OREANDA-NEWS. Russian President Vladimir Putin stated that Russophobes declared war on the Russian language, and in some countries, it became official policy.

“We are faced with attempts artificially – I want to emphasize this, artificially, roughly, sometimes absolutely unceremoniously – to reduce the space of the Russian language in the world, to oust it to the periphery,” the head of state said at a meeting of the Presidential Council for the Russian Language.

Putin noted that Russia has a great responsibility for the preservation, development and dissemination of the Russian language and literature. “Not only crude Russophobes declare war on the Russian language… all kinds of marginal persons and aggressive nationalists are actively working here,” the president emphasized.

According to him, in these conditions, Russia faces two tasks. “The first is to ensure a decent level of knowledge and general competence of Russians, and thereby global competitiveness, the attractiveness of the Russian language as a modern, living, dynamically developing means of communication. The second is to implement an effective system of supporting the Russian language environment abroad in the information, educational and humanitarian spheres,” Putin explained.

During the meeting, the Russian president instructed to begin the development of a single corpus of dictionaries and reference books, the norms of which should become mandatory for use in government agencies and the media.

“Our goal is to create an active and holistic language policy that will ensure the preservation and development of the Russian language, domestic literature in Russia and in the world,” Putin resumed. He noted that the participation of the professional community is crucial in solving this problem, and asked members of the Russian Language Council to join in this work.