러시아ㆍ유라시아

The Belarussian language was developed on the base of the Old Belarussian language, surviving in the ethnic Belarusian territories in the 17th century. By the end of the 18th century, Old Belarusian was still common among the minor nobility in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (GDL) and Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth (PLC). The development of Belarusian in the 19th century was strongly influenced by the political conflict in the territories of the former PLC, between the Russian Imperial authorities, trying to consolidate their rule over the "joined provinces", and the Polish and Polonised nobility, trying to bring back its pre-Partitions rule. One of the important manifestations of this conflict was the struggle for ideological control over the administrative-territorial reform and the educational system. The Polish and Russian languages were being introduced and re-introduced, while the general state of the people's education remained poor until the very end of the Russian Empire. In summary, the first two decades of the 19th century had seen the unprecedented prosperity of Polish culture and language in the former GDL amd PLC lands. The era had seen the effective completion of the Polonization of the lowest level of the nobility, the further reduction of the area of use of contemporary Belarusian, and the effective folklorization of Belarusian culture. After the 1917 February Revolution in Russia, the Belarusian language became an important factor in political activities in the Belarusian land. In the Belarusian People's Republic, Belarusian was used as the only official language (decreed by Belarusian People's Secretariat on 28 April 1918). Subsequently, in the Belarusian SSR, Belarusian was decreed to be one of the four (Belarusian, Polish, Russian, and Yiddish) official languages (decreed by Central Executive Committee of BSSR in February 1921).