In the last days of the Soviet Union, Belarus was the most russified of all its republics, and there were few supporters of national revival in its Communist leadership or bureaucratic apparatus. A small nationalist tendency was nevertheless represented in the new republic’s government, and its members managed to introduce some appropriate reforms.
In 1990, Belarusian became the country’s only official language; the flag and coat of arms of the Belarusian People’s Republic (declared in 1918) were re-adopted for the new post-Soviet republic and a programme of ‘belarusification’ was set in motion in the spheres of education and cultural life.
Russification
But this policy did not last for very long. In 1994, Alyaksandr Lukashenka was elected as the country’s first president and he looked to Russia and a renewal of the close economic links of the Soviet period as a way to pull Belarus out of its critical economic situation. In the 1990s, Russo-centrism became official ideology – the idea being that Belarus would be reunited with Russia and Ukraine as a great Slav people.
