True,
due to the presence of a number of shortcomings in this
alphabet, in 1929 Yakutia switched to a unified Latinized
alphabet. Almost simultaneously, the Latinization of the
alphabet began in Azerbaijan: in 1918, that is, even
before the establishment of Soviet power, three projects
of a Latinized alphabet were submitted to the Azerbaijani
Majlis for consideration. During open discussions
organized by the Soviet government of Azerbaijan in
December 1921, the arguments of «Latinists» and
«Arabists» were voiced. The authorities considered the
arguments in favor of Latinization more convincing and
began to carry out the reform. In 1922, a committee was
created for the transition to the Latin alphabet, headed
by Nariman Narimanov himself, chairman of the Council
of People’s Commissars of the AzSSR and the Union
Council of the Transcaucasian Federation. By decree
of June 27, 1924, the new alphabet was declared state
and mandatory for use on the territory of the AzSSR.
Somewhat earlier, in 1923, North Ossetia, Ingushetia
and Kabarda switched to the Latin script.
In 1926, the All-Union Central Committee of the New
Turkic Alphabet (All-Union Central Committee of the New
Turkic Alphabet) was established in Moscow. Baku was
chosen as his place of residence, with the organization of
a representative office in Moscow to communicate with
the union bodies on organizational and financial issues.
The committee included 39 members, they represented
all the Turkic union and autonomous republics, the North
Caucasus region, the Dagestan Autonomous Soviet
Socialist Republic, the Turkic population of Armenia
and Georgia. On June 1, 1927, the first plenum of the
All-Russian Central Committee of the NTA took place;
it was proposed to transform the committee from an
advisory div into a governing and planning one. At
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the same time, the committee selected the Azerbaijani
project from 17 proposed projects for a unified Latin
alphabet and approved it for further distribution. Thus,
by 1926, when the campaign for mass Latinization of
Turkic languages began, the USSR had accumulated
considerable theoretical and practical experience in this
area. Major linguists were involved, such as Samed-
aga Agamaly-ogly, B.M. Grande, E.D. Polivanov, A.A.
Reformatsky, L.V. Shcherba, N.V. Yushmanov, N.F.
Yakovlev and others, the necessary large material and
administrative resources were involved.
The decisive stage in the implementation of
Latinization was the First All-Union Turkological
Congress, held in Baku in February - March 1926. It
was not by chance that the capital of Azerbaijan was
chosen to host it: the Azerbaijani language had already
been translated into Latin. The congress was attended
by representatives of all Turkic autonomous regions and
republics, as well as delegates from the academies of
sciences of the USSR and Ukraine, from the All-Union and
Transcaucasian associations of orientalists, scientists
from Turkey, Germany and other countries, and the
President of the Turkish Republic Mustafa Kemal. After
discussion, the congress by a majority vote adopted a
resolution recommending the transfer of the alphabets
of all Turkic peoples of the USSR without exception from
Arabic to Latin script. The voting results were as follows:
«for» – 101 votes, «against» – 7 and 6 abstentions. Thus,
the reform received legitimate grounds for acquiring an
all-Union scale.
At the second plenum of the All-Russian Central
Committee of the NTA, held in January 1928 in
Tashkent, the stages of reform were determined: the
immediate introduction of the Latin alphabet in second-
level schools (secondary) and in vocational schools,
and from the 1928/29 academic year – in first-level
schools ( initial). The third plenum took place in Kazan
in December of the same 1928. At it, they agreed on
the timing of the reform: five to six years is too long,
one year, as in Turkey, is unrealistic; We agreed on a
compromise: two, maximum three years. On August 15,
1930, the Presidium of the Council of Nationalities of
the Central Executive Committee of the USSR decided
to transfer the committee, whose activities had long
gone beyond the borders of Azerbaijan, from Baku to
Moscow. Its apparatus consisted of 29 people, divided
into four sectors: Caucasian, Turkic-Tatar, Finno-Ugric
languages and technological. In total, the committee
supervised the work on the Latinization of 70 languages
of the peoples of the USSR. From the beginning of the
1930s, its administrative functions came to the fore as
the «struggle for early Latinization» unfolded. At the
same time, the main task was no longer the creation of
alphabets, but the development of the literary languages
of the peoples of the USSR, which was impossible to
do in one or two years.
In 1926, at the Fourth Session of the Central Executive
Committee of the Uzbek SSR, it was decided to abandon
the Arabic alphabet and switch to Latin. The Central
Committee of the New Uzbek Alphabet (CC NUA) is
being created, consisting of 44 people, including Yu.
Akhunbabaev (chairman). According to the initial plan
approved by the Central Executive Committee of the
Uzbek SSR, the transition to the new alphabet was to
be completed in the republic by the end of 1932. But
the «successes of socialist construction on all fronts»
force these deadlines to be shortened (quite in the spirit
and pace of the first five-year plans): the transition is
declared completed at the end of 1929.
It is necessary to note the factors that significantly
facilitated the transition to the Latin alphabet for the
Central Asian republics. First of all, they had at their
disposal the experience of other republics of the USSR,
where Latinization began and ended earlier. Further, the
level of illiteracy in the region was high, that is, there
were relatively few people who needed to be reeducated.
Courses were opened for them with the right to take an
external exam to obtain a certificate of literacy in the
new Turkic alphabet. In Central Asia it was much easier
to replace the old Arabic alphabet with a new one than,
for example, in Turkey, also because it was not in the
interests of the Soviet government to translate a large
number of books published in Arabic script into Latin.
There were not many printing houses in the region that
needed to be re-equipped.
CONCLUSION
It can be assumed that here we see the negative
consequences of Latinization, although at the rate of
liquidation of illiteracy set in those years, the quality
of the education received would probably have fallen
even without translation into the Latin alphabet. But
if the question of the pros and cons of Latinization in
education remains controversial, there is no doubt that
other goals of the forces interested in reform, primarily
political and ideological, have been achieved.
Language reforms carried out, carried out and planned
for implementation in Central Asia serve as excellent
indicators of the degree of freedom or non-freedom of
society from state control and from the manipulation
of public opinion by political elites. It is worth noting
that relatinization has been carried out or is planned
to be carried out in states that have chosen linguistic
nationalism, monolingualism and re-traditionalization
of the main spheres of public life as a strategic political
course.
It can be said that the method of making decisions
on carrying out linguistic transformations that was and is
being used in the region is deeply symptomatic. Politicians
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did not even always involve the expert community for
preliminary discussion and planning. More often than not,
everything was decided in a narrow circle of authorities,
quickly and without a comprehensive discussion of
the details of the reform or calculation of its possible
consequences. And then, through the media, people
unexpectedly learned about the government’s readiness
to meet his «numerous and ardent wishes» to change
the familiar alphabet to a new one.
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