The Dynamics of Russian Language Maintenance in the U.S.-Based Russophone Diaspora: Conflicted Heritage, Resilience, and Persistence

Abstract

This study examines intergenerational transmission of Russian within the U.S. Russophone diaspora in the wake of Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine. It addresses: (1) parents’ motivations and practices surrounding intergenerational language transmission; and (2) challenges faced by Russian-speaking families in today’s shifting sociopolitical landscape. The study draws on semi-structured Zoom interviews with 16 Russian-speaking parents in the United States, each raising children aged 3–15 and representing four different immigration periods, from the early 1990s to 2022, following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Findings reveal that heritage language maintenance is shaped not only by linguistic choices, but also by political and ethical considerations. While all parents continue to view Russian as a source of identity, cultural capital, and familial cohesion, many also actively disassociate the language from its sociopolitical ties to the aggressor state. Shared aspirations for bilingualism are tempered by internal and external pressures, including children’s growing agency, family dynamics, challenges of immigrant life, and war-driven fractures within the diaspora. This study contributes to research on heritage language maintenance and family language policies by exploring how global geopolitical events are negotiated through intimate, everyday language practices in immigrant households.

1. Introduction

Heritage language maintenance (HLM) refers to the sustained use and intergenerational transmission of a minority language within a community where another societally dominant language (SL) is spoken. Typically, heritage languages (HLs) are acquired at home during early childhood but are quickly placed at risk of attrition as children enter formal schooling in the SL and begin to integrate into the broader society (Benmamoun et al., 2010). While the term heritage language (HL) is now firmly established in academic and institutional discourse, its scope and usage have evolved alongside expanding research on the linguistic systems and lived experiences of HL speakers (Polinsky, 2018). From a sociolinguistic and sociocultural perspective, a full account of HL development must consider the interplay of macro-level factors such as ideologies, language policies, and historical events; meso-level influences like schools and community organizations; and micro-level domains of family and interpersonal interaction (Lynch & Avineri, 2021). Furthermore, the sociopolitical status of a migrant/heritage language can shape speakers’ attitudes and beliefs, the availability of formal instruction, and the extent of its public use (Montrul, 2016). Those attitudes and opportunities, in turn, influence how often and in what contexts the language is used, which directly impacts the communicative and grammatical competence of its speakers. Foregrounding the complexity of sociolinguistic factors, Leeman and Showstack (2022) argue that sociolinguistic perspectives are vital for understanding HL speakers’ linguistic knowledge and use. Therefore, sociolinguistic studies of migrant/HL populations can help explain how their languages persist, shift, or change structurally across generations and may contribute to a more refined understanding of the migrant—heritage language continuum.

Multiple studies have documented the social, emotional, and cognitive benefits of HL maintenance for subsequent generations, including stronger family cohesion (S. H. Chen et al., 2012; Shen & Jiang, 2023), identity affirmation (Cho, 2000; Oh & Fuligni, 2010), and enhanced metalinguistic awareness (Isurin, 2011; Polinsky & Scontras, 2020). Nevertheless, the forces that lead to language shift are numerous and powerful and tend to overwhelm even the most intentional and persistent family language policies. These forces include lack of institutional support for HLs, the dominance of the majority language in educational and social settings, and a perception that HLs lack practical utility in future academic or professional contexts (Fishman, 1991, 2006; Inan & Harris, 2025).

Recent scholarship has also highlighted how macro-level sociopolitical events—such as war, forced migration, or changes in public sentiment toward specific linguistic communities—can significantly alter the trajectory of HL maintenance (Hua & Wei, 2016; Jasinskaja-Lahti et al., 2024). Geopolitical upheavals affect not only the physical and psychological well-being of HL speakers, but can also fundamentally alter perceptions of identity, belonging, and cultural affiliation. Language, as a salient marker of ethnic and/or national identity, often becomes entangled in the political conflict itself, transforming its use into a site of ideological struggle and social stigma (Hornsby, 2015; Pavlenko, 2003). In such cases, the HL may be rejected due to its symbolic associations, or conversely, it may be reasserted as a marker of identity and resistance (Makoni, 2018; Nedashkivska, 2018; Pavlenko, 2003; Zabrodskaja, 2015). Such complex dynamics call for more context-sensitive and nuanced investigations into how language ideologies and practices in immigrant families shift over time, especially in contexts of political upheaval.

The Russian-speaking diaspora presents a compelling case in this regard. As one of the most widespread and well-studied diasporas, Russophone communities have long maintained complex, and at times conflicted, linguistic and cultural ties to their homeland(s). However, the geopolitical events of the past decade, especially the escalation of Russia’s war in Ukraine which culminated in the full-scale invasion in 2022, alongside the intensification of political repression within the Russian Federation, have begun to drastically reshape the sociolinguistic landscape of Russian-speaking communities worldwide. As Dubinina and Kisselev (2025) note, critical questions now facing the field of HL studies include how the already weakened intergenerational transmission of Russian will be further affected and whether the language will continue to function as a marker of the post-Soviet diaspora.

The United States has been a key destination for Russian-speaking immigrants since the early 20th century, with migration peaking in the 1990s and slowing considerably thereafter. Still, in 2022, approximately 1.04 million U.S. residents aged five or older spoke Russian at home, making it the 12th most spoken language nationwide (U.S. Census Bureau, 2025). One characteristic of this population is its relatively high educational level and socio-economic status (SES): most Russian-speaking immigrants are university-educated, many of whom hold advanced degrees, and often work in prestigious white-collar professions (Nesteruk, 2010). While this community’s high SES can facilitate HL transmission by enabling access to resources such as travel and extracurricular education, some families have been found to prioritize English for school readiness and social integration, sometimes to the detriment of maintaining Russian (Nesteruk, 2010). Another feature of the diaspora that is not conducive to HL transmission is its low residential concentration; although enclaves exist in metropolitan areas like New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago, most Russian-speaking families are dispersed across urban centers, often due to professional mobility (Kagan & Dillon, 2010; Laleko, 2013). Research indicates that families in enclaves benefit from community schools and peer networks that support HL maintenance, while those in more dispersed settings face greater challenges sustaining Russian language practices (Portes & Rumbaut, 2006; Potowski, 2010).

One of the most important features of the diaspora in question that sets it apart from many is that its members come from varied ethnic, religious, cultural and, following the fall of the USSR, national backgrounds. In fact, as a number of diasporic researchers have pointed out, the term ‘Russian’ may obscure multiple levels of complexity (e.g., Dubinina & Kisselev, 2025); “Russian” is a deeply ambiguous label, often imposed on individuals of varied ethnic, national, and religious backgrounds historically linked to the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union, or the post-Soviet states (Pavlenko, 2006; Ryazanova-Clarke, 2014). This imposition of the demonym both within and outside the diaspora is rooted in the fact that the Russian language has been a unifying force for over 200 ethnic groups within the former USSR and an important marker of (post-)Soviet identity. However, Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine has significantly disrupted this sense of unity to the point that many (post-)Soviet immigrants are now re-evaluating their ties to the Russian-speaking identity, with some distancing themselves from it altogether (Bergmann & Turkevych, 2024; Kulyk, 2023; Warditz & Meir, 2024). As a result, the very notion of a “Russian diaspora” is being questioned, highlighting the complexity of diasporic identities shaped by ethnicity, language, religion, and shifting geopolitical realities.

The association of the Russian language with the aggressor state has contributed to a global decline in the language’s prestige and desirability, affecting people who speak this language natively and those who are L2 learners. The declining use of Russian is particularly pronounced among Russian-speaking Ukrainians, many of whom have consciously transitioned to Ukrainian as the primary or only family language, while rejecting Russian as a symbol of occupation and violence (e.g., Bergmann & Turkevych, 2024; Warditz & Meir, 2024). In light of current geopolitical shifts, this paper explores the language practices in the Russophone diaspora in the United States, examining how the ongoing Russian aggression in Ukraine and political oppression inside the Russian Federation may reconfigure the building blocks of intergenerational language transmission, namely language attitudes, motivations for HL maintenance, family practices, and community cohesion, among Russian-speaking parents raising young children and representing various immigration waves. This is the first systematic investigation of the impact that the 2022 Ukraine war has had on family language practices and parental motivation for HLM in Russian-speaking communities in the U.S. The paper contributes to the discussion of the diasporic continuum of migrant versus heritage languages by providing a sociolinguistic account of intergenerational transmission of Russian among migrants from the former USSR living in the United States.

Following the review of the Family Language Policy framework in Section 2, the paper presents the research goals and researchers’ positionality in Section 3. Section 4 (Materials and Methods) describes the procedure, participants, data collection and analysis; Section 5 presents the results containing representative citations from interviews, while Section 6 discusses the findings. We conclude with Section 7 (Study Limitations) and Section 8 (Conclusions).

2. Family Language Policy Framework: Key Assumptions

In recent years, Family Language Policy (FLP) has increasingly gained attention as a framework for understanding how multilingual families make decisions about language use, transmission, and maintenance in domestic settings (Spolsky, 2004). FLP research, intersecting sociolinguistics, language education, and migration studies, emphasizes that language practices within families are neither neutral nor incidental; rather, they result from a complex interplay of ideological beliefs and structural constraints (Curdt-Christiansen & Lanza, 2018; Duff, 2019).

Research on FLP, family language practices, parental attitudes, and the constraints shaping them in immigrant families is critical to understanding intergenerational shift along the continuum of migrant–heritage language and toward dominance in the societal language because it clarifies the mechanisms of this process and identifies leverage points to support multilingual families. Even among large immigrant communities—such as the U.S. Spanish-speaking population—research consistently documents an intergenerational shift toward English. By the third generation, home use of Spanish frequently gives way to English (Alba et al., 2002; Potowski, 2004; Montrul, 2016). Less populous immigrant communities face even steeper barriers to language preservation due to thinner networks, fewer HL community programs, less support at schools, and limited access to educational and cultural materials (Potowski, 2010).

The FLP framework includes three interconnected components: language ideology (i.e., what people think about a language), language practice (what they actually do with that language), and language management (what steps they take to maintain that language); all three are influenced by internal family dynamics as well as external sociopolitical, economic, and cultural influences (Curdt-Christiansen, 2014, 2018; Spolsky, 2004, 2009). Within this framework, both family language practices and language management are influenced by linguistic goals, parents’ SES, migration histories, educational policies, and emotional and identity-based motivations (M. Chen & Cao, 2025; Curdt-Christiansen, 2013). The FLP perspective reconceptualizes HL maintenance as a socially and politically situated practice that reflects and responds to wider ideologies, institutional structures, and transnational experiences (Liang & Shin, 2021), rather than being simply a private family matter.

Importantly, FLP is dynamic in nature (Hollebeke, 2023; King et al., 2008; Schwartz & Verschik, 2013; Smith-Christmas, 2021), evolving and adapting over time due to shifting family circumstances, societal contexts, and interpersonal relationships. As a result, it is difficult to identify a singular motivation behind families’ language practices and efforts to maintain HLs. To overcome this challenge, researchers have explored a spectrum of interconnected motivations.

Some motivations for intergenerational language transmission are rooted in the parents’ desire to connect their child with familial roots (Zhu & Li, 2016), cultural identity, and a sense of belonging within the ethnic community (Guardado, 2018; Noar, 2024; Smolicz, 1981). Indeed, if an HL is perceived as inseparable from one’s sense of self and group belonging, then its loss is seen as a threat to the continuity of cultural traditions and values (Schecter & Bayley, 2002). Another example of internal motivation for HLM is the language’s role in helping families navigate the realities of physical separation from their homelands and the consequent changes to sense of self; and in this sense, HL acts as an invisible bridge between past and present, home and host culture, and older and younger generations. In fact, HLM may function as both a coping and a defense mechanism (Noar, 2024; Tannenbaum, 2012).

Importantly, in immigration parental identity itself is not static; as their uprooted lives take hold in a new country, a new, transnational identity evolves, reshaping parents’ beliefs and attitudes regarding their home language choices (Hua & Wei, 2016). Researchers in diaspora studies emphasize that transnational individuals actively negotiate their identities (Vorobeva & Jauhiainen, 2023) and everyday practices. Instead of choosing between preserving their ethnic identity or fully assimilating, they often strive to find common ground and build connections—with co-ethnic diasporic communities, other migrant groups, or members of the host society—thereby creating a shared sense of transnational belonging (Cohen, 1997; De Bree et al., 2010). In transnational contexts, belonging becomes agentive; individuals may feel connected to places or communities by choice rather than through national, ethnic, or legal affiliations alone (Colic-Peisker, 2010; Dahinden, 2012).

As such, parents’ identities and lived experiences within transnational contexts often align with externally oriented, future-focused motivations for HLM. For some families, HL proficiency is viewed as a gateway to expanded educational and career opportunities. Parents’ educational backgrounds, language-learning experiences, and SES influence their perceptions of the value of multilingualism (Bilgory-Fazakas & Armon-Lotem, 2025; Curdt-Christiansen, 2009). Parents who perceive bilingualism as a valuable skill tend to adopt supportive practices, such as maintaining consistent HL communication at home, enrolling their children in HL programs, and seeking out opportunities to enhance HL exposure (De Houwer, 1999).

In addition to parents’ motivation to maintain and support HL, children, beginning at a certain age, also become active participants in shaping the family’s language practices. They begin to develop their own internal and external motivations—or demotivations—toward using the HL. While earlier FLP studies primarily highlighted caregivers’ perspectives, framing children’s roles as passive compliance or resistance, recent studies emphasize children as active co-participants who significantly shape linguistic practices and norms within the family (Luykx, 2003; Schalley & Eisenchlas, 2020).

Thus, the decision-making process of a particular parent or family in adopting a specific FLP is shaped by a complex set of interrelated internal and external factors which stem from sociocultural, socioeconomic, and sociopolitical contexts of a family’s life (Curdt-Christiansen & Huang, 2020). These contexts are further complicated by internal family dynamics that include child agency and by the unique constellations of factors that shape each immigrant community’s experience. No language or speech community is affected by migration in exactly the same way (Curdt-Christiansen & Huang, 2020; Hua & Wei, 2016; Pauwels, 2016). Families navigate not only the linguistic ideologies and institutional pressures of the host society, but also the sociopolitical conditions, including upheavals and societal trauma, in their countries of origin and in their migration process.

In many cases, geopolitical events in immigrants’ homelands catalyze a reevaluation of the value of HL and its role as identity marker. Those who experience feelings of detachment from their homeland, whether due to political disillusionment or migration-related trauma, may intentionally downplay or even reject the cultural significance of their HL (Le & Trofimovich, 2024). Speakers may deliberately distance themselves from the HL when it is associated with a state involved in violence, oppression, or war. However, conflicts can also strengthen emotional and symbolic attachments to the HL, especially when it is perceived as endangered or under siege (e.g., Karapetian, 2023, for Armenian). For some, maintaining the HL becomes an act of resilience or defiance, a way to preserve cultural identity and community cohesion in the face of displacement or trauma (Nedashkivska, 2018).

At the same time, families may face new forms of external pressure in the new sociopolitical contexts. In host countries, stigmatization of HLs in media portrayals or public discourse can affect children’s willingness to speak it, parents’ willingness to promote it, and institutions’ willingness to support its instruction. Research on Arabic-speaking communities in the West post-9/11, for instance, shows how geopolitical hostility led to a decreased public use of Arabic and a heightened sense of linguistic vulnerability for Arabic HL speakers (Al Zidjaly, 2012). Likewise, Russian-speaking communities in Europe since 2022 have encountered increased suspicion and occasional hostility regardless of their political stance (Davydenko & Henry, 2024; Jasinskaja-Lahti et al., 2024; Wright & Palviainen, 2024).

3. Research Questions and Researchers’ Positionality

Research Goals and Questions

Taking into consideration characteristics of the Russian-speaking diaspora in the United States and guided by the FLP framework and its significance for the study of HLs, this research project aims to achieve two broad research goals, each with its own specific research questions.

• Goal 1: We aim to understand the motivations for and practices of intergenerational transmission of Russian in the U.S. Russophone diaspora. Specifically:

  ○

  RQ1–1: What do Russian-speaking parents think about the Russian language and the necessity to maintain it?

  ○

  RQ1–2: What strategies do Russian-speaking parents employ to transmit Russian to their children?

• Goal 2: We aim to define challenges to intergenerational transmission navigated by Russian-speaking parents in today’s social and geopolitical contexts. Specifically:

  ○

  RQ2–1: How do the (im)migration experience and current political events influence parental motivation to maintain Russian within their families?

  ○

  RQ2–2: What challenges do Russian-speaking families face in language maintenance?

Researchers’ Positionality

As the researchers who are also members of the Russian-speaking diaspora in the United States, we approach this project from an insider-outsider perspective. We share with many of our participants the experience of immigration from a post-Soviet region, including the emotional and practical challenges of adjusting to life in a new country, maintaining our Russian, and raising multilingual children in a predominantly English-speaking society. These shared experiences offer us a deeper understanding of the sociopolitical, cultural, and emotional landscapes that shape participants’ language choices and family language policies and assist us in data analysis and interpretation. At the same time, our role as researchers within our academic institutions and training in applied linguistics creates a degree of critical distance that enables reflexivity throughout the research process.

4. Materials and Methods

4.1. Procedure

The study is rooted in an interpretive research design (Schwartz-Shea & Yanow, 2012), with qualitative interviews forming the primary source of data. We employed semi-structured interviews to explore our broad research goals. Since the project explores topics that are complex and usually perceived as very personal, we decided against fully structured interviews to give our participants more freedom for self-reflection and expression of opinions and positions. The conversational format of semi-structured interviews reduces social desirability bias that often emerges when participants feel pressured to provide “correct” responses about language maintenance or cultural identity and helps participants become more comfortable expressing ambivalent feelings or contradictory attitudes. At the same time, our detailed semi-structured interview format ensured consistency in data collection.

The initial interview protocol was designed by three researchers on the team after a careful review of existing studies investigating language use, language identity, and family language policy based on interviews and surveys (Bahtina-Jantsikene, 2013; Balaska, 2024; Nesteruk, 2010; Pagé & Noels, 2024; Tziampiri et al., 2024; Warditz & Meir, 2024). As another step to ensure validity of the study, we consulted with two experts who are active in the field and have their own projects investigating language attitudes, motivations, and FLM. The protocol was then piloted with the fourth researcher who joined the project only after serving as a tester. Based on the feedback received from this researcher, several adjustments were made to the protocol, including adding new questions, clustering, regrouping or reformulating some questions, and adjusting their order. We then ran another pilot and made further, albeit smaller, changes to ensure clarity and flow of the questions before conducting the study.

The interview protocol consists of 29 broad questions which are divided into four clusters that roughly can be defined as the following: questions about language preferences, attitudes, and practices of the parent(s); questions related to language use and preferences of the child/children; questions about parent’s identity and attitudes toward Russian-speaking community/diaspora; and questions concerning parents’ outlook on the future of the diaspora and their children’s belonging. In addition, we always asked the participants if there was anything else they wanted to talk about that we did not cover in the interview. The majority of questions were open-ended and follow-up questions were asked in the moment if the interviewer felt the need to clarify or go deeper on the participant’s answers. The order and exact formulations of the questions varied, depending on the conversation flow with each individual interviewee as we strove to maintain the conversational nature of the interviews as much as possible. For the full list of interview questions, see Appendix C.

4.2. Participants and Data Collection

The study used a combination of convenience and criterion-based/purposeful sampling approaches (Patton, 2015). We recruited Russian-speaking parents of young children through announcements in Russian-speaking groups on Facebook. Any interested person who met three basic criteria—being a Russian-speaking immigrant in the United States, being older than 18, and raising children in Russian—could fill out an initial in-take form which contained questions about the person’s language use in childhood, education, country of birth, age and year of immigration, languages spoken at home, and number and age of children. After obtaining the initial list of potential participants (convenience-based sample), we selected those who fit our specific criteria, i.e., specific immigration periods, children’s age (between three and 15 years of age), and source country (representation across various post-Soviet states).

The data presented in this study is based on this purposeful selection and therefore is part of a larger corpus of interviews. Fifty-eight people responded to the initial invitation to participate, 43 of them met the study’s criteria, and 30 individuals were interviewed. This study analyzed 16 in-depth interviews in order to have a balance across four different immigration periods: those who arrived in the United States at the very end of the Soviet period and throughout the immediate post-Soviet decade of the 1990s (three participants), those who came during the relatively calm first decade of the 21st century (four participants), those who immigrated after the 2014 when Russia annexed Crimea (four participants), and those who left Russia and neighboring countries more recently in response to the 2022 invasion of Ukraine (five participants). This selection allowed us to achieve the desired balance, resulting in 16 interviews total. This sample reflects a purposeful and criterion-based sampling strategy (Maxwell, 2005), designed to capture variation in family experiences while ensuring that participants are well-positioned to speak to the study’s focus on language attitudes, maintenance, and intergenerational transmission amid changing geopolitical circumstances. While the study is not strictly small-scale, it is exploratory in nature, as the lived realities of HL families are particularly complex. Our goal was not to gather a representative sample based on country of origin, family structure, or immigration wave, but rather to include a diverse range of voices from different immigration periods.

Our participants represent families in which Russian is the dominant household language, as well as families where only one parent speaks Russian, with English being the parents’ only common language. The sample includes both female and male participants, though mothers are overrepresented, likely reflecting their greater participation in online parenting communities and their primary role as caregivers. Only four fathers responded to the initial call to participate in the study, which represents 6.9% of all parents who responded. Of the 16 interviewed participants in the current sample, 14 (87.5%) were women and 2 (12.5%) were men, which corresponds to the low proportion of male respondents in the recruitment stage.

Additionally, our participants represent single-parent families, same-sex families, and families navigating children’s learning disabilities. All of the parents have higher education diplomas, and several have advanced degrees. However, this does not necessarily translate into a higher socio-economic status as several families are recent immigrants and as such do not work in their field or have a high income. Participating families have widely differing migration histories, cultural affiliations, and social positions (see Appendix A for detailed information).

The initial intake form included a declaration of informed consent, which was then confirmed again with each participant before the start of the interview. All participants volunteered to take part in the study. All interviews were conducted via Zoom in the spring and summer of 2025, audio-recorded with participants’ consent, and fully transcribed, using an AI tool Speech2text. Transcripts were then manually checked and, if necessary, adjusted by researchers and a trained assistant. In transcription, pseudonyms were assigned to all participants (and children and spouses when applicable), to guarantee confidentiality.

Participants were given the option to choose the language of the interview; all interviews were conducted in Russian. Each interview lasted approximately 60 min, though in several cases the conversation continued informally beyond the scheduled time, particularly when parents expressed interest in research on bilingualism, requested educational resources, or wanted to talk off record. These moments, while not included in the formal data analysis, reflected a reciprocal and humanizing approach to research that acknowledged participants’ time, care, and expertise (Denzin & Lincoln, 2018).

4.3. Data Analysis

The interview transcripts were analyzed manually by all four researchers, using open coding which included structural and holistic coding, and theming the data (Saldaña, 2021). Structural codes were informed by our research questions and helped us identify large segments of texts on the three broad goals we are exploring. Simultaneously, we applied holistic codes to grasp basic themes in the data. The coding was done in several iterative stages, which helped refine analysis and achieve a shared understanding of themes we identified. At the first stage, we analyzed one interview each, developing the initial set of codes relevant to the study’s goals and specific research questions, and creating analytical memos. We then discussed our initial observations and coding and fine-tuned thematic analysis by adding new codes, identifying more precise patterns, making more nuanced categorizations, and refining our interpretations of observed themes. We followed these steps at the second cycle of coding when we analyzed one more interview each, continuing the cycles until we arrived at a coding protocol that was nuanced and precise enough to provide answers to the posited research questions. At the final cycle of coding, we ranked identified themes by mapping the coded data.

5. Results

The thematic analysis of the data identified several themes that align with each of the study’s research goals. In this section, we explore each theme, describing patterns observed in the data.

5.1. Motivating Factors for Russian HL Maintenance

The analysis revealed three main themes regarding RQ1–1 which inquired about the parents’ attitude to the Russian language and necessity to maintain it: namely, benefits of bilingualism; Russian as a glue that holds families together; and the value of Russian as an anchor of identity.

Theme 1. Benefits of Bilingualism. Within this most frequently occurring theme, parents emphasized pragmatic benefits associated with speaking another language, including cognitive benefits of bilingualism, enhanced career opportunities, broader access to information in general and specific educational resources in particular, as well as the opportunities to build social connections through shared language. Irena (1991)1 summarized such benefits in the following way: “I believe it is always better to know more than one language. It enriches your life, your knowledge, your erudition, it helps you grow, it helps develop your cognitive functions.”

Theme 2. Russian as a Glue That Holds Families Together. For many parents, Russian functions as a means of parent-child connection, for example Alina (2006) shares:

I get anxious when they [my children] start speaking to me in English because I wouldn’t want to have children in my home who are, essentially, children-foreigners. It’s just that my husband and I speak Russian with each other, we think and feel in Russian, and I’d like the children to do the same, because it seems to me that if they don’t speak Russian, it’s like there is distancing from the family. Our relationship, I think, may also change because of that. […] that is, the tone and, perhaps again, the mentality—language and mentality go together—so I feel that when I speak English, it just immediately switches me into, sort of, my work mentality.

In addition to the important role of the Russian language in maintaining close parent–child connections, participants also viewed Russian as an instrument for connecting with their extended family, especially when those family members do not speak English. For example, Raya (2023) said: “… I just see it as a way of communicating with close relatives who, like grandparents, who will never be able to speak English—so that they [the children] have some kind of connection with them.”

Theme 3. Russian as an Anchor of Identity. Parents often viewed Russian language as a medium for intergenerational transmission of cultural capital and even the parents’ identity and lived experiences as speakers of this language—as Kamila (2012) puts it:

…this is ours, it’s his [my son’s] past, it’s in his genes. It’s a kind of past, historical memory. I think it will be easier for him to live later on if he understands where we come from. And I think that without knowing the language, he’ll never truly understand that. I mean it will open up some understanding of our culture, of our Russian-speaking consciousness. And I believe that our authors will enrich his life. He’ll read them in Russian. I think, at some point, that will probably help him in life.

Importantly, there is often a considerable cross-over between all three themes. For example, in Kristina’s (2019) comment, connection to family is closely intertwined with access to authentic literature and culture as an anchor of self-identity: “I want him [my son] to… There is this cultural code—I want him to be able to read the same books I did, or his father did, so that we could all share that identity, so that he can make his way through the same literature.”

As seen from the previous quote, parents often emphasized the value of authentic Russian literature (i.e., literature penned by Russian-speaking authors) in HL transmission. However, even within such a literature-centered position, parents still often ranked the ability to read any content in Russian over the importance of reading authentic Russian literature. In addition to sustaining children’s conversational ability, the development of literacy skills (especially reading, and, to a lesser extent, writing) was often perceived as an important component in HL maintenance and transmission.

Some parents were, however, reluctant to connect the Russian language to the cultural heritage of the country (countries) where it is spoken. For instance, Irena (1991) viewed Russian as ‘divorced’ from any state: “I don’t believe that Russia owns the Russian language. The Russian language doesn’t belong to any one particular nation, just like any other language.” In a similar vein, Maria (2012) described Russian as something that belongs to the people and something that one cannot be deprived of because it is separate from any political regimes.

Finally, we want to note that although most parents valued Russian, and some even expressed fear and dismay at the possibility of their children not speaking Russian, a few participants seemed to have accepted the eventuality of language loss or severe reduction. For example, Olga (2005) does not expect her children to be fluent: “I don’t expect that they will have a 100% language… but I’d like for them to have at least some minimal conversational abilities.”

5.2. Family Language Policy of Russian-Speaking Parents in the United States

With regard to RQ1–2 which asked what strategies the parents employ to transmit Russian to their children, we observed several types of strategies. The first broad category consists of strict Russian language use within the immediate family and with the extended family and friends. For example, Sergey (2023) considers speaking the language at home as the most important strategy: “Three things, really. First—communication within the family. It’s a pretty strong motivator. Second—they read books in Russian. And third—we watch Russian films, Russian cartoons.” Within the family, endogenous families communicate with their children only in Russian, while exogenous families report using the ‘one parent one language’ strategy. Maria (2012) describes her practice of following the “one parent, one language” strategy in her bilingual household:

I speak Russian, and he [my husband] speaks English. Research shows this is probably the right strategy. If American grandparents visit, we follow the same strategy. I speak Russian. If they’re curious about what I’m saying to her, I translate. And I speak to them, of course, in English.

This family rule, however, can be broken when parents interact with the broader English-speaking community. Regarding language use with extended family, some participants reported children having regular conversations with grandparents through online platforms as well as written communication using speech-to-text tools. Older children also sometimes communicate in Russian with their cousins and friends residing in other countries with the help of technology. As Raya (2023) explained: “They [my children] watch most of their content in Russian, and they have cousins they talk to. They discuss things—like popular children’s stuff, bloggers, I don’t know, that kind of thing…” Parents of younger children arrange playdates with other Russian-speaking families.

The second broad category of strategies concerns home literacy practices and the consumption of various media content. Many parents seem to be committed to developing their children’s reading skills in Russian. Home literacy practices include regular reading of Russian books to children, reading in turns with the child, and on-the-spot translating or interpreting English books to support a Russian-only environment even when consuming English-based content. One parent even took a course on the development of children’s reading skills (Natalia, 2022) in order to understand how to better support the child’s literacy development in a bilingual context. Parents also reported exposing younger children to non-printed media content in Russian, including podcasts, audiobooks, songs, movies, and cartoons. As Ella (2020) shared:

We read books in Russian. He listens to podcasts in Russian; our smart speaker plays content only in Russian… We only read in Russian with him—at night before bed, and earlier in the day too—even if the book is in English, if he brings it from the library or somewhere, I translate it on the spot, and we read in Russian.

This example illustrates a comprehensive approach to media-based language exposure and highlights the additional effort parents make to translate materials and maintain consistency in Russian-only input. However, parents also shared their concerns about overwhelming children with literacy in Russian, especially in writing, when they also have to develop literacy skills in English. As Andrey (2023) commented: “I am not sure about writing skills… it is a skill that is developed over years of schooling and he won’t have this much practice, he won’t even have this much time… if he is reading English books assigned at school, he won’t have time to read as much in Russian. We cannot torture the child.”

The third broad category of strategies we observed pertains to ensuring the use of Russian in daycare and schooling. For example, participants find Russian-speaking babysitters, send their children to Russian-speaking daycare centers, and Saturday schools. They also find Russian language tutors (both in-person and online) and search for Russian-speaking teachers or coaches in extracurricular activities, including chess, music, and math classes. Alina (2006) highlights that long-term engagement with Russian-speaking tutors becomes an integral part of her bilingual children’s lives:

These are extracurricular lessons throughout their entire conscious life. […] We have a teacher they’ve been studying with for the last 10 years. She teaches them in the summer at the dacha, and during the school year they meet to read, answer questions, and so on once a week.

We also observed parents’ tendency to take their children to various extracurricular Russian culture events and activities (i.e., New Year performances and different holiday celebrations like Maslenitsa, mentioned by many participants). At the same time, parents often see such events as a way to maintain culture rather than as venues for Russian language practice.

Finally, we noted the important role of technology in supporting HL maintenance which was mentioned by several parents. They commented on the use of various online platforms and tools that make communication with relatives and the children’s peers possible and in some cases easier (e.g., speech-to-text function of messengers). At the same time, parents understand the importance of face-to-face interactions in Russian for their children. For example, Andrey (2023) commented: “Online platforms are not enough; activities that exist off-line give much more in terms of culture transmission and language development… [Children] need face-to face interactions in order to communicate, to learn, to do things.”

5.3. Challenges to Parents’ Motivation and Attitudes Toward Maintaining Russian

The second broad goal of the study concerned identifying challenges to intergenerational transmission navigated by Russian-speaking parents in today’s social and geopolitical contexts. With regard to RQ2–1 on the effect of the participants’ immigration experiences and current political events on their motivation to maintain Russian, the analysis identified three prominent themes: realities of (immigrant) life in the host country, children’s evolving agency, and effects of the ongoing war in Ukraine and repressive regime in Russia.

Theme 1: Realities of Life Itself and Specifically Life in Immigration Impacting Parents’ Motivations. Participating parents noted that despite their best intentions, life often interferes in their plans to maintain Russian in the family. Some of the challenges relate to family structure such as the birth of subsequent children and the increasing practical demands of larger families which can diminish parents’ energy and commitment to maintaining Russian. As Liza (2019) indicated, commenting on the cumulative fatigue and pressures of parenting, activities promoting the Russian language and culture became casual rather than intentional for her children: “I would even question if I have such a goal [to maintain Russian]. No, not anymore. It’s just if this does not require some super big efforts, then why not?” Her comment reflects a shift from intentional maintenance to a more casual exposure, driven not by ideological change or external events, but by the everyday challenges of raising multiple young children.

Immigration experience also tests parents’ motivation to uphold Russian language use in the family as parents’ multilingualism exerts pressures on their own views on the language. Kristina (2019) shared that the vastly different contexts in which people exist in the United States and Russia put a distance between family members. At the same time, her extensive use of English altered her perceptions of Russian:

It became more difficult for me to communicate with relatives and close friends, probably because we live in different contexts and have concerns about different things. I understand that it’s just their language, they communicate this way, but for me it is now difficult because English is more polite, there is more etiquette built into the language, and Russian does not have the same [etiquette].

Ella (2020) expressed a poignant concern about speaking like ‘a dinosaur,’ fearing that both her and her child’s Russian would become disconnected from the linguistic reality of Russian in the metropoly: “Perhaps, I will speak like a dinosaur, approximately like my mother who at 86 uses teenage slang of her youth. It is certainly cute and funny, but I am afraid he will have the same dinosaurian language.” She wondered how well her son would be able to understand all of the dialects and sociolects of Russian as an adult, given that even her Russian is becoming obsolete.

Finally, at least for one parent, realities of life also include the nature of human relations within the family unit connected to people’s personalities, opinions, and beliefs. Irena (1991) noted that her son’s rebellious behavior gets transferred even onto the Russian language while her partner has low motivation to maintain the Russian-only rule at home because she “hates Russian” for geopolitical reasons although at the same time she is unwilling to hire babysitters who do not speak standard Russian.

Theme 2: Children’s Evolving Agency in Making Language Choices. Children’s agency in asserting their language preferences creates a substantial impact—both negative and positive—on families’ motivation to maintain the Russian language. Negative pressure may stem from children’s desire to avoid feelings of isolation or exclusion associated with linguistic differences. Lilya (1996) described her daughter’s early rejection of the home language:

At some point, around the second or third grade, she said she didn’t want to speak Russian because she “doesn’t need it: no one, no one among school friends speaks Russian, so why is it even needed; it is not fashionable, and I am the only one who is like this.

At the same time, children’s agency can have a positive effect on the growth and maintenance of the home language, specifically for recent immigrants. Children may actively embrace opportunities to engage with the Russian language and culture, finding valuable emotional support and coping mechanisms within these familiar elements of their identity. Natalia (2022) noted the transformative effect of a community-based experience for her daughter: “I saw my child’s eyes light up when she first attended a Russian folklore studio. This experience became crucial emotional support during a challenging psychological period when school and all classes were entirely in English.”

Vera (2023) shared that her daughter—now 14 but 12 at the time of their arrival—reacted extremely negatively toward the family’s push for the children to integrate quickly into the English-speaking social environment at the expense of Russian: “she hates the English language, hates immigration, hates us, hates everything.” As is evident from this quote, lowering commitment to speaking Russian within the family may create resentment and protest in children of recent immigrants.

Even for children who were born in the United States, speaking Russian can serve as a way to build community at school and thus have a positive effect on the family’s motivation to maintain the language. Lilya (1996) shared a story of how her daughter met a Russian-speaking boy in an online school they both attended and how the two struck up a friendship and decided to organize a Russian literature, language, and culture club.

Theme 3. The Effects of the Ukraine War and Russian Political Repressions on Parents’ Language Attitudes and Motivations to Speak Russian. Although none of the parents we interviewed ceased using Russian within their families or reported experiencing negative attitudes from their American acquaintances toward them speaking Russian, some described the sense of shame associated with having a Russian (speaking) identity, especially during the initial year of the war. Natalia (2022) explained: “During the first year or two, I always felt uncomfortable saying that I was from Russia as I believed–and still believe–that Russia started the war.” But Yana, whose family lived in the Czech Republic at the start of the war, did report substantial criticism from outsiders for their use of Russian to communicate with children which pressured her to avoid speaking the language around strangers. Yana (2017) commented that even after moving back to the United States from the Czech Republic after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, she hesitated to resume speaking Russian in public with her child: “[…] conflicts arose there, so I tried to avoid speaking Russian in public places.” Yana now perceives the first two years after the war began as a period that undermined her efforts to maintain Russian with her child and openly expresses regret about missed opportunities. Her 12-year-old son currently refuses to speak Russian with her.

For parents who immigrated to the United States long ago and now feel largely assimilated into American society—and, as they themselves note, are increasingly distanced from current events in their former homelands—the war has further weakened their motivation to maintain the Russian language within the family. It represents a significant, and potentially definitive, challenge to their previously established commitment to language maintenance. Irena (1991) explicitly questioned her family’s decision to speak Russian at home, noting her deep uncertainty about the language’s future:

I have no optimism that Russia will ever become a normal country. I don’t think my child will ever go there or have any interaction with people from Russia. So the question arises—why am I striving to maintain the language? What purpose does it serve?

Both parents in this particular family immigrated to the United States from Russian-speaking regions of the former Soviet Union during the 1990s. Before having children, they primarily communicated with each other in English. Despite their longstanding opposition to developments in Russia—particularly punitive legislation against the LGBTQIA+ community, which would likely exclude or endanger their family—they made a conscious choice to maintain Russian at home, valuing cognitive benefits of bilingualism for their child over the language’s national or ideological associations of which they were already cognizant. However, the war intensified existing doubts and disagreements about maintaining Russian, prompting them to start reassessing their prior commitment.

5.4. Challenges to FLP

With regard to RQ2–2 regarding challenges Russian-speaking families face in HLM, we observed that the identified themes detailed above overall coincide with those that describe how immigrant families actually use and manage the language in everyday life. We illustrate specific issues grouped into the main themes within the category “Challenges to FLP” below.

Theme 1: Realities of (Immigrant) Life and Social Pressures in the Host Country. Many families described a continuous struggle to balance support for Russian with the demands of English-language schooling. This balancing act is especially pronounced among families who immigrated recently with school-age children. Parents in this group said that they prioritized English to support their children’s smoother integration and to help them avoid the assimilation-related challenges the parents themselves faced upon arrival. In fact, maintaining the Russian language was not perceived as an urgent priority amid the broader challenges of adapting to and surviving in a new country. Parents emphasized that their immediate goals centered on economic stability, social integration, and the children’s academic success, making English the dominant focus in everyday life. Raya (2023) described the challenges of providing formal education in Russian:

Unfortunately, we’re not studying Russian, and that’s probably because our family is just trying to survive, so to speak. We work a lot, we study a lot, and because of that, we simply don’t have the energy to teach Russian to the children.

Natalia (2022) explained the family’s decision to temporarily withdraw their child from a Russian-language program in order to prioritize English before middle school, with the hope of reintroducing Russian instruction later.

In contrast, families whose children were born in the United States or immigrated at a very young age were more concerned about their Russian with the start of schooling. Our interviewees often described a noticeable shift in their children’s language use, influenced by immersion in an English-speaking environment at school and frequent interaction with English monolingual peers. Despite deliberate efforts to maintain a Russian-speaking context—such as fostering relationships with other Russian-speaking immigrant families and creating opportunities for natural language use—parents observed that children increasingly default to English in peer interactions. Even when surrounded by parents who communicate exclusively in Russian with each other and other family members, children tend to use English during play and in conversations of personal interest. As Liza (2017) noted: “We speak Russian, and our children can talk to adults in Russian, but when they’re together, they usually switch to English. They could speak Russian, but the environment overrides that.”

Theme 2: Growing Child Voice in Family Language Practices. The beginning of formal education in the societal language, the child’s increasing autonomy, and the expansion of their English-speaking social circle all influence the child’s language preferences and, consequently, the family’s language practices. For example, Lilya (1996) recalled that reading books in Russian used to be a bonding time for her and her daughter:

…we had this time every evening; she was already quite grown, around 9 or 10 years old, and I would read books to her. By then, she could read perfectly well on her own, but she liked when we’d sit down before bed and read a book together.

As her daughter grew older, Lilya noticed her increasing desire to read in English, and this evening ritual gradually disappeared from their lives. Another mother, Yana (2017), expressed a similar regret about losing the reading routine with her son: “The older he got, the more he read in English, the less he read with me in Russian.”

Some parents in this group felt it is necessary to regulate family language practices by reminding children which language is expected at home. For instance, Alina (2006) shared her approach: “They often address me in English, and I respond in Russian or say, ‘We speak Russian,’ and then they repeat in Russian.” Other parents, however, leave the choice of language up to the child, accommodating the child’s preferences. Kamila (2012) said:

I can’t make him watch something; I’m always waiting for the moment when he’ll just say: ‘I want this, I liked this, let’s watch it.’ And when he chooses English, then he watches it in English. I just think I wasn’t able to get him interested enough.

Theme 3: Lack of Resources to Support and Grow Children’s Russian. Alongside the need to balance HL maintenance with formal education conducted in English, many parents encounter significant challenges due to the lack of adequate resources for sustaining their home language in immigrant contexts. For example, Liza (2007) explained that all of her child’s extracurricular activities are in English because there are just no good options in Russian: “Right now we live in Columbia, South Carolina. It’s just… there’s nothing here—no Russian language, no theater, no piano teachers who speak Russian, no soccer in Russian, nothing at all.”

In addition to a lack of desired services and programs, several parents reported facing significant structural constraints that limited their ability to prioritize language transmission amid demanding work schedules, childcare duties, and other essential responsibilities. They emphasized that the high cost of extracurricular HL programs, combined with the physical and emotional toll of immigrant labor, often renders sustained language support unfeasible. Tatiana (1997) acknowledges that within such conditions, the capacity to maintain HL development is a form of privilege:

Most parents simply can’t make the effort because they’re working nonstop. These are immigrant families with young children. Parents work like horses—there’s just no time. We happen to have the resources, energy, and time. And that’s a very privileged position to be in.

Another structural constraint concerns the availability of the larger speech community. Some parents emphasized that maintaining Russian at home would be significantly easier if they lived in larger cities or states with stronger and bigger Russian-speaking communities.

Theme 4: The Effect of the Ukraine War and Geopolitical Disruption. Several parents pointed out that geopolitical disruptions caused by the ongoing war in Ukraine, coupled with a lack of financial resources for travel, significantly hindered their ability to provide opportunities for broader and more meaningful contexts for speaking Russian. As Kristina (2019) shared: “In my ideal scenario, we could afford to travel to Russia regularly, for long periods during the summer, for instance. That would be ideal for me, and then I would feel reassured that something of the language would remain.” The geopolitical tensions between the United States and Russia also make travel for grandparents and other relatives difficult as getting a U.S. visa has become an enormously laborious and expensive process. The war has not only restricted travel to and from the homeland but also created new obstacles for accessing Russian-language resources in immigrant contexts. One parent pointed to the rising costs of Russian-language books and educational materials for children, noting that prices had increased significantly since the outbreak of the war.

6. Discussion

Our findings reveal a complex landscape where families demonstrate remarkable resilience in maintaining their commitment to intergenerational transmission of Russian. The usual pressures of immigrant realities create many challenges even under the most favorable sociopolitical conditions, but the ongoing war in Ukraine significantly complicated the parents’ task of maintaining their own (migrant) language and supporting their children’s (heritage) language as they themselves grapple with their identity negotiation, fragmented community, and increased geopolitical tensions surrounding the Russian language. We organize the discussion along the major themes discovered during our analysis.

6.1. A Spectrum of Motivations and Practices in Intergenerational Transmission of Russian (RQ 1–1 and RQ 1–2)

We observe that parental motivations for sustaining Russian are largely rooted in internal, identity-based processes linked to the transnational identities of immigrant parents and their school-aged children. These internal processes vary among Russian speakers belonging to different immigration waves and seem to depend on the length of residence in the United States and the strength of their emotional ties to the homeland. For parents who immigrated in the 1990s, received their higher education in the United States, and became comfortably assimilated, often distancing themselves from developments in the post-Soviet space, the motivation to transmit Russian within the family is less emotional and is typically linked to the perceived benefits of multilingualism and access to more educational and cultural resources. This motivation is often grounded in the parents’ own experiences and their desire to provide their children with a valuable life tool—an additional language that proved useful to them personally. Immigrants who arrived in the 2000s–2010s were better able to sustain strong transnational family ties post-migration due to the widespread availability of the Internet and more accessible international travel. Several parents from this immigration period noted that for a long time following their relocation to the United States, they felt as though they were living “between two homes” (“нa двa дoмa”), frequently returning to their countries of origin. They envisioned a similar transnational connection for their children, viewing HLM as closely tied to relationships with extended family. When reflecting on their motivation to maintain Russian, these parents emphasized not only the importance of their children speaking the language but also of engaging with cultural knowledge and “knowing their roots.” It is important to note that changes in the geopolitical context of the post-Soviet space—triggered by Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 and continuing into the early 2020s—influenced the motivations of many parents who immigrated to the United States at that period. In the interviews, these parents expressed a heightened fear of losing emotional closeness with their children as they grow up immersed in a different language and culture. We hypothesize that this concern is partly related to less frequent travel back to their home countries, as well as internal conflicts within extended families due to divergent and often controversial views on the political events. For recently arrived parents in our study, especially those who came after the start of the Russian-Ukraine war, maintaining Russian at home is often perceived as a means of preserving close emotional bonds with their children and sustaining a sense of safety and continuity within the family in immigration. However, many of these newly arrived parents also acknowledge the risk of losing Russian as a family language due to assimilation pressures and SL integration demands inherent to immigrant life. They emphasize that, while maintaining Russian is important, the well-being and unity of the family remain the foremost priority—with or without the language.

An interesting observation emerged from the analysis of the motivations and aspirations expressed by interviewed parents across different immigration periods for their children: after the ability to communicate in Russian, the second most frequently mentioned priority was the ability to read in Russian. Overall, the parents we interviewed demonstrated a strong orientation toward literature-based language competency, and the degree to which they focused on it depended on the length of their residence in the United States and the strength of connections they kept with the home country. For some parents, regardless of the time of arrival, but especially for those who have maintained strong ties with family members in their homelands, it is important that their children can read Russian classical literature in the original, understand the cultural context, and engage with the same texts that the parents—and even grandparents—read during their own childhoods. For more recent immigrants, literature often functions as a bridge for fostering parent–child intimacy in immigration. These parents were less concerned with whether the books were authored by Russian or Russophone writers, and more focused on the act of reading in Russian and discussing texts in the language. This emphasis on reading in Russian is closely tied to parental anxieties about the potential emergence of a language barrier between themselves and their children. Overall, the desire to see their children reading in Russian was a consistent theme across all generations of parents interviewed in this study, which can be explained by the parents’ education level and is supported by prior research on HL motivations among Russian-speaking college-age students (Carreira & Kagan, 2011). And while the reasons explicitly stated by our participants in support of literacy-based practices centered around cultural knowledge, the prevalence of these practices among interviewed parents allows us to hypothesize that transmission of the Russian language remains stable. As previous research points out, home literacy environment, specifically the presence of books in the HL and reading routines, predicts lexical development in the HL and scaffolds HL development overall (Curdt-Christiansen, 2009; Zhang & Koda, 2011).

With regard to RQ 1–2, our findings highlight that Russian-speaking parents in the United States employ a diverse range of strategies to support HL transmission, including structured interactional rules within the family, targeted media exposure, and educational opportunities. In this regard, our participants’ HLM practices align with those of other immigrant populations who strive to ensure survival of the migrant language (De Houwer, 1999; Potowski, 2013; Curdt-Christiansen, 2013). At the same time, Russian-speaking parents focus more on reading specifically as they aim to preserve culturally significant texts as part of their children’s cultural heritage. We observed such emphasis on reading in most of the participants’ reports regardless of their ethnic background. As immigrants from the former USSR, they often commented on the importance of reference texts as a uniting factor in the shared cultural code.

Our data also indicate that family language practices are complex, fluid, and highly adaptive. For example, they are shaped by the ideological orientations of both caregivers, which may diverge and require ongoing negotiations, even in endogenous families. In parents who have more than one migrant language in their repertoires (e.g., Belarusian and Russian; Ukrainian and Russian), these parental languages compete for space in HLM, increasing the complexity of practices and motivations in FLP. Family language practices also adapt to the emerging role of technology, which functions both as a facilitator and a site of language choice negotiation. Current technological developments—such as online video communication platforms and speech-to-text tools—have introduced new opportunities for Russian HL use, facilitating transnational communication with family members and supporting literacy development in innovative ways.

The findings regarding RQs 2–1 and 2–2 align with previous research emphasizing the central role of parental motivation in intergenerational HL transmission (Fishman, 1991; Potowski, 2010, 2013). However, our analysis reveals that these motivations—whether emotional and identity-driven or pragmatic and instrumental—often come into tension with a range of internal and external factors. These include children’s growing agency, shifting geopolitical contexts, and parents’ internal conflicts over linguistic choices in light of the ongoing geopolitical upheavals.

6.2. Internal and External Pressures Operating on Parents’ Motivation and FLP (RQs 2–1 and 2–2)

Our analysis revealed a strong overlap between external forces challenging parental motivation to maintain Russian as HL and those informing actual family language practices. The various factors clustered into themes represented in Figure 1 and Figure 2 are interrelated as they consistently shape parents’ views on HLM and influence their concrete decisions about language use at home. This finding is supported by research on other language communities which shows that FLP is shaped by a complex set of interrelated factors (Balaska, 2024; Curdt-Christiansen & Huang, 2020; Shen & Jiang, 2023).

Two of the key themes we identified as challenges to parental motivation and family language practices—the realities of immigrant life and children’s evolving agency—are both powerful external pressures which resonate not only within the Russian-speaking families interviewed in this study, but also reflect patterns found in other immigrant communities (Curdt-Christiansen, 2009; Schalley & Eisenchlas, 2020).

Family language practices are embedded within the realities of the host country, including the omnipresence of the SL in all social settings, existing educational structures, and broader societal expectations, each of which can significantly hinder HL use within the family (Hollebeke, 2023; Pagé & Noels, 2024). Counteracting the assimilative forces of the host society is not an easy task for immigrant families. Several participants in our study explicitly acknowledged that their ability to maintain Russian represented “a very privileged position.” This recognition of linguistic privilege underscores the fact that HLM often requires resources, such as time, money, and proximity to an HL speech community (Fishman, 2012; Potowski, 2013), that are not equally accessible to all Russian-speaking families, regardless of their motivation or commitment. Consequently, parents find themselves navigating a persistent tension between identity-rooted motivations and structurally imposed constraints.

At the same time, as children grow older, parents face new dilemmas, particularly around educational programming, bilingual literacy development, and balancing competing academic and linguistic goals with finite resources. Many participants emphasized the critical importance of access to Russian-speaking communities, educational materials, and extracurricular activities in Russian. They also noted that a lack of such resources or their cost combined with pressures from daily immigrant life frequently leads to revised expectations and shifting language practices. Many participating parents acknowledged that, despite their best efforts, their children communicate predominantly in English, even with their Russian-speaking peers, highlighting how children’s agency simultaneously challenges parental motivation to persist with HLM and the consistent implementation of family language practices. Similar challenges are reported in many other language communities in the United States. For instance, recent research on Turkish parents shows that maintaining the HL under conditions of limited resources and English dominance necessitates continual negotiation and compromise (Inan et al., 2024).

The third major external factor that challenges maintenance of Russian in participating families concerns the Ukraine war, Russian political repression, and a broader geopolitical disruption. The war in particular emerged as a powerful force challenging not only the sociopolitical context in which Russian-speaking immigrant families navigate HLM, but also their internal motivations and emotional relationships with Russian. As the interviews demonstrated, the war introduced moral ambivalence, identity-based discomfort, and ruptures in transnational family ties. For some participants, Russian became a language marked by unfavorable sociopolitical associations which arose after Russia’s attack on Ukraine, raising existential questions for parents about the role of Russian in their children’s future lives. While prior research has acknowledged the role of macro-level pressures in shaping FLP (Curdt-Christiansen & Huang, 2020; Gu et al., 2025), our findings underscore that geopolitical trauma can shift parents’ views on the home language, even in the absence of overt linguistic discrimination in the host country.

On the other hand, this lack of overt linguistic discrimination in the host country seems to help Russian-speaking parents in the United States to maintain their FLP, despite the internal angst they developed after the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Studies conducted in the context of European host countries show that Russian-speaking families do experience significant societal pressures against using Russian in public because of the language’s negative associations (Protassova & Yelenevskaya, 2024; Wright & Palviainen, 2024). In our study, one participant reported reducing and even stopping to speak Russian to her child in public when she lived in the Czech Republic, but she felt safe to use it again once they returned to the United States.

Moreover, some of the recent immigrants who arrived after the start of the war commented that they feared negative reactions toward their Russian from the Americans but discovered that their fears were unfounded. This finding highlights that geopolitical upheavals and the resulting unfavorable associations with the language affect a family’s emotional stance toward the home language but do not automatically lead to the abandonment or reduced use of an HL; attitudes of the host society towards the language seem to be a more influential factor affecting FLP.

Nevertheless, the war does challenge family practices because the geopolitical disruption caused by Russia’s invasion created additional financial and travel constraints, which several of the interviewed parents described as significant barriers to creating what they considered a supportive environment for effective language transmission.

Overall, our study confirms that HL maintenance operates within significant structural constraints that extend beyond the current political context. The challenges described by participants—time pressures, financial limitations, and geographic isolation from Russian-speaking communities—reflect broader patterns of linguistic inequality in immigrant contexts that affect all HL communities (Leeman, 2015). The additional pressures introduced by the war—including increased costs of materials in Russian, restricted travel, and reduced community programming—further exacerbate pre-existing structural barriers.

6.3. Persistent Commitment to HLM Despite SL Pressures and Geopolitical Upheaval (RQ 2–1)

Perhaps the most striking finding of this study is the absence of widespread Russian language abandonment among participating families, despite the significant geopolitical pressures and moral complexities introduced by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which is something we expected to uncover. This challenges assumptions that HL maintenance would necessarily decline when the homeland becomes associated with aggression or violence. Our participants consistently demonstrated what may be called ideological persistence—a continued commitment to Russian as a marker of identity and family connection that transcends political events.

This persistence aligns with Fishman’s (2006) argument that language loyalty often operates independently of political allegiance, but our findings extend this concept to show how families actively work to decouple language from state politics. Participants like Tatiana (1997) explicitly emphasize that “no Putin can take away [her] native language,” while Irena (1991) asserts that “Russian is not guilty of anything” even if she is highly critical of the Russian state. This deliberate separation of language from political regime represents a complex form of identity work that preserves cultural resources while rejecting political associations and that characterizes Russian-speaking immigrants regardless of the immigration waves, represented by our sampling. At the same time, it seems that recently arrived families (after February 2022) are more acutely aware of and more vulnerable to the geopolitical pressures surrounding the Russian language.

Overall, our analysis indicates that motivation for HLM is often affected by internal forces, such as emotional attachments, sense of belonging, and identity (cf. Guardado, 2018), whereas family language practices are shaped mostly by external factors, including immediate structural realities, the demands of navigating everyday life, and geopolitical events. The finding that families maintain Russian despite external pressures also supports previous observations about the agentive nature of identity construction in transnational contexts (Curdt-Christiansen, 2018; Vorobeva & Jauhiainen, 2023). Rather than passively accepting externally imposed stigma, our participants actively redefined what “being Russian” means in their diaspora context, often emphasizing cultural, linguistic, and family connections over national or political identities.

6.4. The War in Ukraine as a Complicating Factor, Not a Determining Force

While the war in Ukraine has undoubtedly introduced new challenges for Russian HL maintenance, our data suggests that it functions more as a complicating factor than a determining force in FLP. The war has added layers of complexity—moral discomfort, social anxiety, community tensions—but has not fundamentally altered the core dynamics of HL transmission that these families were already navigating. This finding is significant because it highlights the robustness of established FLP in the face of external crises. Families like Kristina’s (2019), who described disruptions to community programming and interpersonal tensions, still maintained Russian use at home and continued to value their children’s language development. This suggests that while macro-level geopolitical events create stress for HL communities, micro-level family practices may be more resilient than previously assumed.

The Ukraine war’s impact was most pronounced in two areas: community cohesion and transnational connections. Several participants described cancelled cultural events, reduced community participation, and strained relationships within Russian-speaking networks. Additionally, travel restrictions and moral concerns about visiting Russia disrupted what some families had relied upon as crucial immersion experiences for their children. These findings align with research on how conflict affects diaspora communities’ transnational practices (Cohen, 1997; Dahinden, 2012), but they extend this work by showing how such disruptions specifically impact HL maintenance strategies.

6.5. FLP as a Complex and Constantly Evolving Process

Finally, the findings confirm that FLP is not static but continually reconfigured in response to changing life circumstances, particularly as children start formal schooling in English and families confront new social and institutional demands. Many parents in our study began their parenting journeys with a strong commitment to maintaining Russian, yet over time, this commitment changes. These shifts align with King et al.’s (2008) argument that FLP is inherently dynamic and subject to temporal renegotiation. Rather than interpreting language maintenance outcomes through a binary lens of success or failure, it is more productive to view them as the result of complex, evolving negotiations between competing goals: the desire for intergenerational cultural continuity versus the demands of survival, mobility, and integration into the host society. For many immigrant families, HL practices may be paused, redefined, or reintroduced in new forms, depending on resources, emotional bandwidth, and children’s developmental stages. This perspective not only destigmatizes parental “inconsistency” but also highlights the need for flexible, longitudinal approaches to understanding HLM across the family life cycle.

Our findings align with research from other U.S.-based HL communities. Case studies with Hmong American children show that children’s agency and key schooling milestones can reconfigure family language policy during the early elementary years (Her, 2024). Likewise, work with Turkish immigrant parents in the United States documents how English-only school environments and limited community support lead families to recalibrate “home-only” rules and adjust expectations over time (Özkaynak, 2023).

7. Study Limitations

Several methodological limitations should be acknowledged in this study. The sampling approach, while purposeful and criterion-based, relied exclusively on recruitment through Russian-speaking Facebook groups, and specifically parents’ groups. This, combined with the fact that participants volunteered for the study, may have introduced a selection bias toward those who are already committed to intergenerational transmission of Russian. In fact, many of our interviewees expressed an explicit wish to see the results of the study and asked for recommendations on bilingualism resources in order to learn more about language maintenance.

We recognize that intersecting factors such as gender, race, class, and power relations play a significant role in shaping FLP—especially in intercultural and transnational contexts (Lanza & Gomes, 2020)—and acknowledge that our study cannot capture every dimension of this complexity, especially considering that the majority of our participants were mothers. We also acknowledge that participants may have chosen—consciously or subconsciously—what to share during interviews, which inevitably shapes the narratives collected and interpreted in this study (Caduri, 2013).

Although we aimed for diversity across immigration periods, the sample of 16 interviews represents a relatively small data set. Nevertheless, being rooted in an exploratory, qualitative approach, this study seeks to illuminate the lived experiences of Russian-speaking immigrant families rather than to generalize across the entire diaspora. The demographic homogeneity of the sample may also present some constraints, as all participants possessed higher education diplomas, potentially limiting generalizability to families with different educational backgrounds, despite the inclusion of families with varying socio-economic statuses which depend on the length of immigration.

We recognize the heterogeneity of the Russian-speaking diaspora and acknowledge that other perspectives and trajectories may differ from those represented in our sample.

8. Conclusions

As the first systematic investigation of the impact that the 2022 Ukraine war has had on parental motivation for HLM in Russian-speaking communities in the U.S., this study has highlighted the complex dynamics of family language practices, revealing how Russian-speaking immigrants navigate the intersection of personal motivations, structural constraints, and geopolitical upheaval caused by the war in Ukraine. Our findings demonstrate that while the 2022 invasion has introduced new layers of complexity to the FLP, it has not fundamentally undermined the commitment to intergenerational transmission of Russian among participating families. Instead, we observed a remarkable persistence in language maintenance practices, in many cases driven by the deliberate separation of language from state politics. The analysis of the interviews shows that participating parents are concerned about the possible reduction and potential loss of Russian, the language they speak as migrants, in their children for whom it will become a heritage language. They are aware of the changes taking place not only in their own language when it is separated from the source country, but also of the changes that happen to the language during intergenerational transmission. Some recognize the inevitability of this process, taking comfort in the hope that their children will preserve at least basic conversational abilities and/or will have knowledge of the culture. The majority hope for a balance between the two languages if not across all four modalities—speaking, understanding, reading, and writing—then at least in some (speaking, understanding, and reading). Still, all of the parents we interviewed are invested in intergenerational language transmission and motivated to continue despite the pressures exerted by immigration, loss of the source country, and geopolitical tensions affecting the Russian language.

This study extends the FLP framework by demonstrating how macro-level geopolitical events function as complicating rather than determining factors in HLM. We introduce the concept of “ideological persistence”—families’ ability to decouple language from state politics while maintaining commitment to intergenerational transmission. This study also contributes to the broader understanding of FLP as an inherently dynamic process that requires flexible, longitudinal approaches rather than binary assessments of success or failure. In many cases, the challenges described by the interviewed parents reveal a deep interconnection between motivational factors and practical language decisions, suggesting that shifts in FLP are both a response to and a reflection of evolving emotional, social, and structural conditions within immigrant family life which also depend on the broader sociopolitical context. The recognition that HL practices may be paused, redefined, or reintroduced across the family life cycle offers a more realistic and compassionate framework for supporting immigrant families’ linguistic goals.

Our findings have important implications for educators, policymakers, and community organizations seeking to support multilingual families, suggesting that effective programs must address both the structural barriers that constrain language practices and the emotional complexities that shape family motivations. Beyond its analytical contributions, this study also responds to the deeply personal questions voiced by many of the parents we interviewed. After sharing their experiences, many parents asked us, “Am I doing the right thing?” “How are other parents managing this?” or “Is it even possible to preserve Russian here?” These questions underscore the uncertainties and emotional burden many parents carry as they navigate HL maintenance in complex sociopolitical and cultural landscapes. Our findings do not offer a single solution, but they do affirm that many families—despite challenges and uncertainties—continue to find meaning, value, and purpose in passing on Russian. By bringing these stories into dialogue, this study offers a collective reflection on what it means to preserve a heritage language amid displacement and disruption.