"This could lead not only to weakening of federative unity and violation of the Russian Federation's powers in the linguistic sphere but also to limitation of the constitutional rights and freedoms of citizens," the CC's ruling says.
The court also believes that studying the Tatar language in the same volume as Russian is mandatory in all the educational establishments of Tatarstan.
At the same time CC chairman Valery Zorkin, reading out the
court's decision, noted that the federal legislator had not ruled out a possibility to change the graphic foundation of the alphabets of the official languages of republics which they were using at the moment of the adoption of the Russian Federation's Constitution (1993).
Chairman of the State Council of Tatarstan Farid Mukhamedshin, commenting on the CC ruling, stated: "I am sure that as Russian society develops we will increasingly take interest in the Latin alphabet and study it. This process cannot be stopped. It is possible to switch over to Chinese hieroglyphs but should this be done? Our scientists have shown that society has been moving towards the Latin alphabet, we do not need the Chinese or Japanese hieroglyphs when we know that the globalization of society has been going to the English language through the Latin alphabet, he added.
According to Mr. Mukhametshin, the authorities of Tatarstan do not intend to take any steps to remove the signs using Latin letters from the streets of Tatarstan's cities and towns.
As the State Council chairman said, an experiment to study the possibilities to switch over to the Latin alphabet is under way at 30 schools of Tatarstan.
Mr. Mukhametshin also noted that Tatarstan's authorities do not intend to appeal against the decision of the CC of the Russian Federation to use the Cyrillic alphabet in writing Tatar words in the European judicial structures.
The inquiries by the State Council and Supreme Court of Tatarstan, made in 2000, gave cause to considering the case.
The CC recognized Item 6 of Article 3 of the federal law On Languages of the Peoples of the Russian Federation which says that the alphabets of the national languages in the republics must be built on the graphic foundation of the Cyrillic alphabet while other graphic bases of the alphabets shall be established by the federal law to be not contradicting the country's fundamental law.
