Belarusian Language as Lingua Non Grata : Fighting for Belarussian Language in the Belarusian Countryside during the National Policy of Belarussization
Abstract
This chapter is dealing with the agitation campaigns led in favor of opening Belorussian schools (i.e. schools teaching in Belorussian) in Belorussian rural areas during the 1920s. These agitation campaigns were a part of the nationalities policy of the so-called Belorussization (biełarusizacyja), conducted on the BSSR territory in the years 1924-29.
Belorussization included promotion of the Belorussian language in public discourse, its further elaboration and intellectualization and actual "acquainting" the Belorussian peasant majority with the Belorussian language in its official form in the bureaucracy, press and public education. Several concrete examples of the frequent government agitation campaigns serve as an illustration of the conflict of identity, language and religion of the contemporary Belorussian peasants.
The strategies of campaign organizers are being studied (such as the preliminary evaluations of the given region's linguistic particularities, the agitator's persuasion tactics, etc.) as is also the reception of these campaigns by the peasants themselves.