"The leading tendency of national-linguistic development has become bilingualism: the mastery in equal degree of the native and the Russian languages, and this has been by far an unfinished process, which requires constant attention [...] The interest towards the Bashkir language from other ethnicities has kept growing, the functions of the Bashkir language expanding [...] - Preface, Bashkir-Russian Dictionary: 32000 words. Moscow, Russian Academy of Sciences, 1996. Page v."