Is your native language something you take for granted? Well, for me
it has been a struggle — a struggle with history, politics, society,
and myself. Yet something guided me through it. I don't
know what you heard about my native land — Belarus. For
most of the world it is a new country, as four centuries of severe Russian
assimilation devastated Belarusian culture. But some of it managed
to survive, mostly in the villages. This shaped my biography.
Although I was born in a city in the western part of then Byelorussian
SSR1, the first six years of my life I spent in a village with my grandparents.
I remember the manmade old woody gate to the orchard. I remember
noises of storks on the roofs of the houses and frogs croaking in the
evening. I remember the sounds of whistling "ts," "dz,"
tough "ch," "r," "dzh" people made while
talking. "Volya..." I would hear from my great-grandparents,
and I would feel proud as this word also meant "freedom."
All of those sounds seemed to come from nature, creating feeling of
harmony and peace.
At the age of six, like thousands of other children in the 16 Republics
of the Soviet Union, I entered a school in my native town, Brest.
It was at school I noticed I spoke a different dialect than the other
children. They said I had bad grammar and pronounced words in strange,
"village" ways, ways they used to correct. I felt ashamed
because of my lack of education. In those soviet 80s, for the
city people "village" was almost a derogatory word.
Little by little, I learned to speak correctly. But during vacations
I went back to the village, and the world there worked in other sounds
— in another language. I would no longer accept that language
as it stood for something illiterate and awkward. I would correct
my grandmother, when she pointed to a nest of storks on the roof of
a neighbouring house, "Not 'busel' (Belarusian for 'stork'), but
'ayist' (Russian for 'stork')." I was sure that they taught me
correctly at school.
In the second grade, the teacher mentioned that soon we were going to
study a new subject. It was the second official language of our
part of the USSR — the Byelorussian language. That fact
did not mean much to my classmates. Nor it did to me until one
day my classmate teased me again about a word that I said "incorrectly."
The teacher, who had been watching us, said that if it had been in Belarusian,
it would have been correct. For the first time it occurred to
me that the "village" language I had been speaking before
I entered school was one of the Belarusian dialects. But in our
exercise books, with the ABCs of knowledge, we were writing and rewriting,
"The USSR is our great motherland. The official language of communication
is Russian."
At school we studied Belarusian rather superficially. We rarely spoke
it, even during the Belarusian literature and language lessons.
After years of studying in Russian, I could easier express myself in
that language. But some instinct did not let me ignore my native
language completely. Once I was quarrelling with my mother.
She was shouting in Russian that I never shared my problems with her,
but sulked like a wild wolf-cub, waited until they became bigger.
She said "vauchanjo" — a very specific Belarusian word
for "wolf-cub." My grandmother used it to mean aloof
children. I suddenly felt so connected and belonging that I fell
on my knees. That convinced me that my perceptions were still
sharper in Belarusian.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the countries that were
part of it had the possibility to develop independently. They
reformed their social, political, economic, and educational systems.
But changes happened slower in Belarus. Even though more and more
Belarusian subjects were integrated into the curriculum, most of the
education was still in Russian. My attempts to turn back to my
first language were unsuccessful. There were few places I could
expose myself to Belarusian: the country had been ruled by foreigners
and had not managed to establish a good representation of its own culture.
However, my search for Belarus led me to an institution in the capital,
Mensk, where I applied to an international educational program, and
was sent to study abroad.
I was sixteen when I went to an international school in Norway.
There I met people from other cultures and faced the real challenge
of defining who I was and where I came from. I began to think:
even though I came from Belarus, what made me Belarusian? I did not
use the Belarusian language at home. I was still searching.
But now inside myself. I was lucky that part of the curriculum
was a self-study in a native language. For my self-study I had
to read Belarusian books, some of which I never came across in Belarus.
Then I realized I could not speak Belarusian with confidence, and when
I read words seemed familiar and expressive, but I could not explain
or translate them; their meanings were faded. Obviously, I could
not control history that had affected me, but I saw a way out.
I began to learn, carefully reading every line of a book I had in Belarusian.
On the day of my exams in self-taught, I decided to reverse the flow
of the river and change back to Belarusian. From then on all my
letters home were in Belarusian. That inspired confidence in me to discover
who I really was. But doubts came over me again when I went home
for vacations. It was one challenge to begin speaking Belarusian
to my family in the city, but what would I speak to the people I did
not know: in shops, in post-offices, in hair salons, in busses or libraries?
Because it was a forth year of a pro-Russian dictatorship in Belarus,
speaking Belarusian was now a political statement against the authorities,
which can put you in danger. Positive changes that happened in
the society after the collapse of the Soviet Union had been eliminated.
That made me doubt, and the closer I got to the border, the more worried
I was about what to do. When I got on the train "Warsaw-Brest",
a passerby helped me to carry my bag. I thanked him in Polish,
as I was on the Polish territory. His reply remimded me of Russian,
but I did not understand what he said.
" Do you speak Russian?" I asked him still in Polish, assuming
I was wrong. He affirmed dully, and I said: "So, maybe you are
Russian..."
The man stayed silent for a moment, as if deciding, and then answered
without looking at me:
" Belarusian"
" Good! I am a Belarusian too." I continued to speak in Polish.
" Dyk i kazhy pa-belarusku! (So speak Belarusian!- Belarusian)"
He laughed in surprise. That was it. That was my answer.
I have not run into a serious problem speaking Belarusian. Unlike
other young people who also turned to Belarusian culture, I can afford
it, because I am out of the country for most of the year. My parents
use Belarusian in the city themselves when I am in Belarus. As
for strangers, I chose to surprise them, sometimes meeting resistance
or anger, sometimes recieveing thanks and cheers. It is a battle
every time I leave my apartment in Brest. It is hard to get used
to. But sometimes that what it takes to be who you are. When I
visit my grandmother, she laughs: "Remember, when you were a kid
you used to correct me when I said "stork" in Belarusian to
"stork" in Russian, saying that now you knew how to say it
correctly. Old people also know something about life."
ENDNOTES:
I use a different spelling of Belarus and Belarusian when I refer to
the Soviet era, as before 1991 the country's name was translated to
English from Russian as "Byelorussia" or "Byelorussian
SSR."