Russification
This article is about the political term. For localization of computers and software, see Russification (computers).Russification refers to both official an inofficial policy of Imperial Russia and Soviet Union with respect to their national constituents and to national minorities in Russia propria aimed at the Russian domination. In a narrow sense, russification is used to denote influence of the Russian language on other Slavic languages.
The two main areas of russification are politics and culture. Some consider shifts in demographics in favor of Russian population to be a form of russificaion as well.
In politics, an element of russification is assigning Russian nationals to leading admistrative positions in national institutions.
In culture, russification primarily amounts to domination of the Russian language in official business and strong influence of Russian language on the national ones.
One of the examples of Russification was gradual replacement of Polish by Russian on areas of Poland-Lithuania after Partitions of Poland. In 1864 Polish was banned in public places Lithuania, in 1880-ties Polish were banned in schools and offices of Congress Kingdom.
Another example is Ems Ukaz of 1876, banning Ukrainian language.
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