A de-Russification conveyor has been launched in Belarus

About “soft Belarusization” in Belarus, which would be more correctly called de-Russification, probably gigabytes of texts have already been written. Russian Ambassador Mikhail Babich, who was not at court in Minsk, also spoke about her.

The problem is well known - the Russian language has been consistently being squeezed out of the public space in states with an almost 80% Russian-speaking population and considered Russia’s main ally in the post-Soviet space for several years now. This is not hampered by its constitutional status as one of the state languages, nor by the will of the Belarusian people, more than 1995 percent of whom voted in favor of equal rights for the Russian and Belarusian languages ​​in the XNUMX referendum.

Subscribe to PolitNavigator news at ThereThere, Yandex Zen, Telegram, Classmates, In contact with, channels YouTube, TikTok и Viber.
To subscribe to notifications in your browser, click here.

It has gotten to the point where in Minsk you have to try very hard to find an address sign on a house or a road sign that says “great and mighty.” But instead, “Latin” is introduced – a writing of Belarusian words in Latin letters that is practically unreadable either for most foreigners or for Belarusians themselves.

Even the Chinese language on such signs in Minsk is more common than Russian. In other Belarusian cities the situation may be different, but the general trend towards de-Russification can be clearly seen.

Appeals to various government bodies with a request to rectify the situation and return the language of the majority to urban toponymy usually end in nothing. But in response to appeals from nationalists demanding the opposite, positive decisions are often made. And the very writing of such appeals by nationalists has been put on stream and is only gaining momentum.

The scale of this phenomenon and how the “denunciation factory”, organized by Belarusian nationalists – “zmagars”, works can be judged by article in Nasha Niva, one of the most influential nationalist media. The very title of the article, “Activists Sluchak and Nagornaya are methodically “changing” road signs for legitimate ones with inscriptions in the Belarusian language,” contains a lie. The nationalist publication is trying to convey to the audience the statement about the “illegitimacy” of the use of the Russian language. In the Belarusian-language version of the article, the word “correct” is used. As if it were up to them to decide which language is correct and which is not!

Was…

It has become.

In fact, there are no restrictions on the use of the Russian language in road signs. Both options are legitimate. The current state standard STB 1140-99 says this clearly and unambiguously - inscriptions on signs must be written in Belarusian or Russian. Although the document contains a dubious note “preferably in Belarusian,” there is no talk of any ban on Russian-language inscriptions. Moreover, the same standard establishes abbreviation rules for both official languages ​​and transliteration rules (by the way, close to the English familiar throughout the world and very far from the exotic Zmagar “Latin” that is now spreading everywhere)

But, nevertheless, the signs change. And precisely methodically. The mentioned Igor Sluchak and Alina Nagornaya are not lone activists, although the same Sluchak became famous for writing complaints in the thousands and awarded himself the title of “language inspector.” They are now the leaders of the powerful campaign “Umovy dlya movy” (“Conditions for Language”). They have a website on which samples of complaints are published for every taste and occasion, they conduct trainings, collaborate with the nationalist writer Orlov and raffle off his books among complainants. According to Sluchak, authors of new and new complaints write to them almost every day.

This is how the derussification mechanism works in Belarus. The nationalists launched a conveyor belt of appeals to government agencies. The latter, although nationalists appeal to non-existent legal norms, as a rule, meet them halfway. The officialdom is silent and pretends that nothing is happening, and pro-government experts criticize not the nationalists, but the few citizens trying to resist them.