The Failure of the Language Policy in Belarus

Abstract

The Republic of Belarus, which used to be part of the Soviet Union, became an independent state in August of 1991. It was expected that Belarus would follow the same path on the way of its independent nation building as the other former Soviet republics, i.e. it would promote its national identity and the use of the national language in the public and private spheres of life. The tentative attempt of the nationalist-inclined part of the Belarusian intelligentsia to introduce a new language policy that stipulated for a gradual switch to Belarusian as the sole state language first seemed quite successful. The referendum of 1995, however, reintroduced the Russian language as the second state language, which in practice meant squeezing Belarusian out of the public sphere, and going back to Belarus being a predominantly Russian-speaking country.

Based on the available scholarship, official and historical documents, and other secondary data, the essay argues that the new language policy failed because Belarusians had not formed into a nation by the beginning of the 20th century. With the Russian language being the medium of urban dwellers’ communication and a means of upward social mobility since the times of the tsarist empire, the value of being fluent in Belarusian still remains questionable for the majority of the Belarusian population.