The Great and Powerful Russian Language Isn’t as Uniform as Putin Imagines

Paul Goble

            Staunton, January 30 – One of the myths Vladimir Putin promotes and that many in Russia and elsewhere uncritically accept is that there is a single Russian language that everyone who calls himself a Russian speaks. In fact, as a Belarusian commentator points out, that is simply not the case.

            The “standard” Russian Putin and his regime insist on in the schools and in the central media is not the language many people beyond the ring road speak. Instead, there are many Russians, which some Russian scholars acknowledge as “dialects” but which in fact, Belarusian commentator Ales Mikus says, are proto-languages or even more.

            In a commentary in Belarusian that has now been translated into Russian for the Region.Expert portal, Mikus points to the language people living around Smolensk used to speak and in some measure still do (naviny.by/article/20190101/1546339538-ales-mikus-praekcyi-karta-u-rukave-kadyfikavac-smalyanskuyu-movu  and region.expert/smolanguage/).

                He provides materials from three books prepared by a late 19^th century Russian ethnographer, Vladimir Dobrovolsky, who collected materials about the Smolensk language and suggests that those words, if revived and promoted, could serve as the basis of a regional language within the Russian nation.

            Mikus says that this is an especially worthy project because Smolensk means far more to its residents and to Belarusians than it does to Russians.  Smolensk was where the Belarusian SSR was proclaimed a century ago this month. More than that, it was one of the most important cities of the Grand Principality of Lithuania, rather than of Muscovy.

            Now, unfortunately, he says, “even the name Smolensk is something that Muscovites and we following them do not understand. They think it comes from the Russian word for “tar” (smol), but in fact apparently it comes from the Baltic word for “bee” (kimal), as even some Russian investigators have acknowledged.   

            This can and should be recalled, the commentator continues; and “possibly, the Smolensk language will become one of the projects for the future cultural decentralization of Russia,” something from which the people of Smolensk and other regions would clearly benefit however much the imperial center can be counted on to oppose.

Russians’ Lack of Solidarity Means ‘Navalny Trade Union’ Will Fail, Shelin Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, January 30 – Opposition leader Aleksey Navalny has created an online site at which Russian workers can compare their incomes with what Vladimir Putin has promised and thus learn how much they are not getting, but this self-described “Navalny Trade Union” will fail because it is based on appeals to egotism rather than solidarity, Sergey Shelin says.

            Navalny in a 17-minute YouTube appeal (youtube.com/watch?v=Ra0RuM1gQNI) announced a new site, union.navalny.com/, to mobilize people by allowing them to see Putin is failing to meet his promises. The idea might be a good one elsewhere, but it won’t work in Russia, the Rosbalt commentator says (rosbalt.ru/blogs/2019/01/29/1760851.html).

            There are some simple reasons for that, but one fundamental underlying one, Shelin continues. The simple reasons include the absence of interest of Russians in such a site – only 2.1 million people viewed Navalny’s announcement, far fewer than expected and the fact that the regime didn’t promise higher wages for all but only higher ones on average for budget workers.

            Still, the commentator says, the idea might be a good one if it caused the authorities to be more careful in making promises and trying to fulfill them.  But it is going to falter in Russia for one simple reason: the absence of a sense of solidarity among Russians and the failure of such a site to promote solidarity as opposed to individual anger.

            Many Russians who do fall within the parameters of the government’s promises, Shelin says, are angry about that. Each and every one of them would like to be getting higher pay given that he or she were promised that. But such individual anger is not sufficient to spark “a collective struggle for their money.”

            Something more is required, something not present in Russia. And that can be seen by recalling the Solidarity movement in Poland.  That movement had as its “formal slogans” the struggle for pay, “but in fact [Polish workers] united and took risks for justice, freedom and to teach the powers a lesson.”

           

            “The word ‘solidarity’ here is the key one,” Shelin observes. It doesn’t exist in Russia, and a site that provides information about individual shortfalls will not by itself produce it. Indeed, such a site may have the effect of reinforcing this egotism rather than overcoming it. That is something that Navalny and his team appear to have forgotten.

Any Moscow Attempt to Annex Belarus by Force will Be the Beginning of the End of Russia, Severinets Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, January 30 – Pavel Severinets, a Belarusian Christian Democrat who plans to run for president, says that “the day when Moscow decided to use force to transform Belarus into part of the empire will be the beginning of the end of the empire.” Any attempt to repeat the Crimea or Donbass in Belarus will lead Russia to fall apart.

            The threat that Moscow will try, he continues, is “great;” but the Russian regime may ultimately be dissuaded not only by the resistance it would face in Belarus and the opposition of the international community but by the negative consequences such a step would have within Russia (nn.by/?c=ar&i=224161&lang=ru and region.expert/severinets/).

            “From the times of the Grand Principality of Lithuania,” Severinets says, “the mystery of the life and death of the Russian Empire has pulsated here: the first congress of the RSDRP was in Minsk, the tsarist headquarters in the First World War were in Mohylev, and Beloveshchaya pushcha became he turning point” in the struggle to disband the USSR.

            For 500 years, Moscow been trying to swallow up Belarus but has failed and will fail again, he argues. Moscow can send MIGs, but we can send books because we rely on our history and our culture which are quite different from those of the empire and its rulers. “We pray ad will do what we can that they will not ever succeed.”

            Some Belarusians believe that Alyaksandr Lukashenka has become a believer in independence.  But for 25 years, he has been “a guarantor [only] of his personal power … People will not defend a state that oppresses them.  You want Belarusians to support you? Give them back freedom, repent, release political prisoners and the unjustly condemned, raise the white-red-white flag, and hold free elections.”

            “If Lukashenka won’t do that,” Severinets says, “he will have signed his own death warrant and history will anything but merciful to him.”