Conflict, Policy, and Threats to Linguistic Ecologies in the Caucasus

Abstract

In 1944, nearly half a million Chechens and Ingush were forcibly deported by Soviet authorities to Central Asia. Their villages were razed or repopulated, and for thirteen years, their languages lost official status and functional domains. Upon repatriation, many of their children had become monolingual in Russian. This episode illustrates a larger pattern: armed conflict and state repression do not merely displace populations or change borders; they also reshape linguistic landscapes. Yet in the growing literature on conflict studies, the cultural and linguistic consequences of violence remain strikingly understudied. This paper argues that language loss and endangerment, especially in multiethnic conflict zones like the Caucasus, are not incidental outcomes of conflict but are structured by the same forces that drive displacement and institutional breakdown. Drawing on case studies from Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan, this article examines how political violence and public policy reconfigure linguistic ecologies through demographic shocks, forced migration, and state-led cultural assimilation.