clearingstick

What do you expect the long-term reaction to be within Russian separatist states and with former enemies, as well as in other areas under territorial dispute?

The Russian logic in moving troops, for the "protection of Russian speakers," appears to be one that several other states with vested interests could use to expand and claim territory.

Sorry, here is more specifically what I meant. It's an interesting case, because the Russian law in 2002 essentially prevented Tatar script from use in official Kazan documents. Tatar is still spoken and, in some cases written, but cannot be used in any official capacity. It is nominally a recognized language.

Both go hand in hand. If you can't officiate in the native language, but only speak it, that's erosion of culture. Especially since "the Republic of Tatarstan passed a law in 1999, which came into force in 2001, establishing an official Tatar Latin alphabet. A Russian federal law overrode it in 2002." This wasn't a choice on Tatarstan's part. I'm not sure of the current public sentiment toward it, since I haven't been there in three years, but at the time, there was great resentment for this change even years later.

This doesn't seem to be a case of Russia not impeding on Tatarstan, but the country having an overwhelming lack of choice in the matter. It's landlocked (functionally) to Russia and has slowly leaned further and further away from sovereign status. Incidentally, the amendments that furthered this were also signed in 2002.

Absolutely. I'm even wondering too about places like Kazan (where, ironically, Russian laws have slowly been eroding the native language in favor of Russian). While not a sovereign nation, this situation certainly has them thinking again about some form of greater autonomy.

In the more extreme case is a country like China delicately raising the same arguments to "protect" the heavily ethnic Chinese populations in southeastern Russia. This is of course extremely unlikely to happen, but the rhetoric seems like it could backfire on Russia quite vividly.

No, they definitely are. I don't mean to suggest that there is rampant or even institutional abuse, just that Russia tends to do the same "one language" stressing that the Ukrainian parliament did in the last few weeks. It just serves to undermine their point.

Kazan and the rest of Tatarstan are, in my opinion, the most beautiful and inviting parts of Russia and absolutely a must-see location!