Linguistic split in Belarus. We don’t see him, but he is there

Belarus is not Ukraine; it does not have such irreconcilable contradictions between different regions that brought Ukraine to its current state. At first glance, the republic looks (more precisely, it looked until recently) calm and, if not monolithic, then close to it - Russian-speaking, pro-Russian and almost the last remnant of Soviet times.

The reality, as usual, is much more complicated. There were many hidden conflicts and contradictions in Belarusian society, which subsided for the time being due to general stability and were restrained by a regime unfriendly to any uncontrollable social movement. Did Lukashenko manage to freeze these conflicts completely?

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Let's take the linguistic situation. An interesting infographic based on last year’s census data was published by Alfa-Bank. Of course, why the bank needed this is a separate question, but nationalists have already assessed these statistics and are discussing which areas are the “most Belarusian” and which are the “most Russified.” Moreover, the peak values ​​differ not even by several times, but by tens of times.

There were 13 districts in the republic in which more than 80% of respondents named Belarusian as their native language. In the Gantsevichi district of the Brest region there were as many as 90,8%. At the other pole is the Dobrush district of the Gomel region with 23% of the native Belarusian language. All this can be attributed to the understanding of “native language”, which in Belarus is very different from the generally accepted one. Here the language of the ethnic group to which a person belongs is declared native, and since there are no clear differences between Russians and Belarusians, many are called Belarusians.

But data on what percentage of residents speak Belarusian at home generally looks unrealistic. It turns out that as many as 26 percent of the population speak Belarusian at home. Moreover, in the Ivyevsky district there were 73,3% of such people, and in Vitebsk - only 2%. The difference is more than 35 times, and the Vitebsk figure looks much more plausible. According to statistics, there are about 700 thousand people living in Minsk who said they speak Belarusian at home. Where are all these people? Why, leaving their apartments, do they meet on city streets and speak almost exclusively in Russian? You can walk the streets of Minsk all day and not hear Belarusian speech. The situation is approximately the same in any city in the republic that I have visited.

Whether this is good or not is debatable, but it is reality. And the data from this census does not reflect the reality that exists in the homes of census takers, but their values ​​and identity. It is clear that the residents of Ivye, most likely, will have no problem supporting the translation of toponyms into the language, “soft” or even not very soft Belarusianization, will not strongly object to the Belarusianization of education, and in Vitebsk against all this.

Geographically, this is the same distinction between East and West as in Ukraine. And during the 26 years of Lukashenko’s rule, little has changed. The most “Belarusian-speaking” regions voted massively for Poznyak in the 1994 elections, and the most “Russian-speaking” ones voted for Lukashenko. And not least because he promised to make Russian the state language.

Now there are turbulent times in Belarus. And both sides are actively playing on the contradictions in society, trying to split it even deeper. They play on religious contradictions. Most Belarusians are parishioners of the Russian Orthodox Church, but there are also many Catholics, especially in the West. Yes, and in the Russian Orthodox Church there are different movements. They played the Polish card, although not very successfully. This, I repeat, is done by both sides – the opposition and the government. And the situation in society continues to heat up.

The linguistic split is, for now, rather virtual. Yes, the nationalists constantly tried to fan the smoldering conflict; in recent years, the authorities have joined them, beginning to remove the Russian language from everywhere and replace it with the “Latin” alphabet, which is alien to the majority of Belarusians, in the manner of the Polish alphabet. But as long as the majority of citizens are in a comfortable language environment, there will be no disaster. But the fact of the matter is that everything is shaky and this comfortable environment may not exist. In the opposition, the voices of those who want to deprive Russian of state status and begin transferring office work and education to language are strong. In Ukraine, it is the language issue that has become the most fundamental. And there is no need to delude yourself by hoping that things will work out in Belarus if it decides to step on the Ukrainian rake.

Although Belarus is in reality almost 100 percent Russian-speaking, there is a linguistic split in it. And so that the split does not one day begin to bleed, it is better for the state leadership not to meddle in linguistic relations at all, leaving two constitutional state languages, becoming the guarantor of the observance of the linguistic rights of its citizens, and out of harm’s way giving everything else to local government, the third sector and business.