Abstract
This study concerns the diminished use of Belarusian in Belarus. It analyzes the language’s position in nation-building, as it was an important part of the Belarusian nationalist movements.
It applies a Miroslav Hroch’s model, which has been extended to include not only circumstantial preconditions, but also discursive phenomena. One of the study's main conclusions is that a more extensive spread of national self-identification and real political participation are necessary before the Belarusian nation can be considered fully-formed.
It also points out that restricting the use of Belarusian to ethno-symbolic functions, which leads to a decrease in its use in everyday communication, has been part of Soviet nation-building as well as the current government’s effort to build a civic nation-state, rather than ethnic one.