Culture as Politics: A Note on Language Legislation in Putin’s Russia

This article discusses the ways in which culture in general, and language in particular, has become an important field of attention to the authorities in today’s Russia for a particular purpose. Over the last decade, Russian authorities have significantly increased their involvement in the cultural field, creating programmes for the patriotic education of citizens, adopting new laws and regulations affecting film, literature and art, drawing on the capital of culture for all its worth. It is important to get a firm grasp of the state’s renewed interest in culture, in order to assess its impact in the broader context of Russian politics and society. In the following, I discuss a few concrete examples of state involvement in the cultural sphere, focusing in particular on the question of language legislation