Language policy in Russia: main directions, problems and prospects

Special attention is paid to the issues of the state's language policy. For contemporary Russia, the most acute problems remain those, related to the role and status of the Russian language within the country and in the world community, as well as with the preservation and development of other languages of the Russian Federation. In recent years, a set of measures has been taken at the state level, aimed at strengthening the positions of the state and national languages, but today many issues have not received the necessary solutions. The article provides a theoretical overview of significant concepts that are used in legislative documents, one way or another devoted to the Russian language policy, reveals the category of language policy in interdisciplinary scientific discourse, and presents the author's understanding of language policy. The purpose of the work is to identify the main directions and key problems of modern language policy, possible ways to solve them, as well as further prospects for developing language policy in the Russian Federation. The main research methods are content analysis of the regulatory framework and empirical analysis of secondary data of the AllRussian sociological survey. As a result of the analysis, we have found that there is a lack of system, fragmentation in the language legislation of the Russian Federation, and identified problems with the definition of language norms, requirements for compiling dictionary reference publications, and the general literacy level. The paper shows that the optimal achievement of the goals of language policy is possible in the course of joint activities of the state and society. We have presented the proposals, which it is advisable to pay attention to when developing the concept of the Russian language policy.