Russian language in Belarus
The Russian language in Belarus is one of the two official languages (the other being Belarusian). Being dominant in the media, education and other areas of public life, Russian is de facto the main language of the country.
After 1995
In 1995, according to the results of the 1995 Belarusian Referendum, the Russian language was declared the second official language. According to the Belarus Census (2009), 41.5% of the Belarusian population declared Russian as their mother language and 70.2% declared Russian "the language spoken at home" (the second language-related question of the Census).
| Excerpt from the Russian Empire Census results |
| Guberniya* |
Total Population |
Belarusian (Бѣлорускій) |
Russian (Вѣликорускій) |
Polish (Польскій) |
| Vilna |
1,591,207 |
891,903 |
78,623 |
130,054 |
| Vitebsk |
1,489,246 |
987,020 |
198,001 |
50,377 |
| Grodno |
1,603,409 |
1,141,714 |
74,143 |
161,662 |
| Minsk |
2,147,621 |
1,633,091 |
83,999 |
64,617 |
| Mogilev |
1,686,764 |
1,389,782 |
58,155 |
17,526 |
| Smolensk |
1,525,279 |
100,757 |
1,397,875 |
7,314 |
| * See also: Administrative-territorial division of Belarus and bordering lands in 2nd half 19 cent. (right half-page) and Ethnical composition of Belarus and bordering lands (prep. by Mikola Bich on the basis of 1897 data) |
References
External links