Putin instructed to counteract the excessive use of foreign vocabulary

Russian President Vladimir Putin has included countering the excessive use of foreign vocabulary in the tasks of state cultural policy. The decree signed by the head of state is published on the portal of legal information.

“Protection and support of the Russian language as the state language of the Russian Federation, ensuring compliance with the norms of the modern Russian literary language (including the prevention of obscene language) and countering the excessive use of foreign vocabulary,” marked one of the tasks in the document.

In October 2022, a draft law on monitoring compliance with the norms of the Russian literary language was submitted to the State Duma. initiative accepted in the first reading on 13 December. The authors of the project explained that it was also aimed at protecting the Russian language from foreign borrowings.

The explanatory note says that the initiative emphasizes the unifying role of the Russian language as the state language in a multinational country. It is noted that the literary norms must be observed by officials and citizens of the Russian Federation.

The bill provides for a restriction on the use of borrowed words, with the exception of expressions that have no analogues in the Russian language. The authors of the initiative propose to orientate themselves on normative dictionaries, in which the norms of the modern Russian literary language are fixed.