Central Asia by Alexei Vassiliev

Author:Alexei Vassiliev
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780863567742
Publisher: Saqi

The Nationality Policy

According to the constitution, the state language of the country is Turkmen. The status of Russian was not fixed in the fundamental law. It was envisaged that Turkmen would take over as the language of the work-place by 1996: special commissions were set up at enterprises to determine the degree of knowledge of the language by each employee, and to decide on this basis whether or not it would be expedient to employ him or her in the future. The leadership of Turkmenistan explains the reduction in the use of Russian by the steady decrease in the Russian-speaking population, caused not only by migration of the Slavs, but also by the rapidly increasing numbers of the indigenous population: the birth rate among Turkmens is much higher. In recent years, the daily broadcast of Russian TV programmes has reduced from 17 to 10 hours. The weekly length of Russian programmes on national television is 52 hours, or 28% of the total. However, unlike some other ex-Soviet republics such as Uzbekistan, Russian newspapers are readily available.

The promotion of Turkmen as the state language presents a major problem to the Russian-speaking population. Less than 5% of them are fluent in Turkmen. In the past the living standards and social status of Russian-speakers were higher than those of the indigenous population due to their more advanced skills. This prompted them to take a kind of ‘big-brother’ approach to the Turkmens, and to project themselves as ‘carriers of European civilization’. The feelings experienced by the Slavs in Turkmenistan, as well as in the whole of Central Asia, mirror in many respects those felt in recent years by Europeans in former colonies: the ‘messengers’ of the parent states, who used to live in their isolated worlds, retaining the traditions of their homelands, who then had to adjust almost overnight to an alien civilization. Another problem faced by the Russian-speaking population in the republic is the introduction of the Roman script in Turkmen. It will be used in the work-place from 2001.

There has been an increase in migration of the Russian-speaking population, even from a ‘peaceful’ Turkmenistan. Whereas 7% of the Russian-speaking people left the republic in 1989-91, 3% did so in 1992 alone. This has happened despite the law granting citizenship of Turkmenistan to everybody living there on the day the law was adopted. The state policy on nationality relations proclaims adherence to democratic standards of equality for people of all nationalities, and the mass media also plays a part in promoting inter-ethnic harmony. After Turkmenistan and Russia signed the agreement on dual citizenship in 1993, the migration of the Russian-speaking population almost stopped.

The leadership of the republic is aware of the necessity of ensuring the social protection of the Russian-speaking population, because only about 6% of the industrial employees are Turkmens. The Russian-speaking employees prevail in the gas complex, which yields about 75% of the budget proceeds. However, the economic weight of the Russian-speaking citizens does not correspond to their political status, though their share among the decision-makers is higher than in other Central Asian countries.

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