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Primary school children in Tajikistan

Language policy in education: Tajikistan 1860-Present

The Tajik language is the only non-Turkic language in central Asia, its roots lie in the Persian language and is closely related to Dari spoken in Afghanistan and Farsi spoken in Iran. Historically the languages in Tajikistan were written in the Arabic script, if they were written at all and teaching was provided predominantly by Islamic schools with Arabic being taught for mostly for Qu'ranic recitation. The focus of language teaching prior to Russian annexation was religion centered and had very little literary focus. Up until declaring Independence in 1991, Soviet language policy implementation in education was predominantly implemented for the entirety of the Central Asian republics.

Tsarist period: 1860s-1917

Following the Russian Conquest of Central Asia in the 1860s, there were attempts by the Tsarist regime to introduce the use of the Cyrillic script as the new writing system from Arabic but was limited to administrative functions and the teaching of state controlled schools. In the Tsarist's governments bid for Russification of central Asian states, the Tsarist government focused on language policy in education, passing a education statute in 1864 that required all teaching in schools to be carried out in Russian. The forms of education adopted were ill considered and literacy rates in Russian during the Tsarist period were 1% or less in central Asia according to the 1897 consensus and these levels continued up until the Russian Revolution in 1917.

Soviet period: 1917-1991

Tajik SSR coat of arms

The Establishment of Tajik SSR

The Russian Revolution in 1917 marked the end of the Tsarist regime and its Russian centered approach to language policy in education. The revolution created favorable conditions for the development of local languages in public contexts and opened domains to local languages that had previously been occupied by Russian. These favorable conditions were largely due to the division of Central Asia into Republics. Initially the Soviets established the Turkestan Soviet Federative Republic in 1918 which later became the Turkestan ASSR in 1920 and the Kirghiz Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic was also established in 1920, later being renamed as the Kazakh ASSR in 1925. In 1924, the Turkestan ASSR was divided up into the Turkmen SSR and the Uzbek SSR which was further divided to create the Tajik SSR in 1929. The division of Central Asia into these Soviet Republics resulted in all of the Central Asian ethnolinguistic groups (Kyrgyz, Kazakh, Turkmen, Uzbek and Tajik) being split up across these republics which has created a very ethnically and liguistically diverse region.

Initial Approach to language policy

Policy of Korenizatsiya (Nativisation)

The policy of Korenizatsiya, formalised in April 1923, which advocated the equality of the non-Russian languages and cultures in relation to the Russian language and culture. This policy was to essentially reverse the policy of Russification that the Tsarist regime implemented, in order to achieve such aims, language policy in education was at the core of the governments approach. Stalin stated that the initial approach of the Soviet government was to expand teaching in local languages and the need to establish local schools and recruit local teachers was central to the education policy proposed by Stalin.

Nativisation process challenges

The first problem that the communist government encountered was the lack of language standardisation and the need for Orthographic development and reform. The standardisation of the the languages of Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan represents the separation of the previously merged Turkic and Persian (Tajik) languages into new varieties. Soviet language planning preferred to adopt new varieties that separated post-revolutionary language practices from the past as a way of creating distinct linguistic identities for the Soviet Republics. The Tajik language is a Persian variety but the Persian of Iran was not considered the basis for a standard as Iran was not part of the USSR. Historically and culturally important Tajik speaking cities of Samarkand and Bukhara were controversial as the cities were now located in the Uzbek SSR after the formation of the republics, nonetheless, the Bokharan variety was chosen as the standard.

The process of nativisation progressed at different paces because the communist government faced significant challenges in its implementation, especially in the case of Tajikistan. Tajikistan lacked the most important factors to enable this process which including, ethnic homogeneity, a developed national consciousness and the multifaceted and multifunctional use of the Tajik language. In order to combat the issues of illiteracy, in December 1919, Lenin signed a nine point decree titled ' The elimination of illiteracy among the population of the Russian Soviet Republic' and in June 1920, the Extraordinary Commission for the Liquidation of Illiteracy was formed to advance the practical implementation of the 1919 decree. In Tajikistan the literacy campaign was launched in 1925 with the organisation of the state agency, Nīst bād bīsawādī (Down with Illiteracy), by the end of the year, the agency had established 47 schools for adults and five years later, there were 1,111 schools, attended by about 80,000 men and women. The attendance at literacy classes rose to a peak of 296,000 in 1936 and the reported literacy for the ages of 9-49 rose from 3.8% in 1926 to 82.8% in 1939.

Shift in approach to language policy

Change in scripts

Immediately after the Russian Revolution, anti-Russian sentiment in Central Asia prompted an attempt to reform the Arabic script that had traditionally been used to write the languages in the region, especially between 1921-23. However, it quickly gave way to the introduction of the Latin script that was favored by the communist leaders and in 1929, the use of the Arabic script for publications was banned in the Soviet Union. The switch meant that the literacy campaigns had to change their teaching to accommodate the change in script and caused disruption in the academic field and the separation between the Soviet Union and the rest of the Islamic world as they continued to use the Arabic script.

The policy of Latinisation did not last very long and from the 1930s, the policy of indegenisation (Nativisation) gave way to one of Russification with the shift from the Latin script to the Cyrillic script. This shift was in the context where Russian had come to be widely taught in the Soviet Union, becoming a compulsory subject for all Tajiks in 1938, and it became more convenient to teach a single script for both the local language and Russian to facilitate the acquisition of written Russian. By 1940 the Cyrillic script was imposed in all of the Central Asian republics. This change hampered the progress of literacy programs as this shift to the Cyrillic script was the second script reform in a decade. Nonetheless, literacy rates for men and women were reported at 92.6% in both urban and rural areas in the 1959 consensus, almost a 10% increase from 1939.

Language education by the 1950s

Education in most of the local languages of the Soviet Union including Uzbek, Russian, Kyrgyz and Turkmen were available in most schools at primary level and some languages in secondary schools and less so in Tertiary education, with the lack of teachers being the major issue. In Tertiary education, ethnic languages were not treated the same as Russian, with individuals and whole disciplines only being taught in Russian. AS the result of such language policy was that secondary school pupils, who were educated in ethnic minority languages, felt disincentivized to learn in these languages when pursuing further higher education.

The Soviet policy for ethnic languages was one of Bilingualism promoting local languages (Tajik) for local purposes, but viewed Russian as the vehicular language of the Union, of industrial and technological modernisation and as the international language of communism. In Soviet thinking, the languages were never thought of as equal as Soviet policy was built on the idea of слияниe (merger), the eventual merging of cultures and languages into a singular international one through the gradual voluntary adoption of Russian. The result of this Soviet policy approach to language education was a 2-tier system where monolingual education in Russian medium schools was considered superior to that of education in Tajik schools and therefore those schools were better funded.

1958-59 educational reforms

- Education in the mother-tongue was made optional for the linguistic minorities of Tajikistan.

- The reforms introduced Russian as a compulsory subject in all local medium schools

- The introduction of the right for parents to decide on the language of instruction for their children, meaning that decisions about Russian and local language medium education were no longer made by the Tajik government.

1970s

From the early 1970s, the use of Russian in schools increased.

- increased allocation of time to Russian in ethnic language schools

- Introduction of Russian in pre-school programs

- The establishment of mixed, bilingual schools, which used both Tajik and Russian as the medium of instruction, as an alternative to ethnic language medium schools.

In the 1977 constitution, alterations were made to local language policy in education making the access to education in a mother-tongue no longer a guarantee as it was in the 1936 constitution and the obligation of the state was only to provide opportunities for such teaching.These reforms were aimed at increasing education in Russian at the expense of the Tajik and other minority languages, marking a significant shift in language policy emphasis.Despite greater emphasis on Russian language teaching, the 1979 consensus reported that only 30% of Tajikistanis were using Russian as their first or second language, owing to poor rural teaching quality.

Mid 1980s: period of Perestroika

With the arrival of perestroika, Soviet attitudes to language education began to change and advocacy for national languages began to strengthen. The increasing dominance of the Russian language in education was contested across the Soviet Union, the key concern being the decreasing value of local languages. The contestation was targeted at the optional nature of education in ethnic languages and the right granted to parents to choose the language of instruction for their children introduced in the 1958-59 reforms, favoring the Russian language. Despite this opposition, the rights were reaffirmed in the 1988-89 Plenums of the Central Committee of the communist party. The Plenums did however grant the right for the Republics to make decisions about the official status of their titular language (Tajik) as long as they did not discriminate against other languages. The period of Perestroika represented both an re-emergence for the advocacy of local languages but also it reaffirmed the central role of Russian.

Independent Tajikistan: 1991-present

Soon after declaring Independence from the Soviet Union in September 1991, Tajikistan plunged into a civil war and by 1992 there were a reported 1.2 million internal and external refugees and a significant economic downturn. The civil war significantly disrupted the implementation of language policy in Tajikistan as funding for education was reduced and aspects of schooling was heavily disrupted.

In Tajikistan, the current functioning language law was passed in 1989 when it was still part of the USSR and the main regulations on the status of the Russian language remained intact when Tajikistan adopted the new constitution in 1994 and the education law in 2004.

1989 language law

- Article 1: The state language of the country is Tajik

- Article 2: Russian functions freely in the nation as the language of interethnic communication

- Article 3: Issues related to the status of Pamir languages are handled independently by the Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Region but it was not given a place in the constitution.

- Article 7: The Tajik language is used exclusively in the sphere of office work, in the government and administration of Tajikistan and in public organisations.

The language law reinforced the position of the Tajik language in the sphere of public life and the lesser role of Russian within Tajikistan.

Article 21 of the Tajik education law guarantees Tajik citizens the freedom of choice in the language of education and ensures secondary education (Grades 1-11) in Tajik, Russian and Uzbek languages and in regions with high concentrations of citizens of other ethnicities, mainly Turkmen and Kyrgyz, secondary education can be received in those languages.

Position of the Russian Language

Most Russian schools in Tajikistan ended up closing due to the sudden emigration of Russian-speakers during the civil war, including a large number of Russian-speaking teachers. In 1989, Russians made up 7.6% of the population of Tajikistan but in the 2000 consensus, it declined to only 1.1%. In the 2004-2005 school year, of the 1,673,745 secondary school pupils, 73.7% studied in Tajik, 25.5% in Uzbek, 2.2% in Russian. Despite the decline in population of Russian speakers, Russian medium education was still prevalent as many non-Russian parents sent their children to these schools believing education was of higher quality and opened opportunities to work in Russia.

Following the shift to Tajik as the dominant language of the Republic and its educational institutions, the lower level of Russian language abilities of students emerged as a cause for concern and in 2004, the study of Russian was made compulsory in all schools from grade 2-11.

In the early 2000s, the interest and the need for Russian has increased due to the development of new forms of economic, cultural and academic collaboration. The governments agreed on a singular academic space, meaning all dissertations have to be written in Russian and all doctoral and professional degrees have to be approved by the Higher Attestation Commission (VAK) of the Russian Federation.

State program of the improvement of teaching and learning of Russian and English in the years 2004-2014

Job opportunities in Russia has also made the learning of the Russian language more desirable as 93% of the 200,000 annual temporary migrants go to work in the Russian Federation, with there being a need to demonstrate a basic level of Russian. To accommodate for the increase demand in Russian teaching, in December 2003 the Tajik government adopted the State program of the improvement of teaching and learning of Russian and English in the years 2004-2014. The programs main goals included:

- The development of Russian language as the language of interethnic communication within Tajikistan, the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) and Baltic nations.

- Continuation of Russian education at all stages of schooling.

- Focus on high quality and practical Russian education.

- Creation of a Russian-language teaching program for all strata's of society.

- Development of the ways to popularise Russian via the mass media.

Additionally in March 2015, Zulfiya Safarova, the spokesperson for the ministry of education announced that the new curriculum would increase the number of hours allocated to Russian in upper comprehensive schools (Grades 10-11) to 4 hours per week, an increase from 2-3 hours.

Revised language law of 2009

Despite the pro-Russian language sentiment of the 2004-2014 program, the 2009 reformed language law removed the Russian languages status as the language of interethnic communication, making Tajik the only official language. The President Emomali Rahmon believes that this legislation will develop national consciousness and a sense of patriotism of the Tajik people, however the reform caused significant backlash with many Russian-speakers emigrating. Although the state language policy favors the state language, Rahmon has stressed the importance of studying Russian and English which is shown in the 2004-2014 program and competition for admissions to schools with instruction in Russian language are among the highest.

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