Russification of Belarus
[1] This period witnessed a notable rise in the use of the Russian language in education, administration, and public life, often paralleling and sometimes overshadowing the Belarusian cultural and linguistic elements.
Following the partitions of Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth in the late 18th century (1772, 1793, 1795), the Russian Empire gained control over a large part of Belarusian territory.
This period saw the beginnings of a deeper Russification process, wherein the Russian authorities faced the challenge of integrating a region where the majority of the nobility and a significant proportion of the urban population, along with the Uniate clergy, predominantly spoke Polish, while approximately 90% of the rural populace retained Belarusian as their primary language.
[7]Throughout the 18th and 19th centuries in the Northwestern Krai, the developing confessional divide between Orthodox and Catholics significantly influenced ethnic distinctions.
[8] Russification efforts, particularly under Mikhail Muravyov-Vilensky and continued by his successor, Konstantin Kaufman, aimed to rebuild the West Russian ethnic consciousness among the Orthodox population.
[9] This led to a heightened sense of all-Russian national identity among the populace, emphasizing regional peculiarities and linguistic characteristics in the Northwestern Krai.
[10][11] These institutions were distinctly class-based, and the shift was designed to instill loyalty to the Russian Orthodox Church and the autocratic regime.
By the end of the 19th century, the Russian authorities had significantly enhanced the infrastructure in the Northwestern Krai, part of their strategy to more fully incorporate the Belarusian region into the empire.
This focus on developing industry, transportation, and agriculture marked a contrast to the previous Polish view of Belarus as a backward province.
From 1860 to 1881, the number of schools in Belarus increased from 576 to 2185, demonstrating a strategic effort to expand Russian educational and cultural initiatives.
[22]In the 1920s, belarusization took place in the Byelorussian SSR, aiming to expand the use of the Belarusian language in socio-political and cultural life.
[29] The phase of Belarusization eventually gave way to a renewed emphasis on Russification, aligning with Soviet policies that favored Russian linguistic dominance across the USSR.
[34] Candidate of Philological Sciences Igor Klimov writes: The Bolshevik state, in its unique historical experiment of creating a new society and a new human being, viewed language as an object of special manipulation aimed at achieving certain non-linguistic goals.
A key aspect of these manipulations, starting from 1930, was to reinforce Russian influence in the literary language norms of other ethnicities of the USSR.
[36][37] In 1990, the Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Belarus for Ideology, Alexander Kuzmin, recalled: In 1958, there were eight Belarusian-language schools in Minsk.
As Vladimir Alpatov notes:This led to a paradoxical situation at first glance: many national schools were more supported from above, sometimes out of inertia, while there was a movement from below towards switching to education in Russian (not excluding the study of the mother tongue as a subject).
[53] The vast majority of Belarusian-language schools located in rural areas that are gradually closed through the exodus of its population to the cities.
[57] Efforts continue to revive and promote the Belarusian language through various media including the historically significant newspaper "Nasha Niva" and modern internet platforms.
