[LINK] Some Friday links

• Centauri Dreams examines the equations used to try to estimate the numbers of high-tech civilizations in our galaxy and comes up skeptical but hopeful. More data's needed, of course.


• Daniel Drezner worries that Dubai's government isn't being nearly as open about its finances and the emirate's economic plight as it should be.


• Far Outliers blogs about the women and children left behind by Japan after the Soviet conquest of Manchuria, and the surprising ways in which they were treated, as well as the ethnic politics of Uighur dance halls.


• Gideon Rachman blogs about his visit to Hebron and comes off depressed.


• Mark MacKinnon argues that, for the time being, it's probably best for Russia and the West to leave countries like Ukraine alone, and to let them evolve on their own terms rather than try to sponsor proxies.


• Noel Maurer is surprised by the speed at which China's exports are contracting. Also, that the drop in U.S. employment in this recession is no different from other recessions, and that a "double-dip" pattern has been characteristics so far.


• At Passing Strangeness, Paul Drye examines the mysterious Vela incident (asteroid impact or nuclear weapons test in the late 1970s Indian Ocean?), Ford Motors' Brazilian rubber plantation city and the ever-dangerous Reelfoot Rift of the central Mississippi river area, poised to go off in a tectonic catastrophe.


• Slap Upside the Head blogs about the tiresome tendency of some conservative groups to put quotation marks around "marriage" when it's used in reference to same-sex relationship.


• Spacing Toronto reports that Paris' bike-rental scheme is encountering major problems, thanks to the theft or vandalism of bikes.


• Strange Maps features maps showing how non-French Euro coins infiltrated across the French frontiers.


• The Volokh Conspiracy's Ilya Somin speculates that the economic crisis will discredit the current Russian government, leading either to a more authoritarian model of government or a more liberal one.


• Windows on Eurasia suggests the Russian political system is set to transmute under the pressures of the economic crisis, that Russian ambassador in Kyiv Viktor Chernomyrdin's professions of skepticism about closer Russian-Ukrainian relations might be, suggests that Circassians and other Russia-based diasporas might receive "the right to return" under citizenship legislation though ethnopolitics is likely to be an issue slowing this down if not blocking it entirely.

[PHOTO] Looking out of the King TTC station

Looking out of the King TTC station
Originally uploaded by rfmcdpei

I took this picture in late evening at the entrance to the King TTC station, looking south across King from the northwestern corner of the Yonge/King intersection. In the left of the photo, a streetcar is visible.

[BRIEF NOTE] Yonge-Bloor Square?

The Yonge-Bloor Gap
Originally uploaded by rfmcdpei

This site is, by Toronto's historical standards, quite unnatural: From a position south of Bloor and Yonge Street, you can look north to have an unobstructed view of the Hudson's Bay Company store and the Royal Bank of Canada entrance on the corner, both on the north side of Bloor. As I've blogged before, this new visibility came about because of the razing of the southeastern corner of Yonge and Bloor in preparation for the Crystal Blu condo tower, planned by a Kazakhstani construction company. Given Kazakhstan's economic troubles, this construction might be in doubt--it has stopped, actually. What could be done with the space if the plan falls through? Spacing Toronto's Matthew Blackett suggests that this space could become the site of a new public square, one located in the heart of the city. Go, read him.

[BRIEF NOTE] Russosphere note: Kyrgyzstan

Last week's post on Russophone populations in the former Soviet Union didn't cover one particular country of note. Over at Open Democracy, Surveyya Yigit's angry article "Kyrgyzstan’s default mode is Russia" is exceptionally critical of the elite of the former Soviet republic of Kyrgyzstan, located just to the south of the better-known Kazakhstan, for its very strong Russian orientation.

The Kyrgyz elites continue to pursue the lifestyle imposed on them by the Russians. Their clothes, drinking habits, system of education, administration, law enforcement, military, civil code are stuck in the Soviet past. They receive their news from Russian television channels, read Russian language newspapers, correspond and speak in Russian.

There has been no concerted effort to change this and implement a ‘national' alternative. This is not surprising given the depth and scope of the indoctrination and dependency over the last century.

[. . .]

However, the local population does not share this view of their country's symbiotic relationship with the Russian Federation. There is a small and so far, silent minority that is aware of their historic origins as well as their culture, religion and language. They know that Joseph Stalin created the state of Kyrgyzstan. They do not support the continuation of the old Soviet status quo. They long for closer relations with the Turkic world, with their Islamic brethren as well as with democratic nations - in fact with any state other than authoritarian Russia.

As is usual, things are more complex than that. Take a look at the matter of language use; Jacques Leclerc has summarized the situation.

Les proportions (ou pourcentages) entre les ethnies et les langues ne correspondent pas. Par exemple, il y a plus de Kirghiz (64,9 %) que de locuteurs du kirghiz (52,7 %), mais il y a plus de russophones (30,3 %) que de Russes (12,5 %); il faut comprendre que beaucoup de membres des communautés minoritaires utilisent le russe comme langue de communication (Ukrainiens, Allemands, Biélorusses, Arméniens, Géorgiens, Tatars, Dounganes, Coréens, Kurdes, Bachkirs, etc.), voire comme langue maternelle. Au total, les minorités linguistiques du Kirghizistan forment 47,3 % de la population[.]

The proportions (or percentages) of ethnic groups and languages do not match. For example, there are more Kyrgyz (64.9%) than Kyrgyz speakers (52.7%), but there are more Russian speakers (30.3%) and Russians (12.5%). It should be understand that many members of minority communities use Russian as the language of communication (Ukrainians, Germans, Belarusians, Armenians, Georgians, Tatars, Dungans, Koreans, Kurds, Bashkirs, etc.), even as their mother tongue. In total, the linguistic minorities of Kyrgyzstan are 47.3% of the population[.]

More, just as in Ukraine or Kazakhstan, patterns of language use also reflects profound regional divisions.

N'oublions pas qu'au Kirghizistan les kirghizophones ne forment que 52 % de la population et que, si les habitants du Sud (Batken, Och et Jalal-Abad) parlent le kirghiz (en plus du tadjik et de l'ouzbek), ceux du Nord (Talas, Tchoui, Naryn et Issyk-Koul) et de la capitale Bichkek sont largement russifiés. On peut même dire que le Kirghizstan est composé de deux «pays» bien distincts: le Sud (vallée de Ferghana), conservateur et islamisé, est tourné vers l’Ouzbékistan, alors que le Nord, industriel et russifié, est tourné vers le Kazakhstan (lui aussi largement russifié). Entre les deux grandes régions du Kirghizistan, on trouve des sommets rocheux généralement inaccessibles pendant les mois d’hiver. Dans un récent sondage, 63,5 % des Kirghiz estimaient que les clivages Nord-Sud étaient la cause principale de l’instabilité interne au pays.

Let us not forget that in Kyrgyzstan Kyrgyzophones represent only 52% of the population and that, where the inhabitants of the South (Batken, Osh and Jalal-Abad) speak Kyrgyz (in addition to Tajik and Uzbek) those in the north (Talas, Chuy, Naryn and Issyk-Kul) and the capital Bishkek are largely Russified. One can even say that Kyrgyzstan is composed of two quite distinct "countries" quite distinct: the South (Ferghana Valley), conservative and Muslim, turns towards Uzbekistan, while the North, industrial and Russified, turns towards Kazakhstan (also largely Russified). The two major regions of Kyrgyzstan are separated by rocky mountains whcih are inaccessible during the winter months. In a recent survey, 63.5% of Kyrgyz felt that divides North and South were the main cause of instability within the country.

The language shift to Russian in the north of Kyrgyzstan occurred during the Soviet period, when the settlement of Russians, the shift of other immigrant minority populations to Russian (Ukrainian, German, Korean, and so on), and the exclusion of the Kyrgyz language from the education system and government, helped create a mostly Russophone society. Indeed, the cited 52% figure for Kyrgyz might be an exaggeration, since "mother tongue" is often taken to mean not the language one learned as a child but the language associated with one's ethnicity. In 2000, differences between the Russian- and Kyrgyz-language versions of the country's constitution created a public scandal, As Cholpon Orozobekova wrote for IWPR in 2005, attempts by the Kyrgyz government to engineer a shift away from Russian towards Kyrgyz have been very controversial.

Language--which comes down to whether Russian should enjoy the same status as Kyrgyz--has come up time and again since the country became independent in 1991. The last occasion was five years ago, when the then president, Askar Akaev, succeeded in according Russian the status of "official language" while Kyrgyz kept the title of "state language". It was a compromise that granted Kyrgyz superior status while allowing Russian to be widely used in public life.

After a lull of several years, the issue has come to the fore again as politicians debate the wording of a proposed set of wide-ranging amendments to the constitution.

The Ashar movement, which as long ago as 1989 was lobbying for improved status for the Kyrgyz language in the then Soviet republic, published a statement in the press on November 10 calling for Russian to lose its official status. This public statement was followed by the establishment of a campaign headquarters for "protecting the state language from the expansion of Russian"

[. . .]

Since the March revolution, some senior officials have shown more of an interest in Kyrgyz. For example, Defence Minister Ismail Isakov ordered that all commands and military terminology should be translated into Kyrgyz, and soldiers even began singing their army songs in the language.

Former foreign minister Roza Otunbaeva ordered diplomatic negotiations to be translated into Kyrgyz, while Justice Minister Marat Kayipov proposed that cabinet meetings should be conducted in the state language rather than Russian. Kayipov also suggested that the amended constitution should be drafted in Kyrgyz and then translated into Russian.

Edil Baisalov, who heads the NGO Coalition for Democracy and Civil Society, accepts that Kyrgyz has had a bad deal over the years, but says changing the law will not fix things. He recalled how his brother was unable to find a good kindergarten that used Kyrgyz as the teaching medium, so that his daughter could have a good grounding in her mother tongue.

Since Kyrgyzstan became independent, most schools have used Kyrgyz rather than Russian as the principal language, but there are still relatively few in the capital, where all the prestigious, well-equipped schools use Russian.

"There isn’t a single decent Kyrgyz-language school or kindergarten in Bishkek. Everything is in Russian," complained member of parliament Kubatbek Baibolov. "We only have ourselves to blame. What sort of country is it that cannot develop or attend to its own state language?"

Migration has had a non-trivial effect on the demographics of Kyrgyzstan, with very heavy emigration, particularly among ethnic Russians and other Russophones; the number of Russians has fallen by half since 1989. Kyrgyzstan is also trying to recruit ethnic Kyrgyz immigrants on the model of Kazakhstan's program of promoting Kazakh immigration, though whether this will work the given the lack of preparation for the immigrants' arrival and proposals to settle them in depopulating rural areas is quite open to question. It doesn't look like these population movements will alter the language demographics. By all accounts, Kyrgyz culture and language remains less prestigious than Russian, used more as a symbol than as a reality, while even in the even in the relatively non-Russified south Russian-language education is preferred by non-Russophones on account of its perceived superior quality.

What will happen in Kyrgyzstan? The language situation may shift towards Kyrgyz, as Russophones emigrate and Kyrgyz numbers grow, but it will do so only slowly. Bilingualism is set to stay, and it will be only with strenuous efforts that any balance between the two languages--one a world language spoken by hundreds of millions of people associated with a dynamic population culture, the other a relatively unprestigious language spoken by 2.5 million--could be achieved.