181-491: Grodno ( Russian : Гродно [ˈɡrodnə] ; Polish : Grodno [ˈɡrɔdnɔ] ) or Hrodna ( Belarusian : Гродна , IPA: [ˈɣrɔdna] ) is a city in western Belarus . It is one of the oldest cities of Belarus. The city is located on the Neman River , 300 kilometres (190 mi) from Minsk , about 15 kilometres (9.3 mi) from the border with Poland , and 30 kilometres (19 mi) from
362-674: A constitutional referendum on whether to adopt Russian as a second official language. According to the Central Election Commission, 74.8% voted against, 24.9% voted for and the voter turnout was 71.1%. Starting in 2019, instruction in Russian will be gradually discontinued in private colleges and universities in Latvia, and in general instruction in Latvian public high schools. On 29 September 2022, Saeima passed in
543-519: A new education law which requires all schools to teach at least partially in Ukrainian, with provisions while allow indigenous languages and languages of national minorities to be used alongside the national language. The law faced criticism from officials in Russia and Hungary. The 2019 Law of Ukraine "On protecting the functioning of the Ukrainian language as the state language" gives priority to
724-610: A core part of the Belarusian national identity, with Belarus continuing to refer to itself as the "partisan republic" since the 1970s. Following the war, many former Soviet partisans entered positions of government, among them Pyotr Masherov and Kirill Mazurov , both of whom were First Secretary of the Communist Party of Byelorussia. Until the late 1970s, the Belarusian government was almost entirely composed of former partisans. Numerous pieces of media have been made about
905-532: A disputed election took place on 8 January 1922, and the territory was annexed to Poland. Żeligowski later in his memoir which was published in London in 1943 condemned the annexation of the Republic by Poland, as well as the policy of closing Belarusian schools and general disregard of Marshal Józef Piłsudski 's confederation plans by Polish ally. In January 1919, a part of Belarus under Bolshevik Russian control
1086-572: A formula with V standing for the nucleus (vowel) and C for each consonant, the maximal structure can be described as follows: (C)(C)(C)(C)V(C)(C)(C)(C) Belarus in Europe (dark grey) – [ Legend ] Belarus , officially the Republic of Belarus , is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe . It is bordered by Russia to the east and northeast, Ukraine to
1267-834: A home to the Dregoviches Slavic tribe. It was a significant city in Black Ruthenia and later part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania , which joined the Polish-Lithuanian Union in 1385. Grodno faced numerous invasions, most notably by the Teutonic Knights . The city was a key trade, commerce, and cultural center in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth , and one of its royal residences, and de facto capital in
1448-484: A language that "belongs to the European cultural space". The financing of Russian-language content by the state will cease, which the concept says create a "unified information space". However, one inevitable consequence would be the closure of public media broadcasts in Russian on LTV and Latvian Radio, as well as the closure of LSM's Russian-language service. In Lithuania , Russian has no official or legal status, but
1629-588: A lesser extent the languages to the south and the east: Uralic , Turkic , Persian , Arabic , and Hebrew . According to the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California , Russian is classified as a level III language in terms of learning difficulty for native English speakers, requiring approximately 1,100 hours of immersion instruction to achieve intermediate fluency. Feudal divisions and conflicts created obstacles between
1810-754: A massacre of 15 Polish prisoners-of-war. After the Ostrów Agreement of 1392, Vytautas expelled the Teutonic Knights, who in revenge captured the city, burned the castle and took 3,000 prisoners. The city was attacked one more time by the Teutonic Knights in 1402. Since 1413, Grodno had been the administrative center of a powiat in Trakai Voivodeship . Polish King Władysław II Jagiełło often stopped in Grodno, including in 1414, 1416, 1418 and 1425. In 1425, Polish-Teutonic talks concerning
1991-622: A minority language under the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities . 30% of the population was fluent in Russian in 2006, and 2% used it as the main language with family, friends, or at work. In Azerbaijan , Russian has no official status, but is a lingua franca of the country. 26% of the population was fluent in Russian in 2006, and 5% used it as the main language with family, friends, or at work. In Georgia , Russian has no official status, but it
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#17327795966662172-468: A national consciousness. In western Belarus under Polish control, Byelorussia became commonly used in the regions of Białystok and Grodno during the interwar period. The term Byelorussia (its names in other languages such as English being based on the Russian form) was used officially only until 1991. Officially, the full name of the country is Republic of Belarus ( Рэспубліка Беларусь , Республика Беларусь , Respublika Belarus ). In Russia,
2353-526: A qualitatively new entity can be said to emerge—the general language of the working class... capitalism has the tendency of creating the general urban language of a given society. In 2010, there were 259.8 million speakers of Russian in the world: in Russia – 137.5 million, in the CIS and Baltic countries – 93.7 million, in Eastern Europe – 12.9 million, Western Europe – 7.3 million, Asia – 2.7 million, in
2534-612: A quarter of its population and half of its economic resources. In 1945, the Byelorussian SSR became a founding member of the United Nations and the Soviet Union. The republic was home to a widespread and diverse anti-Nazi insurgent movement which dominated politics until well into the 1970s, overseeing Belarus' transformation from an agrarian to an industrial economy. The parliament of the republic proclaimed
2715-712: A short-lived state to be set up there, the first one with a Belarusian name—the Belarusian People's Republic . This declared its independence from Russia in March 1918 in Minsk (known at that time as Mensk), but then the Rada of the Belarusian Democratic Republic had to leave Minsk and fled to Grodno and later to the temporary Lithuanian capital Kaunas . All this time the military authority in
2896-588: A significant Jewish population before the Holocaust : according to Russian census of 1897 , out of the total population of 46,900, Jews constituted 22,700 (around 48%, or almost half of the total population). After the outbreak of World War I, Grodno was occupied by Germany (3 September 1915) and ceded by Bolshevist Russia under the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk in 1918. After the war the German government permitted
3077-450: A staggering quarter of the prewar population . In the 1990s some raised the estimate even higher, to 2.7 million. The Jewish population of Belarus was devastated during the Holocaust and never recovered. The population of Belarus did not regain its pre-war level until 1971. Belarus was also hit hard economically, losing around half of its economic resources. The borders of the Byelorussian SSR and Poland were redrawn, in accord with
3258-621: A summer residence of the last Polish king. The city is served by Grodno Airport located 18 km south-east of Grodno. Some seasonal international and charter flights are available throughout the year. The city's public transport includes trolleybuses , which began operating in Grodno on 5 November 1974. The trolleybus system is operated by the city, and in 2009 it had 12 routes and carried around 66.5 million passengers per year. Additional routes have been opened subsequently, including routes 21 and 22 in November 2019. Its railway station
3439-528: A total population of 47,000. In the period of independent Poland, a yeshiva had operated in the city ( Shaar ha-Tora ) under the management of Rabbi Shimon Shkop . Before the German-Soviet invasion of Poland there were about 25,000 Jews in Grodno out of 50,000 total population. During the German occupation of the city, on 1 November 1942 the Jews were concentrated in 2 ghettos. 15,000 men were confined to
3620-578: A vast East Slavic state ruled by the Rurikids . Upon the death of its ruler Yaroslav the Wise in 1054, the state split into independent principalities. The Battle on the Nemiga River in 1067 was one of the more notable events of the period, the date of which is considered the founding date of Minsk . Many early principalities were virtually razed or severely affected by a major Mongol invasion in
3801-621: Is landlocked , relatively flat, and contains large tracts of marshy land. About 40% of Belarus is covered by forests. The country lies within two ecoregions: Sarmatic mixed forests and Central European mixed forests . Many streams and 11,000 lakes are found in Belarus. Three major rivers run through the country: the Neman , the Pripyat , and the Dnieper . The Neman flows westward towards
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#17327795966663982-539: Is Belarusian, among ethnic Belarusians this share is 28.5%; the highest share of those who speak Belarusian at home is among ethnic Poles — 46.0%. In Estonia , Russian is spoken by 29.6% of the population, according to a 2011 estimate from the World Factbook, and is officially considered a foreign language. School education in the Russian language is a very contentious point in Estonian politics, and in 2022,
4163-481: Is a co-official language per article 5 of the Constitution of Kyrgyzstan . The 2009 census states that 482,200 people speak Russian as a native language, or 8.99% of the population. Additionally, 1,854,700 residents of Kyrgyzstan aged 15 and above fluently speak Russian as a second language, or 49.6% of the population in the age group. In Tajikistan , Russian is the language of inter-ethnic communication under
4344-401: Is a high degree of mutual intelligibility between Russian, Belarusian and Ukrainian , and a moderate degree of it in all modern Slavic languages, at least at the conversational level. Russian is written using a Cyrillic alphabet. The Russian alphabet consists of 33 letters. The following table gives their forms, along with IPA values for each letter's typical sound: Older letters of
4525-610: Is a post-posed definite article -to , -ta , -te similar to that existing in Bulgarian and Macedonian. In the Southern Russian dialects , instances of unstressed /e/ and /a/ following palatalized consonants and preceding a stressed syllable are not reduced to [ɪ] (as occurs in the Moscow dialect), being instead pronounced [a] in such positions (e.g. несл и is pronounced [nʲaˈslʲi] , not [nʲɪsˈlʲi] ) – this
4706-488: Is being used less frequently by Russian-speaking typists in favor of the extension of Unicode character encoding , which fully incorporates the Russian alphabet. Free programs are available offering this Unicode extension, which allow users to type Russian characters, even on Western 'QWERTY' keyboards. The Russian language was first introduced to computing after the M-1 , and MESM models were produced in 1951. According to
4887-624: Is called yakanye ( яканье ). Consonants include a fricative /ɣ/ , a semivowel /w⁓u̯/ and /x⁓xv⁓xw/ , whereas the Standard and Northern dialects have the consonants /ɡ/ , /v/ , and final /l/ and /f/ , respectively. The morphology features a palatalized final /tʲ/ in 3rd person forms of verbs (this is unpalatalized in the Standard and Northern dialects). During the Proto-Slavic (Common Slavic) times all Slavs spoke one mutually intelligible language or group of dialects. There
5068-437: Is in the transitional zone between continental climates and maritime climates . Natural resources include peat deposits, small quantities of oil and natural gas, granite , dolomite ( limestone ), marl , chalk, sand, gravel, and clay. About 70% of the radiation from neighboring Ukraine's 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster entered Belarusian territory, and about a fifth of Belarusian land (principally farmland and forests in
5249-573: Is more spoken than English. Sizable Russian-speaking communities also exist in North America, especially in large urban centers of the US and Canada, such as New York City , Philadelphia , Boston , Los Angeles , Nashville , San Francisco , Seattle , Spokane , Toronto , Calgary , Baltimore , Miami , Portland , Chicago , Denver , and Cleveland . In a number of locations they issue their own newspapers, and live in ethnic enclaves (especially
5430-564: Is odd") – чу́дно ( chúdno – "this is marvellous"), молоде́ц ( molodéts – "well done!") – мо́лодец ( mólodets – "fine young man"), узна́ю ( uznáyu – "I shall learn it") – узнаю́ ( uznayú – "I recognize it"), отреза́ть ( otrezát – "to be cutting") – отре́зать ( otrézat – "to have cut"); to indicate the proper pronunciation of uncommon words, especially personal and family names, like афе́ра ( aféra , "scandal, affair"), гу́ру ( gúru , "guru"), Гарси́я ( García ), Оле́ша ( Olésha ), Фе́рми ( Fermi ), and to show which
5611-402: Is recognized as a minority language under the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities . Russian is the language of 9% of the population according to the World Factbook. Ethnologue cites Russian as the country's de facto working language. In China , Russian has no official status, but it is spoken by the small Russian communities in the northeastern Heilongjiang and
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5792-569: Is sometimes considered to have played a significant role in the formation of modern Russian. Also, Russian has notable lexical similarities with Bulgarian due to a common Church Slavonic influence on both languages, but because of later interaction in the 19th and 20th centuries, Bulgarian grammar differs markedly from Russian. Over the course of centuries, the vocabulary and literary style of Russian have also been influenced by Western and Central European languages such as Greek, Latin , Polish , Dutch , German, French, Italian, and English, and to
5973-585: Is spoken by 14.2% of the population according to an undated estimate from the World Factbook. In 2005, Russian was the most widely taught foreign language in Mongolia, and was compulsory in Year 7 onward as a second foreign language in 2006. Around 1.5 million Israelis spoke Russian as of 2017. The Israeli press and websites regularly publish material in Russian and there are Russian newspapers, television stations, schools, and social media outlets based in
6154-405: Is the only surviving monument of ancient Black Ruthenian architecture, distinguished from other Orthodox churches by prolific use of polychrome faceted stones of blue, green or red tint which could be arranged to form crosses or other figures on the wall. The church was built before 1183 and survived intact until 1853, when the south wall collapsed, due to its perilous location on the high bank of
6335-518: Is the stressed word in a sentence, for example Ты́ съел печенье? ( Tý syel pechenye? – "Was it you who ate the cookie?") – Ты съе́л печенье? ( Ty syél pechenye? – "Did you eat the cookie?) – Ты съел пече́нье? ( Ty syel pechénye? "Was it the cookie you ate?"). Stress marks are mandatory in lexical dictionaries and books for children or Russian learners. The Russian syllable structure can be quite complex, with both initial and final consonant clusters of up to four consecutive sounds. Using
6516-464: Is usually shown in writing not by a change of the consonant but rather by changing the following vowel. Another important aspect is the reduction of unstressed vowels . Stress , which is often unpredictable, is not normally indicated orthographically , though an optional acute accent may be used to mark stress – such as to distinguish between homographic words (e.g. замо́к [ zamók , 'lock'] and за́мок [ zámok , 'castle']), or to indicate
6697-522: The Kievan Chronicle as Goroden , and located at a crossing of numerous trading routes. The same chronicle also reports in the year 1183: 'That same year all of Goroden burned, including all the stone churches, from a flash of lightning and a clap of thunder in a thunderstorm.' Grodno became part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in the 13th century, and the local stronghold was rebuilt by Lithuanians. Prince Daniel of Galicia briefly captured
6878-634: The Reichskommissariat Ostland in 1941, but in 1943 the German authorities allowed local collaborators to set up a client state, the Belarusian Central Council . During World War II, Belarus was home to a variety of guerrilla movements , including Jewish, Polish, and Soviet partisans. Belarusian partisan formations formed a large part of the Soviet partisans , and in the modern day these partisans have formed
7059-470: The 2011 Lithuanian census , Russian was the native language for 7.2% of the population. In Moldova , Russian was considered to be the language of interethnic communication under a Soviet-era law. On 21 January 2021, the Constitutional Court of Moldova declared the law unconstitutional and deprived Russian of the status of the language of interethnic communication. 50% of the population
7240-945: The Apollo–Soyuz mission, which first flew in 1975. In March 2013, Russian was found to be the second-most used language on websites after English. Russian was the language of 5.9% of all websites, slightly ahead of German and far behind English (54.7%). Russian was used not only on 89.8% of .ru sites, but also on 88.7% of sites with the former Soviet Union domain .su . Websites in former Soviet Union member states also used high levels of Russian: 79.0% in Ukraine, 86.9% in Belarus, 84.0% in Kazakhstan, 79.6% in Uzbekistan, 75.9% in Kyrgyzstan and 81.8% in Tajikistan. However, Russian
7421-580: The Bandkeramik predominated in what now constitutes Belarus, and the Cimmerians as well as other pastoralists roamed through the area by 1,000 BC. The Zarubintsy culture later became widespread at the beginning of the 1st millennium . In addition, remains from the Dnieper–Donets culture were found in Belarus and parts of Ukraine . The region was first permanently settled by Baltic tribes in
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7602-917: The Belarusian Byzantine Catholic Church was formed by the Poles to bring Orthodox Christians into the See of Rome . The Belarusian church entered into a full communion with the Latin Church through the Union of Brest in 1595, while keeping its Byzantine liturgy in the Church Slavonic language. The union between Poland and Lithuania ended in 1795 with the Third Partition of Poland by Imperial Russia, Prussia , and Austria . The Belarusian territories acquired by
7783-509: The Belarusian People's Republic . Immediately afterwards, the Polish–Soviet War ignited, and the territory of Belarus was divided between Poland and Soviet Russia. The Rada of the Belarusian Democratic Republic exists as a government in exile ever since then; in fact, it is currently the world's longest serving government in exile. The Belarusian People's Republic was the first attempt to create an independent Belarusian state under
7964-544: The Belarusian Popular Front campaigned for early elections later in the year, two years before they were scheduled. By May of that year, about 383,000 signatures had been collected for a petition to hold the referendum, which was 23,000 more than legally required to be put to a referendum at the time. Despite this, the meeting of the Supreme Council of the Republic of Belarus to ultimately decide
8145-649: The Belarusian minority was no exception. The polonization drive was inspired and influenced by the Polish National Democracy , led by Roman Dmowski , who advocated refusing Belarusians and Ukrainians the right for a free national development. A Belarusian organization, the Belarusian Peasants' and Workers' Union , was banned in 1927, and opposition to Polish government was met with state repressions. Nonetheless, compared to
8326-765: The Byelorussian SSR , which became a founding constituent republic of the Soviet Union in 1922. After the Polish-Soviet War (1918–1921), Belarus lost almost half of its territory to Poland. Much of the borders of Belarus took their modern shape in 1939, when some lands of the Second Polish Republic were reintegrated into it after the Soviet invasion of Poland , and were finalized after World War II. During World War II, military operations devastated Belarus, which lost about
8507-788: The CIS , the CSTO , the EAEU , the OSCE , and the Non-Aligned Movement . It has shown no aspirations of joining the European Union but maintains a bilateral relationship with the bloc , and also participates in the Baku Initiative . The name Belarus is closely related with the term Belaya Rus' , i.e., White Rus' . There are several claims to the origin of the name White Rus' . An ethno-religious theory suggests that
8688-413: The Constitution of Tajikistan and is permitted in official documentation. 28% of the population was fluent in Russian in 2006, and 7% used it as the main language with family, friends or at work. The World Factbook notes that Russian is widely used in government and business. In Turkmenistan , Russian lost its status as the official lingua franca in 1996. Among 12% of the population who grew up in
8869-431: The Council of Lithuania and representation in the Government of Lithuania by Lithuanian Ministry for Belarusian Affairs ). After the outbreak of the Polish–Bolshevik War , the German commanders of the Ober Ost feared that the city might fall to Soviet Russia, so according to the 1919 Treaty of Białystok on 27 April 1919 they passed authority to Poland, which just regained independence several months earlier. The city
9050-399: The East Slavs to the Grodno Region in the 10th–11th centuries, the area was inhabited by Baltic tribe Yotvingians , who were heavily Lithuanized in the 5th-7th centuries already and especially during the formation of the State of Lithuania in the 13th century, and subsequently for a long time Grodno and its area was a part of the Ethnographic Lithuania (e.g. even in the 19th century
9231-526: The Grodno State Medical University where many students from different parts of Belarus acquire academic degrees, as do a number of foreign students. Other higher educational establishments are Yanka Kupala State University of Grodno (the largest education centre in Grodno Province) and Grodno State Agrarian University. To support the Polish community, a Polish school was built in 1995, where all subjects are taught in Polish and students are able to pass exams to get accepted into Polish universities . The town
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#17327795966669412-492: The Lithuanian Wars of Independence , thus large amount of its members were awarded with the highest state award of Lithuania – Order of the Cross of Vytis . In accordance with an agreement between Lithuania and Belarus (Rada BNR), the Grodno Region was joined to Lithuania. According to Lithuanian president Antanas Smetona , the Lithuanians considered granting an autonomy to the Belarusian territories within Lithuania (as requested by Belarusian side; there were Belarusian members in
9593-423: The Old Grodno Castle was started in 2017 and also received criticism due to the lacking of historical authenticity. For instance, the contemporary viewpoint was added near the central gates. Some specialists disputed the restoration project, they found significant mistakes in documentation that appeared because the constructor could not read historical inventory descriptions written in Polish and German. For example,
9774-1006: The Old Grodno Castle , and is a center for Roman Catholicism and Polish culture in Belarus. In Belarusian Classical Orthography ( Taraškievica ), the city is named as Горадня (Horadnia). In Latin , it was known as Grodna ( -ae ), in Polish as Grodno , in Lithuanian as Gardinas , in Latvian as Grodņa , in German as Garten , and in Yiddish as גראָדנע (Grodne). [REDACTED] Grand Duchy of Lithuania (1270–1569) [REDACTED] Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth (1569–1795) [REDACTED] Russian Empire (1795–1915) [REDACTED] German Empire (1915–1918) ( occupation ) [REDACTED] Belarusian Democratic Republic (1918–1919) [REDACTED] Republic of Poland (1919–1939) [REDACTED] Soviet Union (1939–1941) ( occupation ) [REDACTED] Nazi Germany (1941–1944) ( occupation ) [REDACTED] Soviet Union (1944–1991) [REDACTED] Belarus (1991– present ) Before arrival of
9955-430: The Renaissance Batorówka Palace. The Old and New Castles were often visited by the Commonwealth monarchs. Kings Casimir IV Jagiellon and Stephen Báthory died there, and the latter was initially buried at the local Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary . Grodno was one of the places where the Sejms of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth were held, incl. the last Sejm in the history of the Commonwealth in 1793. The city
10136-602: The Soviet Union after the war ended in 1921, and the Byelorussian SSR became a founding member of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in 1922. In the 1920s and 1930s, Soviet agricultural and economic policies, including collectivization and five-year plans for the national economy , led to famine and political repression. The western part of modern Belarus remained part of the Second Polish Republic . After an early period of liberalization, tensions between increasingly nationalistic Polish government and various increasingly separatist ethnic minorities started to grow, and
10317-472: The Tatars (i.e., Polotsk, Vitebsk, and Mogilev) had been referred to as White Rus' . A fourth theory suggests that the color white was associated with the west, and Belarus was the western part of Rus' in the 9th to 13th centuries. The name Rus' is often conflated with its Latin forms Russia and Ruthenia , thus Belarus is often referred to as White Russia or White Ruthenia . The name first appeared in German and Latin medieval literature ;
10498-405: The UN Security Council statement condemning "the apparent terrorist attack" intimating the possibility that the Belarusian government itself was behind the bombing. Mass protests erupted across the country following the disputed 2020 Belarusian presidential election , in which Lukashenko sought a sixth term in office. Neighbouring countries Poland and Lithuania do not recognize Lukashenko as
10679-476: The Ukrainian language in more than 30 spheres of public life: in particular in public administration , media, education, science, culture, advertising, services . The law does not regulate private communication. A poll conducted in March 2022 by RATING in the territory controlled by Ukraine found that 83% of the respondents believe that Ukrainian should be the only state language of Ukraine. This opinion dominates in all macro-regions, age and language groups. On
10860-507: The United States Census , in 2007 Russian was the primary language spoken in the homes of over 850,000 individuals living in the United States. Russian is one of the official languages (or has similar status and interpretation must be provided into Russian) of the following: The Russian language is also one of two official languages aboard the International Space Station – NASA astronauts who serve alongside Russian cosmonauts usually take Russian language courses. This practice goes back to
11041-511: The Yurysdyka River. The Köppen Climate Classification subtype for this climate is " Dfb " (Warm Summer Continental Climate). The city has one of the largest concentrations of Roman Catholics in Belarus. It is also a centre of Polish culture , with a significant number of Poles living in Belarus residing in the city and its surroundings. The Eastern Orthodox population is also widely present. The city's Catholic and Orthodox churches are important architectural treasures. The city houses
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#173277959666611222-406: The border with Lithuania . Grodno serves as the administrative center of Grodno Region and Grodno District , though it is administratively separated from the district. As of 2024, the city has a population of 361,115 inhabitants. The modern city of Grodno, founded in 1127, originated as a small fortress and trading outpost on the border of the Baltic tribal union of the Yotvingians . It was also
11403-401: The fourth most widely used language on the Internet . Russian is written using the Russian alphabet of the Cyrillic script ; it distinguishes between consonant phonemes with palatal secondary articulation and those without—the so-called "soft" and "hard" sounds. Almost every consonant has a hard or soft counterpart, and the distinction is a prominent feature of the language, which
11584-491: The sovereignty of Belarus on 27 July 1990, and during the dissolution of the Soviet Union , Belarus gained independence on 25 August 1991. Following the adoption of a new constitution in 1994, Alexander Lukashenko was elected Belarus's first president in the country's first and only free election after independence, serving as president ever since. Lukashenko heads a highly centralized authoritarian government. Belarus ranks low in international measurements of freedom of
11765-429: The state-owned enterprise industrial sector. Norway and Japan have joined the sanctions regime which aims to isolate Belarus from the international supply chain. Most major Belarusian banks are also under restrictions. Belarus lies between latitudes 51° and 57° N , and longitudes 23° and 33° E . Its extension from north to south is 560 km (350 mi), from west to east is 650 km (400 mi). It
11946-451: The (larger) Ukrainian minority , Belarusians were much less politically aware and active, and thus suffered fewer repressions than the Ukrainians. In 1935, after the death of Piłsudski, a new wave of repressions was released upon the minorities, with many Orthodox churches and Belarusian schools being closed. Use of the Belarusian language was discouraged. Belarusian leadership was sent to Bereza Kartuska prison . In September 1939,
12127-428: The 13th century, but the lands of modern-day Belarus avoided the brunt of the invasion and eventually joined the Grand Duchy of Lithuania . There are no sources of military seizure, but the annals affirm the alliance and united foreign policy of Polotsk and Lithuania for decades. Incorporation into the Grand Duchy of Lithuania resulted in an economic, political, and ethno-cultural unification of Belarusian lands. Of
12308-434: The 1580s. The grand dukes allowed the creation of a Jewish commune in 1389, and the city received its charter in 1441. Grodno was the site of two battles during the Great Northern War . Grodno has a rich history with various rulers and influences. In 1793, Grodno became the capital of the Grodno Voivodeship, but was annexed by Russia in 1795 after Third Partition of Poland . The city had a significant Jewish population before
12489-454: The 1919-proposed Curzon Line . Joseph Stalin implemented a policy of Sovietization to isolate the Byelorussian SSR from Western influences . This policy involved sending Russians from various parts of the Soviet Union and placing them in key positions in the Byelorussian SSR government. After Stalin died in 1953, Nikita Khrushchev continued his predecessor's cultural hegemony program, stating, "The sooner we all start speaking Russian,
12670-405: The 20th century, Russian was a mandatory language taught in the schools of the members of the old Warsaw Pact and in other countries that used to be satellites of the USSR. According to the Eurobarometer 2005 survey, fluency in Russian remains fairly high (20–40%) in some countries, in particular former Warsaw Pact countries. In Armenia , Russian has no official status, but it is recognized as
12851-404: The 20th century, different states at various times controlled the lands of modern-day Belarus, including Kievan Rus' , the Principality of Polotsk , the Grand Duchy of Lithuania , the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth , and the Russian Empire . In the aftermath of the Russian Revolution in 1917, different states arose competing for legitimacy amid the Civil War , ultimately ending in the rise of
13032-658: The 3rd century. Around the 5th century, the area was taken over by the Slavs. The takeover was partially due to the lack of military coordination of the Balts, but their gradual assimilation into Slavic culture was peaceful. Invaders from Asia , among whom were the Huns and Avars , swept through c. 400–600 AD, but were unable to dislodge the Slavic presence. In the 9th century, the territory of modern Belarus became part of Kievan Rus' ,
13213-1030: The Baltic Sea and the Pripyat flows eastward to the Dnieper; the Dnieper flows southward towards the Black Sea . The highest point is Dzyarzhynskaya Hara (Dzyarzhynsk Hill) at 345 metres (1,132 ft), and the lowest point is on the Neman River at 90 m (295 ft). The average elevation of Belarus is 160 m (525 ft) above sea level . The climate features mild to cold winters, with January minimum temperatures ranging from −4 °C (24.8 °F ) in southwest ( Brest ) to −8 °C (17.6 °F) in northeast ( Vitebsk ), and cool and moist summers with an average temperature of 18 °C (64.4 °F). Belarus has an average annual rainfall of 550 to 700 mm (21.7 to 27.6 in). The country
13394-569: The Belarusian partisans, including the 1985 film Come and See and the works of authors Ales Adamovich and Vasil Bykaŭ . The German occupation in 1941–1944 and war on the Eastern Front devastated Belarus. During that time, 209 out of 290 towns and cities were destroyed, 85% of the republic's industry, and more than one million buildings. After the war, it was estimated that 2.2 million local inhabitants had died, and of those some 810,000 were combatants—some foreign. This figure represented
13575-412: The Belarusian society the Russian language prevails, so according to the 2019 census 6,718,557 people (71.4% of the total population) stated that they speak Russian at home, for ethnic Belarusians this share is 61.4%, for Russians — 97.2%, for Ukrainians — 89.0%, for Poles — 52.4%, and for Jews — 96.6%; 2,447,764 people (26.0% of the total population) stated that the language they usually speak at home
13756-649: The Blessed Virgin Mary , which because of its founder (14th century) was commonly referred to as Vytautas ' Church , was first turned into a warehouse and eventually in 1961 was blown up by a decision of the Grodno Executive Committee. The Grodno Town Hall (constructed in 1513) was demolished to expand Savieckaja Square . The early 17th century Baroque style Church of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary and Bernardine Monastery
13937-685: The Byelorussian SSR took place. Though the opposition candidates, mostly associated with the pro-independence Belarusian Popular Front , took only 10% of the seats, Belarus declared itself sovereign on 27 July 1990 by issuing the Declaration of State Sovereignty of the Belarusian Soviet Socialist Republic . Wide-scale strikes erupted in April 1991. With the support of the Communist Party of Byelorussia ,
14118-641: The First Secretary of the Communist Party of Byelorussia, narrated during the meeting that previously he discussed with the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin the issue of the territorial transfers between the Byelorussian SSR and the Lithuanian SSR and Stalin said to him that if he will not transfer territories where there are many Lithuanians he will be punished. On 23 June 1941, the city came under German occupation that lasted until 16 July 1944. It
14299-630: The French led by Jérôme Bonaparte . The entry of the allied Polish and French troops was met with enthusiasm by the population, the Accession to the Confederation of the inhabitants of the Grodno district was announced, Napoleon 's name day was officially celebrated and an obelisk was erected in honour of the French. In 1833, following the unsuccessful November Uprising , notable local Polish independence activist and insurgent Michał Wołłowicz
14480-532: The Great and developed from the Moscow ( Middle or Central Russian ) dialect substratum under the influence of some of the previous century's Russian chancery language. Prior to the Bolshevik Revolution , the spoken form of the Russian language was that of the nobility and the urban bourgeoisie. Russian peasants, the great majority of the population, continued to speak in their own dialects. However,
14661-496: The Holocaust. After WWI, it was briefly part of the Belarusian People's Republic and the Republic of Lithuania before being taken over by Poland. During WWII, it was occupied by the Soviet Union and later by Nazi Germany . Since 1945, Grodno has been part of Belarus. Today, it has a diverse population, including Belarusians, Poles, and a small Jewish community. The city is known for its historical architecture, including
14842-590: The Institute of Russian Language of the Russian Academy of Sciences, an optional acute accent ( знак ударения ) may, and sometimes should, be used to mark stress . For example, it is used to distinguish between otherwise identical words, especially when context does not make it obvious: замо́к ( zamók – "lock") – за́мок ( zámok – "castle"), сто́ящий ( stóyashchy – "worthwhile") – стоя́щий ( stoyáshchy – "standing"), чудно́ ( chudnó – "this
15023-549: The Lithuanian Grand Duke Vytautas . During the next years, their status had changed several times and in 1495 the Jews were deported from the city and banned from settling in Grodno (the ban was lifted in 1503). In 1560 there were 60 Jewish families in Grodno. They were concentrated on the "Jewish street" with their own synagogue and "hospital". In the year 1578 the great synagogue of Grodno was built by rabbi Mordehai Yaffe (Baal ha-Levush). The synagogue
15204-653: The Lithuanian-inhabited areas were still nearby the present-day suburbs of Grodno city). The modern city of Grodno originated as a small fortress and a fortified trading outpost maintained by the Rurikid princes on the border with the lands of the Baltic tribal union of the Yotvingians. The first reference to Grodno dates to 1005. The official foundation year is 1128. In this year Grodno was mentioned in
15385-526: The Middle East and North Africa – 1.3 million, Sub-Saharan Africa – 0.1 million, Latin America – 0.2 million, U.S., Canada , Australia, and New Zealand – 4.1 million speakers. Therefore, the Russian language is the seventh-largest in the world by the number of speakers , after English, Mandarin, Hindi -Urdu, Spanish, French, Arabic, and Portuguese. Russian is one of the six official languages of
15566-588: The Neman. During restoration works, some fragments of 12th-century frescos were discovered in the apses. Remains of four other churches in the same style, decorated with pitchers and coloured stones instead of frescos, were discovered in Grodno and Vaŭkavysk . They all date back to the turn of the 13th century, as do remains of the first stone palace in the Old Castle. The Cathedral of St. Francis Xavier stands on Batory Square (now: Soviet Square). The cathedral
15747-555: The Poles to reconvert to the Orthodox faith. In 1863, economic and cultural pressure exploded in a revolt , led by Konstanty Kalinowski (also known as Kastus). After the failed revolt, the Russian government reintroduced the use of Cyrillic to Belarusian in 1864 and no documents in Belarusian were permitted by the Russian government until 1905. During the negotiations of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk , Belarus first declared independence under German occupation on 25 March 1918, forming
15928-700: The Polish Duchy of Masovia . Since 1385 Grodno formed part of the Polish–Lithuanian union . The famous Lithuanian Grand Duke Vytautas was the prince of Grodno from 1376 to 1392, and he stayed there during his preparations for the Battle of Grunwald (1410). During the Lithuanian Civil War of 1389–1392 , the city was captured by Władysław II Jagiełło in 1390, and then by Vytautas in 1391, with Vytautas-allied Konrad von Wallenrode committing
16109-600: The Russian Empire under the reign of Catherine II were included into the Belarusian Governorate (Russian: Белорусское генерал-губернаторство ) in 1796 and held until their occupation by the German Empire during World War I . Under Nicholas I and Alexander III the national cultures were repressed with policies of Polonization replaced by Russification which included
16290-807: The Russian alphabet include ⟨ ѣ ⟩ , which merged to ⟨ е ⟩ ( /je/ or /ʲe/ ); ⟨ і ⟩ and ⟨ ѵ ⟩ , which both merged to ⟨ и ⟩ ( /i/ ); ⟨ ѳ ⟩ , which merged to ⟨ ф ⟩ ( /f/ ); ⟨ ѫ ⟩ , which merged to ⟨ у ⟩ ( /u/ ); ⟨ ѭ ⟩ , which merged to ⟨ ю ⟩ ( /ju/ or /ʲu/ ); and ⟨ ѧ ⟩ and ⟨ ѩ ⟩ , which later were graphically reshaped into ⟨ я ⟩ and merged phonetically to /ja/ or /ʲa/ . While these older letters have been abandoned at one time or another, they may be used in this and related articles. The yers ⟨ ъ ⟩ and ⟨ ь ⟩ originally indicated
16471-458: The Russian principalities before and especially during Mongol rule. This strengthened dialectal differences, and for a while, prevented the emergence of a standardized national language. The formation of the unified and centralized Russian state in the 15th and 16th centuries, and the gradual re-emergence of a common political, economic, and cultural space created the need for a common standard language. The initial impulse for standardization came from
16652-566: The Soviet Union in 1941. The defense of Brest Fortress was the first major battle of Operation Barbarossa . The Byelorussian SSR was the hardest-hit Soviet republic in World War II; it remained under German occupation until 1944. The German Generalplan Ost called for the extermination, expulsion, or enslavement of most or all Belarusians to provide more living space in the East for Germans. Most of Western Belarus became part of
16833-551: The Soviet Union invaded and occupied eastern Poland, following the German invasion of Poland two weeks earlier which marked the beginning of World War II . The territories of Western Belorussia were annexed and incorporated into the Byelorussian SSR. The Soviet-controlled Byelorussian People's Council officially took control of the territories, whose populations consisted of a mixture of Poles, Ukrainians, Belarusians and Jews, on 28 October 1939 in Białystok . Nazi Germany invaded
17014-668: The Soviet Union. On 1–2 October 1940, negotiations were held in Grodno between the Lithuanian and Belarusian communists to resolve territorial disputes between the Lithuanian SSR and Byelorussian SSR. The Lithuanians received less territories than they were appointed by the Supreme Soviet Decree of 3 August 1940 and on 6 November 1940 the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union adopted a new decree regarding
17195-405: The Soviet era can speak Russian, other generations of citizens that do not have any knowledge of Russian. Primary and secondary education by Russian is almost non-existent. In Uzbekistan , Russian is the language of inter-ethnic communication. It has some official roles, being permitted in official documentation and is the lingua franca of the country and the language of the elite. Russian
17376-600: The Supreme Council at the time and was largely opposed to political and economic reform, with allegations that some of the deputies opposed Belarusian independence. A national constitution was adopted in March 1994 in which the functions of prime minister were given to the President of Belarus . A two-round election for the presidency on 24 June 1994 and 10 July 1994 catapulted the formerly unknown Alexander Lukashenko into national prominence. He garnered 45% of
17557-467: The United Nations. Education in Russian is still a popular choice for both Russian as a second language (RSL) and native speakers in Russia, and in many former Soviet republics. Russian is still seen as an important language for children to learn in most of the former Soviet republics. In Belarus , Russian is a second state language alongside Belarusian per the Constitution of Belarus . 77% of
17738-555: The United States have all imposed sanctions against Belarus because of the rigged election and political oppression during the ongoing protests in the country. Further sanctions were imposed in 2022 following the country's role and complicity in the Russian invasion of Ukraine; Russian troops were allowed to stage part of the invasion from Belarusian territory. These include not only corporate offices and individual officers of government but also private individuals who work in
17919-612: The borders of the Byelorussian SSR and Lithuanian SSR. The Byelorussian SSR transferred cities and surroundings of Švenčionys , Dieveniškės , Druskininkai to the Lithuanian SSR that were mostly inhabited by Lithuanians and the Lithuanians began administrating them in January 1941. According to a 26 September 1940 meeting protocol of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Byelorussia , Panteleimon Ponomarenko ,
18100-601: The borders took place there. To aid the reconstruction of trade and commerce, the grand dukes allowed the creation of a Jewish commune in 1389. It was one of the first Jewish communities in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. In 1441 the city received its charter, based on the Magdeburg Law . In 1445, Casimir IV Jagiellon received a delegation from Kraków in Grodno announcing his election as king of Poland. As an important centre of trade, commerce, and culture, Grodno
18281-403: The broader sense of expanding the use of Russian alongside or in favour of other languages. The current standard form of Russian is generally regarded as the modern Russian literary language ( современный русский литературный язык – "sovremenny russky literaturny yazyk"). It arose at the beginning of the 18th century with the modernization reforms of the Russian state under the rule of Peter
18462-611: The castle was altered on numerous occasions, although a 17th-century stone arch bridge linking it with the city still survives. The Wettin monarchs of Poland were dissatisfied with the old residence and commissioned Matthäus Daniel Pöppelmann to design the New Grodno Castle , whose once sumptuous Baroque interiors were destroyed during World War II. The oldest extant structure in Grodno is the Kalozha Church of Sts. Boris and Gleb (Belarusian: Каложская царква ). It
18643-399: The chronicles of Jan of Czarnków mention the imprisonment of Lithuanian grand duke Jogaila and his mother at " Albae Russiae, Poloczk dicto " in 1381. The first known use of White Russia to refer to Belarus was in the late-16th century by Englishman Sir Jerome Horsey , who was known for his close contacts with the Russian royal court. During the 17th century, the Russian tsars used
18824-518: The city has been a centre of one of the provinces of the Byelorussian SSR , now of the independent Republic of Belarus. Most of the Polish inhabitants were expelled or fled to Poland in 1944–1946 and 1955–1959 . However, in 2019 Poles are still the second-most numerous nationality in the city (22%), after Belarusians. The Grodno Old Town was severely damaged during World War II and post-war authorities lacked will to preserve its heritage. The Church of
19005-508: The city in 1253 and once again attacked it in 1259. In 1276, Duke Traidenis gave shelter in Grodno to Yotvingians fleeing the Teutonic Knights ' massacre. The city was unsuccessfully attacked by the Rus' princes and Tatars in 1277, then repeatedly attacked, with varying success, by the Teutonic Knights in 1283, 1296, 1306, 1311, 1312, 1328, 1361, 1363, 1373, 1375, 1377. In 1358 a convention took place in Grodno on border disputes between Lithuania and
19186-480: The city or transported them to other locations. On 2 November 1942 the deportations to the death camps began and during 5 days in February 1943, 10,000 Jews were sent to Auschwitz . Later, on 13 February, 5,000 Jews were sent to Treblinka . During the deportations, many synagogues were looted and some people were murdered. The last Jews were deported in March 1943. By the end of the war, only one Jew had remained in
19367-765: The city remained in German hands until April 1919. Nevertheless, military units of the Lithuanian Armed Forces were formed in the German-controlled part of the Grodno Region in 1918–1919. For example, a Belarusian unit named 1st Belarusian Regiment , commanded by Alaksandar Ružancoŭ, was formed mainly from Grodno's inhabitants in 1919 as a part of the Lithuanian Armed Forces and participated in Lithuania's side during
19548-679: The city, including Polish Army officers and youth, were massacred afterwards by the Soviets. After the Soviet forces surrounded the engaged Polish units, the escaping Polish units withdrew to Lithuania. In accordance with the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of August 1939, the city was occupied by the Soviet Union and annexed into the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic . Several thousand of the city's Polish inhabitants were deported to remote areas of
19729-665: The community by the authorities in the 1990s. The head of the community is Rabbi Yitzhak Kaufman. A memorial plaque, commemorating the 25,000 Jews who were murdered in the two ghettos in the city of Grodno was placed on a building in Zamkavaja vulica, where the entrance to the ghetto once was. The following rivers flow through the city: the Neman River, the Lasosna River and the Haradničanka River with its branch
19910-518: The country's name was changed to the Republic of Belarus on 25 August 1991. Stanislav Shushkevich , the chairman of the Supreme Soviet of Belarus, met with Boris Yeltsin of Russia and Leonid Kravchuk of Ukraine on 8 December 1991 in Białowieża Forest to formally declare the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the formation of the Commonwealth of Independent States . In January 1992,
20091-572: The country. There is an Israeli TV channel mainly broadcasting in Russian with Israel Plus . See also Russian language in Israel . Russian is also spoken as a second language by a small number of people in Afghanistan . In Vietnam , Russian has been added in the elementary curriculum along with Chinese and Japanese and were named as "first foreign languages" for Vietnamese students to learn, on equal footing with English. The Russian language
20272-685: The cultural layer in the historic Old Market Square, demolition of 28 Constructivist architecture buildings in Mickevich, Gorky and September 17 streets in order to replace them with a modern hotel complex and the main traffic flow is directed in dangerous proximity to the New and Old Castles, while the plans to rebuild the Grodno Town Hall and the Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary ( Vytautas' Church ) are not being implemented. The reconstruction of
20453-426: The date for said referendum was delayed by six months. However, with no evidence to suggest such, the Supreme Council rejected the petition on the grounds of massive irregularities. Elections for the Supreme Council were set for March 1994. A new law on parliamentary elections failed to pass by 1993. Disputes over the referendum were accredited to the largely conservative Party of Belarusian Communists , which controlled
20634-404: The economy, with inflation reaching 108.7%. Around the same time the 2011 Minsk Metro bombing occurred in which 15 people were killed and 204 were injured. Two suspects, who were arrested within two days, confessed to being the perpetrators and were executed by shooting in 2012. The official version of events as publicised by the Belarusian government was questioned in the unprecedented wording of
20815-413: The factory and the industrial plant their local peasant dialects with their phonetics, grammar, and vocabulary, and the very process of recruiting workers from peasants and the mobility of the worker population generate another process: the liquidation of peasant inheritance by way of leveling the particulars of local dialects. On the ruins of peasant multilingual, in the context of developing heavy industry,
20996-411: The faster we shall build communism." Between Stalin's death in 1953 and 1980, Belarusian politics was dominated by former members of the Soviet partisans, including First Secretaries Kirill Mazurov and Pyotr Masherov. Mazurov and Masherov oversaw Belarus's rapid industrialisation and transformation from one of the Soviet Union's poorest republics into one of its richest. In 1986, the Byelorussian SSR
21177-456: The final reading amendments that state that all schools and kindergartens in the country are to transition to education in Latvian . From 2025, all children will be taught in Latvian only. On 28 September 2023, Latvian deputies approved The National Security Concept, according to which from 1 January 2026, all content created by Latvian public media (including LSM ) should be only in Latvian or
21358-717: The former Soviet Union . Russian has remained an official language of the Russian Federation , Belarus , Kazakhstan , Kyrgyzstan , and Tajikistan , and is still commonly used as a lingua franca in Ukraine , Moldova , the Caucasus , Central Asia , and to a lesser extent in the Baltic states and Israel . Russian has over 258 million total speakers worldwide. It is the most spoken native language in Europe ,
21539-550: The former lands of Kievan Rus' , including the territories of modern-day Belarus and Ukraine . On 2 February 1386, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Kingdom of Poland were joined in a personal union through a marriage of their rulers . This union set in motion the developments that eventually resulted in the formation of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth , created in 1569 by the Union of Lublin . In
21720-631: The generation of immigrants who started arriving in the early 1960s). Only about 25% of them are ethnic Russians, however. Before the dissolution of the Soviet Union , the overwhelming majority of Russophones in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn in New York City were Russian-speaking Jews. Afterward, the influx from the countries of the former Soviet Union changed the statistics somewhat, with ethnic Russians and Ukrainians immigrating along with some more Russian Jews and Central Asians. According to
21901-541: The ghetto. However, a few hundred survived in the camps or in hiding in the area. Perhaps as many as 2000 survived, including those who fled or were deported to the USSR. After the war, the Jewish community was revived. Most of the Jews emigrated after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Today there are several hundred Jews in the city with most of the community's activity centralized in the main synagogue that had been returned to
22082-480: The government bureaucracy for the lack of a reliable tool of communication in administrative, legal, and judicial affairs became an obvious practical problem. The earliest attempts at standardizing Russian were made based on the so-called Moscow official or chancery language, during the 15th to 17th centuries. Since then, the trend of language policy in Russia has been standardization in both the restricted sense of reducing dialectical barriers between ethnic Russians, and
22263-552: The grounds, and the 18th-century buildings of the Dominican monastery (its cathedral was demolished in 1874). Other sights in Grodno include the Orthodox cathedral, a polychrome Russian Revival extravaganza from 1904; the botanical garden, the first in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, founded in 1774; a curiously curved building on the central square (1780s); a 254-metre-high TV tower (1984); and Stanisławów,
22444-736: The invading Wehrmacht . In the course of the Soviet invasion of Poland (initiated on 17 September 1939) heavy fighting took place in the city between Soviet and improvised Polish forces, composed mostly of march battalions and volunteers. In the course of the Battle of Grodno (20-22 September) the Red Army lost some hundred men (according to Polish sources; according to Soviet sources – 57 killed and 159 wounded) and also 19 tanks and 4 APCs destroyed or damaged. The Polish side suffered at least 100 killed in action, military and civil, but losses still remain uncertain in detail (Soviet sources claim 644 killed and 1543 captives with many guns and machine guns etc. captured). Over 300 captured Polish defenders of
22625-448: The late 1920s the city became one of the biggest Polish Army garrisons. This brought the local economy back on track. According to the 1921 Polish census , the population of the city was 49.9% Polish, 43.4% Jewish, 4.3% Belarusian, 2.0% Russian, 0.26% German and 0.05% Lithuanian. During the Polish Defensive War of September to October 1939 the garrison of Grodno was mostly used for the formation of numerous military units fighting against
22806-413: The legitimate president of Belarus and the Lithuanian government has allotted a residence for main opposition candidate Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya and other members of the Belarusian opposition in Vilnius . Neither is Lukashenko recognized as the legitimate president of Belarus by the European Union, Canada, the United Kingdom or the United States. The European Union, Canada, the United Kingdom, and
22987-414: The most spoken Slavic language , as well as the most geographically widespread language of Eurasia . It is the world's seventh-most spoken language by number of native speakers , and the world's ninth-most spoken language by total number of speakers . Russian is one of two official languages aboard the International Space Station , one of the six official languages of the United Nations , as well as
23168-422: The name "Belarus". Despite significant efforts, the state ceased to exist, primarily because the territory was continually dominated by the Imperial German Army and the Imperial Russian Army in World War I , and then the Bolshevik Red Army . It existed from only 1918 to 1919 but created prerequisites for the formation of a Belarusian state. The choice of name was probably based on the fact that core members of
23349-440: The name used to describe the part of old Ruthenian lands within the Grand Duchy of Lithuania that had been populated mostly by Slavs who had been Christianized early, as opposed to Black Ruthenia , which was predominantly inhabited by pagan Balts . An alternative explanation for the name comments on the white clothing the local Slavic population wears. A third theory suggests that the old Rus' lands that were not conquered by
23530-491: The names of the Yotvingians . Another hypothesis connects the word with the Gothic Kingdom that occupied parts of the territory of modern Belarus and Ukraine in the 4th and 5th centuries. The self-naming of Goths was Gutans and Gytos , which are close to Gudija. Yet another hypothesis is based on the idea that Gudija in Lithuanian means "the other" and may have been used historically by Lithuanians to refer to any people who did not speak Lithuanian. From 5000 to 2000 BC,
23711-419: The naturally regenerating forest 2% was reported to be primary forest (consisting of native tree species with no clearly visible indications of human activity) and around 16% of the forest area was found within protected areas. For the year 2015, 100% of the forest area was reported to be under public ownership . Belarus borders five countries: Latvia to the north, Lithuania to the northwest, Poland to
23892-402: The newly formed government were educated in tsarist universities, with corresponding emphasis on the ideology of West-Russianism. The Republic of Central Lithuania was a short-lived political entity, which was the last attempt to restore Lithuania to the historical confederacy state (it was also supposed to create Lithuania Upper and Lithuania Lower). The republic was created in 1920 following
24073-420: The northwestern Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region . Russian was also the main foreign language taught in school in China between 1949 and 1964. In Kazakhstan , Russian is not a state language, but according to article 7 of the Constitution of Kazakhstan its usage enjoys equal status to that of the Kazakh language in state and local administration. The 2009 census reported that 10,309,500 people, or 84.8% of
24254-471: The old part of the city where the main synagogue was located. A high wall of 2 meters was built around the ghetto. The second ghetto was located in the Slovodka part of the city with 10,000 inhabitants. The head of the Judenrat was appointed Dr. Braur (or Brawer), the school's headmaster, who served in this duty until his execution in February 1943 during a roundup for a deportation to Treblinka. Several local Jews were rescued by Poles who either hidden them in
24435-515: The other hand, before the war, almost a quarter of Ukrainians were in favour of granting Russian the status of the state language, while after the beginning of Russia's invasion the support for the idea dropped to just 7%. In peacetime, the idea of raising the status of Russian was traditionally supported by residents of the south and east . But even in these regions, only a third of the respondents were in favour, and after Russia's full-scale invasion , their number dropped by almost half. According to
24616-401: The other three languages in the East Slavic branch. In many places in eastern and southern Ukraine and throughout Belarus, these languages are spoken interchangeably, and in certain areas traditional bilingualism resulted in language mixtures such as Surzhyk in eastern Ukraine and Trasianka in Belarus. An East Slavic Old Novgorod dialect , although it vanished during the 15th or 16th century,
24797-446: The parliament approved a bill to close up all Russian language schools and kindergartens by the school year. The transition to only Estonian language schools and kindergartens will start in the 2024-2025 school year. In Latvia , Russian is officially considered a foreign language. 55% of the population was fluent in Russian in 2006, and 26% used it as the main language with family, friends, or at work. On 18 February 2012, Latvia held
24978-453: The peasants' speech was never systematically studied, as it was generally regarded by philologists as simply a source of folklore and an object of curiosity. This was acknowledged by the noted Russian dialectologist Nikolai Karinsky , who toward the end of his life wrote: "Scholars of Russian dialects mostly studied phonetics and morphology. Some scholars and collectors compiled local dictionaries. We have almost no studies of lexical material or
25159-409: The period up to 15 days. Nevertheless, the British, American, Lithuanian, Canadian authorities and Belarusian opposition representatives urged not to travel to Belarus because of the safety concerns due to the risk of arbitrary enforcement of local laws (resulting in arrests and detention) and Russo-Ukrainian War . Jews began to settle in Grodno in the 14th century after the approval given to them by
25340-406: The population aged 15 and above, could read and write well in Russian, and understand the spoken language. In October 2023, Kazakhstan drafted a media law aimed at increasing the use of the Kazakh language over Russian, the law stipulates that the share of the state language on television and radio should increase from 50% to 70%, at a rate of 5% per year, starting in 2025. In Kyrgyzstan , Russian
25521-418: The population was fluent in Russian in 2006, and 67% used it as the main language with family, friends, or at work. According to the 2019 Belarusian census , out of 9,413,446 inhabitants of the country, 5,094,928 (54.1% of the total population) named Belarusian as their native language, with 61.2% of ethnic Belarusians and 54.5% of ethnic Poles declaring Belarusian as their native language. In everyday life in
25702-408: The press and civil liberties . It has continued several Soviet-era policies, such as state ownership of large sections of the economy . Belarus is the only European country that continues to use capital punishment . In 2000, Belarus and Russia signed a treaty for greater cooperation, forming the Union State . The country has been a member of the United Nations since its founding and has joined
25883-520: The principalities held by the duchy, nine of them were settled by a population that would eventually become the Belarusians . During this time, the duchy was involved in several military campaigns, including fighting on the side of Poland against the Teutonic Knights at the Battle of Grunwald in 1410; the joint victory allowed the duchy to control the northwestern borderlands of Eastern Europe . The Muscovites , led by Ivan III of Russia , began military campaigns in 1486 in an attempt to incorporate
26064-427: The pronunciation of ultra-short or reduced /ŭ/ , /ĭ/ . Because of many technical restrictions in computing and also because of the unavailability of Cyrillic keyboards abroad, Russian is often transliterated using the Latin alphabet. For example, мороз ('frost') is transliterated moroz , and мышь ('mouse'), mysh or myš' . Once commonly used by the majority of those living outside Russia, transliteration
26245-414: The proper pronunciation of uncommon words or names. Russian is an East Slavic language of the wider Indo-European family . It is a descendant of Old East Slavic , a language used in Kievan Rus' , which was a loose conglomerate of East Slavic tribes from the late 9th to the mid-13th centuries. From the point of view of spoken language , its closest relatives are Ukrainian , Belarusian , and Rusyn ,
26426-491: The respondents), while according to the 2002 census – 142.6 million people (99.2% of the respondents). In Ukraine , Russian is a significant minority language. According to estimates from Demoskop Weekly, in 2004 there were 14,400,000 native speakers of Russian in the country, and 29 million active speakers. 65% of the population was fluent in Russian in 2006, and 38% used it as the main language with family, friends, or at work. On 5 September 2017, Ukraine's Parliament passed
26607-435: The return to Orthodox Christianity of Belarusian Uniates . Belarusian language was banned in schools while in neighboring Samogitia primary school education with Samogitian literacy was allowed. In a Russification drive in the 1840s, Nicholas I prohibited the use of the Belarusian language in public schools, campaigned against Belarusian publications, and tried to pressure those who had converted to Catholicism under
26788-450: The shape of the dome above the central tower, added levels between towers and galleries. Some authentic 16th century walls were demolished. Despite its significant loss of heritage, the city still has the largest ensemble of historical buildings in Belarus and is still nicknamed the "royal city" and "a grand-ducal-royal city", thus is a popular tourists destination. The Brest - Grodno area was declared visa-free zone for foreign visitors for
26969-418: The south, Poland to the west, and Lithuania and Latvia to the northwest. Belarus spans an area of 207,600 square kilometres (80,200 sq mi) with a population of 9.1 million. The country has a hemiboreal climate and is administratively divided into six regions . Minsk is the capital and largest city ; it is administered separately as a city with special status. Between the medieval period and
27150-591: The southeastern regions) was affected by radiation fallout. The United Nations and other agencies have aimed to reduce the level of radiation in affected areas, especially through the use of caesium binders and rapeseed cultivation, which are meant to decrease soil levels of caesium-137 . In Belarus forest cover is around 43% of the total land area, equivalent to 8,767,600 hectares (ha) of forest in 2020, up from 7,780,000 hectares (ha) in 1990. In 2020, naturally regenerating forests covered 6,555,600 hectares (ha), and planted forests covered 2,212,000 hectares (ha). Of
27331-414: The staged rebellion of soldiers of the 1st Lithuanian–Belarusian Division of the Polish Army under Lucjan Żeligowski . Centered on the historical capital of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania , Vilna ( Lithuanian : Vilnius , Polish : Wilno ), for 18 months the entity served as a buffer state between Poland , upon which it depended, and Lithuania, which claimed the area. After a variety of delays,
27512-431: The styles flourishing in the 17th century, from Gothic to Baroque. The interior is considered a masterpiece of so-called Vilnius Baroque. Other monastic establishments include the old Franciscan cloister (1635), Basilian convent (1720–51, by Giuseppe Fontana III), the church of the Bridgettine cloister (1642, one of the earliest Baroque buildings in the region) with the wooden two-storey dormitory (1630s) still standing on
27693-626: The survey carried out by RATING in August 2023 in the territory controlled by Ukraine and among the refugees, almost 60% of the polled usually speak Ukrainian at home, about 30% – Ukrainian and Russian, only 9% – Russian. Since March 2022, the use of Russian in everyday life has been noticeably decreasing. For 82% of respondents, Ukrainian is their mother tongue, and for 16%, Russian is their mother tongue. IDPs and refugees living abroad are more likely to use both languages for communication or speak Russian. Nevertheless, more than 70% of IDPs and refugees consider Ukrainian to be their native language. In
27874-459: The syntax of Russian dialects." After 1917, Marxist linguists had no interest in the multiplicity of peasant dialects and regarded their language as a relic of the rapidly disappearing past that was not worthy of scholarly attention. Nakhimovsky quotes the Soviet academicians A.M Ivanov and L.P Yakubinsky, writing in 1930: The language of peasants has a motley diversity inherited from feudalism. On its way to becoming proletariat peasantry brings to
28055-456: The term to describe the lands added from the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The term Belorussia (Russian: Белору́ссия , the latter part similar but spelled and stressed differently from Росси́я , Russia ) first rose in the days of the Russian Empire , and the Russian Tsar was usually styled "the Tsar of All the Russias", as Russia or the Russian Empire was formed by three parts of Russia—the Great , Little , and White . This asserted that
28236-405: The territories are all Russian and all the peoples are also Russian; in the case of the Belarusians, they were variants of the Russian people. After the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, the term White Russia caused some confusion, as it was also the name of the military force that opposed the red Bolsheviks. During the period of the Byelorussian SSR, the term Byelorussia was embraced as part of
28417-615: The two. Others divide the language into three groupings, Northern , Central (or Middle), and Southern , with Moscow lying in the Central region. The Northern Russian dialects and those spoken along the Volga River typically pronounce unstressed /o/ clearly, a phenomenon called okanye ( оканье ). Besides the absence of vowel reduction, some dialects have high or diphthongal /e⁓i̯ɛ/ in place of Proto-Slavic * ě and /o⁓u̯ɔ/ in stressed closed syllables (as in Ukrainian) instead of Standard Russian /e/ and /o/ , respectively. Another Northern dialectal morphological feature
28598-402: The usage of Belorussia is still very common. In Lithuanian, besides Baltarusija (White Russia), Belarus is also called Gudija . The etymology of the word Gudija is not clear. By one hypothesis the word derives from the Old Prussian name Gudwa , which, in turn, is related to the form Żudwa , which is a distorted version of Sudwa, Sudovia. Sudovia , in its turn, is one of
28779-454: The use of the language has some presence in certain areas. A large part of the population, especially the older generations, can speak Russian as a foreign language. However, English has replaced Russian as lingua franca in Lithuania and around 80% of young people speak English as their first foreign language. In contrast to the other two Baltic states, Lithuania has a relatively small Russian-speaking minority (5.0% as of 2008). According to
28960-547: The vote in the first round and 80% in the second, defeating Vyacheslav Kebich who received 14% of the vote. The elections were the first and only free elections in Belarus after independence. The 2000s saw some economic disputes between Belarus and its primary economic partner, Russia. The first one was the 2004 Russia–Belarus energy dispute when Russian energy giant Gazprom ceased the import of gas into Belarus because of price disagreements. The 2007 Russia–Belarus energy dispute centered on accusations by Gazprom that Belarus
29141-416: The years following the union, the process of gradual Polonization of both Lithuanians and Ruthenians gained steady momentum. In culture and social life, both the Polish language and Catholicism became dominant, and in 1696, Polish replaced Ruthenian as the official language, with Ruthenian being banned from administrative use. However, the Ruthenian peasants continued to speak their native language. Also,
29322-426: Was hanged by the Russians, and the local Dominican gymnasium was seized by the Tsarist authorities. Local Poles took part in Polish national mourning after the Russian massacre of Polish protesters in Warsaw in 1861. The dean of Grodno, Józef Majewski, was deported to Tobolsk in Siberia for attempting to organise a procession to Różanystok , a regional Catholic pilgrimage destination. Count Aleksander Bisping
29503-453: Was a Jesuit church until 1773. This specimen of high Baroque architecture , exceeding 50 metres in height, was started in 1678. Due to wars that rocked Poland-Lithuania at that time, the cathedral was consecrated only 27 years later, in the presence of Peter the Great and Augustus the Strong . Its late Baroque frescoes were executed in 1752. The extensive grounds of the Bernardine monastery (1602–18), renovated in 1680 and 1738, display all
29684-407: Was a notable royal city and was also one of the royal residences and political centers of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth . In the 1580s, Grodno was the de facto capital of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, when King Stephen Báthory of Poland moved his main residence and military headquarters there. Stephen Báthory rebuilt the Old Grodno Castle into an important royal residence and built
29865-408: Was administered as part of the Bialystok District . Surviving inmates of the Grodno prison were released and the scale of the NKVD prisoner massacres revealed. In the course of Operation Barbarossa in World War II, the majority of Jews were herded by the Nazis into the Grodno Ghetto and subsequently killed in extermination camps . The Germans also operated a Nazi prison in the city. Since 1945,
30046-418: Was arrested and imprisoned here during the January Uprising (1863-1864) before his exile to Ufa . After the fall of the uprising, a ban on the use of Polish in public places was introduced in 1865, and martial law was in force in Grodno until 1871. As a result of Russian discriminatory policies (see Pale of Settlement ) the city experienced an influx of Jewish immigrants in the 19th century, and thus had
30227-400: Was contaminated with most (70%) of the nuclear fallout from the explosion at the Chernobyl power plant located 16 km beyond the border in the neighboring Ukrainian SSR . By the late 1980s, political liberalization led to a national revival, with the Belarusian Popular Front becoming a major pro-independence force. In March 1990, elections for seats in the Supreme Soviet of
30408-421: Was declared the Socialist Soviet Republic of Byelorussia (SSRB) for just two months, but then merged with the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic (LSSR) to form the Socialist Soviet Republic of Lithuania and Belorussia (SSR LiB), which lost control of its territories by August. The Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic (BSSR) was created in July 1920. The contested lands were divided between Poland and
30589-412: Was demolished in 1951 also by a decision of the Grodno Executive Committee and the Grodno Regional Drama Theatre was built in its place. In 2005, the reconstruction of the historical centre of Grodno began. In 2008, the Belarusian Voluntary Society for the Protection of Historical and Cultural Monuments declared violations of the Law on the Protection of Historical and Cultural Heritage: the destruction of
30770-405: Was first introduced in North America when Russian explorers voyaged into Alaska and claimed it for Russia during the 18th century. Although most Russian colonists left after the United States bought the land in 1867, a handful stayed and preserved the Russian language in this region to this day, although only a few elderly speakers of this unique dialect are left. In Nikolaevsk, Alaska , Russian
30951-421: Was fluent in Russian in 2006, and 19% used it as the main language with family, friends, or at work. According to the 2014 Moldovan census , Russians accounted for 4.1% of Moldova's population, 9.4% of the population declared Russian as their native language, and 14.5% said they usually spoke Russian. According to the 2010 census in Russia , Russian language skills were indicated by 138 million people (99.4% of
31132-502: Was in the New Castle on 25 November that year that the last Polish king and Lithuanian grand duke Stanisław August Poniatowski abdicated . In the Russian Empire , the city continued to serve its role as a seat of Grodno Governorate since 1801. The industrial activities started in the late 18th century by Antoni Tyzenhaus , continued to develop. During the Napoleonic Wars and fights for Polish liberation, in 1812, Polish uhlans of Prince Józef Poniatowski entered Grodno, followed by
31313-402: Was lost by Poles to the Red Army on 20 July 1920 in what became known as the First Battle of Grodno . The city was also claimed by Lithuanian government, after it was agreed by the Soviet–Lithuanian Treaty of 1920 signed on 12 July 1920 in Moscow that the city would be transferred to Lithuania. However, Soviet defeat in the Battle of Warsaw made these plans obsolete, and Lithuanian authority
31494-435: Was never established in the city. Instead, the Red Army organised its last stand in the city and the Battle of Neman took place there. On 23 September the Polish Army recaptured the city. After the Peace Treaty of Riga , Grodno remained in Poland. Initially, prosperity was reduced due to the fact that the city remained only the capital of a powiat, while the capital of the voivodeship was moved to Białystok . However, in
31675-410: Was once an important stop on the Poland-Lithuania route, but this has been cut on the Lithuanian side. Russian language Russian is an East Slavic language belonging to the Balto-Slavic branch of the Indo-European language family . It is one of the four extant East Slavic languages, and is the native language of the Russians . It was the de facto and de jure official language of
31856-439: Was planned to be dominated by the Old Grodno Castle , first built in stone by Grand Duke Vytautas and thoroughly rebuilt in the Renaissance style by Scotto from Parma at the behest of Stefan Batory , who made the castle his principal residence. Batory died at this palace seven years later (December 1586) and originally was interred in Grodno. (His autopsy there was the first to take place in Eastern Europe .) After his death,
32037-460: Was severely damaged in a fire in 1599. The community was not affected by the Khmelnytsky uprising but suffered during the 1655 Cossack uprising and during the war with Sweden (1703–1708). After Grodno was annexed by the Russian Empire in 1795 it was made part of the Pale of Settlement within which Jewish residency was allowed, and beyond which it was prohibited. Thus the Jewish population continued to grow and in 1907 there were 25,000 Jews out of
32218-441: Was siphoning oil off of the Druzhba pipeline that runs through Belarus. Two years later the so-called Milk War , a trade dispute, started when Russia wanted Belarus to recognize the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia and through a series of events ended up banning the import of dairy products from Belarus. In 2011, Belarus suffered a severe economic crisis attributed to Lukashenko's government's centralized control of
32399-468: Was taken over by the Polish Army the following day and Polish administration was established in the city. The Poles disbanded the Lithuania's 1st Belarusian Regiment (which refused to carry out Polish orders) in Grodno and publicly humiliated, looted and repressed soldiers of this unit, including officers, as well as Lithuanian and Belarusian symbols and flags in the city were torn down and publicly ridiculed, and were replaced with Polish equivalents. The city
32580-414: Was the site of two battles, Battle of Grodno (1706) and Battle of Grodno (1708) during the Great Northern War . After the Second Partition of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and a subsequent administrative reform of the remainder of the Commonwealth, Grodno became the capital of the short-lived Grodno Voivodeship in 1793. In 1795, Russia annexed the city in the Third Partition of Poland . It
32761-402: Was the sixth-most used language on the top 1,000 sites, behind English, Chinese, French, German, and Japanese. Despite leveling after 1900, especially in matters of vocabulary and phonetics, a number of dialects still exist in Russia. Some linguists divide the dialects of Russian into two primary regional groupings, "Northern" and "Southern", with Moscow lying on the zone of transition between
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