Members of several of Russia's ethnic groups held a demonstration on September 10 in Warsaw to remember ethnic Udmurt scholar and activist Albert Razin on the anniversary of his death by self-immolation in 2019.
Participants, including representatives of Tatarstan, Buryatia, Yakutia, and Circassia, held posters made by political refugee Nafis Kashapov, who refers to himself as a representative of "the government of Tatarstan in exile."
"Only after the collapse of Russia can peoples speak their native language," read one of the posters. The slogan was written in Russian, English, and Tatar.
Razin died after he lit himself on fire on September 10, 2019, outside the regional parliament in Izhevsk, capital of the Volga region of Udmurtia.
He was holding a placard reading: "If my language disappears tomorrow, I'm ready to breath my last today."
SEE ALSO: Man Dies After Self-Immolation Protest Over Language Policies In Russia's UdmurtiaAt the time of his death he was an associate professor, an honored scholar of Udmurtia, and an active participant in the national movement Udmurt Kenesh.
Razin, 79, was among a group of local experts who signed an open letter in June 2018 calling on the Udmurt parliament not to support a bill that canceled the mandatory teaching of indigenous languages in regions and republics where non-Russian ethnic groups are well-represented.
Officials insisted the change was not aimed at destroying linguistic diversity but would help save some languages from extinction by speeding up the process for approving orthography norms.
But activists considered it an existential threat to their cultures.
The demonstrators in Warsaw aimed to draw attention to the controversial language policy, which banned students from taking final exams in any language other than Russian.
In 2019, a commissioner with the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe assessed that the opportunities for Tatars in Tatarstan to access the study of their language and culture remain quite limited despite Tatar also being an official language of Tatarstan. The commissioner told RFE/RL at the time that he was surprised that the Unified State Exam in Tatarstan was only offered in Russian.
Against this backdrop, a provision enshrined in 2020 in the Russian Constitution made Russian the language of the "state-forming people" of Russia. This amendment, proposed by President Vladimir Putin, was seen by experts and activists as reinforcement of the dominant position of both the Russian language and Russian identity.
SEE ALSO: Russia's State Duma OKs Controversial Bill Allowing Government To Standardize Indigenous LanguagesA member of the Belarusian opposition who took part in the demonstration in Warsaw told RFE/RL that Razin's suicide was a protest against Russian "imperialism."
"People learned about the tragedy that the Udmurt people and all other peoples who have the misfortune of being under the rule of imperial Moscow are experiencing," said Vyachaslau Siuchyk of the Belarusian opposition movement Together.
"That is why I considered it my duty to come to the action announced by the League of Free Nations. Moscow has long ago severed all ties between peoples who should unite," he said. "There should be no place for this evil empire in human civilization."
Kashapov said the Tatars, Bashkirs, Chuvashes and other non-Russian people inhabiting Russia are in the same tragic situation as the Udmurt people with respect to language.
"Russia is destroying their languages and culture. But the collapse of the Putin regime is inevitable. Streets, institutes, educational institutions will be named after Albert Razin," Kashapov predicted.
Ibragim Yaganov, a representative of the Circassian National Movement, told RFE/RL that language is "the storehouse" of any nation.
"When a nation loses its language…[it] loses its identity, he said.
Raisa Zubareva, an activist for the independence of Sakha in Yakutia, said she understood Razin's actions and how much he realized the full depth of the tragedy while at the same time feeling hopeless and great pain for the Udmurt people.
"Now we understand that only dismantling, only disintegration, and only independence will save our nations from this monster that swallows nations whole," she said.
Based on data from the Education Ministry, from 2016 to 2023, the proportion of schoolchildren who learn entirely in their native languages fell from 1.98 percent to 0.96 percent.
At the same time, the number of pupils who learn entirely in their native languages fell from 292,000 to 173,500, although the number of children in schools increased by 3.2 million over those seven years.