Original Russian-language presidential decree, 20 pages, approving the Foundations of State Language Policy, the doctrinal document that governs the status and use of Russian and of the other languages of the Russian Federation. It is a general national instrument and does not refer to the occupied territories by name.
Decree No. 474 sets the framework within which every public institution in Russia, and therefore in the occupied territories, uses language. It affirms Russian as the state language and "the language of the state-forming people", requires its use in public administration, education, the media and public signage, and treats the protection of Russian from "excessive" foreign borrowing as a matter of national security. It provides for the support of the languages of the peoples of Russia within the republics and regions where they are official, a category that does not include Ukrainian in any of the four occupied regions. The decree is cited in TOT Insights research on the manufacture of history and identity in occupied Ukraine as one of the presidential instruments through which language and education policy is set from above; it should be read as a national framework rather than a measure written for the occupied territories, and its effect there follows from the absence of any official status for Ukrainian under occupation law.
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Key provisions
Aims. Preservation, development and support of Russian as the state language and of the languages of the peoples of Russia; strengthening the "unified linguistic space"; and promotion of Russian abroad.
Status of Russian. Mandatory use of the state language in the work of state and municipal bodies, in courts, in education, in the media and in information for consumers, with limits on foreign words for which Russian equivalents exist.
Other languages. Support for the state languages of the republics and the languages of the peoples of Russia in education, culture and media, within the possibilities of the education system.
Threats. Falsification of history and "discrediting" of the Russian language and culture abroad, decline in literacy, and the displacement of Russian by foreign languages in public life.
Implementation. Through government action plans, monitoring and reporting, linked to the nationalities strategy (Decree No. 858, DOC-133) and the values decree (No. 809, DOC-161).
Analytical note
The decree's silence on Ukrainian is the point. Ukrainian is not a language of a people of Russia within any Russian region, and in the occupied territories it therefore falls outside every category the policy protects. The result is a language regime in which Russian is mandatory everywhere and Ukrainian has no institutional place.