'The Planet Is Speaking Russian': Russian Language Politics Abroad and at Home in the Brezhnev Years

• In Event: Soviet Internationalism at Home and Abroad

Abstract

This paper explores how Soviet officials, scholars, and pedagogues employed campaigns to promote Russian abroad, as a “world language,” to advance Russian fluency among national minorities in the USSR. Historians have argued that in the 1960s and 1970s, the Soviet government tried to leverage its inner empire to shape its foreign policy. This paper contends that in the realm of Russian language politics, by contrast, the levers of influence operated in reverse.

Author

• Rachel Applebaum, Tufts U