TALLINN, Estonia (AP) — When Mikalay started school in Belarus this year, the 15-year-old discovered that his teachers and administrators no longer called him by that name. Instead, they called him Nikolai, the Russian equivalent.
Moreover, classes at his school, one of the best in the country, are now taught in Russian, rather than Belarusian, which he has spoken for most of his life.
Belarusians like Mikalay are experiencing a new wave of Russification as Moscow extends its economic, political and cultural dominance, taking over the identity of its neighbor.
It is not the first time. Russia under the tsars and in the era of the Soviet Union imposed its language, symbols and cultural institutions on Belarus. But with the demise of the USSR in 1991, the country began to assert its identity, and Belarusian briefly became the official language, with the white-red-white national flag replacing a version of the red hammer and sickle.
But all that changed in 1994, when Alexander Lukashenko, a former Soviet collective farm official, came to power. The authoritarian leader made Russian an official language, alongside Belarusian, and abandoned nationalist symbols.
Now, with Lukashenko in power for more than three decades, he has allowed Russia to dominate all aspects of life in Belarus, a country 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.
Official business is conducted in Russian, which dominates the majority of the media. Lukashenko speaks only Russian, and government officials often use non-native languages.
The country is dependent on Russian loans and cheap energy and has formed a political and military alliance with Moscow, allowing President Vladimir Putin to station troops and missiles on the country's territory, which has been used as a base 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 effective 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 hundreds of nationalist organizations have been closed. Experts say Moscow is trying to implement in Belarus what the Kremlin planned to do in neighboring Ukraine when the war there began in 2022.
“It is clear 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 on condition that his last name not be used for fear of retaliation.
“We were informed about the synchronization of the curriculum with Russia this year and were shown a propaganda film about how the Ukrainian special services allegedly recruit our teenagers and force them to commit sabotage in Belarus,” he said.
Mikalay's school was one of the few where paperwork and some courses were taught in Belarusian. In recent years, dozens of teachers have been fired and the Belarusian-language section of the website has disappeared.
Human rights lawyer Ales Bialiatski, convicted in 2023 on charges stemming from his Nobel Peace Prize-winning work, demanded that his trial be conducted in Belarusian. The court rejected this and sentenced him to 10 years.
Lukashenko mocks his native language, saying: “Nothing great can be expressed in Belarusian. … There are only two great languages in the world: Russian and English.”
Speaking to Russian state media, Lukashenko recounted how 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 one empire and we take part in (helping) develop that language,'” Lukashenko said.
Belarus was part of the Russian Empire for centuries and became one of the 15 Soviet republics after the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. The everyday use of the Belarusian language declined and survived only in the west and north of the country and in rural areas.
In 1994, about 40% of students were taught in Belarusian; now it is less than 9%.
Although Belarusian, like Russian, is an East Slavic language, its vocabulary is significantly different. In 1517, the Belarusian publisher Francysk Skaryna was one of the first in Eastern Europe to translate the Bible into his native language.
Even speaking Belarusian is seen as a show of opposition to Lukashenko and a declaration of national identity, and played a key role in the mass protests that followed disputed 2020 elections that gave the authoritarian leader a sixth term. Half a million people fled the country in the crackdown that followed.
“The Belarusian language is increasingly seen as a sign of political disloyalty and is being abandoned in public administration, education, culture and mass media in favor of Russian, either on the orders of the hierarchy or out of fear of discrimination,” said Anaïs Marin, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Belarus.
At the same time, “more people want to speak Belarusian, which has become one of the symbols of freedom, but they are afraid to do so in public,” says Alina Nahornaja, author of “Language 404,” a book about Belarusians who experience discrimination for speaking their native language.
Like Ukraine, Belarusians wanted rapprochement with Europe, which was accompanied by nationalist sentiments, according to Belarusian analyst Valery Karbalevich.
“But the Kremlin quickly realized the danger and began the process of creeping Russification in Belarus,” he added.
This led to the proliferation of pro-Russian organizations, joint educational programs and cultural projects “like mushrooms after the rain – against the backdrop of harsh repression against everything that is Belarus,” Karbalevich said.
Censorship and bans affect not only contemporary Belarusian literature, but also the classics. In 2023, the Public Prosecutor’s Office declared the 19th-century poems of Vincent Dunin-Martsinkyevich, who opposed the Russian Empire, extremist.
When the Kremlin began supporting Lukashenko against anti-government protests in 2020, it secured his loyalty and was given carte blanche in Belarus.
“Today Lukashenko is paying Putin with our sovereignty,” said exiled opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya. “Belarusian national identity, cultures and language are our strongest weapons against the Russian world and Russification.”
Four cities in Belarus now have a 'Russia House' to promote its culture and influence, offering seminars, film clubs, exhibitions and competitions.
“The goal is to plant Russian narratives so that as many Belarusians as possible see Russia as their own,” analyst Alexander Friedman said. “The Kremlin is sparing no expense and acting on a large scale, which can be especially effective and dangerous in a situation where Belarus is in information isolation and there is almost no one left in the country to stand up to the Russian world.”
Almost the entire troupe of the Yanka Kupala Theater, the country's oldest theater, fled Belarus because of political repression. Former director Pavel Latushka, now an opposition figure abroad, said the new management could not recruit enough new actors and had to invite Russians, “but it turned out that no one spoke the Belarusian language.”
“Putin published an article in 2021 in which he denied the existence of an independent Ukraine, and even then we understood perfectly well that he was pursuing similar goals in Belarus,” Latushka said.
“The main course should be Ukraine,” he added, with a Russified Belarus “for dessert.”
