A New Language Paradigm as a New Basis of Building Relations between Russia and Central Asian Countries

The collapse of the Soviet Union and the formation of new national states on its territory led to the intensification of ethnic processes that provoked a discursive rethinking of the history of the USSR and a change in the relationship between the status of identities of new titular and minority groups. Within Russia, competition and the coexistence of different national and nationalistic ideologies began to manifest themselves, which affected the legal and actual status of the Russian language. The paper substantiates the need to change the scientific paradigm that determines the language ideology and language policy of the Central Asia states both in the era of the existence of the USSR and after its disintegration. Ethnocultural language paradigm, which strengthens centrifugal tendencies in nation building, does not correspond to the goal of construction a single civilian nation, which should determine the tasks of language policy at the present stage. A lot of efforts should be applied to change the attitude in post - soviet states (in case of Central Asia in particular) where the study of Russian is under question at the moment. The risk is to lose the historical connection between Russia and minor nationalities who make a choice not in favor of the Russian language any more. The peculiarities of language policy issues are seen as a result of a great amount of purely political decisions which focus on language policy only as product of presidential politics. The empirical material is the present-day situation with language policy in Central Asia region as well as the presidential discourse in Russia which are focused on different kinds of political approaches in this domain. The key questions of the research: What are the possible consequences of reducing the number of people studying Russian in the countries of the Central Asian region for building partner relationships with Russia? Will a change in the language paradigm in Central Asia countries be detrimental in matters of a general decline in culture and literacy among the young population? How does the analysis of the presidential discourse in Russia and the countries of the Central-Asian region reveal the contradictions that are decisive for changing the language paradigm?