Русіфікацыя адукацыйна-інфармацыйнай прасторы Беларускай ССР у перыяд «адлігі» (1953–1968 гг.)
Russification of the Educational and Information Space in Soviet Belarus in the Period of the ‘Thaw’ (1953–1968)

Author(s): Alexander Huzhalouski
Subject(s): Anthropology, Cultural Anthropology / Ethnology, 16th Century, 17th Century, 18th Century
Published by: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego
Keywords: Russification; Thaw; national education; book publishing; mass media; intellectuals; communist party and state officials
Summary/Abstract: The article considers the specifics and mechanism of the Russification of the educational and information space in Soviet Belarus during Khrushchev’s ‘Thaw’. Analysed in the paper is the socio-political context of communist society construction in the Soviet Union which provoked the accelerated ghettoisation of the Belarusian language, as well as the attempts of intellectuals to slow this process down. The construction of the Belarusian national discourse of the era was the result of initiatives taken by the humanist intelligentsia and expressed on the pages of local press. Not all such initiatives met with the support of party leadership of the republic, which spent the lion’s share of its workpower and funds on the construction of a global state where all nationalities and social classes would disappear. However, the sprouting Belarusian ethno-cultural nationalism of the 1950s and 1960s not only developed a vision of language as the embodiment of ethnic uniqueness, but also became the foundation for the implementation of the Belarusian national political project at the turn of the 1990s.

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