Of all the languages of Russia, Russian is the only official language at the russia foreign languages level. There are 35 different languages which are considered official languages in various regions of Russia, along with Russian. There are over 100 minority languages spoken in Russia today.
Russian was the sole official language of the Russian Empire which existed until 1917. During the Soviet period, the policy toward the languages of the various other ethnic groups fluctuated in practice. Russia lost its status in many of the new republics that arose following the 1991 dissolution of the Soviet Union. In Russia, however, the dominating status of the Russian language continued. Ukraine by most of the international community. The Constitution of Dagestan defines “Russian and the languages of the peoples of Dagestan” as the state languages, though no comprehensive list of the languages was given.
Karelia is the only republic of Russia with Russian as the only official language. This is the case, for example, of the Kazakh language in Altai Republic. 4 million Uzbek citizens and 1. 2 million Tajik citizens entered Russia. There are many endangered languages in Russia. Some are considered to be near extinction and put on the list of endangered languages in Russia, and some may have gone extinct since data was last reported.
On the other hand, some languages may survive even with few speakers. Some languages have doubtful data, like Serbian whose information in the Ethnologue is based on the 1959 census. Most numbers are according to Michael Krauss, 1995. Given the time that has passed, languages with extremely few speakers might be extinct today.
Since 1997, Kerek and Yugh have become extinct. Knowledge of at least one foreign language is predominant among younger and middle-aged population. Knowledge of a foreign language varies among social groups. People with higher education and high economical and social status are most expected to know a foreign language. The age and social profiling are the same: knowledge of a foreign language is predominant among the young or middle-aged population with higher education and high social status and who live in big cities.
