Sussex R., Cubberley P. The Slavic Languages

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Slovenian was not accepted as an official administrative medium until 1945. The

1920 plebiscite had shown that the majority of the Slovenes living in Styria and

Carinthia wished to remain in Austria rather than join the new inter-war

Yugoslavia. This result is commonly attributed to the Slovenes’ fear of domination

by the Serbian and Croatian majorities in Yugoslavia. Either way, it kept a large

number of Slovenes outside Yugoslavia until the territorial, national and political

changes brought about by the Second World War consolidated the major part of

the Slovenes in Tito’s Yugoslavia, with full constitutional linguistic rights, as a

constituent republic. The language is now fully codified in orthography, grammar

and lexicography.

The separation of Slovenia as an independent nation on the break-up of

Yugoslavia in 1991 is helping to confirm the status of Slovenian, in the absence

of pressure and competition from Serbo-Croatian. Certainly the contexts where

Serbo-Croatian was favored in the Republic of Yugoslavia – including television,

education and the armed forces, as described by Toporis

(1978) – are now

significantly reduced.

2.3 East Slavic

The three modern East Slavic languages are Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian. As

a linguistic group they are more homogeneous than South or West Slavic. Under

the Soviet regime they were all part of the USSR. Ukrainian was centered in the

Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic of the USSR, and Belarusian in the

Belorussian (as it then was)

Soviet Socialist Republic, situated on the western

borders of the USSR. Russian was the language of the Russian Soviet Federal

Socialist Republic, which was not only the political and cultural center of the

USSR, but also the largest of the republics, covering the expanse from European

Russia to the Pacific. Russian was also the lingua communis of the entire USSR, as

it is of the new Russian Federation, which is territorially still the world’s largest

nation. All three language cultures and countries are now officially autonomous.

In comparison to the West and South Slavs, the East Slavs have remained

politically and culturally more cohesive. Russia and Russian have been the domi-

nant forces. This factor has hindered the emergence of both Ukrainian and

Belarusian as autonomous language-cultures. True, the Russian influence has

In these sections we use Belorussia(n) only for names like the Belorussian SSR or older

references to the geographical area. Elsewhere, in spite of anachrony, we favor Belarus for

the state as it was officially named after independence in 1991, and Belarusian as the

adjective and name of the language.

2.3 East Slavic 79

been interrupted – first by the Tartar invasion and occupation, and later by the

periods of Polish domination in Belorussia and Ukraine; Polish also had an

appreciable effect on Russian, especially in the seventeenth and early eighteenth

centuries. The main source of this Polish element was the eastward expansion

of Poland after the fourteenth century, which brought with it Catholicism, parti-

cularly Jesuit Catholicism, and a more Western form of culture. Russia regained

control of Ukraine and Belorussia after the Partitions of Poland at the end of the

eighteenth century. Both Ukraine and Belorussia, however, had a difficult path to

linguistic and cultural autonomy, particularly under Russian rule. Having finally

become federated republics of the USSR in the 1920s, they were subjected to

Stalin’s anti-nationalistic purges in the 1930s, and the subsequent policy of cultural

and linguistic Russianization. In Marxism and the problems of linguistics (1954)

Stalin claimed that linguistic variety within the USSR actually demonstrated that

Russian was a national supra-language. The extent of this linguistic imperialism

can be judged by the data on publishing (Armstrong, 1962), which favored Russian

out of all proportion to the population balance. This was in direct contradiction to

Lenin’s explicit policy of national cultural self-determination.

All three East Slavic languages lay claim to the same early written records as

evidence of their own historicity. East Slavic learning began at a time when the

three languages were dialectally similar, and the center of this emerging culture

was, at various times, located in Ukraine and Great Russia. From the conversion of

the East Slavs to Orthodoxy in 988 until the sacking of Kiev by the Tartars in 1240,

the East Slavs were culturally, religiously and linguistically coherent. The written

records bear the mark of the Greek Orthodox influence, which was transmitted

by the disciples of Cyril and Methodius from Moravia to Bulgaria, and thence

to Russia. The earliest documents of East Slavic are in Church Slavonic – a

South Slavic language – in both the Glagolitic and the Cyrillic scripts. They are

mainly religious, and consist of Gospels, sermons, prayers and hagiography. Only

occasional errors on the part of the monk copyists reveal the beginnings of

dialect differentiation. Distinct Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian emerged slowly,

following the disorganization of Rus

during and after the Tartar invasion, the

absorption of Ukraine and Belorussia into Poland and Lithuania, the later emer-

gence of Novgorod, Moscow and St. Petersburg as centres of Orthodox culture and

political influence, and the folklore- and regionally based cultural revivals.

Moscow emerged as the dominant East Slavic cultural force with the fall of

Constantinople and Bulgaria to the Turks. As a result, Moscow took on the role

of the ‘‘Third Rome’’ as the centre of Orthodoxy. Nevertheless, the Russian

language did not achieve a viable written literary form, clearly distinguished

from Church Slavonic, until the latter part of the eighteenth century. And for

80 2. Socio-historical evolution

Ukrainian and Belarusian there was the additional burden of establishing and

maintaining their autonomy from ‘‘Great’’ Russian. All three languages have had

long histories of diglossia, especially involving the vernacular and Church

Slavonic.

2.3.1 Russian

The history of Russian (or ‘‘Great Russian’’) shows a language-culture developing

from a position of relative strength. The most significant political threat to Russian

was the 250 years’ occupation by the Tartars between the thirteenth and fifteenth

centuries. But in spite of their destructive political and cultural influence, the

Tartars were not linguistically hostile to the Russians. The development of the

Russian language was characterized by a search for identity. On the one hand, it

was necessary to differentiate Russian clearly from Church Slavonic; and, on the

other hand, various Western languages (mainly French, Polish and German) had

left behind linguistic bric-a

-brac in Russian which had to be eclectically discarded

from, or integrated with, the emerging written language.

The East Slavs were converted to Orthodox Christianity under Prince Vladimir

AD 988, and literacy among the Russians began with religious and hagiographical

writings. The earliest manuscript to contain Russian elements, even if only in

copyists’ errors, is the Ostromir Gospel of 1056–1057. Here we find the beginnings

of a Russianized Church Slavonic, which spread gradually to liturgical, ecclesias-

tical and chancery documents (see below), where the use of Church Slavonic was

obligatory. The non-official records of Russian from this period, like the Novgorod

birch-bark inscriptions and some inscriptions on pottery, show even more evidence

of a native Russian idiom. The Igor Tale, a heroic epic describing a military campaign

of 1185, shows stronger Russian elements, though its authenticity is not certain.

With the passage of time Russian dialects became increasingly distinct from the

original common East Slavic. After the fall of Kiev, in 1240, the centre of power

shifted to Novgorod and then to Moscow (Rus Moskva

), which meant that the

geographical center of the future Russian literary language was much further to the

north. And the Moscow dialect eventually became, from the eighteenth century,

the basis for the development of the new literary Russian language. Before this

time, however, the model of the literary language was Church Slavonic, maintained

in a fairly static state by the authority of the church. The Church Slavonic

language, and its cultural tradition, gave to Russian considerable quantities of

vocabulary in the form of borrowings and calques, ultimately from Greek. After

the loss of Bulgaria to the Turks, and the fall of Constantinople in 1453, Russian

Orthodoxy became more self-contained, both dogmatically and linguistically. And

2.3 East Slavic 81

if the influence of Church Slavonic is also fundamental to the development of South

Slavic literary languages, these latter differ from Russian in that the geographical

source of interference was closer to home. As the Russian language evolved, Church

Slavonic became progressively more foreign, and the presence of these non-native

South Slavic Church Slavonic elements is particularly evident in Russian. The South

Slavic component was deliberately emphasized during the ‘‘Second South Slavic

Influence’’ of the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, when Bulgarian prelates

consciously ‘‘re-Bulgarized’’ (Issatschenko, 1980; 1980–1983) the church texts to

achieve maximum conformity with the established church norms. In time, however,

the Russian recension of Church Slavonic gained increasing acceptance in Russia,

and came to influence Serbian and Bulgarian Church Slavonic, and the formation

and revival of these literary languages. Nonetheless, a genuinely Russian translation

of the gospels did not appear until 1819.

The fifteenth century also marked the opening of regular Russian contacts with

the West. The Tartars had left behind only a modest legacy of vocabulary, and little

else of cultural value. Russian was still insulated from the Renaissance and the

Reformation by distance, poor communications and political isolationism. But the

language began steadily to acquire a more Western character, with cultural contact

and lexical loans from Polish and Ukrainian, and – often by way of these languages –

from German, Italian and French. By the start of the eighteenth century, however,

Russia was still culturally backward, with an unsophisticated literature, restricted in

scope and sensibility, and written in a heavy and unexpressive idiom. The so-called

‘‘Chancery’’ language (Rus delovo

j jazy

k), a bureaucratic register somewhat closer to

spoken Russian, was also conservative and inflexible.

The force that Westernized Russia and Russian was Peter the Great (1672–1725),

who ‘[hauled] Muscovy kicking and screaming into the 18th century’ (Hingley,

1972: 74). Peter was personally responsible for weakening the authority of the

church in areas of Russian culture, education, public life, politics and economic

affairs. He imported Western technology and technologists, military advisers, and

cultural and linguistic models. Many of his contemporaries, and many subsequent

critics, have accused him of being an undiscriminating reformer. This is certainly

true in some cases: his technical and cultural importations, for instance, created

lexical anarchy in Russian for more than half a century. But Peter, in a linguistic

sense, was a kind of latter-day Reformation man. He brought education and writing

to the people by reforms of Russian calligraphy, typography and orthography, and

he actively encouraged the use of Russian in all areas outside the strict confines of

church affairs. The question now was how Russian would create linguistic and

artistic forms from properly Russian material, and how these would relate to the

Church Slavonic models which had hitherto dominated Russian writing.

82 2. Socio-historical evolution

The relation between Church Slavonic and Russian is the key to an understanding

of the evolution of the modern Russian literary language. Some authors interpret

the history of Russian in terms of a steady Russification of Church Slavonic.

More recently, however, Issatschenko (1980, 1980–1983) and others have argued

that there is, in fact, a break in the evolution of Russian in the eighteenth century,

coinciding with the break-down of Russian–Church Slavonic diglossia, and the

emerge nce of new models for literary Rus sian, especially the written and spoken

forms of educated French. This Westernizing movement forms part of the central

Russian cultural theme of the eighteenth century. There was a large amount of

straight imitation and translation of French, German, Italian and Polish litera-

ture, philosophy and publicistic writings. During the course of the century some

substantial literary talents were instrumental in bringing Western culture to

Russia, and in attempting to form a Russian literary medium which could express

all that its foreign models could. The most famous example is probably

Karamzin, although his role as a slavish Westernizer is commonly overstated.

At the other extreme was a faction known as the Slavophiles, who were in favor of

taking over as little as possible from the West, and of exploiting the resources of

Slavic to fill the obvious linguistic and literary gaps (Walicki, 1975). The poly-

math and grammarian Lomonosov first formulated the problem clearly in 1755 in

his adaptation of the classical theory of the ‘‘three styles’’ to the balance of

Church Slavonic and Russian elements in the literary language: a high style for

formal occasions and heroic poems, with substantial Church Slavonic influence; a

middle style for informal verse epistles, satires, ec logues and el egies; and a low

style for comedy, epigrams, prose and ordinary affairs. This helped to stabilize

some of the stylistic confusion in Russian literature of the time. Towards the end

of the century, writers like the fabulist Krylov began to make increasing use of

Russian and of Russian folklore, and the work of Pushkin in particular was

fundamental in the establishment of a workable balance of Russian and non-

Russian elements in the new literary language. Pushkin was accused of being an

immoderate Westernizer by the Slavophile camp, and it was fortunate for

Russian literature that Pushkin’s language, and that of later major poets like

Lermontov and Tyutchev, and prose writers like Turgenev, Tolstoy and

Dostoevsky, showed that the medium was rich and flexible enough to fulfill

the role of a major literary language. The Church Slavonic element has never-

theless remained in some aspects of phonology, and in many areas of grammar

and particularly lexis. On the other hand, the Russian regional phonological

influence on the contemporary standard is evident in the Moscow pronunciation,

with its approximate admixture of South Russian vowels and North Russian

consonants (10.3.3).

2.3 East Slavic 83

During the nineteenth century the Russian language made two significant

advances. In literature, science and other registers it became a much more flexible

and sophisticated medium; and in geographical terms Russian greatly expanded its

area from Poland to the Pacific. Russian exploration eastwards, and its acquisition

of areas to the south and west of Russia proper, led to groups of non-Russian

subjects coming under the control of Moscow. The policy of Russification intensi-

fied towards the end of the century as rebellious movements became more active.

Ukrainian, Polish and Belarusian all underwent periods of partial prohibition in

Russian-controlled areas, although these controls were relaxed after the Revolution.

Lenin’s policy towards minorities was officially one of cultural self-determination.

This policy was ideologically sound as well as politically expedient in the early years

of the USSR. Under Stalin, however, ethnic language groups suffered badly in the

wave of Great Russian nationalism. Although the post-Stalin era reversed many of

these injustices, it is still true that Russian monopolized a volume of the cultural

and linguistic resources far out of proportion to its numerical status vis-a

-vis other

languages in the USSR. On the other hand, it did function, in both theory and

practice, as a general medium for communication in extra-national affairs within

the republics of the USSR, not to mention its role as the major foreign language

of the Eastern Bloc, and as an official language of the United Nations and in

international politics and commerce.

With the Russian Revolution the Russian language changed in some fundamental

ways (Comrie, Stone and Polinsky, 1996). The most obvious was the overdue 1918

reform of the orthography, and the vastly expanded area of literacy. The style and

lexis (chapter 9) of the Revolution also had their own particular characteristics,

which in turn influenced the Communist movements in others areas of Eastern

Europe. There has also been a shift from the so-called ‘‘Old Moscow norm’’, based

on the upper class speech of Moscow and accepted as standard Russian since the

age of Pushkin, towards a less class-oriented variety with its roots partly in

Leningrad/St. Petersburg speech. In spite of the linguistic, social and political

upheavals which followed the Revolution, the position of Russian gained in

strength, both nationally and internationally, until the fall of European

Communism. It has now suffered something of a setback outside Russia, as its

role as a lingua communis in the former USSR has become anachronistic, and as its

status in international affairs has to some extent been eroded by English.

2.3.2 Ukrainian

In its early years Ukrainian (formerly sometimes known also as ‘‘Little Russian’’ or

‘‘Ruthenian’’ (2.3.3) ), shared with Russian and Belarusian a common culture and

84 2. Socio-historical evolution

language derived from Bulgarian Orthodox Christianity from the conversion to

Christianity in 988 (2.3). After the fall of Kiev (Ukr Ky

jiv) in 1240, and the

departure of the Metropolitan to Russia in 1299, Ukraine enjoyed a short period

of uneasy independence in Galicia and Volhynia (–1321), after which Ukraine was

absorbed progressively into Lithuania, Poland and Hungary. The major part of

Ukraine remained under Lithuanian and Polish domination until the Union of

Lublin in 1569, when Poland assumed control. In the Partitions of Poland in the

eighteenth century, however, Ukraine and a substantial portion of Poland were

annexed by Russia, which banned the use of Ukrainian in much of public life from

1863–1905. Although nominally autonomous from 1917, Ukrainian did not really

prosper within the Soviet Union from the 1930s until the formation of the

independent modern Ukrainian state in 1991 after the fall of the USSR.

Apart from the early Church Slavonic manuscripts, which show only a small

degree of Ukrainian interference, there were only inconclusive stimuli to Ukrainian

as a literary language until the late sixteenth century. During this period the written

models included the ‘‘Euthymian’’ recension of Church Slavonic, an esoteric,

Bulgarian-inspired attempt to re-establish older South Slavic models, which was

then replaced by Ruthenian, a written and administrative language based on the

Belarusian dialect of Vilno under Lithuanian rule. After the Union of Lublin in

1569, however, the increasing domination of Polish as a written language in the

Ukrainian lands progressively took over the functions of Ruthenian, and turned

Church Slavonic into a virtually dead liturgical language. Church Slavonic scholar-

ship itself underwent a significant revival, with the production of the Ostrih Bible in

1581, and the appearance of grammars and dictionaries of Church Slavonic by

scholars like Zizanij, Smotrytsky (Smotryc

kyj) and Berynda. This recension of

Church Slavonic replaced Polish as the literary language for those Ukrainians who

had not been wholly polonized (Shevelov, 1980: 149), and, in conjunction with

allegiance to the Orthodox Church, began to acquire symbolic value associated

with national identity. In the western parts of Ukraine there was also a movement

towards a more genuinely Ukrainian written language, inspired by the influence of

the Reformation and the translation of church books into the vernacular, which

resulted in lexical borrowings from Western European cultures. To a limited

extent, the Jesuit schools reintroduced written Ukrainian in interludes to plays

and in occasional satirical verse.

The anti-Polish and anti-Catholic sentiment eventually came to a head in the

Khmelnitsky (Xmel

nyc

kyj) riots of 1648, which led to the creation of the Cossack

state in eastern Ukraine as a Russian protectorate, and so eventually to the

annexation of this area of Ukraine by Russia after the defeat of the Cossacks at

the Battle of Poltava (1709). Polish influence in Ukraine declined steadily through

2.3 East Slavic 85

the eighteenth century, as Russian political, religious, military and cultural power

increased. The partitions of Poland at the end of the eighteenth century transferred

control of the major part of the Ukrainian lands to Imperial Russia. With these

changes came an increased influence of the Russian recension of Church Slavonic,

and of Russian as a cultural and linguistic model.

Ukrainian gained a sense of historical purpose from the Xmel

nyc

kyj uprising, a

spirit which was strongly felt in the nationalistic Romantic Ukrainian literature of

the nineteenth century, especially in the writings of poets like Shevchenko

evc

enko), Kulish (Kulis

) and Franko. During this period the written language

was realigned closer to the vernacular, particularly the south-eastern dialects in the

Kiev–Poltava–Kharkov area. Elements of Church Slavonic were progressively

replaced, since it was now too closely associated with the growing authority of

Imperial Russian rule and that of the church in Russia. The Russian attitude

towards Ukrainian in the nineteenth century varied from paternalism to suppression.

Gogol’s Ukrainian-flavored Russian was accepted as part of Russian literature, but

distinctly Ukrainian separatist movements met with stern repression. Printing in

Ukrainian was restricted, being allowed only in poetry, fiction and drama. Lvov

viv) became the centre of Ukrainian publishing activity, and Galician (western)

Ukrainian was briefly promoted as a literary language. The Kiev variant regained

some of its prominence after 1905, however, when printing in Ukrainian was once

more permitted, though Ukrainian schools remained closed until 1917.

The story of Ukrainian after the Revolution is similar to that of Belarusian

(2.3.3). The establishment of the Ukrainian SSR, and the acceptance of Ukrainian

as its official language after the Civil War, were followed by a period of linguistic

and cultural construction and reconstruction in the 1920s, and the reconciliation

and codification of the various geographically based variants of the language,

especially the lexical innovations common in the western (Galician) areas of

Ukraine with the phonological elements of the south-eastern dialects. Written

Ukrainian, however, was slow to occupy a full range of written roles in public life

and official functions. Ukraine was still predominantly an agricultural country,

and there was a historical shortage of intellectuals to provide leadership in the

re-formation of Ukrainian as a national language-culture. This period of militant

Ukrainianization and laissez-faire in Ukrainian affairs came to an end in 1930, the

beginning of Stalin’s purges of regional nationalists and of his campaign against the

anti-collectivization attitude of the Ukrainian peasants. Russian was generally

used in official business, and was formally installed as the second language of

Ukraine. These policies help to explain why many Ukrainians fought with the

Germans in the Second World War, in the hope of liberating Ukraine, and why the

cultural and linguistic recovery of the Ukrainian SSR after the war was so delayed.

86 2. Socio-historical evolution

From 1945, however, Ukraine did finally include most speakers of Ukrainian,

with the exception of upwards of 3 million who were left in the Russian

Republic, and the less numerous but politically active migrant settlements in

North America. Modern Ukrainians remain acutely conscious of the cultural and

linguistic differences between Russian and Ukrainian.

The post-Communist language situation in Ukraine is currently not a little

confused. While de-Russification in the heart of Ukraine is proceeding as pre-

dicted, the substantial numbers of Russian residents are posing a problem of

policy and equity, in terms of both language rights, ethnic allegiance and the

cultural solidarity of Ukraine as a whole. In addition, the pro-Moscow orientation

of the Cossacks is contributing to some political destabilization. Nonetheless the

reduction of Russian influence is providing a vital stimulus to the Ukrainian

language, which is now moving to develop a full range of functional roles (2.5).

2.3.3 Belarusian (formerly Belorussian)

Belarusian emerged from Kievan Rus

in the thirteenth century as a group of

dialects not clearly differentiated from Russian and Ukrainian. When the Tartar

invasion of 1240 split Kiev from Belorussia, the Belorussians turned westwards to

Lithuania for political protection against the Tartars and the Teutonic Knights.

From 1386, when the Grand Duchy of Lithuania joined with Poland, Belorussia

fell increasingly under Polish domination in secular and religious affairs. The

Union of Lublin (1569), and the Union of Churches (1596), brought Polish customs

and Catholicism to the upper levels of Lithuanian–Belorussian society, but not to

the majority of the people. Belorussia and the Polish Ukraine were seceded to

Russia in the Polish Partitions of 1772, 1793 and 1795. The Russians proved to be

linguistically even less sympathetic than did their Polish predecessors. The use of

the name ‘‘Belorussia’’ was even banned in 1840, and the population was subjected

to a policy of Russification and forced re-conversion to Orthodoxy which followed

the popular revolt under Kalinou

ski in 1863. After the First World War Poland

incorporated a substantial proportion of Belorussian territory, and probably about

3.5 million Belorussian nationals. The remainder of Belorussia had to endure the

Civil War (1917–1920) before emerging in the USSR with its own official language

after the Peace of Riga in 1921, when the western part of Belorussia was ceded to

Poland. These boundaries were readjusted to consolidate Belorussia between 1939

and 1945. While the Belorussian SSR was nominally secure as a constituent

republic of the USSR from 1921, Belarusian language and culture underwent

more thoroughgoing Russification than did Ukrainian, and were starting to

show signs of real weakness by the end of Russian control in 1991.

2.3 East Slavic 87

The Belarusian (‘‘White Russian’’, ‘‘White Ruthenian’’) language is first recorded

as an official language from the fourteenth century, when it was used in literature and

administration in a form intermingled with Ukrainian elements. Its first major

literary document is Skaryna’s translation of the Bible, which appeared in Prague

in 1517–1519, and some ecclesiastical writings of the sixteenth century. Until 1596,

when the Grand Duchy of Lithuania was absorbed into the Polish commonwealth,

Belarusian – sometimes known also as ‘‘Ruthenian’’ (2.3.2) – served ‘as the medium

for state, diplomatic and private correspondence, as well as for all chancery and legal

functions’ (McMillin, 1980: 106). This administrative language was initially written

but not literary, and its range of functions was restricted. However, as an entity

separate from Church Slavonic, it showed some elements of local dialectal variation,

and – as is the case with Russian – provided an alternative secular written medium to

the language of the church. The contact with the Reformation and Western culture

through Polish enriched the vocabulary and range of the language. The next century,

however, saw a policy of progressive Polonization, and in 1697 the Polish sejm

(parliament) officially banned the use of Belarusian in state and court affairs. The

public use of Belarusian was intermittently under official interdiction until 1921.

Modern Belarusian literature is generally thought to begin with the early

nineteenth-century Aeneid by Rovinski, which was prompted by Kotlyarevsky’s

(Kotljarevs

kyj) Ukrainian version of 1798. But it was not until the second half of

the nineteenth century that we see the emergence of a substantial vernacular literary

culture, which drew more from folk poetry and the spoken language than from

prestigious existing literary standards. In the works of poets like Kupala and Kolas,

and in the Nas

a Niva literary circle, the language began to achieve a genuinely

literary level of achievement (Karskij, 1955). The journal Nas

a Niva finally decided

in 1912 to publish exclusively in Cyrillic, ending a prolonged period of Cyrillic/

Roman parallel use. And Belarusian could not even be referred to as a ‘‘language’’

in Russia until 1917. Belarusian has constantly felt the influence of Ukrainian,

Russian and Polish in cultural and religious matters, and much of its evolution has

been concerned with establishing the viability of Belarusian as an independent

literary language. Subsequent codification of the orthography (1933), grammar

(1960s) and lexis (1970s) has made late but important contributions towards

regularizing and establishing Belarusian as an autonomous language. With a

smaller and more coherent geographical space than Ukrainian, Belarusian has

had less of the problem of language revival from multiple dialect bases, and the

tendency has been towards a dialectal compromise which reflects the general

characteristics of the language around the capital, Minsk.

In theory, Belarusian now had the right to cultural and linguistic self-determination

guaranteed by the constitution of the USSR. But Stalin’s anti-nationalistic purges

88 2. Socio-historical evolution