[lg policy] Belarus Foreign Ministry Toys With The Belarusian Language

Fri Mar 6 16:55:01 UTC 2015

Belarus Foreign Ministry Toys With The Belarusian Language
Igar Gubarevich <http://belarusdigest.com/category/author/igar-gubarevich> 06
March 2015
     Minister of Foreign Affairs

Belarus' President Alexander Lukashenka said in 1994 that the Belarusian
language was a poor one, unfit for expressing anything grand. His senior
diplomats appear to be proving him wrong.

On 19 February, Foreign Minister Vladimir Makei publicly recited
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWj6ORB6UJg&list=UUPBStmsLu1sRNFu_Y-Y1iYQ#t=27>
the poem "Motherland" written by Janka Kupala, a famous Belarusian poet.
Two weeks later, his deputy, Alena Kupchyna, inaugurated an art exhibition
in perfect Belarusian. Both of them share an internal conviction that
Belarusian should play a greater role in public life.

The foreign ministry has long been a vanguard of the progressive Belarusian
bureaucracy. However, despite these and other examples of changing attitude
towards the national language, most diplomats still scarcely use it - more
out of indifference and lack of proper guidance than because of any policy
restrictions.

*The Belarusian Language as a Cornerstone of the Country's Independence*

Moscow's ideological coverage of its actions in Ukraine should have warned
the Belarusian ruling elite of the vulnerability of having a weak national
identity. Russia has been clearly demonstrating it is eager to stake out a
claim in lands where Russian remains a predominant language.

Russian still heavily dominates Belarus' foreign ministry

The authorities have finally heard the warning shot across the bow.
President Alexander Lukashenka
<http://belarusprofile.com/en/profile/lukasenka-aliaksandr-ryhoravic>spoke
in Belarusian at a National Day holiday celebration in July. It sent a
signal to the nomenklatura that they should not regard the use of national
language an apanage of the opposition. Later on, Lukashenka and other
senior officials advocated for a greater role of the Belarusian language
and culture.

Many expected that the foreign ministry, as one of the country's showcase
institutions, would take the lead in this process. This government agency
has the advantage of employing many well-educated and open-minded people.

However, the results thus far have been mixed. While some changes are under
way, the Russian language still heavily dominates the ministry's
communications and internal workings.

*The Belarusian Language: Personal Choice, Institutional Indifference*

In mid-1990s, the prospects of the Belarusian language in the foreign
ministry seemed much brighter. Piotr Krauchanka, the then foreign minister,
conducted the meetings in Belarusian. Many diplomats, from attachés to
Krauchanka's deputies, studied the language with a ministry-paid coach.

Language use depends on enthusiasts

Everything changed when Lukashenka arrived. The ministry has never
expressly prohibited or penalised the use of Belarusian by diplomats in
their work, though it has long failed to encourage or promote it either.

In fact, any advance or retreat of the Belarusian language's usage in the
foreign ministry has rarely been an institutional decision. It mostly
depended on personal choice or preferences of individuals working there.
Here is a brief anecdote to support this point.

The foreign ministry has always had two telephone directories, one for the
headquarters in Minsk and the other for its foreign missions. In 1995, a
minister's assistant, a Belarusian-language enthusiast, translated both
directories into Belarusian. The foreign ministry used them until 1998,
when it merged with the ministry of external economic relations.

Then, another official, in charge of creating a unified directory,
translated the old MFA's part back into Russian. Since then, the HQ
directory has always been in Russian. As the merger never affected the
foreign missions' network, their phone directory still exists and gets
updated in Belarusian.

There have been no reports of the ministry preventing its staff from
speaking or writing in Belarusian. The author of this article, while
serving in the ministry from 1993 to 2006, drafted most of his
correspondence in Belarusian – both internal memos and documents addressed
to other government agencies.

These included a few memos to President Lukashenka on standing issues
between Belarus and the US. Ural Latypov, the then foreign minister (born
in Russia), signed them without posing any question with regard to the
choice of the language. The author's preference for Belarusian never
affected his career.

*Two Waves of Belarusianisation?*

Back in 2010, the foreign ministry adopted a set of measures to promote the
use of Belarusian in its internal workings and external communications.
(Ironically, they wrote the internal Belarusianisation plan in Russian).

The ministry failed to implement many of these measures, i.e. the provision
on promoting the Belarusian language in the activities of the
MFA-controlled National Centre for Marketing and Price Study
<http://ncmps.by/en/>. The plan died in December 2010, together with the
thaw in relations with the West.

Only a handful of Belarusian embassies communicate in Belarusian

The 2010 plan included, among other things, a provision regarding the
Belarusian-language versions of the ministry's and its foreign missions'
web sites. The foreign ministry's web site acquired a Belarusian-language
version <http://mfa.gov.by/by/> only in July 2014, in the 23rd year of the
country's independence. Now, the MFA's press service runs all news reports
in three languages, Belarusian, Russian and English.

Previously, the Russian-language section of the web site hosted rare news
items written in Belarusian. They came almost exclusively from a narrow
circle of embassies – in Bonn, Budapest, Paris and Warsaw – as well as the
permanent mission to the UN in New York.

MFA's spokesman reassured Belarus Digest that the ministry "remained
committed to wider use of the Belarusian language"

All of Belarus' foreign missions, with the exception of the embassy in
Moscow, have their web sites based on the same template, which allows one
to choose between several languages. However, only four embassies out of
over fifty – in France, Germany, Hungary and Poland – have
Belarusian-language versions of their web sites.

About two dozen Belarus' embassies now have Twitter accounts. Only the embassy
in France <https://twitter.com/AmbassadeBLR> and the MFA's press service
<https://twitter.com/BelarusMID> care to post some of their tweets in
Belarusian.

MFA's spokesman Dzmitry Mironchyk reassured Belarus Digest that the
ministry "remained committed to wider use of the Belarusian language in its
daily activities and communications to the outside world". However, he
stressed that the ministry embraced the principle of "reasonable
sufficiency and maximum efficiency" when choosing the language for its
communications.

In July 2014, the Belarusian-language newspaper Zviazda started a series of
interviews with Belarusian ambassadors and other senior diplomats. The fact
that it happened simultaneously with the emergence of the
Belarusian-language web site would seem to indicate that a new wave of
Belarusianisation is likely ahead.

However, it seems that the ministry is putting little effort into this
process. Indeed, some steps do not even require any financial support or a
much in the way of perseverance and could be quite symbolic, such as using
Belarusian-language nameplates during official meetings.

While some changes in the foreign ministry's language policy are
encouraging, they are happening much too slowly. For a new wave of
Belarusianisation to succeed, the ministry's senior officials must show
more determination, while rank-and-file diplomats need to show more
interest and personal involvement. So far, these factors are largely
lacking.

Igar Gubarevich is a senior analyst of the Ostrogorski Centre in Minsk. For
a number of years he has been working in various diplomatic positions at
the Belarusian Foreign Ministry.
http://belarusdigest.com/story/belarus-foreign-ministry-toys-belarusian-language-21810

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