NATIONAL MEDIA-LANDSCAPE AS A FACTOR TO PRESERVE THE ETHNIC IDENTITY (on the example of Chuvash-speaking mass media in Bashkortostan)
In this article, on the basis of materials of archive of the State book chamber of the Republic of Bashkortostan, administration of Ufa Federal postal communication service of the Republic of Bashkortostan - branch of FSPA «Mail of Russia», as well as data from the current archives of a number of areas with compact settlement of the Chuvash population the authors carried out the study of national-linguistic needs of the Chuvash in the field of printed products. In two regions - Aurgazinsky and Bizhbulyaksky - with a high proportion of the Chuvash, newspapers in the Chuvash language are published. In other regions, in order to meet their national-language needs, the Chuvash population subscribes to periodicals from the Republic of Chuvashia in the Chuvash language. The range of such periodicals represented a wide range of genres according to the interests. If teachers and educators of Chuvash schools in Bashkortostan mostly subscribed to educational and methodical literature in the Chuvash language, a significant part of subscribers preferred newspapers and magazines about the life and everyday routine of their fellow-countrymen in the Republic of the same name. During the period of perestroika of the Soviet society in October 1989, Bashkortostan started publishing a Republican newspaper in the Chuvash language «Ural Sassi» («Voice of the Urals») with a frequency of once a week, which received a massive demand among the Chuvash population of the Republic. The analysis of subscriptions to periodicals in the Chuvash language in the Republic of Bashkortostan at the present stage shows that the Chuvash population reads less in the language of the mother ethnic group in favor of reading newspapers and magazines in the Russian language.