Deputy of the Tatarstan Parliament: “It’s the destruction of the national grounds of the Republic”
Today, the Deputy of the Parliament of the Republic of Tatarstan Rkail Zaidulla made an unexpectedly bold speech: “There is the destruction of national grounds of the Republic”, – he declared this, speaking about the next wave of attack on the Tatar language (and languages of other peoples of Russia).
It should be mentioned here, that two years after the abolition of obligatory Tatar language lessons in Tatarstan, some activists began to demand the exclusion of the subject “native language” from the list of obligatory subjects of the school curriculum. If this happens, Russian and foreign languages for children will remain obligatory, but their native languages no.
In 2017, Russian President Vladimir Putin, while he was visiting Mari El, declared the inadmissibility of coercion to learn non-native languages. In 2018, the state Duma of the Russian Federation amended the Federal law “On Education”, according to which the state languages of the national republics, except Russian, ceased to be part of the obligatory school curriculum. This caused unrest in a number of Idel-Ural republics. Already in 2018, according to the Minister of education and science of the Republic of Tatarstan Rafis Burganov, more than 1,200 teachers of the Tatar language and literature have undergone professional retraining and completely ceased to teach the Tatar language.
Rkail Zaydulla (Zaydullin Rkail Rafailovich) – is Tatar poet, publicist, Deputy of the State Assembly of the Republic of Tatarstan (*Parliament), a supporter of the party “United Russia”. He was born on 23th of January in 1962 in the village of Chychkany in Komsomolsk region of the Chuvash Republic. Some of R. Zaydulla’s works (verses, poems, stories) have been translated into English, Russian, Turkish, Uzbek and Chuvash languages. He himself is actively engaged in literary translation. He translated into Tatar some poetic works of A. Navoi and other poets. In 2010, for the book “Magara” (“The Cave”) and “Tashka Ordym Bashny” (“To Beat Your Head On A Stone”) he was awarded the State prize of Tatarstan named after G. Tukai.
In the summer of 2019, he openly stated that after receiving the mandate, he is going to handle problems with the teaching of the Tatar language and the development of national culture. He is the supporter of the idea of adopting a law which could allow persons to take the Unified State Exam (*in Russian language known as “EGE”) in their native language.
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