Bilingualism in Tatarstan: Origins, Current Situation and Perspectives

The Republic of Tatarstan is one of Russia’s regions, situated in its central part. This region is famous for its bilingualism and tolerant language policy. The two main languages of the Republic are equal in importance and rights. In this paper, we decided to study the origins of the bilingualism of the republic, the current language situation in the region, including the state policy and perspectives of both languages. To understand the origins of bilingualism, we studied the history of the region and its relationship with the Russian state. To evaluate the current situation, we studied statistic information from Russian Census 2010 (the newest one), local laws concerning language policy, media sources and relevant researches.