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This article presents observations and findings from an ongoing research on language revival among Italian new speakers in Crimea. Victim of Stalin’s mass deportations of minorities in the 1940s, the community experienced severe physical, demographic, social and cultural dislocation that led inexorably to language shift towards Russian. Through the use of ethnographic research methods, including participant observations and in-depth, semi-structured interviews, the study explores the participants’ motivations, learning experiences and language use as they are involved in the project of reviving the Italian community.

Following Crimea’s incorporation into Russia in March 2014, the Crimean parliament adopted a new constitution granting official status to Russian, Ukrainian and Crimean Tatar. Despite the official multi-ethnicity and multilingualism of Crimea now constitutionally acknowledged, however, there is reason to believe that the formally proclaimed equality of the three languages has not translated into equality in practice. Among the areas where the inequality in language promotion and support is most noticeable, language education policy and language use in public place play a special role.

This work identifies and discusses developments in language policy and language education in Crimea since the peninsula’s incorporation into the Russian Federation in March 2014. Working on the assumption that post-Soviet reforms and changes in language and education policies cannot be understood outside their historical context, the article starts by briefly outlining some of the defining features of the historical and sociolinguistic situation of Crimea until March 2014. It then presents the changing linguistic situation of the peninsula since its accession into Russia and discusses present developments in light of the broader context of post-Soviet language ideologies, policies and practices. It suggests that the new Crimean authorities are following a double strategy: the imposition of monolingual educational and linguistic policies, accompanied by largely symbolic concessions to the demands of local ethnic communities.

This paper presents the results of fieldwork conducted among the small Italian minority living in Kerch, a coastal town in Crimea, between 2012 and 2013. After introducing the socio-historical background and the current situation of the minority, it presents and discusses the attitudes of members of the community towards the different languages which constitute their linguistic repertoires. The research builds on Bourdieu's theoretical approach to symbolic (linguistic, social and cultural) capital and on analyses and conceptualisations of linguistic identification in Ukraine and Crimea. Analysed data generate a picture of language use and attitudes within a minority group in the Crimean pluralistic environment, where individuals may feel allegiances and commitments to different ethnic communities and to different languages simultaneously.