Soviet Finnish: The Language of Neuvosto Karjala (Soviet Karelia)

In: Nationalities papers: the journal of nationalism and ethnicity, Band 9, Heft 2, S. 171-178

Abstract

The Karelian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic provides a unique opportunity for an examination of Soviet linguistic policy. Part of the difficulty in the analysis of the development of Soviet languages has been the lack of a control language or suitable basis for comparison between a language in its Soviet and non-Soviet environment. While it is impossible to determine how a language would have developed had there been no revolution or had it not been in the Soviet Union, some very general observations seem clear. The example of Turkish and Azerbaijani is instructive in this respect. The entire orientation of these two languages has changed drastically since their respective revolutions, particularly in the replacement of the Arabic alphabet by Latin and Cyrillic respectively, the handling of traditional arabisms and Persianisms, and the sources for neologisms (Western European languages and native roots for Turkish and Russian for Azerbaijani). There are, however, very few situations where a realistic comparison can be made between different versions of the same language, for the language abroad may represent only an emigre community or may exist in totally different circumstances, such as Iranian Azerbaijani, or the Soviet language may itself represent only a rump, such as Soviet Yiddish.