TALLINN, Estonia — When Mikalay began school in Belarus this 12 months, the 15-year-old discovered that his teachers and faculty administrators now not called him by that name. Instead, they called him Nikolai, the Russian equivalent.
In addition, classes at his school – among the finest within the country – are actually taught in Russian somewhat than Belarusian, the language he has spoken for many of his life.
Belarusians like Mikalay are experiencing a brand new wave of Russification as Moscow expands its economic, political and cultural dominance and overtakes its neighbor's identity.
This isn’t the primary time. Russia imposed its language, symbols and cultural institutions on Belarus under the tsars and within the Soviet era. But with the collapse of the USSR in 1991, the country began to say its identity and Belarusian briefly became the official language, with the white-red-white national flag replacing a version of the hammer and sickle.
But that modified in 1994, when Alexander Lukashenko, a former Soviet collective farm official, got here to power. The authoritarian leader made Russian the official language alongside Belarusian and abolished nationalist symbols.
Lukashenko has now ruled the country for over thirty years, allowing Russia to dominate all facets of life in Belarus, a rustic of 9.5 million people. Belarusian, which like Russian uses the Cyrillic alphabet, is barely heard on the streets of Minsk and other major cities.
The official language, utilized by most media outlets, is Russian. Lukashenko speaks only Russian and government officials often don’t use their native language.
The country relies on Russian loans and low cost energy and has a political and military alliance with Moscow, allowing President Vladimir Putin to station troops and missiles on Ukrainian soil, which served as a staging area for the war in Ukraine.
“I understand that our Belarus is occupied. … And who is the president there? Not Lukashenko. The president is Putin,” said Svetlana Alexievich, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2015 and lives in de facto exile in Germany. “The nation has been humiliated and it will be very difficult for Belarusians to recover from this.”
Belarusian cultural figures have been persecuted and a whole lot of nationalist organizations have been closed. According to experts, Moscow is attempting to implement in Belarus what the Kremlin planned to do in neighboring Ukraine when the war began there in 2022.
“It is obvious that our children are being deliberately deprived of their native language, history and Belarusian identity, but parents are strongly advised not to ask questions about Russification,” said Mikalay's father, Anatoly, who spoke to The Associated Press provided that his last name not be used for fear of retribution.
“We were informed about the synchronization of the curriculum with Russia this year and were shown a propaganda film about how the Ukrainian secret service allegedly recruits our teenagers and forces them to carry out acts of sabotage in Belarus,” he said.
Mikalay's school was one among the few where paperwork and a few classes were conducted in Belarusian. In recent years, nevertheless, dozens of teachers have been fired and the Belarusian-language section of the web site disappeared.
Human rights activist Ales Byaljatsky, who was sentenced in 2023 for his work that won the Nobel Peace Prize, demanded that his trial be held in Belarusian. The court refused and sentenced him to 10 years in prison.
Lukashenko mocks his native language and says: “You can’t express anything great in Belarusian. … There are only two great languages in the world: Russian and English.”
Speaking to Russian state media, Lukashenko said Putin once thanked him for making Russian the dominant language in Belarus.
“I said, 'Wait, what are you thanking me for? … The Russian language is my language, we were part of an empire and we participate in the development of this language,'” Lukashenko said.
Belarus was a part of the Russian Empire for hundreds of years and have become one among the 15 Soviet republics after the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. Everyday use of the Belarusian language declined and was only utilized in the west and north of the country and in rural areas.
In 1994, about 40% of scholars were taught in Belarusian; today, this figure is lower than 9%.
Although Belarusian is an East Slavic language like Russian, its vocabulary differs considerably. In 1517, the Belarusian publisher Francysk Skaryna was one among the primary in Eastern Europe to translate the Bible into his native language.
Simply speaking Belarusian is seen as an indication of opposition to Lukashenko and a commitment to national identity. This played a key role within the mass protests after the authoritarian leader won a sixth term within the disputed 2020 elections. The crackdown that followed saw half 1,000,000 people flee the country.
“The Belarusian language is increasingly perceived as a sign of political disloyalty and is being abandoned in favor of Russian in public administration, education, culture and the mass media – on the orders of the hierarchy or out of fear of discrimination,” said Anaïs Marin, United Nations Special Rapporteur on human rights in Belarus.
At the identical time, “more and more people want to speak Belarusian, which has become a symbol of freedom, but they are afraid to do so in public,” says Alina Nahornaja, writer of “Language 404,” a book about Belarusians who’ve experienced discrimination for speaking their native language.
As in Ukraine, Belarusians also share nationalist feelings and a desire for rapprochement with Europe, says Belarusian analyst Valery Karbalevich.
“But the Kremlin quickly recognized the danger and began the creeping Russification of Belarus,” he added.
This has led to pro-Russian organizations, joint educational programs and cultural projects “springing up like mushrooms after the rain – against the backdrop of harsh repression against everything Belarusian,” said Karbalevich.
Censorship and bans affect not only contemporary Belarusian literature, but in addition its classics. In 2023, the prosecutor's office declared the poems of Nineteenth-century poet Vincent Dunin-Martsinkevich, who opposed the Russian Empire, to be extremist.
When the Kremlin began supporting Lukashenko against anti-government protests in 2020, it secured his loyalty and received carte blanche in Belarus.
“Today Lukashenko is paying Putin with our sovereignty,” said exiled opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya. “Belarusian national identity, culture and language are our strongest weapons against the Russian world and Russification.”
There is now a “Russia House” in 4 cities in Belarus to advertise the country’s culture and influence and to supply seminars, film clubs, exhibitions and competitions.
Almost the complete troupe of the Yanka Kupala Theater, the oldest within the country, fled Belarus amid political repression. Former director Pavel Latushka, now an opposition figure abroad, said the brand new management was unable to recruit enough recent actors and needed to invite Russians, “but it turned out that no one spoke the Belarusian language.”
“Putin published an article back in 2021 denying the existence of an independent Ukraine, and even then it was clear to us that he was pursuing similar goals in Belarus,” Latushka said.
“The main course should be Ukraine,” he added, and for dessert a Russified Belarus.
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