Belarusian Russians

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According to Alexander Lukashenko, before he came to power in 1994, Russians in Belarus were sitting on their suitcases, expecting every second that the nationalists would come and drive them out of the country. But when the current head of Belarus took the reins of power into his own hands, the situation immediately magically changed. “We are ready to share the last piece of bread with the Russian people,” Lukashenko vows.

The truth is that, despite, to put it mildly, not the simplest relations between the Belarusian and Russian peoples in the distant past, there were no significant Russophobic sentiments in Belarus before Lukashenko, there are not now and there will not be after.

The reference to the “dashing nineties” is intended mainly for the Kremlin, which also has little memory of what was happening in the neighboring state in those days. Thanks to this, Alexander Lukashenko sells himself as a loyal friend who saved Russians from the persecution of Belarusian nationalists, while not forgetting to charge a modest price in the form of cheap oil and gas worth billions of dollars.

In fact, nationalists in Belarus were never in power and, with all their desire, could not create big problems for local Russians. Official propaganda periodically uses as a bogeyman the times when Stanislav Shushkevich was the chairman of the Supreme Council (at that time the first person of the country). However, the latter, after his election to this post, distanced himself even from the Belarusian Popular Front, which also never ate Russian babies for breakfast. Moreover, among the BPF activists there were many Russians by nationality. The most striking example of this is Oleg Trusov, now the head of the Belarusian Language Society (Belarusian Language Society).

By the way, about the language. Russian has been predominant in everyday speech for half a century; in 1995, on the initiative of Alexander Lukashenko, it received state status on an equal basis with Belarusian. In reality, there is no equality. Lukashenko himself speaks Russian, resorting to Belarusian in exceptional cases, which have happened once or twice in 19 years. Accordingly, officials look up to the first person. Office work in the vast majority of government agencies is conducted in Russian. The same can be said about teaching in schools and universities.

The Russian language also dominates the media. Some of them may use a compromise option: part of the content is in Russian, part in Belarusian. But there are few completely Belarusian-speaking people. Russian TV channels are accessible, although they may be subject to censorship (if you do not receive the signal through a “dish”) for “sedition”: from films like “The Godfather” to harmless jokes about Alexander Lukashenko.

Films in cinemas are shown exclusively in Russian. Distributors don’t even mention dubbing into Belarusian.

The Belarusian Orthodox Church, subordinate to the Moscow Patriarchate, enjoys the patronage of the authorities. Her political influence is limited, but Alexander Lukashenko personally shows signs of respect regularly. Moreover, at one time the BOC structures enjoyed super-privileges: they were allowed to import duty-free alcoholic beverages and tobacco products, most of which were subsequently transported to Russia. The shops were closed, but the sediment remained. According to various estimates, from 40% to 76% of the population of Belarus consider themselves Orthodox. However, although churches are not empty on holidays, talking about millions of believers means significantly embellishing reality.

In general, Russians can really feel at home in Belarus. There are no external signs that allow one to completely distinguish a Russian from a Belarusian. And the absolute majority here do not care about the topic of nationality.

And in these most comfortable conditions, the number of Russians in Belarus has decreased by a third over 10 years. According to the 1999 census, 1 million 141 thousand Russians lived in the country. And in 2009 there were only 785 thousand of them.

The National Statistical Committee explains this for a number of reasons, including migration processes (apparently, the local “paradise” is not as sweet as it is painted, primarily from an economic point of view), and assimilation (descendants of immigrants born in Belarus are gradually beginning to consider yourself as Belarusians - after all, you don’t even have to learn the language for this). But the main factor is the aging and natural decline of representatives of Russian nationality. Moreover, this process continues: during the 2009 census, it was revealed that the share of people over working age in the total number of Russians increased by 11.4 percentage points and approached 33%. At the same time, the share of children and adolescents under the age of 16 who classified themselves as Russian decreased by more than half compared to the previous census: from 15.2% to 7.4%.

So Russians in Belarus are becoming a disappearing nation - just like in Tajikistan.

Another paradox: there are no strong pro-Russian organizations and politicians in Belarus. This can be explained by the interests of Alexander Lukashenko, who monopolized the topic of friendship with Russia. Admitting the existence of pro-Western politicians, the head of Belarus really does not want someone serious to appear in the country with whom Moscow could, on occasion, start an affair. Therefore, the pro-Russian field here has been trampled with special care.

However, this task turned out to be extremely easy for the Belarusian authorities. Russians in Belarus were not united along ethnic lines. There are a dozen “couch” organizations that compete with each other for the attention of their historical homeland and complain about insufficient financial support, which does not allow them to develop to their full potential. Therefore, for now we have to limit ourselves to modest events like the historical and journalistic evening “From Rurik to the Union State.”

Another entertainment of these structures is internal welds and splits. So, last week the court liquidated “the oldest organization of Russian compatriots in Belarus” - the Minsk Society of Russian Culture “Rus”. However, the Russian Foreign Ministry did not see any political motive in this. As stated by the official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry, Alexander Lukashevich, problems with “Rus” arose solely due to “failure to comply with the instructions of local justice authorities, which relate to the organizational side of the activities of this structure.” Simply put, after the congress held in December 2011, the society for a year and a half was unable to determine who its legitimate leader was.

This is a fairly typical case when accusations of “incessant persecution” and “discrediting the ideas of the Russian World” voiced by the “victims” are addressed not even to the country’s authorities, but to the Coordination Council of Organizations of Russian Compatriots at the Russian Embassy in Belarus and the local representative office of Rossotrudnichestvo.

Plus, the overwhelming majority of members of these organizations are people of retirement age, which does not contribute to the active activity of the structures.

Today, for citizens of Belarus, Russians are not those who live nearby, but those who come from Russia on holidays to have fun in Minsk. They really are identified and discussed: some kindly, some with irony, but if the occasion is unpleasant, then they can say an evil word. But in general, Russians have no problems in Belarus. Except for one thing: as mentioned above, there are fewer and fewer of them.

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