The Soviet Union is the largest country in the world. It is also one of the most linguistically varied countries. Few countries in the world have devoted as much time discussing and analyzing the problems associated with multi-lingualism as the USSR. In order to solve these problems, especially those in the fields of education and communication, the USSR formulated many policies, plans, and programs. The means by which these plans were implemented ranged from coercion to coopting. However, the efforts of the central government have not always met with favor with the non-Russian nationalities of the country.

In 1980 the USSR had a population of about 265 million (Narodnoe khoziaistvo SSSR v 1980 godu: 7), constituting more than one hundred linguistically varied people. These people are also different in terms of their religion and other attributes ordinarily benchmarking ethnic boundaries of a group.

The fifteen republics of the USSR federation give us a description of the people and the languages they speak. Each republic is named after the people who, with the exception of the Kazakh people, constitute the majority (sometimes only barely) of the population in that republic. Starting from the Baltic and going counter-clockwise on the Soviet Union's map we encounter the Estonians, Latvians, Lithuanians, Belorussians, Ukrainians, Moldavians, Georgians, Armenians, Azerbaijanis, Turkmans, Uzbeks, Kirgiz, Tajiks and Kazakhs.¹ The so-called Great Russians, who constitute at the present time a little more than fifty percent of the country's population, also occupy the largest union republic.

The above paragraph gives some idea of the complexity of the linguistic scene in the USSR. The problem gets much more complicated when one wants to analyze the linguistic nationalism of the various nationalities on the one hand, and the ideological imperative of the country on the other.

The USSR is officially committed to the creation of a proletarian society with a homogenized proletarian culture. Apparently, this system also includes a language. Although no one has clearly stated what that language would be (as the discussions that follow will illustrate), the socialist notables of the USSR have left little doubt in their utterances about the primacy of the Russian language in this multi-lingual country.

This ideological imperative has created political problems for the Soviets. Apparently, not all peoples of the USSR see the existence of a homogenized Soviet proletariat culture as a good thing. They fear the russification of their languages, as well as other aspects of their cultures. The Russian peoples' monopoly of power over the distribution of resources in the USSR implies this russification.

The anxiety of the non-Russian people has not been lost on the Soviet government and the Communist Party of the USSR. From the beginning, they have tried to come to terms with two mutually exclusive policies. On the one hand, the Soviets try to tolerate (and at times encourage) the nationalism of various minorities, and on the other hand they try to integrate the people toward the realization of the homogeneous proletariat culture.

Understandably, almost all attempts by the Central Government for the creation of the standardized Soviet culture have been interpreted by the minorities as a ploy for russification of their cultures. In order to reassure the non-Russians, the USSR proclaimed its nationality policies as "nationalism in content and socialism in form."

This meant that various ethnic groups in the USSR can use their own mother tongues and the literature that goes with them provided the literature and the utterances in the mother tongues reflect the Soviet brand of socialism. This presents the Soviets with the laborious task of trying to find the "appropriate" passages from literature and also policing everyday conversations of the people for signs of deviance. Only recently, for example, have some of the Russian classics like those by Fyodor Dostoyevsky been published in the USSR.

The multi-pronged conflict between the state and its ideological imperative which pushes for integration and the nationalism of ethnic groups (which in turn leads to greater differentiation) continues to persist in the USSR. The conflict which continues between different nationalities also exists, such as the enmity between the Russians and most other national minorities. A good example of this conflict-ridden scene is Soviet Central Asia. The language policies of the USSR seems to be one of the major contributors to this clash.

Central Asia is the southern-most part of the USSR. It border the People's Republic of China in the East and Iran in the West. It has its linguistically and culturally identical groups straddling the common boundaries it shares with Afghanistan, Iran and the PRC. It is composed of more than a dozen nationalities. Some of these nationalities are newcomers in the area, like the Slavs, while others have been there for centuries. The major indigenous groups (in contrast to the European new comers) are the Uzbeks, Kirgiz, and Turkman peoples.These peoples speak turkic, and occupy the union republics bearing their names. The other important Central Asian group with their own republic are the Tajiks who speak an Indo-Iranian language.

Historically, these people have always thought of their own Islamic heritage and the languages articulating it as superior to those offered by their colonizers, the Russians. As a result, they have perceived their learning the Russian language as a prelude to their own acculturation to the Russian way of life. The Islamic religion encourages learning, including the learning of languages. Apparently, the Central Asians, who consider themselves oppressed, are reluctant to learn the Russian language because it is the language of the oppressors.

This attitude of the indigenous people has in part been a response to the Russian's crass and overtly racist attitudes toward the Central Asians(Wimbush and Alexiev, 1980). This in turn exasperates the programs of Teaching Russian as a Second Language(TRSL). The Russians have ruled for more than a century and have made conscious efforts to acculturate the Central Asians, first under the auspices of the Orthodox Church and later, up to the present time, through the efforts of the Russian government of the USSR. In spite of this, Central Asians lag behind other Soviet ethnic minorities in their acquisition of the Russian language.

This study is an assessment of the theories and practices of teaching Russian to the indigenous Turkic and Iranian speaking people of Soviet Central Asia. More specifically, it is a description of the processes by which the programs of Teaching Russian as a Second Language(TRSL) are implemented in the classrooms of Central Asia.

Language acquisition, like other forms of learning, is influenced by a great many factors, not all present in the school environment.² The present study assumes that schooling is important in the acquisition of a second language. It is important as an apparent "best" alternative to non-formal types of education like on-the-job training alone. It is also clear that the "best" alternative by itself does not lead to the best results. For this to happen, the discovery and the development of supportive economic, social, cultural and political institutions are necessary. Another factor signifying the importance of the school is the fact that the demand for language learning, like the demand for other forms of learning, is derived. The more one learns and get educated the more one wants to go learning. This demand becomes more clear when various reward packages are attached by the society to various levels of education and different types of competency credentials. To learners, theoretically successive levels of education provide greater numbers of options among alternative futures. One of the most important options seems to be the ability to be socially and spatially mobile in the USSR. In Central Asia, learning some Russian permits one to move into the urban centers of the area. Here, opportunities to move up the occupational structure and also augment one's level of linguistic competence are more frequent than in the rural areas. In spite of this potential advantage, the proportion of Central Asians fluent in Russian lags behind the average of all other non-Russians fluent in that language(as census data shows).

It is difficult to isolate the numerous factors which may be contributing to this lag. Some of these factors are discussed here. Others may be anchored in the people's cultures, traditions, and social psychological make-up, some of which was mentioned earlier.

Soviet Central Asia is composed of the republics of Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Kirgizistan. In 1979, the titular people living in these republics composed about twenty million persons scattered over 1.2 million square kilometers( Narodnoe Khoziaistvo SSSR v 1980 G: 24). The area has had experiences with numerous alphabets prior to the introduction of the Cyrillic script in the late 1930's(Gibb 1928; Baskakov 1967; Shorish l984). The most important alphabets seem to have been those of Arabic and Latin prior to the present one. The Arabic alphabet came into the area after Central Asia was overrun by the Iran-Islamic armies in the eight century. This alphabet continued as a means of communication and instruction in the schools until the latter half of the 1920s when it was replaced by the Latin alphabet. In 1938 the Cyrillic alphabet was introduced in Central Asia, where it replaced the Latin alphabet almost totally in all printed material by the early 1940s. Also, on March 13, 1938, by a decree of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the USSR, the teaching of the Russian language became compulsory in the schools of the non-Russian people, among them those residing in Central Asia(Shukurov 1957:76).

By the middle of 1938 almost all of the Central Asian republics had adopted similar decrees on the compulsory teaching of the Russian language. The task of the preparation of the Russian teachers fell to the Commissariat of education of each republic. Due to the extreme scarcity of such teachers at the time in Central Asia, the republics started importing many teachers from the Slavic speaking areas of the USSR. Many Russian teachers for the secondary and incomplete secondary schools were provided by various other union republics, especially the RSFSR. In 1938, for example, Tajikistan received 368 teachers from the Russian republic mentioned above. Also, Central Asians started massive Russian language teacher training programs. By the end of 1939, almost 5,000 teachers of Russian language for grades 2-4 were trained in Tajikistan alone(Shukurov 1957: 76ff).

Numerous conferences and meetings to legitimize the conversion to the Cyrillic alphabet and to legitimize and expand the teaching of Russian in Central Asia have taken place over the past several years. One of the most important of these meetings took place in Alma Ata, in 1962. It was titled the "Conference on the Development of Literary Languages" and had as its main concern the creation of common lexical stocks for the languages of the USSR. However, as Lewis points out, in actuality the conference was to investigate the relationships of all these languages to that of Russian(Lewis, 1974:58). The results of all these relationships have been a continuous inflow of Russian words often at the expense of local terms in almost all non-Russian languages of the USSR. The reactions of the indigenous people to this has been varied.³ (Pool, 1976; Tojikistoni Soveti, henceforth TS, March 6, 1966:4).

The first inter-republican conference on the study of Russian in these Muslim republics took place in Tashkent in August 1965, following the reorganization of the Soviet schools under the provision of so-called Khrushchev Reforms. Similar conferences have taken place since then to discuss various aspects of teaching Russian as a second language. The results of these conferences have been to increase significantly the number of hours devoted to the Russian language and Russian language related materials in the non-Russian schools(Rahbari Donish, 1930: 13; King 1936:312-314; Uzbek SSR 1939:13-16; Central Asian Review, henceforth CAR, 1961:27; Maorif v Madaniyat, henceforth MvM, May 19, 1970:4, June 7, 1975:4, Sep. 10, 1974:4).

In Dushanbe a conference of teachers of the Russian language took place on March 28,1968, in which the role of the Russian language in the "bringing together" (nazdikshavi, sblizhenie) of the socialist nations was discussed. The meeting was addressed by one of the secretaries of the Communist Party of Tajikistan, I. Rahimova, who declared that the learning of the Russian language was the "greatest weapon at the hand of our party in the process of unification of all Soviet people"(MvM, March 30, 1968:3). Other conferences on various pedagogical aspects of TRSL have been taking place over the past decades at the republican and federal levels(Baskakov 1968). In all of these Russian language conferences and related material appearing in the Soviet press, there seems to be one consistent and concurrent theme: the glorification of the Russian language and rationalization of its dominant position in government and commerce.

The theses of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Soviet Union (CC of CPSU) and the Council of Ministers of the USSR, Regarding the Strengthening of the Relationship of School and and for the Further Development of the System of Public Education in the USSR was published on November 16,1958, and puts forward the official view. The 19th clause of it reads:

In the Soviet schools instruction is conducted in the native language. This is one of the more important achievement of the Leninist national policy. At the same time in the union and autonomous republics is also studied the Russian language which is a great means of international communication, of strengthening of friendship among the peoples of the USSR and of introducing them to the treasures of Russian and world culture.(Kolasky 1968:26.)

The importance of studying the Russian language is apparent not only because it is a "window" to the outside world, but also because it is the vehicle of international communication and friendship among people. Few may want to undermine such an arrangement by not opting for the study of the Russian language. Also, at the present time, there is no doubt that without the knowledge of the Russian language it is impossible to become a Soviet leader. Thus, Russian is a prerequisite for upward social, political and economic mobility.

There are still other stimuli for learning Russian. For example, "Russian language is the most important means in the making of a Communist; one can learn ethical behavior, patriotism, etc., by reading Gorkii, Turgenev, and. . . stories by Gogol makes one selfless in defense of the motherland." (Zhuravleya 1968:4.) Kanimetrov, a former minister of education of the Kirgiz SSR claimed that those who learn Russian become better students and adjust better in life(TS, November 10, 1972:4). Another example is " The Children must be prepared to fulfill their duty to the motherland, to study arduously the Russian language, in which are written the the regulations, military orders, and instructions in which their comrades and commanders will speak." (Russkii Iazyk i Literatura v Azerbaidzhanskoi Shkola, henceforth RIILASH, 1973 No.8:5.) A last example shows that Russian ". . . is the language of Lenin,Gorkii, the Communist Party. . . Maiakovskii; it is the language of kosmonauts; it is the language of the country. .. Moreover, the great literary figures of the Tajik literature such as Rudaki, Ibni-Sino, Fidausi, Nosir Khisrav, Umar Khayyom, Sa"di, Hofiz, Jomi, Bedil, and Ahmad Makhdum Donish were competent in more than one language." (Asrori, 1966:4.)

Another area which gets a great amount of emphasis for the learning of Russian is science and technology and the cultural development of the non-Russians. For example,

Every day new machinery comes into Tajikistan. Therefore, the addition of these Russian-International words increase the wealth of our language. Learning of the mother tongue is needed not only for cultural reasons but also due to the fact that creative thinking, intelligence, logical thinking is done effectively through mother tongue. . . However, one of the essential criteria in achieving the high cultural level of the Soviet Person is through learning of the language of the great Russian People. It is the Russian language through which we learn about the technical and scientific progress of the world and other human achievements. Nevertheless, one should emphasize that one cannot learn the Russian language without first mastering his own mother tongue.(Yusofbekov 1974:2-3.)

Another example is,

Learning Russian makes one moral; it makes one to grasp scientific and technical knowledge; it brings people together; increases one's social and political mobility; leads to the development of the socialist person; leads to the economic development of the country; increases friendship among the large and small peoples; it gives needed ideological and political content to the development of the young; it reflects the level of knowledge and the spirit of internationalism and socialism of an individual.⁴ (Uspenskaia 1975:2.)

All of these qualities are, of course, empirical questions that have not been validated. That is, the authors(both indigenous and Europeans) seem to have some sort of faith in the power of the Russian language to cause behavioral changes in individuals to the degree that was mentioned above. Some of the rhetorical, which these statements are, reminds one of those espoused once by General K.P. Von Kaufman when he was the governor general of the Russian Turkistan, and also of the preachings of V.I.Il'minskii. They both thought the second half of the 19th century Russia and the Russian culture, including the Orthodox Church, to be a reference culture that would draw the non-Russians to it and thereby elevate their cultural level. (Pierce 1960.)

Can Russian become the language of the people of the USSR? To answer this question one has to look carefully at the Soviet linguistic policies in which some of the above statements are anchored, and at the programs and plans which have been designed for their implementation.

The ultimate aim of (Soviet) social and linguistic policy was stated by Stalin as early as the XVIth Congress-- 'the fusion of nations, languages and cultures' and this ultimate objective has never been abandoned or even modified except to the extent that was originally set out as a declaration of intent is now progressively articulated as a maturing program. (Lewis 1972:54.)

But statements by Lenin and Stalin do not leave any doubt about the virtues of centralization and suitability, if not the superiority of the Russian language as the means of communication and instruction.(Lenin 1968:2.) The idea of merging nations into a single socialist people, apparently sharing one single language among many others things, was for decades the overt linguistic policy of the USSR and has now been somewhat modified. Also, the element of coercion has been replaced by sets of apparently much superior stimuli, some of which were listed above. These new stimuli are products of the present relatively high levels of economic, educational, political and social development of the USSR. These put a degree of pressure on the creation of Russian as the language of the country before which was unknown in the history of the Soviet Union.

It is a push-pull situation. One is pushed to learn Russian by ones peers, the mass media and the Soviet cultural and political institutions. And one is also pulled by unparalleled rewards in the form of spatial and social mobility. All of these are apparently done without making a sacrifice in the form of losing the allegiance of the members of one's community or one's language. (Rashidov 1975:1-3.)

It is necessary to mention that there are also opinions which differ markedly from those expressed above by the late Sharaf Rashidov (former First Secretary of the Uzbek Communist Party and a Candidate Member of the Political Bureau of the USSR Communist Party). These opinions have been expressed by those who look at him as a "russified" native, a "cosmopolitanist". (Shorish 1981; Carr'ere d'Encausse 1980.) It is also necessary to realize that there have probably been very few languages other than Russian on behalf of which such intensive propaganda has been orchestrated. Printed and electronic media, scholarly journals and books have had the cause of the Russian language as a topic of discussion in recent years. In fact, wherever one goes in Central Asia pressure for learning the Russian language is felt.

One can not work effectively in any of the urban centers of this area without some knowledge of the Russian language. Almost all of the street signs and those describing means of transportation are in Russian. Television and Radio programs are dominated by the Russian language. Random weeks of TV programs(from 1974 to 1985 in MvM, Komsomoli Tojikistan, and TS) revealed that the materials about and in the Russian language amounted to more than 75% of the total broadcasting time. The Russian language related programs for the radio broadcasting consumed more than 55% of the total broadcasting time of radio Dushanbe. Of course, there is always the possibility that some people will tune in to radio and TV programs other than those originating in the USSR.

In spite of all these efforts, it is still true that central Asians lag behind the rest of the non-Russian population of the USSR in the acquisition of Russian. This fact has not been lost from the Soviet authorities, who have been complaining about the poor quality of Teaching of Russian as a Second Language(TRSL) in Central Asia(Besemeres 1975; Murtazoev, 1984:4-5). As early as 1950, the most common cases of failures in schools in Mordavia, Bashkiria and Tataristan at the elementary level was failure in the Russian language(Valitov 1952:67 ). Even though the problem cited was for the RSFSR, it is equally true for the very high rate of failure of the non-Slavic children elsewhere in the USSR. In fact, the problem of failure in Russian constitutes one of the major educational problems of the Soviet Union.

From the standpoint of Soviet educators, there are several major problems which seem to have contributed to student failures and have persisted in TRSL in Central Asia over several decades. These perennial problems fall into two general categories. The first concerns the students and problems associated with the linguistics and pedagogy of second language learning. The second concerns the teachers of Russian, their training and the logistics required for Russian language teaching.

Central Asian students, when learning Russian, experience great orthographic and pronunciation problems. These orthographic mistakes associated with the incorrect pronunciation suggest also that teachers should have paid close attention to the students' mother tongue to see if some of the problem of pronunciation could lie there(Kliueva 1952:77).

One of the most important matters which has concerned educators over the years has been the very low lexical stocks of the non-Slavic children, who often memorize words without being able to perceive their meanings, as some of these words were absent from their languages. (Mokhov 1952:63-64; Kissen 1952:61-62; Tarzimanov 1952:65-66;Boitsova and Varkovitskaia 1952:66-69.) The problem of pronunciation, orthographic mistakes, grammatical errors and inability to distinguish between consonants and vowels all lend themselves to poor syntax for the children of local Central Asians. (CAR 1953:43-44, 1954:187-189.) The problem is nowhere more apparent than among rural children who are unable to speak and write a simple Russian sentence after ten years of in-class instruction. (CAR 1957:38; Medlin ,Cave, & Carpenter 1971:105.)

There are aspects of TRSL which by necessity differ from one region to another. Nevertheless, for many years a standardized method of TRSL was prescribed from the central government for non-Russian students. In general, the phonemic problem is one of the most persistent for almost all of the non-Slavic nationalities in Central Asia. It was discovered that Uzbek children are unable to distinguish between the sounds of two or more letters. The most problematic pairs for children in grades II-IV in Uzbek schools were:

b-v, p-f, o-u, e-i, and y-i. (Piatina 1974:33-39.)

They also fail to appreciate the difference between the soft sign and the hard sign. For students in the Tajik schools the most difficult sounds were:

e-ia, iu-io, y-i,q, ch, j, and f. (Ioshonjonov, Shukurov, M. and Rahmanov 1964:42-47.)

The difficulties which Tajik students experience in the above listed letters manifest themselves in pronounciation~ of words and orthography. Children are most confused in distinguishing aurally and orally between y and i as in:

byl-bil, myl-mil, pyl-pil.(Zakharova 1974:47-48.)

Also, problems of lack of discrimination on the part of Tajik children arise regarding:

est-est', zhar-zhar', mel-mel', semia-sem'ia,

u'gol-u'gol', el-el', pyl-pyl', polet-pol'et

and so forth(Ibid.) The problems of other Central Asian children are similar, though not identical(because of variations in their mother tongues) to those of Uzbeks and Tajiks(Popova 1973:26).

Central Asian students are also unable to distinguish between the simple and the complex sentences, that is, sentences that do not follow clear subject-predicate forms are hard for them to construct. They are generally very rigid in their usage of conjunctive words in subordinated clauses. For example, they make the mistake of thinking that all clauses using kogda are temporal and that all clauses using kak indicate forms of action or comparison(Babaev 1973:70-72). In addition, non-Slavic children experience difficulty with Russian verb aspects(Sharikova 1971:3-26), hard and soft consonants(Makhmudov 1973:49-56), and Russian words in non-Russian syntax(Niyozmuhammedov 1970:365-383).

One of the most controversial and conflict-ridden aspects of TRSL program in Central Asia has been the role and the place of the mother tongue in the process of learning Russian. In the context of Soviet linguistic policy, the politics of language has often overshadowed valid pedagogical and linguistic discussions of the subject. The non-Slavic Central Asians frequently have blamed the Russian teacher's lack of knowledge of the student's mother tongues as one of the more important factors inhibiting the successful teaching of Russian, thereby causing the failure of Central Asian Children to score higher in Russian language classes(Makhmudova 1974:6-20). The following is a Kazakh's reaction:

Ignorance of the Kazakh language on the part of the teacher reacts unfavorably on his teaching. The teacher often wastes much time and effort explaining some words and constructions of sentences through the medium of Russian, which is not fully understood(by the students) by the end of his discussion.(Kazakhstankaia Pravda 1956:2.)

The argument against the mother tongue as the medium in TRSL takes place on apparent social-psychological and linguistic grounds. Simply stated, some Soviet educators think that, in isolating the learner from the impact of the mother tongue and developing a "Russian only" environment, one can increase the rate of acquisition of the Russian language. Dzhafarzoda, in a study of bilingualism(Russian-Azeri), found higher frequencies of bilinguals in the urban and workers' villages than in places which could not afford the type of infrastructures(media, other means of communication, factories and so forth) conducive to bilingualism(Dzhafarzoda 1973:82-87). These debates do not take into account the function of the mother tongue in the overall educative process of the young. Instead, a great many Russians and some non-Russian scholars and politicians insist on a program of TRSL which makes Russian the "second mother tongue" of the non-Russian people. Apparently, the term "second mother tongue" is meant to imply the ability of the learner to think in Russian as well as in his mother tongue(Radzhabova 1973:3-11).

Many writers insist on using Russian as a medium of TRSL. "The present method of teaching Russian in National schools requires limitations, as much as possible, of the influence of the mother tongue." (Uspenskaia.) Such statements are often made without clear and adequate substantiation, and too many of them are documented by appealing to authorities who either unknown to the reader or who are not authorities in the area of specialization. Appeal to people like Ibrahim Altynsarin (1841-89, Kazakh protege of the tsarist missionary worker Il'minskii), Marx, Engels, and others, whose interests in linguistics and second language teaching have been tangential, is an all too common strategy.

This does not mean , however, that serious discussions of this topic are not taking place at other levels in the USSR's academic circles. The question of language policy and problems in linguistics have been discussed in this part of the world with much more intensity, at a higher level of sophistication, and over a much longer period of time than in most countries in the world. What has been discussed in this paper up to this point are the pedagogical problems of second language teaching from the standpoint of the practitioners in the classrooms of the Soviet Union--the teachers, the inspectors, the language specialists, and other educators.⁶ (Lewis 1974; MvM March 5, 1968:1.) These people have been taking widely divergent views in discussing the role of the mother tongue in TRSL. Generally, the Russians have advocated no role for the mother tongue, and the local Central Asians have advocated a great role for the mother tongue. Frequently, these views are expressed without any linguistic or pedagogical justification even though, from a pedagogical point of view, the positive role of the mother tongue in children's cognitive and affective learning is unassailable.

Language specialists at a UNESCO meeting agreed that it was essential for learners to start schooling in their own mother tongue in order to minimize both the problem of conceptualization and the break between the home and the school. The specialists also agreed that teachers of the second language should know the mother tongue of the pupils, and that the transfer to the second language should be postponed along as possible(UNESCO 1952.) S.M. Makhmudova, an Uzbek educator, relies on comparative grammar as one of the best methods in TRSL. In this method the use of the mother tongue becomes essential. The economy embedded in comparative grammar makes it an attractive method. Since many children know about some aspects of the grammar of their language before coming to school, it is not necessary to give lengthy definitions or explanations of those aspects which the two languages have in common (Makhmudova).

According to Makhmudova, the contrastive linguistics approach(which by necessity relies on teacher's bilingual ability) includes the comparison of the phonetics and grammatical phenomena of Russian and the native languages, and translations from Russian to the native language and from the native language to Russian. In this undertaking, materials can be grouped according to: (a) phenomena similar or identical in both languages, which need not be time consuming; (b) phenomena characteristic of both languages, but not identical, which need explanation and clarification by the teacher because of native language interference; (c) phenomena particular to Russian and absent from the student's native language, which makes this area completely new to the learners and free from interference by the mother tongue. The learners' experiences in learning are relatively(to (b) above) less ambiguous(Makhmudova, 1974: pp.6-20; Abdulloeva 1971:18).

The non-Russian educators of Central Asia have also been taking a leaf from the Russian educators' book in their defense of the mother tongue and the pedagogical value assigned to it. They have turned some of the arguments advanced by Russian writers for TRSL around to describe the usefulness of the mother tongue, not only as a facilitator in TRSL, but also, in its own merits, as conducive to learning(Asrori). The importance of the native language in the flowering of human culture and civilization is mentioned over and over by these non-Russian writers. For example:

There is evidence pointing to the fact that in schools the importance and the need for learning Tajik language is not emphasized at all. One must increase the enthusiasm of students in a language in which Rudaki[Abu Abdullah Ja"far b. Muhammed Rudaki Samarqandi, d.940], Khayyom[Omar Khayyam,1022-1122], Sino [Abu Ali Ibni Sina, Avicenna,980-1037], Fidavsi[`Abulqasim Firdavsi d. circa 1020 or1025], Sa"di[Abu Abdullah Musharrifuddin d. 1292], Hofiz[Shamsuddin Muhammed d.1320], Donish[Ahmad Makhdum,1827-97], and Ayni[Aini, Sadriddin,1878-1954], have written eternal works(Ma"rufuva 1968:21.)

Central Asians also appeal to same authorities as do the Russians in advocating the teaching of the mother tongue:

Marxist-Leninist psychology and pedagogical methodologies testify to the validity and fruitfulness of learning the mother tongue concomitantly with a new language. Karl Marx certified that a new language should be learned in connection with one's mother tongue. . . our experience in training Russian language teachers(the first in the USSR) proved that the Russian teachers who know the mother tongue of the pupil have been the most productive....⁷ (Ghaniev 1970:2,1971:4.)

There are, in general, two types of teachers of Russian in Central Asia--native Russian speakers and non-Russian teachers. Many of the native Russian speakers and other Russian language teachers(mostly other Slavs) have come from areas outside Central Asia. A great many of them come from RSFSR and some from the other two Slavic republics, the Ukraine and Belorussia. Also, many graduates of pedagogical institutes of these Slavic republics, specializing in the teaching of Russian, spend their student teaching assignments in the Central Asian republics. Almost all of these expatriate Russian language teachers settle in the urban centers and rarely do they venture into the rural areas. Since more than seventy five percent of schools in Central Asia are located in the rural districts, a great many of these schools go without having any Russian teachers. (Dodoboev 1975:1-2; Tojieva 1968:1; MvM Nov.23,1971:1; Khudoidodov 1975:2; Editorial, RIILASH, No.12,1973:3.)

The effectiveness of both rural(generally non-Slavic) and Slavic Russian teachers in TRSL constitutes, according to most observers, the Achilles heel of the Russian language program in Central Asia. Both of these groups suffer some degree of ineffectiveness. The Slavic speaking teachers, by virtue of their ignorance of the local languages and cultures, and a poor grasp of TRSL methodology, can not teach productively. On the other hand, the non-Russian teachers, trained in Central Asian educational institutions, have poor training overall.( TS.April 2,1968:1.)

As previously noted, most Slavic speaking Russian teachers stay in the cities of Central Asia where the infrastructure is not too different from the cities of their home regions. Most local Central Asian graduates of teacher training institutes also prefer to stay in the urban centers. Therefore, the scarcity of qualified Russian teachers in the rural areas of Central Asia remains unchanged. Apparently, the establishment in the early 1960s of branches of the pedagogical institutes which supposedly specialize in the training of Russian teachers for the rural area has not been able to reduce this shortage. Since these branches enrolled almost exclusively students from the rural areas, it was argued that these students upon graduation will remain in the rural districts to teach their own relatives the Russian language. It is not clear how many of these graduates, the so-called special groups(Guruhoi Makhsus) choose to stay in the rural areas upon graduation. In any case, the quality of these branches seems to have remained low, in part because of the poor preparation of their students(graduates of rural elementary and secondary schools) and the teachers(Personal interviews; CAR, 1965:310-322). Poor lesson plans and poor understanding of the systematization of curricula material according to age of students augments the list of problems in TRSL in Central Asia. Each practitioner in the classroom and others who are concerned with the program are encouraged by officials to innovate methods in TRSL. As a result, a hodgepodge of approaches for TRSL are used in the classrooms and pedagogical institutes of the Central Asian republics.

The teaching of Russian as a second language in Central Asia, aside from ideological and political contradictions noted earlier, is marked by other difficulties peculiar to second language pedagogy. First, teaching a language is different from teaching other subjects. As Cozden has observed, "language poses multiple problems for education because it is both curriculum content and learning environment, both the object of knowledge, and a medium through which other knowledge is acquired." (Cozden 1973:135.) Second, the teaching of a particular second language, Russian in this case, should not be standardized for all students. Their mother tongues differ not only linguistically and in terms of concept from the second language being taught, but also from each other's. TRSL in Central Asia suffers from poor understanding of both of these phenomena.

The problem of curricula content for Russian teachers in non-Russian school is a case which illustrates not only the confusion in TRSL, but also the absence of any theoretical foundations. For example, a program for the "special groups" (Uzbeks and Tajiks) in the special branch of Leninabad(Khujand), Pedagogical Institute had the following courses: (a) special seminar on out-of-class work on Russian language and literature; (b) special practical course of writing and composition; (c) special practical course on development of visual aids, and (d) special course of Russian and Tajik literature. A Russian language week was added eventually, during which students were apparently to become imbued with Russian culture(Sevost'ianova 1968:2; Karakulakov 1968:3).

A professor from the same institute has argued that knowledge of Old Church Slavonic is essential in the training of teachers of Russian, for "without it one can not claim to know the present Russian language, and the thirty hours devoted to it in the program is extremely inadequate." (Rusakova 1968:3.) One probably can not argue against teaching Old Church Slavonic to future linguists, but one can question the wisdom of its inclusion in the curriculum of the "special groups" in the Central Asian pedagogical institutes. The extremely poor preparation of the local students at the time of entrance to higher educational establishments(Vuzy) of Central Asia, and the very poor training that the students receive while enrolled in the pedagogical institutes make it infeasible. On similar pedagogical grounds, one can argue against the inclusion of nineteenth-century Russian classics in the "special groups" curricula(Liubana 1968:4).

Clearly, the major logistical problem in TRSL in Central Asia has been finding qualified Russian teachers. In general, most teachers of Russian are badly trained; but there are not even enough of these badly trained teachers to satisfy the needs. As a result, many schools, especially those in the rural areas of Central Asia, have no teachers at all, or have teachers initially trained for other subjects such as biology and physics, who end up teaching Russian(Birashk 1975; MvM 1971, Nov.23:1). Furthermore, statistics often quoted about the percentage of Russian teachers having training in higher educational establishments have to be evaluated in the light of the poor quality of training given these teachers in the Vuzy of Central Asia(Khodoidodov).

Aside from the chronic shortages of qualified Russian teachers, there are chronic shortages of good instructional materials(among them textbooks) and other supportive facilities(including, perhaps, social and cultural institutions) for TRSL in Central Asia. Over the years very few books have been published on TRSL, and those that have been published are deficient in terms of methodology and pedagogy(Ibid; Rubenshtain 1974:107-114). The problem of poor quality textbook production persists even today. Deficiencies in this area, from the point of view of teachers and students, seem to be poor quality paper, very small print(which makes reading difficult) and poor reproduction of illustrations. The shortage of materials designed for out-of-class reading is especially acute. Because of this scarcity of reading materials and the poor production of the materials which can be obtained by the students, the out-of-class TRSL program in Central Asia, especially in the rural areas, has been a failure(Rubenshtain; CAR 1957, V, no.1:39-40). It is interesting to note that almost all text books in TRSL are authored by non-Central Asians and that the best teachers in the TRSL program are non-Central Asians, judging by the names of teachers who have received "best Russian teacher" awards. (Editorial. MvM 1968, April 6:1.)

There are probably as many proposals for teaching methods for TRSL in Central Asia as there are teachers. This is partly because Soviets encourage individual teacher innovations in teaching methods, but idiosyncrasies of particular teachers, composition of the student body in terms of ability, ethnicity, mother tongue, and social class background, and the urban or rural location of the schools are also important factors.

In general, formal education and its language teaching component in the USSR are teacher-centered. Formal language teaching, in particular, requires a transmitter(such a teacher or a machine) which systematically transmits to learner new information, informs of new words, sentences, and aspects of the culture of which the language being taught is a part. The TRSL teachers in Central Asia often have been faulted not only for their poor training in the art of TRSL, but also for their inability to make linkages between the language being taught and the political, economic, and ideological dimensions of the Soviet social system(MvM 1971:1). Apparently, policymakers believe that a good teacher in TRSL is one who, in addition to good academic qualifications, also has a desirable political and ideological orientation(Ibid). The empirical evidence on teachers' political orientations in the educative process of the young is sketchy and often contradictory, especially concerning the teachers' role in the process of political socialization of children(Merelman 1972:34-166; Prewitt 1975:105-114). But there is no doubt that a teacher's qualifications and professional commitment are significant in children's achievement. This role is probably most obvious in the teaching of second language, where the teacher's awareness of stages of cognitive development of children and of the role of social class in the process of acquisition of knowledge and its retention are crucial.

The methodology of TRSL remains basically partisan. The non-Russian Central Asian educators, for the most part, believe in the superiority of comparative grammar(which permits teachers to talk about both languages and requires them to be bilingual). The native Russian teachers and other Slavs interested in the topic insist that increasing and developing the student's vocabulary is the best method of solving the present TRSL problems. This proposal prohibits talking about the languages involved, and has long been favored by the Russians.

The early 1960s witnessed activities on the part of teachers in Central Asia for the implementation of some of some of Khrushchev's reforms, which in TRSL were vocabulary development, sentence construction, and development of skills on speech narratives(Nazarova 1962:3-4). All of these were to take place with minimal usage of the mother tongue. The purpose of this program was to enable seventh and eight grade students to develop their skills in written and oral Russian. The method was actually the drilling of each word and sentence until it was memorized and pronounciation~ was perfected. Teachers were also concerned about the development of sets of superior stimuli outside and inside school to motivate children to learn Russian.

This method, however, failed to increase the children's (especially rural children's) level of achievement in Russian, and the rate of failure of Central Asian children in Russian language courses continued to rise. This rise has been somewhat blunted by increase in the level of investment in TRSL in the late 1970s and early 1980s. To the dismay of many educators, among them the Central Asian Russian teachers, the methodology described above still persists, and there is nothing in the Party program for the near future heralding change(Gazetai Muallimon 1985, Oct.26:1-7). The results of the l979 census, which again showed the relative lag of Central Asians in the acquisition of the Russian language, triggered once more the discussion on teaching method and curriculum development ( Narodnoe Khoziaistvo SSSR v 1980 g: 24 ). The dramatic increase in the number of Uzbeks speaking Russian(49.3%) is incongruous and can not be explained by available TRSL data.⁸

The Central Asian Russian language teachers continue to improvise methods. Some, like the one developed by a Kazakh teacher, combined formal and non-formal educational activities. Classroom instruction was supplemented by listening to radio programs in Russian and broadcasting over the local radio station in that language. Students were required to join the Russian language clubs where they read newspapers printed in Russian and discussed the material with each other. Other gatherings, such as student parties and excursions during which students spoke only Russian and gave speeches on various topics, were encouraged. In all of these activities, the role of the teacher was to be that of the facilitator and a somewhat passive transmitter(Chandirli 1972:83-88). To many people outside and inside the USSR, this method indeed looks innovative and refreshing. Most classes, however, are still conducted in the transmitter-reciprocal method where the teacher is the sole source of knowledge and information about the language.

Another innovation was the teaching of Russian in some of the kindergartens(Russkii Iazyk v Natsional'noi shkole. 1972, no.1:77-79). But this program is not uniformly administered in the USSR. The amount "Russian only" hours per year varies greatly from republic to republic. It is anticipated that the number of hours devoted to the Russian language in kindergartens will increase as part of the overall early education program envisioned in the 1985 Education Reform(Gazetai Muallimon 1985:1-7).

It is difficult to asses the results of these programs in early teaching of the Russian language. The argument of A.K.Kanimetrov(former Minister of Education of Kirgiz SSR), who in 1972 convinced the USSR's Ministry of Education to accept his proposal for the teaching of Russian in the kindergartens is interesting not so much for its appeal in the 1970s(it did not spread beyond a few republics), but for it being in harmony with the present educational policies of the USSR. Then, Kanimetrv argued, "there were about 100 different ethnic groups in the republic in 1970 and sometimes 7-12 different nationalities in the same classroom." The only language instruction that could be carried out, according to the former Kirgiz Minister, "was that of Russian, because this is the language in which most parents want their children to be taught." He went on to say that "those who studied Russian in kindergarten became the best students in later years and also were well adjusted." (TS 1972,Nov.10:4.) It is hard to figure out how the minister was able to establish this relationship between the learning of the Russian language in kindergarten and the later achievement of these children. The 1985 Education Reform, although still far from implementation, does have manpower and educational explanations which are different than the Kirgiz minister's apparent intuitive insights.

These proposals are apparently made with little consideration that their implementation would pose. What is the purpose of non-Russians reading in Russian materials originally written in non-Russian languages? If the purpose is anything other than merely augmenting the student's stock of Russian words, it has never been articulated or demonstrated. If the proposal to teach Soviet literature--for Russian speaking children this means Russian literature plus a few pieces from Western sources, rarely anything by a non-Russian writer--is implemented, whatever is gained in Russian vocabulary is more than often by the loss in understanding the literature, as well as the loss of aesthetic quality that often accompanies translations. More important, however, is the overwhelming evidence opposing such a policy on pedagogical grounds(UNESCO 1952; Cozden; Cohen 1975).

Depending on how one views the teaching of Russian as a second language in Central Asia, the program has been either a failure or a success. It has been successful in making, over the past fifty years(according to Soviet census data), one out of every three urbanites and one in ten ruralites to be able to speak some Russian. Many of these people speak pidgin Russian.

But the TRSL program has been unsuccessful if one compares it to similar programs elsewhere in the USSR. In this comparison, the proportion of Central Asians who are fluent in Russian falls below the average of other non-Russians with similar levels of competency in the Russian language. Almost all of those who have acquired some level of competency in the Russian language are fluent in their own mother tongues(Silver 1976). Officially, this bilingualism is a desirable outcome of TRSL. However, this sentiment may not be similarly perceived by those who see in bilingualism a threat to the development of a genuine monolithic "Soviet culture," a culture which apparently has as a main component one language--most certainly the Russian language. These attitudes toward bilingualism have influenced the methodologies of second language pedagogy in Central Asia.

As noted earlier, the practitioners of TRSL can be grouped into two general categories: those relying on "total Russian" environment--mainly Slavs--which forbids discussions about the mother tongue, and those relying on comparative grammar--mainly Central Asians--which require bilingual teachers and the knowledge of the learner's culture. At present, both of these methods are used in TRSL in Central Asia. The perennial problem of scarcity of qualified Russian teachers still exists, but it is expected to be ameliorated somewhat once the Education Reform of 1985 is put into practice. This reform also aims in breaking up the vicious circle of incompetency, in which incompetent teachers train incompetent students to become incompetent teachers ad infinitum.

8. Following are the proportion of some of the other nationalities: Ukrainians (49.9), Kirgiz (29), Tajiks (30), and Turkmans (25). The Uzbeks (49.8) figure is almost equal to that of the Ukrainians. There seems to be something wrong either with the Uzbek statistics or the method by which Uzbeks are evaluated in Russian Language competency.

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