Russian Language and Identity: Discursive Practices in Post-soviet Russia

After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russia has been dealing with a large number of challenges that affected its sense of national identity: the fourteen constituent republics of the Soviet Union departed, leaving among Russians a mixed feeling of liberation and desertion; the dominant Communist ideology bankrupted and on top of that, the country has been exposed to severe economic and social turbulence. The negotiation by contemporary Russian society of the new ethnic, geographical, ideological and historical dimensions of the national identity takes place in language practice, in other words, in discourses produced at the various levels of society.
So far no comprehensive study of such language practices has been undertaken and the proposed research deals with this gap.
The elites' version of what it means to be Russian is especially formulated in certain public forms of discourse such as for example speeches given at national occasions or in categories and formulas arrived at during the debates in the Russian parliament / the Duma. These views might be supported or challenged in other parts of the society, such as in the media or in the private sphere. As a result, different voices and different ways of expression emerge that will be traced and identified in the project. Over the two periods, roughly corresponding to the two post-Soviet presidencies, of Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin, the official story of the Russian identity has undergone both, changes in content and the language devices used for its production. One example of this is how the attitudes to the Soviet past changed, from a total rejection of the regime to a much more reconciling position. The complexity and often confusion as to who is seen as member of the in- or the out-group in the picture of the multi-national Russian identity, is another aspect of the identity story that will be explored. Finally, it is important to see how the Russian language itself is employed by different discourses as a necessary component of their view of Russian-ness. The disintegration of the Soviet regime was accompanied by changes in language use: public Russian became more liberalised while rigid norms of the past period were marginalised. In the second period covered by the investigation, the consolidation of the official version of the Russian identity becomes connected with the return to the power of the norm. Thus, the project will make a contribution to the theory regarding the connection between the identity articulation and the language used for that purpose.