Late tsarist Russia had simply imported the "progressive" Western European policy of suppressing minority languages and scripts. 19th and early 20th century Bri

Late tsarist Russia had simply imported the "progressive" Western European policy of suppressing minority languages and scripts. 19th and early 20th century Britain, France, Germany, Italy, etc. were all engaged in similar practices to erase the distinct languages and identities of their ethnic minorities in the name of "national unity". Here are just a few examples: > In the later 19th century, virtually all teaching in the schools of Wales was in English, even in areas where the pupils barely understood English. Some schools used the Welsh Not, a piece of wood, often bearing the letters "WN", which was hung around the neck of any pupil caught speaking Welsh. The pupil could pass it on to any schoolmate heard speaking Welsh, with the pupil wearing it at the end of the day being given a beating. [1] > Francization is also a designation applied to a number of ethnic assimilation policies implemented by French authorities from the French Revolution to present. These policies aimed to impose or to maintain the dominance of French language (which at this time was still a minority language in the numerical sense, despite being the prestige language of France and an increasingly important vernacular for writing, with the decline of Latin) and culture by encouraging or compelling people of other ethnic groups to adopt them, and thereby developing a French identity, at the expense of their existing identity. Coupled with this policy was the deliberate suppression of minority languages. Quickly after the end of the Ancien Régime, the new revolutionary government adopted a policy of promotion of French as a unifying and modernizing language, simultaneously denigrating the status of minority languages as bulwarks of feudalism, Church control of the state, and backwardness in general. In less than a year after coming to power (1792), the Committee for Public Instruction mandated that the newly expanded public education would be buttressed by the sending of French-speaking teachers to areas that spoke other languages. The 19th century saw this programme, and similar initiatives and wider cultural prorogatives, achieve many of its intended aims: the French language became much more expansive among the population, and by the 1860s, nearly 80 percent of the national population were able to speak French. [2] > The programme of Italianization was particularly forcefully applied in schools, aiming at the destruction of the German school system. As of 1928, Italian had become the only language of instruction in 760 South Tyrolean classes, affecting over 360 schools and 30,000 pupils. Likewise, German Kindergarten were required to use Italian, while substitutes were forced to shut down. German teachers were systematically dismissed on the grounds of "insufficient didactics", or transferred to the south, from where Italian teachers were recruited instead. Degrees from Austrian or German universities became valid only through an additional stay of one year at an Italian university. [3] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welsh_language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welsh_language [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francization [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italianization_of_South_Tyrol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italianization_of_South_Tyrol