Wiktor Moszczynski on the Putin regime’s attempts to spread the Russian language in Belarusian schools. Plus a letter from Jan Maciejowski
I heartily concur with Timothy Garton Ash’s comments concerning the insidious imposition of the Russian language on areas that Vladimir Putin anachronistically considers to be part of the Russian empire (In Ukraine, I saw the greatest threat to the Russian world isn’t the west – it’s Putin, 17 December).
The Federation of Poles in Great Britain has recently drawn attention to the growing Russification in Belarus, where Putin’s brutal sidekick, Alexander Lukashenko, has been championing the spread of Russian in Belarusian schools, threatening to limit the Belarusian language to the teaching of history only, and closing down the Polish, Lithuanian and Ukrainian language schools that, in accordance with article 50 of the Belarusian constitution, had flourished in the areas where these indigenous minorities lived.
Now even Russian-speaking members of the opposition in Belarus are teaching themselves to speak Belarusian, as they identify this neglected language as the voice of democracy. Another side-effect of Putin’s Russian chauvinism.
Wiktor Moszczynski
Brentford, London
A very perceptive article by Timothy Garton Ash as usual. But surely a much closer and more informative analogy to Russia/Ukraine is Britain/Ireland rather than Britain/India? The cultural, social, political intertwinings are much more similar, as are strategic concerns.
Jan Maciejowski
Cambridge
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