Language and Culture: National Nihilism?

Abstract

The Stalinist system favored the growth of large urban centers for the development of heavy industry: they were also more convenient for dissemination of propaganda and the growth of party and Soviet organs. Belarusian national consciousness, on the other hand, suffered as a result of urban development. All the large cities in Belarus (Hrodna being a possible exception) after the 1930s were repositories of the Russian language and the Belarusians were more easily assimilated in an urban environment. Although a small indigenous Belarusian elite may have had the opportunity to emerge and play a role in the political process, it was also dependent on the vigorous growth and preservation of a rural culture. Belarus’s form of national development as a major industrial republic in which national consciousness has lagged behind that in its neighbor states owes much not only to its demographic development, but also concomitantly to Soviet language policy.