SUMMARY:

The article investigates how present-day Belarusian nationalism determines the quality of research and intellectual writing in Belarus. This is a case study of a book titled “Feminization of the Belarusian Language,” by Uladzislaŭ Harbatski, which supposedly advocates gender equity in language and aims to introduce female versions of professional titles. The article argues that the Belarusian nationalist and anticolonial agenda overwrites the feminist message in the case of linguistic feminization. The latter is just an occasion to fight for the revival of “proper” Belarusian, which was affected by the Russification Language Reform of 1933 during Soviet totalitarianism. It is an occasion to publicly articulate the issues related to the Belarusian nationalist movement and identity. No matter how small, the book in question represents a tendency in post-Soviet Belarusian humanities to declare and employ a specific research field in order to reproduce the pro-European nationalist and anticolonial agenda.