Language rights in the Russian Federation: commùne bònum or bonorum privata? Language v. Constitution

The article presents the approaches to protecting an individual’s linguistic rights that appear in the literature on the subject and then the method of its implementation in the Russian Federation’s legislation. The conducted research allowed us to identify two ways of qualifying an individual’s linguistic rights as human rights. The first is based on understanding them as one of the rights of national minorities, and the second as a category of personal rights. The approaches interpenetrate each other because the native language of an individual is, on the one hand, an expression of national identity and, on the other, a personal good through which he expresses himself. The analysis leads to the conclusion that the state not only does not guarantee language rights but even that they may be violated. The constitution-maker created the conditions for reconciling this category of rights against international obligations.