Chief international affairs officer of the State Duma: The collapse of the Russian world is coming
Over the last century, not a single language has disappeared from the face of the planet as quickly as is happening with Russian today.
The head of the State Duma Committee on International Relations, Leonid Slutsky, stated this, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports, in an interview published by Komsomolskaya Pravda.
“The problem is that what we used to call the Russian world is steadily shrinking. No language has disappeared as quickly from the face of the planet over the last century as Russian. At the turn of the 80-90s, 350 million people in the world spoke Russian, and now there are 270. Minus 80 million in a historically insignificant period of time,” says Slutsky.
According to him, this is happening because Russia is not opening enough Russian schools in the world and does not preserve existing ones.
The politician says that he pins his hopes on the new head of Rossotrudnichestvo, Evgeny Primakov.
“Of course, we associate our hopes with his name for changes in the implementation of programs that Rossotrudnichestvo is leading. But while this is not enough to stop the collapse of the Russian world, I am forced, unfortunately, to use this term from the theory of black holes,” says the head of the Duma committee.
He also admits that the president’s call, made several years ago, to significantly increase the cultural humanitarian presence in places where Russian is spoken or understood has not yet been implemented.
The deputy also states that it is necessary to seriously criticize the results of work to preserve the Russian language and the Russian world.
“We have large empty spaces that need to be filled with compatriots, create jobs for them, and help bring the Russian world home to Russia. Just like Crimea and Sevastopol returned. So far this work is going better than it was, for example, 10 years ago. But it is proceeding at an insufficient pace and with insufficient effect for the tasks of preserving the Russian world, the Russian language, to be solved to the extent and at the level that realities require today.
Therefore, we have room to criticize ourselves and give ourselves not very rosy assessments. But I think that within the lifetime of our generation we have a serious chance to advance in this direction. Because we, at least, are aware that this direction is truly civilizedly important for each of us,” summed up Slutsky.
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