THE 4TH WORLD CONGRESS OF FINNO-UGRIC PEOPLES opened today with greeting speeches by presidents of Estonia, Finland, and Hungary as well as a representative of the Russian Federation. 19 presentations from the delegations of peoples were held in their mother tongues. The main presentation "Youth is Our Future" was held by Hungarian professor János Pusztay.
In his presentation Pusztay expressed his concern for the planned reform of administrative framework in Russian Federation:
'The reform will radically change the living conditions of the small indigenous Finno-Ugric and Samoyed peoples. The structural reform aims at an essential reduction in the number of constituting units of the federation', said Pusztay.
Although the Finno-Ugric republics in Russia have passed their own language acts, according to Pusztay, the effect of these acts is rather limited. 'The direct or indirect enforcement of Russian on the minorities can be considered as linguistic imperialism, which goes hand in hand with economic and political dominance. The advance of English, which can be seen the world over, brings forth a kind of cultural arrogance and linguistic imperialism. Similar phenomena can be observed in the relationship between Russian and the minority languages and cultures in Russia', said Pusztay.
The future of the Finno-Ugric peoples in Russia is not without hope.
'The hope will remain more than an unjustifiably optimistic statement, unless Finno-Ugric peoples reorganize their mother tongue education from elementary school to university level, the mother tongue press, the mother tongue administration, and mother tongue scientific life', said Pusztay.