The Economy

[Jester]

In the former USSR and it's 15 republics, there was only 1 official language. When you consider that it is only Russia and Belorussia that have russian as their native tongue (I believe this is so, taken from memory not sources), the picture becomes clear. I do know that most if not all of the old republics have reverted to their old language.

Russification was real, and sometimes was pushed fairly hard. But it never transformed non-Russian countries into predominantly Russian speaking ones. Belorussian is very close to Russian, but it's not the same language. So, that just leaves Russia.

Russian was used as the state language and the lingua franca for science, but the policy of most republics, at most times, was essentially a loose bilingualism between Russian and the languages of the various Republics. Publishing in other languages for books and newspapers continued throughout, and obviously people kept speaking their native languages in everyday life. Fluency in Russian, even as a second language, was far from universal outside of Russia, although it would have been necessary if you wanted a career in the bureaucracy.

So, we in Europe might know how to speak Russian (I'm sure some of us already do), but I doubt we'd be speaking it now. Plus, there is the possibility (likelihood?) that the USSR would have collapsed by now, even if they'd pushed the tanks all the way to Lisbon.

-Jester