Language policy and youth development: International background and russian multinational practice

The issues of language policy and rights of younger generation are especially topical in the view of the 20-21th century international legislation concerning linguistic and ethnic diversity of a multinational state. The research aims to outline key stages of language policy development through federal and regional laws in Russia, to reveal contradictions between federal and local national laws on language, to look at positive experience and legal collisions entailing social disturbances in the country that communicates in 277 languages and dialects. The methodology integrates theoretical and analytical processing realized in search, investigation and analysis of the material, historical approach allowing to follow the development of cultural and language strategy, comparative and contrastive analysis contributing to identifying discrepancies between federal and national laws and case study techniques contributing to illustrate the challenges the state faces in this social sphere. The materials include core international legislation and major legal sources of the Russian Federation and its entities, academic review of publications on language policy in Russia, including linguistic, political, socio-cultural and legal, and attracts various factual, mass media and internet sources. The findings reveal pitfalls in designing and enforcing the state strategy on culture, language and education in the Russian Federation. The study shows that language and culture issues envisaged in laws of different levels and contradictions between them entail social and political collisions and are subject to further development and regulation. The critical situation with a number of national languages needs attention and regulation by the state, however the balance and harmony of language variety in a multinational country can only be reached through legal consolidation of the status of official languages with the Russian language as the bond of multicultural diversity. © 2019, Association for Social Studies Educa. All rights reserved.