This article traces the evolution of the debate on the balancing of federal and regional competences in regulating the use of minority languages in Russia’s education system. Taking into account relevant law and judicial practice, as well as developments in center-periphery relations since 2017, the article argues that the federal center has been increasingly depriving Russia’s republics of the ability to self-regulate in the education sphere – particularly over the question as to whether they may require the compulsory study of republican languages (recognized as co-official with Russian) in schools located within their administrative borders. These processes can be located in the context of the centralization of the education system and a corresponding reduction of multilingualism in Russia’s schools. This can, in turn, be seen as part of an underlying drive to promote national unity through uniformity, through the dilution of the country’s linguistic and cultural diversity and a concurrent emphasis on the primacy of the Russian language. The article further argues that the Russian education system’s centralization has been ongoing: while it has intensified since 2017, the trajectory of the jurisprudence shows an earlier movement towards a concern for ‘unity’ that anticipated it.

中文翻译：

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俄罗斯联邦共和国的语言权利和教育：通过统一走向统一

本文追溯了关于平衡联邦和地区能力在俄罗斯教育系统中规范少数民族语言使用的辩论的演变。考虑到相关法律和司法实践，以及 2017 年以来中心与周边关系的发展，文章认为，联邦中心越来越多地剥夺了俄罗斯共和国在教育领域进行自我监管的能力——尤其是在这个问题上关于他们是否可能要求在其行政边界内的学校中强制性学习共和语言（被认为是俄语的共同官方语言）。这些过程可以在教育系统集中化和俄罗斯学校使用多种语言的相应减少的背景下定位。反过来，这可以 被视为通过统一、淡化国家的语言和文化多样性以及同时强调俄语的首要地位来促进民族团结的潜在动力的一部分。文章进一步认为，俄罗斯教育系统的集中化一直在进行：虽然自 2017 年以来这种集中化有所加强，但法理学的轨迹表明，早先对“统一”的关注就在预料之中。