I am glad to tell you, folks, that I am finally all set and settled in downtown Washington, D.C. Thanks so much to Iryna V., a journalist and, as of recently, a TOL Belarus blogger, for her help in my apartment hunt.
Yesterday on my way to work, I read a story in The Washington Post about a growing sentiment for enacting English to be the official language of the United States. It is interesting to note that neither Democrats nor Republicans seem to oppose it. Even the majority of Hispanics, according to the newspaper, would approve it. So far the U.S. does not have an official language, but the growing Spanish speaking population raises a lot of debates and concerns. The country formerly referred to as “the melting pot” is gradually becoming more of a potpourri of cultures, traditions, ethnic groups reluctant to lose their roots. Spanish is not the only influential minority language, but others – like Korean and Chinese – are way behind in usage and popularity.
It’d be weird to compare Belarus and America here. And yet, I am often trying to question myself and others – are Belarusian-speakers and Russian-speakers in Belarus on the same page of nation building? Some striking differences often occur, and I don’t think they are empirically tested, so I won’t resort to any speculations about the divide between the two groups. It would be interesting to measure the numbers of Belarusian and Russian speakers who voted for Milinkevich vs. other candidates. Can language be an explanatory variable of political loss or success? In U.S. politics, language has become a big issue. There are some congressmen and senators who overtly oppose the enacted English dominance. In Belarus both Milinkevich and Kozulin tried to avoid the problem and answered language-related questions very cautiously. The former had recourse to a funny sounding bilinguism, while the latter could hardly say a word in Belarusian. It is well-known that the active Belarusian-speaking townsfolk are predominantly oppositional, and to succeed both politicians had to conquer their appeal. It was a difficult task for Kozulin whose knowledge of the mother tongue was very poor, while Russian speaking opposition was sage to back the front runner, i.e. Milinkevich. Could this explain Kozulin’s skinny 5-1% (according to IISEPS and CEC)?
Will the language problem arise during the upcoming campaigns? The answer is obvious – sure, it will in both U.S. and Belarus. Here American looming bilinguism may be an interesting case study of how language may either skyrocket somebody’s popularity or dump it. Kozulin’s mere Belarusian illiteracy (although he was learning) turned many pro-democratic nationals against him despite his alliance with some literati. On the other hand, Milinkevich’s association with the right-of-center BNF party scared part of the Russian-speaking electorate with firm (almost unbreakable) belief that BNF was a radical nationalistic party.
Language as an electoral factor might be a very interesting study for Belarus’ academe. I know that the issue is under scrutiny of American researchers taking seriously the language & politics causality. In Belarus, language has recently been shelved away as a secondary issue. But it willy-nilly bubbles up.