as their first president, this was detrimental to the complete success of a transition to democracy.Belarus proclaimed independence in March 1918 after the collapse of the Russian Empire following the Polish-Soviet war. The eastern region became part of the Soviet Union and Poland occupied the western region. Belarusian nationalism, which is credited to the Nasha Niva, the journal published in the 1906-1915 period, was of critical importance to the Rebirth Movement for self-determination of the Belarusian people at that time, and the name has strong symbolic value today (Altshuler 1998). Publication of the Nasha Niva wasn’t seen again until 1991. It uses traditional Belarusian orthography which was banned in 1933 as part of the Stalinist anti-nationalism and Russification. So when Belarus declared its independence in 1918 they also began this nationalistic movement only to see it come to an end when the Soviet Union took control prior to World War II. Belarus suffered enormous devastation and lost one-quarter of its population during the war. Belarusian nationalism was frowned upon by the Soviet Union and their national identity stripped. Soviet policy towards language was good up through the 1930’s. The policy of “belorusizatiia” gave clear priority to the language of the Belarusian nationality. The framework of this policy had Soviet authorities encouraging schools who worked with the Belarusian language. This linguistic policy was intended to give this language a prestige status and to encourage the use in private and public life (Altshuler 1998). As said, this policy was abandoned in the 1930’s and encouragement of the use of the Russian language gathered strength in the fifty years following World War II. This really stripped Belarus of a national identity, they were forced to abandon their national language and accept the Russian language as their own. The experience with communism from ...
