1. For purposes of this essay, Kazakhstan is included with the four Central Asian republics of Kirghizia, Tadzhikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan, and the five republics are referred to collectively as the “Central Asian republics.”

2. For a fuller discussion of the meaning (and ambiguities) of the census measures on language, see Silver, Brian, “Social Mobilization and the Russification of Soviet Nationalities,” American Political Science Review, 68 (March 1974): 45–66 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Silver, Brian, “Methods of Deriving Data on Bilingualism from the 1970 Soviet Census,” Soviet Studies, 27 (October 1975): 574–97CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3. A classification of the varying social roles of Soviet languages has been worked out by lu. D. Desheriev and his associates in a number of works. See, for example, Desheriev, lu. D., Zakonotnernosti rasvitiia i vzaimodeistviia iasykov v sovetskom obshchestve (Moscow, 1966)Google Scholar; Desheriev, lu. D. and Protchenko, I. F., Razvitie iasykov narodov SSSR v sovetskuiu epokhu (Moscow, 1968)Google Scholar; and Isaev, M. I., Sto tridtsaf ravnopravnykh (Moscow, 1970).Google Scholar

4. Knappert, Jan, “The Function of Language in a Political Situation,” Linguistics , no. 39 (May 1968), p. 63.Google Scholar

5. The extent to which such native language schools have been provided varies considerably from one nationality to the next. On this point see Lipset, Harry, “The Status of National Minority Languages in Soviet Education,” Soviet Studies, 19 (October 1967): 181–89CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Silver, Brian, “The Status of National Minority Languages in Soviet Education,” Soviet Studies , 26 (January 1974): 28–40 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Paul R. Hall, “Language Contact in the USSR: Some Prospects for Language Maintenance Among Soviet Minority Language Groups” (Ph.D. diss., Georgetown University, 1974), chapter 5.

6. See, for example, Khanazarov, K. Kh., Sblizhenie natsii i natsional'nye iazyki v SSSR (Tashkent, 1963), p. 178 Google Scholar; Nishanov, Rank, Internationalism—Znatnia nashikh pobed (Tashkent, 1970), pp. 103–4 Google Scholar; and Bitenova, N, “Vzaimoobogashchenie i sblizhenie natsional'nykh kul'tur narodov Srednei Azii i Kazakhstana v protsesse stroitel'stva kommunizma (1959-1965 gg.),” in Ivanova, R. S., ed., Is istorii natsional'nogo stroitel'stva v SSSR (Moscow, 1967), p. 85.Google Scholar

7. Note, however, that the provision of native language schools is largely confined to residents within their respective official national republics or provinces or to persons residing outside their official national areas who live in longstanding regions of settlement of their nationality. Moreover, the provision of native language schools in a republic does not mean that all pupils will attend schools in their national language; pupils may enroll (by law, according to their parents’ wishes) in schools where Russian or another non-national language is the principal medium of instruction.

8. For a discussion of Soviet and Western literature on the link between mother tongue and national identity, see Silver, “Social Mobilization.” For a discussion of the connection between language and national consciousness among Soviet Muslim nationalities, see Bennigsen, Alexandre and Lemercier-Quelquejay, Chantal, Islam in the Soviet Union , trans. Wheeler, Geoffrey E. and Evans, Hubert (New York, 1967)Google Scholar, chapter 14.

9. The analysis is restricted to segments of the population of each nationality that reside within their respective official national republics, and only adoption of the Russian language is examined here. Also, only the large Central Asian groups are considered.

10. Figures for 1970 are derived from TsSU, Itogi vsesoiuznoi perepisi naseleniia 1970 goda, vol. 4 (Moscow, 1972-73).\

11. Ibid.

12. See, for example, Silver, “The Status of National Minority Languages,” and Hall, “Language Contact in the USSR,” chapter 5.

13. For a discussion of the concept of ethnic ideology in relation to Soviet Muslim nationalities, see Silver, “Social Mobilization,” especially pp. 52-53. See also John A. Armstrong, “The Ethnic Scene in the Soviet Union,” in Goldhagen, Erich, ed., Ethnic Minorities in the Soviet Union (New York, 1968), p. 3–49.Google Scholar

14. Silver, “Social Mobilization.”

15. Of course, a variety of other factors could account for some of the differences between Muslims and non-Muslims in the extent of knowledge of Russian. But, as indicated below, the role of education in accounting for Muslim/non-Muslim differences (as well as the urban-rural differences) in the learning of Russian (especially as a second language) appears to be minimal.

16. The key issue is whether the measure of interethnic contact tends to bias the interpretation of the relative susceptibility of Muslims and non-Muslims to acquiring Russian as a second or a native language. Let us briefly consider the direction of such a possible bias. First, it is plausible to suppose that the aggregate measure of interethnic contact tends especially to exaggerate the true levels of contact between Muslims and Russians, because there may well be a greater incidence of de facto residential segregation in the Muslim republics than in the non-Muslim republics. That Soviet Muslims are less likely than non-Muslims to adopt Russian as a native language under apparently similar demographic conditions may result from actual differences in their demographic situations. If so, Muslims are not necessarily less “susceptible” to adopting Russian as a native language but have simply experienced a weaker demographic stimulus. In that case, the role of a Muslim ethnic ideology in mediating the effects of interethnic contact on native language switching would be smaller than has been indicated here. It would also follow that if Muslims and non-Muslims resided in truly comparable demographic settings, either the lag of Muslims behind non-Muslims in adopting Russian as a native language would be less than our previous analysis has allowed or Muslims might be even more attracted to Russian as a native language than are non-Muslims. Of the two alternatives, the second is not impossible, but the first is more plausible. Consequently, if there is a bias in the measurement of interethnic contact, it probably has led to an exaggeration of the magnitude of the Muslim/non-Muslim differences in the attraction to Russian as a native language. Yet if there is a measurement bias that exaggerates the true level of contact between Muslims and Russians (by ignoring residential segregation), the analysis would underestimate the attraction of Muslims to Russian not only as a native language but also as a second language. Moreover, since the statistical analysis reveals that in apparently similar demographic settings there is no difference in the attraction of Muslims and non-Muslims to Russian as a second language, it follows that, if one could correct for the supposed bias in the measure of interethnic contact, Muslims would be shown to be even more attracted to Russian as a second language than are non-Muslims. This greater attraction of Muslims seems highly implausible (though not impossible). If one therefore rules out this conclusion as unlikely, and thereby rejects the assumption of a measurement bias due to residential segregation, one must then also rule out the possibility that the Muslim/non-Muslim differences in attraction to Russian as a native language are smaller than have been indicated (since this conclusion also rested on the assumption of a measurement bias). By ruling out as unlikely the conclusions that Muslims are even more susceptible than non-Muslims to adopting Russian as a native or a second language and that the true Muslim/non-Muslim difference in adoption of Russian as a native language is smaller than has been indicated, one is left with one alternative. Either the direction of the measurement bias is reversed (which seems unlikely) or there is no systematic bias in our measure of interethnic contact.

17. See M. Mobin Shorish, below.

18. On the movement of Russians into Kazakhstan and Central Asia, see the brief summary in Lewis, Robert A., Rowland, Richard H., and Clem, Ralph S., “Modernization, Population Change and Nationality in Soviet Central Asia and Kazakhstan,” Canadian Slavonic Papers , 17 (Summer and Fall 1975): 286–300.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

19. Silver, “Methods of Deriving Data on Bilingualism.”

20. See Isupov, A. A., Natsional'nyi sostav naseleniia SSSR (Moscow, 1964), p. 46 Google Scholar. Note that the percentages are based on the entire population of each nationality, not the work-age population.

21. See, for example, Bennigsen and Lemercier-Quelquejay, Islam in the Soviet Union, p. 199.

22. Silver, “Social Mobilization,” p. 58.

23. This discussion employs the same categories of the scale of linguistic Russification used in the analysis of generational trends.

24. The evidence also supports Bennigsen and Lemercier-Quelquejay's argument that bilingualism is a stable condition for Soviet Muslims and does not threaten the national languages.

25. Arutiunian, Iu. V., “0 nekotorykh tendentsiiakh v izmenenii kul'turnogo oblika natsii,” Sovetskaia etnografiia, 1973, no. 4, p. 8.Google Scholar