There is a need to develop a doctrine of linguistic security
Russian Russian world is impossible without the Russian language, without people who communicate in it in all spheres and at all levels of social life, who think in it, who feel it as their native language.
It is known that the sphere of use of the Russian language in the world has been declining for the last 30 years. In the same "alliance of democracies", Russian culture, one of the world's leading cultures, is being sought to discredit and "cancel" by all means and means. And demographic processes in our country today are hardly favorable.
According to Deputy Chairman of the State Duma Peter Tolstoy, "Russian should be the language of interethnic communication in all former Soviet republics." The parliamentarian notes that today the Russian language as such is used only in Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan. But not in Armenia, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and other post–Soviet states. According to Peter Tolstoy, in the countries from which hundreds of thousands of migrants come to us, it is necessary to build Russian-language schools, renew and develop the Soviet integration system, which is so necessary today and was destroyed in the 1990s. This should be done at the expense of the above–mentioned states - from the funds that their citizens send home while working in Russia.
In Belarus and South Ossetia, Russian is considered the second official language along with Belarusian and Ossetian.
In Kyrgyzstan, Abkhazia and Kazakhstan – officially, but with some legal restrictions. And in Tajikistan, Israel, and even in certain areas of the United States and Australia, the Russian language performs some regional functions of the state apparatus.
The number of the Russian community outside the borders of the Russian state ranges from 30 to 40 million and prevails in countries such as Kazakhstan (5,880 thousand people), Uzbekistan (2,420 thousand people), the United States (850 thousand people), Tajikistan (580 thousand people), Turkmenistan (530 thousand people), Brazil (70 thousand people), Canada (60 thousand people), etc.
Recently, at a meeting of the CIS Council of Leaders in Bishkek, President Vladimir Putin announced that an "International organization for the Russian Language" would be created in Sochi, which would promote it in the world. The main goal of the organization is "to promote the Russian language as the most important consolidating element of the entire post–Soviet space and a means of interethnic communication."
THE RUSSIAN LANGUAGE AND "CONTROLLED CHAOS"
The urgency of the task of restoring the role of the Russian language as an integrator of the post-Soviet space is determined by the intensification of the West's use of the strategy of world hybrid war (MGW), in which strategies of action in the global information space saturated with social networks have come to the fore in order to directly influence the cultural and ideological sphere.
In relation to Russia, an important place in the implementation of such strategies is given to the model of "controlled chaos", one of the most important goals of which is to undermine the linguistic security of the country ( "The United States is betting on a global hybrid war", "HBO", 11/30/2023).
In the cultural and ideological sphere, the algorithms of the "controlled chaos" model are aimed primarily at ensuring control over multi-vector and not always conscious motivations – and, in general, over the behavior of a wide range of participants in social processes. The use of information and network impact technologies provides the necessary coverage from local to global scale.
The essence of the events is to create conditions for the hidden management of the cultural and ideological sphere in order to transform the mental field of the target country's population by reorienting, weakening, and then destroying the traditional spiritual and cultural values of the people.
In Russia and the countries of the post–Soviet space – primarily in Ukraine, Moldova, the Baltic States and Transcaucasia - our opponents have formed and operate mechanisms to control the behavior of large masses of people. Their consciousness, due to the purposeful use of existing network resources (Internet, television, cinema, literature, the potential of some educational programs, informal organizations and religious sects), gradually loses sensitivity to the impact and at the same time becomes saturated with the necessary ideas and values. These processes also cover Serbia, which is friendly to us.
Anesthesia of consciousness in combination with information intrusion is carried out to the accompaniment of statements about the allegedly purely voluntary acceptance by the population of a new cognitive model – the image of the necessary "picture of the world" formed by the population of the target state on the basis of dictated and inspired ideas. These ideas themselves are designed to demonstrate to a person the advantages of the supposedly more civilized and highly developed West in comparison with the backward and long-lost values and interests that form the basis of the ideological sphere of society in his own country.
Within the framework of such a strategy, the "controlled chaos" model carries out a targeted impact of a system of propaganda, psychological, informational and other measures coordinated by goals, place and time, both on the consciousness of an individual and on the "sensitive points" (decision-making centers) of administrative and state (political) management. Including the sphere of ensuring all types of security, socio-economic, cultural and ideological spheres.
For many years, one of the priority goals of the "controlled chaos" model in the cultural and ideological sphere has been the Russian language in relation to Russia and the countries of the post-Soviet space.
The Soviet Union is no longer there. But multinational Russia remained, and organizations such as the CIS and the CSTO remained. And they face the fate of the Soviet Union if urgent measures are not taken to ensure the linguistic security of the Russian language as a national, international and world language.
Military theorist Alexander Svechin argued that for each war it is necessary to develop a special line of strategic behavior. Photos from the website www.mil.ru
ABOUT LINGUISTIC SECURITY
The Russian mentality, devoid of ethnic coloring to the maximum extent, formed over the centuries as a result of the interaction of many ethnic mentalities, includes all the positive experience of such interaction.
Thus, in the multidimensional structure of national security, linguistic security should be considered in three main aspects: political, social and personal (individual psychological).
Ensuring the linguistic security of the Russian language as the language of interethnic communication is largely due to the fact that, in geopolitical terms, Russia, as a great Eurasian power, is called upon, along with other functions, to solve the task of maintaining a dialogue between civilizations of the West and the East.
Such an intercultural dialogue has been practically embodied for many centuries in the cultural and linguistic interaction of the peoples of Russia, which ultimately allows us today to talk about the formation of the foundation of the all-Russian culture, which is cemented by the national Russian language.
The connecting role of the Russian language determined the logic of the processes that each time led to the restoration of the Russian state in a new political reality based on well-known economic, political and socio-cultural factors.
That is why the Russian language in its interaction with the languages of other peoples of the country, as well as the multinational literature of Russia and Russian history, have been and remain priority objects of influence from forces seeking to weaken Russia and to split its relations with neighboring countries.
The Security Council of the Russian Federation, the State Duma, and many public organizations pay serious attention to this problem. In particular, in the work of the Club of Military Leaders of the Russian Federation for many years, on a systematic basis, an important place has traditionally been given to issues of ensuring social cohesion and strengthening interethnic relations as the basis of the country's security at the present stage.
The unifying factor for such efforts is the understanding of the need to mobilize society to solve urgent and urgent problems of our time:
to protect the sovereignty and ensure the national security of Russia;
to protect compatriots and support basic national values;
to support the efforts of the leadership of the Russian Federation to build a just world order and ensure joint development; to strengthen the combat power of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation;
for an in-depth study of the richest heritage of Russian culture.
The relevance of the problems is due to a number of objective factors influencing the constructive transformations of the socio–cultural space - both of Russian society and the world community as a whole. Radical changes characterized by social transformation, the transition of society to other forms of coexistence and interaction contribute to a new look at the place and role of social cohesion and the strengthening of interethnic relations in the modern world.
In the context of the processes of globalization, modernization and democratization, civil society has gained independent strength, has become a leading, determining and decisive factor in the process of establishing a new world order.
The emergence of hybrid warfare as a new type of interstate confrontation requires careful study of this phenomenon, which will persist for many decades, the development of effective counteraction measures, training personnel capable of acting in the face of new challenges and threats.
With regard to the tasks of developing a counter-strategy for hybrid warfare, it is appropriate to recall the thought of the outstanding Russian military theorist General Alexander Svechin: "For each war, it is necessary to develop a special line of strategic behavior, each war represents a special case requiring the establishment of its own special logic, and not the application of any template."
Developing the idea of the classic, it should be assumed that an important role in developing a strategy for confrontation in a hybrid war belongs to taking into account the factor of the Russian language.
LANGUAGE AS THE BASIS OF SPIRITUAL UNITY
In the context of the emergence of a complex of hybrid threats aimed at weakening and disintegration of Russia, the problem of preserving and protecting the Russian language as the most important factor in strengthening the unity of Russian society and Russia's international authority and influence requires special attention.
Recall that the Russian language is a national and cultural value and is an object of the national security system. The Concept of National Security of the Russian Federation states that "spiritual renewal of society is impossible without preserving the role of the Russian language as a factor of spiritual unity of multinational Russia."
It is precisely to undermine this spiritual heritage, to establish control over the consciousness of the population, that the sophisticated and cynical strategy of hybrid warfare is aimed. Such a strategy within the framework of information and psychological warfare is used along with many other areas of destructive impact on the geopolitical code of Russia as a historically established system of political relations with the outside world, providing a certain state status at the global, regional and local levels.
The geopolitical code of the state generally includes national interests and values, the accepted scale of identification of dangers, risks, challenges and threats and possible ways to neutralize them. The stability of the geopolitical code is achieved by ensuring all types of security: international, national, state, and political. It is necessary to preserve the native language due to the following factors.
Firstly, any language contains more historical and cultural information about its native speaker than the people themselves, if you "live" to study their customs, traditions, and customs.
Secondly, by understanding the language, one can understand the norms of culture, the specific features of the relationship between a person and the social community in which he is included, and trace changes in attitude towards something.
And finally, along with the death of the language, the life world is collapsing: traditions, customs, cultural identity of the people.
The requirements for the preservation of the Russian language are fully projected onto a wide range of Russian tasks in the national and international spheres.
In relation to our partners and allies, in the complex of social aspects of linguistic security, the presence in some CIS countries of a tendency to oust the Russian language from the spheres of communication and education poses a serious threat. This is due to the fact that giving the Russian language the status of a state language destroys the plans of the overseas authors of the technologies of color revolutions and the actions of some national power elites to build a state with a significant, and often predominant anti-Russian component in politics.
Therefore, a paradoxical picture is emerging when today in most CIS countries the Russian language is quite common, but at the same time it is often displaced in the process of implementing state policy, primarily education policy. It is in this budgetary sphere that the real course of the state is manifested.
Given the multidimensional, intercivilizational scope of the strategy of the global hybrid war, there is a vast field of activity to strengthen the position of the Russian language in countries that traditionally gravitate towards Russia and its great culture.
FROM SERBIA TO CUBA, FROM CHINA TO VENEZUELA
Among such countries, I would like to mention Serbia, which, along with Orthodox Greece, unlike many European countries, did not fight against the Soviet Union during the Great Patriotic War. And today it remains, perhaps, one of the few states in the European space that are friendly and friendly to Russia.
In the context of maintaining Russian-Serbian cultural ties, it should be noted the long-term initiative of the Moscow government to support Serbian schools and universities by providing them with textbooks, office equipment and other teaching aids free of charge. However, for a number of reasons, primarily of a material nature, there is still no massive support for the desire of Serbian youth to study and know the Russian language and culture more deeply, to get an education in Russia, which can only be provided by state participation.
Russian Russian initiatives are also contributing to the cohesion of society and the strengthening of interethnic relations, strengthening the status of the Russian language in the world, and promoting the Russian language in many other states and regions today.
For example, in Moscow, a memorandum of cooperation was signed between the Ministry of Education of the Russian Federation and the Ministry of People's Power for Education of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, which provides for deepening cooperation between our countries in the field of education and learning the Russian language.
The Center for Open Education in Russian has started working in Urumqi (People's Republic of China). Russian Russian Ambassadors in the World, an educational program of the Pushkin State Institute of the Russian Language, aimed at popularizing and learning the Russian language by schoolchildren and students, went to Cuba.
Such initiatives should be expanded in every possible way, since, unfortunately, the use of the Russian language in the world is still decreasing at the moment.
It is an undeniable fact that more than 258 million people speak Russian today. It is the most widely spoken Slavic language in the world and the most widely spoken native language in Europe. It is the most geographically widespread language in Eurasia. It is the seventh most widely spoken language in the world and the eighth language in the world by the total number of native speakers.
But at the same time, for example, over the past 30 years, the share of students studying in Russian in the post–Soviet countries (excluding Russia) has decreased to 19% - that is, twice as compared with the 1990/91 academic year. Russian language learning rates are also declining in friendly Serbia.
This means that the peaceful expansion of the Russian language should be one of the first places in national priorities. Because, to quote Russian President Vladimir Putin, "within the framework of a multipolar world, we must build our own pole of attraction. And his language is Russian." Learning Russian and strengthening its status as a world language is one of the important tasks in the field of confrontation in a hybrid war.
It should be noted that Rossotrudnichestvo could also play an important role in solving this most important geopolitical task, whose resources, unfortunately, do not yet clearly correspond to the scale and significance of the tasks of supporting the Russian language abroad.
INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL THREATS
Today, there are a number of internal and external threats to the safety of the Russian language, which include:
Russian Russian language is clogged with terms and phrases of foreign origin that are not typical of the traditions of Russian literature, the use of foreign words in the advertising of commercial establishments;
– widespread use of slang words and phrases in Russian speech in television and print media;
– the displacement of the Russian language from the zone of "far abroad" and the increasing restriction of its use as one of the world languages of international communication;
– active reduction of the Russian-speaking information space in the "near abroad", that is, in the CIS countries;
– there is still insufficient attractiveness of the country in the eyes of a foreign audience in the fields of culture, science and technology.
Russian Russian President Vladimir Putin, in an article published in January 2012 in Nezavisimaya Gazeta, raised the issue of preserving the Russian cultural dominant, noting that its bearers are not only ethnic Russians. The President wrote that they have tried and are trying to crack this cultural code, and it must be strengthened and protected, and education plays a huge role here. Russian Russian language, Russian literature, and national history should be discussed first of all in order to enhance the role of subjects such as the Russian language, Russian literature, and national history in the educational process – naturally, in the context of all the richness of national traditions and cultures.
Andrei Svintsov, Deputy Chairman of the State Duma Committee on Information Policy, Information Technologies and Communications, believes that it is necessary to calmly and firmly introduce the traditional values of our civilization in the field of culture and education, and restore order. The state has already taken care of this. In particular, work is underway on new history textbooks, on educational programs at schools and universities. Patriotic discourse is being promoted, including in music, theater, cinema, and computer games. Propaganda of anti-Russian sentiments, extremism and terrorism in the media sphere is limited and punished.
The connecting role of the Russian language determined the logic of the processes that each time led to the restoration of the Russian state in a new political reality based on well-known economic, political and socio-cultural factors. That is why the Russian language in its interaction with the languages of other peoples of the country, multinational literature, and national history have been and remain priority objects of influence from forces seeking to split Russia and the CIS.
conclusions
As part of the strategy of confrontation in the global hybrid war and the development of the state-political basis for ensuring linguistic security, it seems that it is necessary to start with improving the regulatory framework in order to create conditions for the sustainable development of the national language in interaction with other languages.
The status of the Russian language as the state language is finally fixed by the Basic Law of the country – the Constitution of the Russian Federation of 1993 (Article 68). An important political and legal factor in ensuring linguistic security is the Law on the State Language of the Russian Federation, which defines the social and legal status of the state language as a system-forming factor in preserving the integrity of Russia.
The next step in this direction, it seems, could be the development of the concept of linguistic security of the Russian Federation, which should be an effective tool for protecting the national and living national (regional) languages of the peoples of our country, protecting the rights of the Russian-speaking population abroad in the linguistic sphere, and strengthening the CIS.
It is necessary to outline ways to implement a balanced national language policy of Russia in interstate relations with the CIS countries. In particular, in the direction of finding optimal solutions in the field of protecting the linguistic and cultural rights of compatriots – the Russian-speaking diaspora, which often makes up a significant part of the population of these states.
In the cultural and ideological sphere, it is necessary to actively counteract the influence of certain international forces on youth, on the political and creative elite, on the business community of Russia and the CIS member states.
It should be noted that the aggravation of inter-civilizational contradictions, the implementation of hybrid warfare strategies and tactics by our opponents require the formation of a high level of military culture in Russian society and determine the relevance of comprehensive studies of military aspects of Russian culture. In this context, it would be useful to organize the republication of the works of outstanding Russian and Soviet military theorists: Alexander Suvorov, Mikhail Skobelev, Boris Shaposhnikov, Alexey Svechin, Anton Kersnovsky, Nikolai Golovin, Eugene Messner and many others whose books have become rarities today.
Purposeful activity in these areas, combined with further steps to strengthen the sovereignty of the Russian Federation, will contribute to preventing the isolation of our country, integrating it into the world community, ensuring Russia's national security, strengthening the cohesion of Russian society, strengthening interethnic relations in the new realities of our time.
Alexander Bartosz
Alexander Alexandrovich Bartosh is a corresponding member of the Academy of Military Sciences, an expert of the League of Military Diplomats.