Gromadizatsiya

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Women learning to read and write in Soravian at a language school in Salikhia, 1930s. Gromadizatsiya was particularly prominent in the non-Marolevic parts of Soravia, due to perceived major cultural differences.

Gromadizatsiya (Soravian: Громадизація, from громадянин; gromadyanyn, "citizen", lit. "citizen-ification") was a period of state-backed forced assimilation in Soravia from 1936 until the late 1970s. The policy saw an ideological pivot away from the multi-ethnic, federalist ideas of the Soravian Revolution to the notion of a homogeneous nation-state consisting solely of the Soravian people and their culture.

Gromadizatsiya was largely a byproduct of the political situation in Soravia following the Great War, and was active in all levels of Soravian society. There was an extensive propaganda campaign that aimed to make minority ethnic groups feel ashamed and dishonoured of their background and particularly in speaking their native languages or partaking in their local cultural customs. Boarding schools were established across the country that aimed to "Soravianise" the local population, and Soravian became the sole legal language for all higher education and government institutions. Minorities were encouraged to marry and have families with Soravians, and the prior local, state-based administration was abandoned in favour of a highly-centralised model consisting solely of oblasts. In some cases, Soravian authorities employed violence, including murders and forced relocations, as part of gromadizatsiya. The extent to which the policy constituted a genocide remains extensively debated, and is vehemently denied by the Soravian government.

The policy was gradually scrapped by the government of Aleksander Shelyapin in the late 1970s. The death toll of gromadizatsiya is also debated, but quoted values range from 15,000 to as high as 100,000. In the post-Soravian states, the legacy of gromadizatsiya led to great urgency being placed on the reconstruction of national identities, while many people in these states continue to use the Soravian language on a regular basis. The term gromadizatsiya has also been employed as a general term elsewhere for major state-backed programs of forced assimilation or ethnocide.