Language Research

Following the defeat of Russia in the Russo-Japanese War and the Revolution of 1905, strikes and peasant disorders erupted throughout the Russian Empire. Russian authorities were forced to relax their repressive policies on non-Russian ethnic groups, prompting a national and cultural flowering in Belarus. The ban on the Belarusian language (and other non-Russian languages) was lifted, although there were still restrictions on its use; education was expanded, and peasants began to attend school for the first time. Belarusian writers published classics of modern Belarusian literature. In the early 1920s, Belarusian language and culture flourished, and the language was promoted as the official medium of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) in Belarusian and the Government as well as of scholarly, scientific, and educational establishments. Most primary and secondary schools switched to instruction in the Belarusian language, and institutions of higher education gradually made the switch as well. The Belarusian State University was founded in 1921 and the Institute of Belarusian Culture was founded in 1922. The interests of other minorities in the Republic were taken into account in a July 1924 decree that confirmed equal rights for the four principal languages of the republic: Belarusian, Polish, Russian and Yiddish.

The Belorussian SSR was one of four founding Republics of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR, or Soviet Union), established on December 30, 1922. During the Stalin era Belorussia used to be "protected" against possible Western influences through a program of intensive Russification, thus creating a cordon sanitaire for Russia along the Polish border. Consequently, most key positions in Minsk, as well as in the western provincial cities of Hrodna (Grodno, in Russian) and Brest, were filled by Russians sent from elsewhere in the Soviet Union. The Belorussian language was unofficially banned from official use, educational and cultural institutions, and the mass media, and Belorussian national culture was suppressed by Moscow. This so-called cultural cleansing intensified greatly after 1959, when Nikita S. Khrushchev, the CPSU leader at the time, pronounced in Minsk, "the sooner we all start speaking Russian, the faster we shall build communism."

Supreme Soviet of Belorussian SSR declared independence on August 25, 1991 and changed name of country to Republic of Belarus.

On January 26, 1990, the Supreme Soviet voted to make Belarusian the official language of the State, effective September 1, 1990. The law included provisions for protecting the languages of minorities and allowed up to ten years to make the transition from Russian to Belarusian.

Since late 1992, there has been a growing demand that the Russian language be given the same official status as Belarusian. The results of a four-question referendum of May 1995 put an end to any uncertainty; the populace voted for Russian having the same status as Belarusian.

A new Belarusian Constitution was submitted to the Supreme Soviet in three different versions before it was finally adopted on March 28, 1994, and went into effect on March 30, 1994. The new basic law declares the Republic of Belarus a democracy that operates on the basis of a diversity of political institutions, ideologies, and opinions, with all religions and creeds equal before the law. The official language is Belarusian, although Russian is retained as the language of interethnic communication. Belarus is declared a nuclear-free, neutral state. An element in this strategy may be the April 26, 1986, nuclear power plant accident.

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