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Minority language education has been planned in post-Soviet Russia for two decades. During this period, language policy in education has shifted from compulsory to voluntary study of native languages in school. The effect of this move in policy and its relation to general trends on language education has not yet been systematically evaluated. Addressing this gap, the current article employs a quantitative method to calculate dynamics in the relative share of native language learners attending school. This study demonstrates that, after the breakdown of the Soviet Union, the significant investments by regional authorities to extend titular language teaching resulted in the provision of native language teaching to most of the titular students in some former autonomous republics, notably the Turkic republics in the Volga and Ural areas. In contrast, steps for the promotion of titular languages in the Finno-Ugric republics have had less impact on native language teaching. Throughout the two post-Soviet decades, the insufficient amount of teaching of the Finno-Ugric languages in titular republics failed to ensure the transfer of language competence to a considerable proportion of children. This failure to ensure revival of the titular languages may accelerate the language shift from minority languages towards Russian. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public minority-language schools have a crucial role in the preservation of the societal culture of the minorities. This article explores the institutional position of the languages of the minorities of the Russian Federation in the education system and its transformation as a result of the latest education reform. In the area of language education the reform was justified by the need to ensure the free choice of languages in education by citizens. However, it is argued that those who developed the reform were not as concerned with the rights of citizens as with a nation-building agenda. The analysis of policy documents and legal acts demonstrates that the education reform has not institutionally affected the modes of language education. It is further argued that the reform actually discourages teaching of minority languages and, therefore, will inevitably produce further decline in the numbers of students learning their "native language". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]