While elite attitudes grew more polarized, at the level of local contacts relations between the two communities in general were far less strained, although sociological research in the early 1990s showed that 58% of Orthodox respondents in the city of Białystok felt that there was still too little contact between ethnic Poles and Belarusians, a situation which they believed tended to reinforce mutual ethnic stereotypes.^[1]
The impact of ethnic mobilization on the Orthodox population of the Białystok region has been uneven; in general, those areas where a majority of the local population is Orthodox have been more receptive. An interesting outcome of this is that Belarusian national identity and identification with the Belarusian standard language as a national symbol are strongest in those regions where the local dialects are furthest from standard Belarusian (i.e. in the region to the southeast of Białystok, in the villages near Bielsk and Hajnówka, where transitional Belarusian-Ukrainian dialects are spoken and up to 75% percent of the local population is Orthodox). In contrast, with the exception of the Gródek and Michałowo gminas, in those parts of the Białystok region where dialects much closer to the Belarusian standard are spoken, the majority of the rural population is Roman Catholic and considers itself Polish.
In the Hrodna region on the Belarusian side of the border, signs of ethnic mobilization can also be observed, to varying degrees, among both the Catholic and Orthodox population. Use of the Belarusian language in both rural and urban schools, the media, and was briefly expanded in the early 1990s, but since the Lukashenko-sponsored referendum on state languages, in which a majority voted in favor of official Belarusian-Russian bilingualism, the Belarusanization of the educational system has been reversed to a considerable degree. Inasmuch as the rollback of Belarusianization has been accompanied by a general crackdown on all independent organizations and media, it is difficult to assess the extent to which Lukashenko’s language policies reflect the desires of those who voted for official bilingualism in the referendum. In any event, it appears as if the linguistic trends which began in the late 1940s in the Hrodna region under Soviet rule will continue for the foreseeable future.
The weakness in rural areas of parties with a specifically national agenda, such as the Belarusian Popular Front, is symptomatic of a general political conservatism and a continuing disinclination on the part of the rural population to link ethnic identity with political goals. Attempts to promote Polishness not only as a local religious and cultural identity, but as a specifically ethnolinguistic national identity, have likewise met with limited success. The most important organization in this regard is the Union of Poles of Belarus, which has promoted the publication of Polish-language newspapers and the opening of Polish-language schools. However, the status of the Polish language in education in Belarus is perhaps even worse than that of Belarusian-language schools in Poland, being limited to one or two Polish lyceums and Polish as an optional subject in some rural schools.
In religious life, the Catholic Church in Belarus, which had been subjected to greater restrictions by the authorities during the Soviet period, began to expand its presence in the Hrodna region and throughout the country in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Initially, the majority of new Catholic priests were from Poland, and in many cases sought to bring to their parishioners a specifically Polish vision of Catholicism. Gradually, however, under pressure both from Belarusian nationalists and from the Belarusian government, the Catholic church of Belarus began to adapt its message, becoming less overtly Polish in orientation and even encouraging the use of Belarusian in services in some areas.
With the relaxation of cross-border movement in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the expansion of cross-border economic activity, as well as new joint initiatives in the educational and cultural spheres, the possibility emerged that a new regional identity could be formed, at the same time allowing the cultivation of minority identities on both sides of the border. However, the optimistic signs in the first years after 1991 have been supplanted in the Lukashenko era by decreased permeability of the border and restricted contacts between Belarus and Poland. Due to the increasing self-isolation of the Lukashenko regime, as well as the admission of Poland to NATO and the likelihood of its admission to the European Union, the Polish-Belarusian border will no doubt become even less permeable in the future than it is today.
The political evolution of post-Soviet Belarus has no doubt disillusioned many young Belarusians in the Białystok region, and has very likely weakened the attractiveness of the Belarusian identity for that part of the Orthodox population which remains suspended between traditional confessional and regional identity and Polishness. For Catholics on the Belarusian side of the border, many of whom are similarly suspended between traditional confessionally-based identities and contemporary conceptions of nationality, whether Belarusian or Polish, there is a growing sense of marginalization as the present Belarusian regime increasingly presents Belarus as a Slavic Orthodox adjunct of the Russian state.

4.0. IDENTITIES IN FLUX: THE POLISH-BELARUSIAN BORDERLANDS IN THE 1990S

In this section I will examine contemporary trends in the formation and maintenance of Belarusian, Polish and other identities in the Białystok and Hrodna regions, and the role of political, religious and linguistic factors in identity construction, both at the elite and at the popular level. I will rely on the results of sociological research conducted by Polish and Belarusian scholars, the analysis of examples of local discourse on nationality issues, as well as the results of my own ethnographic and sociolinguistic research in several Belarusian-speaking rural communities on both sides of the border.
The bulk of the fieldwork that I will report on in this section was carried out from the fall of 1996 to the summer of 2000. Tape-recorded interviews and sociolinguistic surveys were administered under my supervision in eight Belarusian-speaking villages, five on the Belarusian side, and three on the Polish side. On the Belarusian side, the survey sites included the village of Malaja Berastavica (with an Orthodox majority), the villages of Indura and Luckawljany (both with a Catholic majority and Orthodox minority), the Catholic village of Љuryčy on the edge of the Belaveža forest in the Svislač rajon, and the Orthodox village of Ulezly-Matveewcy (near Vawkavysk).
On the Polish side of the border, interviews and surveys were carried out in three Belarusian-speaking villages: the Orthodox village of Jałowo in the Dąbrowa Białostocka gmina north of Białystok, the Catholic village of Hało in the Sokółka gmina, and the Orthodox village of Gródek (dial. [haradók]) east of Białystok. However, since the survey data from Gródek are still incomplete, I will focus primarily on the first two communities.
In order to reduce potential observer effects during the interviews I had decided to employ local students from the School of Belarusian Philology at Hrodna University (in Belarus) and the Institute for East Slavic Philology at Białystok University in Poland as fieldworkers. All of the fieldworkers were natives of the villages investigated and were themselves speakers of the local Belarusian dialects.
Informants for the study were selected by means of a judgment sample of 32 people from each of the eight villages investigated, with four females and four males representing each of the following age cohorts: 13-24 yrs, 25-39 yrs, 40-54 yrs, and 55 and above. The informants were drawn primarily from among my student assistants’ social networks in the villages (including family, friends, neighbors and members of their networks).

4.1. SURVEY DATA ON NATIONAL IDENTITIES

The well-known traditional self-designation for much of the Belarusian peasant population, “tutejšy” (‘from hereabouts’), which has become something of a buzzword among students of Eastern European history and ethnography, is no longer widely encountered in the region, having been supplanted by other terms. However, there is evidence that ties to the local community or region remain much stronger, among both Catholics and Orthodox, than those to the “imagined community” of the nation. According to Sadowski’s 1993 survey, 34% of the respondents on the Polish side of the border, and 39% on the Belarusian side indicated that for them, their “homeland” (Pol. ziemia ojczysta, Bel. radzima, Rus. rodina) is the village or town of their birth or current residence. An additional 36% on the Polish side and 10% on the Belarusian side stated that their “homeland” was the region in which they live. Only 12% of respondents on the Polish side (the majority of them claiming Polish nationality) and 10% on the Belarusian side indicated that their homeland was the country of their birth or current residence.^[2]
Nonetheless, the pressures of modernity have forced most of the population to identify itself with larger national or ethnolinguistic communities, at least for the purposes of contacts with outsiders. As Sadowski notes: “In group-internal contacts national definitions are on the whole not raised. Here everything is clear and easily understood. We are ‘locals’, ‘from hereabouts’, ‘normal’, ‘at home’; only the ‘outside world’ demands specific declarations of national identity.”^[3] To avoid charges of disloyalty to the state, or to satisfy the expectations of census-takers and government agencies, or to compensate for the progressing disintegration of traditional local bonds, individuals were increasingly looking (or being forced to look) beyond the local community for foci of identity. In the context of the modern nation-state, being without a nationality (at least in a formal sense) was becoming increasingly anachronistic.
The response to these external pressures has differed among the Catholics and Orthodox on the two sides of the border. In the Białystok region, the majority of the Orthodox population (53%), regardless of its own language and culture, identifies itself primarily as Polish.^[4] Sadowski explains the high percentage claiming Polish nationality as less of an expression of full identification with Polish national culture and the Polish language, but rather as a way of asserting the rights guaranteed by Polish citizenship and as a way of avoiding the marginal status ascribed to those who identify themselves above all as Belarusians.^[5] Among the older generation there are also undoubtedly many who remember the immediate post-war period, when it was feared that any response other than “Polish” to the question of nationality could have resulted in their being deported to the Soviet Union.
The portion of the population of the Białystok region who consciously identify themselves as Belarusians, on the other hand, has been estimated at somewhere between 60 to 70 thousand, i.e. less than 28% of the total Orthodox population in the region, that is, only 10% of the population of the former Białystok voivoideship and less than 6% of the population of the new Podlasie voivodeship.^[6]
I have already noted that on the Polish side of the border, the Belarusian movement has gained the greatest number of adherents in the heavily Orthodox region southeast of Białystok, in the vicinity of Bielsk Podlaski and Hajnówka. However, even in these areas, popularly considered the most consciously “Belarusian” in terms of the identity of the local population, we find that the gains of the Belarusian movement among the Orthodox population as a whole are still relatively modest. Thus, for example, a 1993 survey of students at the Belarusian lyceums in Bielsk Podlaski and Hajnówka found that only 23.4% of the students considered themselves Belarusians, while 45% considered themselves Poles.^[7]
On the Belarusian side of the border, we find a somewhat different picture due to the fact that Soviet nationalities policies stipulated that an individual’s nationality, chosen on the basis of the nationality of at least one of the parents, must be registered in his or her internal passport. Nationality is thus interpreted in the Soviet tradition as ethnic heritage, rather than the presence of specific ethnolinguistic characteristics or even consciousness of belonging to a specific group. At the same time, the very use of the passport system appears to have promoted continued consciousness of the existence and immutability of ethnic boundaries, if only at a somewhat abstract level. The effects of the Soviet passport system in promoting a specific conception of nationality are reflected in the results of Sadowski’s survey in the Hrodna and Białystok regions, where 55% of the respondents on the Belarusian side (as compared with 38% on the Polish side) claimed that it was impossible to change one’s nationality, while only 12% (as compared with 30% on the Polish side) indicated that nationality may be changed.^[8]
I would argue, thus, that the Belarusian majorities in the westernmost rajons of the Hrodna region, bordering on Poland, are to a significant extent a product of identity planning policies that were put in place in the 1940s. It seems likely that the situation in the western Hrodna region at that time was similar to what we see among the Orthodox on the Polish side of the border today, with a variety of self-identifications apart from Belarusian, including those based on citizenship, religion (“Orthodox”, “ruski”), or local identity “tutejšy”. Although there is no existing documentation, to my knowledge, concerning the exact procedures whereby nationality was assigned to the population of the areas annexed by the Soviet Union in 1939 and again in 1945, we may speculate that “Belarusian” was employed by Soviet officials as a default category for individuals of Orthodox heritage who were unable or unwilling to state their nationality.
In the case of the Belarusian-speaking Catholics in the western Hrodna region, Soviet policies may have contributed to the retention of a nominally Polish identity among this segment of the local population. Given the fact that Polishness, as a non-territorial identity, was not supported in the BSSR (Polish cultural autonomy in eastern Belarus having been eliminated in the 1930s); “passport nationality” must have played some role for Belarusian Poles, just has it had for Belarusians.
On the other hand, we must not overemphasize the significance of the nationality entry in the Soviet internal passport in the everyday consciousness of Belarusian and Polish inhabitants of the western BSSR, as if it somehow served to “fix” national identities and eliminate once and for all any potential ambiguities. After all, in theory both groups were ultimately part of the Soviet “family of nations,” in which national identities were expected to be subordinated to an all-encompassing Soviet identity. Indeed, the concept of the “Soviet nation – A New Historical Community”, developed in the 1970s and early 1980s by Soviet ideologists, had some degree of plausibility as applied to much of the population of Belarus. In the context of Soviet and post-Soviet Belarus, one could thus speak of “passport Belarusians” and “conscious” (svjadomyja) Belarusians”, a distinction that became central to the discourse of the Belarusian nationalist movement. Underlying this distinction, however, is the assumption that those with “Belarusian” in their passports, regardless of behavioral and attitudinal factors, are nonetheless at some level “really” Belarusians. The notion of persons having a “true nationality” which they might seek to conceal is even found in academic discourse on Belarusian-speakers in the border region. Thus, for example, in a recent article in the International Journal of the Sociology of Language dealing with East Slavic-speaking minorities in Poland we read: “...the exact number [of Belarusians in Poland] is not known since no statistics concerning nationalities are kept, and the Belorussians themselves do not always acknowledge their nationality.”^[9]

4.2. RELIGION AND IDENTITY

I will now turn to the role of religion in contemporary conceptions of national identity in the Polish-Belarusian borderlands, as reflected in recent survey data as well as ethnographic qualitative analysis.
It may be argued that the anti-religion policies of the socialist regimes that ruled the Białystok and Hrodna regions in the period after WWII were, whether consciously or not, targeted at one of the most salient markers of the division between Poles and Belarusians in the region. On the Polish side of the border, the promotion of a secular Polish national identity under the sponsorship of the officially atheist Polish United Workers’ Party made possible an increasing identification on the part of the Orthodox with the Polish state. The development of a new Polish Orthodox identity was also promoted by the policies of the Polish Autocephalous Orthodox Church, which avoided any official identification with Belarusian organizations and cultivated the use of Polish (and to a lesser extent, Russian) in non-liturgical functions.
On the Soviet side of the border, more significant restrictions on religious practice made religion as a group identity marker even less noticeable than in the Białystok region. The restrictions on religious life were felt above all by the Catholics, who were regarded as particularly suspect by the Soviet regime. However, despite the decline in formal religious observance, the consciousness of “Polish” cultural heritage remained to some extent among the younger generations in the 1980s, and was still deeply embedded in local cultural norms in rural areas.
One sign of the decreased significance of religion in local culture on the two sides of the border from the 1950s to the 1980s are naming practices, which were once one of the key external markers of Catholic vs. Orthodox identity in the region. During this period there was a marked convergence of anthroponymic patterns among Catholics and Orthodox, with the Catholic system prevailing among both communities on the Polish side, and the Orthodox prevailing on the Belarusian side. Naming practices on the two sides of the border are but one small aspect of the cultural configuration of the Polish-Belarusian border region, but are indexical, I would argue, of other, deeper patterns of socio-cultural divergence in the decades following WWII. Thus, on the Polish side of the border, names marked as specifically Orthodox or associated with the Orthodox community, such as Bazyli, Sergiusz, Borys, Wiaczesław, Olga, Nina, Nadzieja, Natalia, Wiera, Zinaida, were avoided by the majority of Orthodox parents by the 1970s; general Polish or ethnically neutral names, such as: Jan, Tadeusz, Piotr, Mikołaj, Małgorzata, Elžbieta, Katarzyna, Marta, Anna, etc. were preferred.^[10] In contrast, on the Belarusian side of the border, traditionally Russian Orthodox names, ethnically neutral names, as well as fashionable post-WWII Soviet Russian names, were predominant among both Orthodox and Catholics: Ivan, Sergej, Aleksandr, Nikolaj, Oleg, Natal’ja, Tat’jana, Irina, Inna. Traditionally Polish names, such as Adam, Czesław, Mieczysław, Tomasz, Jan, Jerzy, Jadwiga, Elžbieta, Małgorzata, Danuta, Jolanta, etc. had become a rarity among Poles on the Belarusian side of the border born after the 1950s. On neither side of the border do we find many examples of the traditional Belarusian forms of personal names, such as Janka, Vasil’, Kastus’, Zmitrok, Ales’, Jazep, Pilip,Vincuk, Piatro, Hanna, Aryna, Kaciaryna, etc., which are evidently still marked as colloquial or non-standard by speakers of Belarusian, and in any case were often not accepted by the church or state authorities for use in official documents.
With the re-emergence of religion as an important factor in public life in Poland in the early 1980s and in Belarus at the end of the decade, the relationship between religion and national identity gained new prominence. The reassertion of old cultural models which identified Polishness with Catholicism and Belarusianness with Orthodoxy created new difficulties for emerging groups, such as Catholic Belarusians and Orthodox Poles, which did not conform to the traditional ethno-confessional stereotypes.
Thus, although numerically the “Orthodox Poles” account for a sizeable percentage of the Orthodox population of the Białystok region, “Orthodox Pole” has become a strongly contested identity, both among many members of the Catholic majority, and among that portion of the Orthodox community that explicitly identifies itself as Belarusian. Although many “Orthodox Poles” have adopted Polish as a first language and are culturally well-assimilated into the Polish mainstream, the lack of recognition of their Polishness on the part of many Catholic Poles in the region underscores the persistent nature of ethnic boundaries. As Fredrik Barth notes: “When defined as an ascriptive and exclusionary group, the nature of continuity of ethnic units is clear: it depends on the maintenance of a boundary. The cultural features that signal the boundary may change, and the cultural characteristics of the members may likewise be transformed, indeed, even the organizational form of the group may change – yet the fact of continuing dichotomization between members and outsiders allows us to specify the nature of continuity, and investigate the changing cultural form and content.”^[11] Thus, the boundary of religion, which many local Poles still view as crucial to the definition of Polishness, remains an ethnic boundary at least from the standpoint of the majority. Similarly, in the case of Belarusians in the Białystok region, for whom Orthodoxy is an essential component of their identity, the recognition of practicing Catholics as fellow Belarusians would be somewhat problematic, for this would undermine the religious basis of their group identity.
Contemporary data on the relationship between religion and national identity in the Polish-Belarusian border region reveal a pattern of both continuity and change. By far the most stable, on both sides of the border, is the connection between Catholicism and Polish identity. Sadowski’s data from the Polish side of the border show that only about 3% of Roman Catholics consider themselves Belarusian, while some 53% of the Orthodox identify themselves as Poles, and only about 28% of the Orthodox consider themselves to be Belarusians. On the other hand, Sadowski’s data from the Hrodna region, which include a considerable number of urban informants, indicated a larger number of “hybrid” identities from the standpoint of traditional nomenclature: 14% of self-declared Belarusians were Roman Catholic, while 21% of Poles were Orthodox.^[12] Sadowski explains the surprisingly high percentage of Orthodox Poles in the Hrodna region as the result of religiously mixed marriages (which are, it should be pointed out, more likely to occur in the urban than rural context). Among the older generation, this could also reflect the results of processes that had begun under Polish rule in the 1920s and 30s.
Sadowski’s findings for the Białystok region are corroborated by the results of my research in the villages of Belarusian-speaking villages of Jałowo and Hało. Thus, with respect to self-reported nationality, in the Orthodox village of Jałowo, 60% of the informants consider themselves Poles, 30% Belarusians, and 10% Orthodox. In the Catholic village of Hało, on the other hand, all informants considered themselves Poles.
In contrast, my data from villages in the Hrodna region reveal a greater continuity in the traditional understanding of the link between religion and identity among both Catholics and Orthodox than suggested by Sadowski’s data.
On the Belarusian side, in the Catholic village of Љuryčy, all respondents gave their nationality as Polish, while in the Orthodox village of Macveewcy-Ulezly, all respondents gave their nationality as Belarusian. I had expected greater numbers of “hybrid” identities in the mixed Catholic-Orthodox villages of Malaja Berastavica, Luckawljany and Indura, but found that here, too, religion still coincided to a surprisingly high degree (much more so than native language) with self-reported nationality. In only two cases (out of a total of 96 respondents in the three villages) did I find instances of non-coincidence of religion and nationality: two Catholic Belarusians in the village of Indura, with a Catholic majority.
The persistence of traditional conceptions of religion and nationality on the Belarusian side of the border, particularly in Catholic communities, was noted by the Polish sociologist Anna Engelking. Reporting on fieldwork conducted in the predominantly Catholic Voranava region of northwestern Belarus, Engelking notes the persistence of the earlier semantics of “ruski” and “pol’ski” among the older population (60s-70s) as reflected in statements such as: “There are no Orthodox Poles... all Belarusians are Orthodox, Poles are Catholic”; “that’s how they’re called: “pol’skija” and “ruskija”. There can’t be a “pol’ski” Orthodox, or a “ruski” Catholic.” At the same time, the link between language and culture and the labels “pol’ski’ and ‘ruski’ remains unclear: “Lithuanians are Poles, only they speak Lithuanian”; “The Germans were a Polish nation, they were Poles, Catholics”.^[13]

4.3. LANGUAGE AND IDENTITY

In the study of the role of language in national movements, it is important to distinguish at least three aspects of language and linguistic behavior and their possible ramifications for national identity: 1) language structure; 2) language use and language functions; and 3) language attitudes. The basis for the symbolic use of language as a component of national identity is the assumption that the speech community is coterminous with the nation. This requires, however, that the speech community be defined above all in functional and attitudinal rather than structural terms, so that differences in the linguistic structure of the various lects that are to be subsumed under the rubric of national language can be downplayed or overlooked to allow the acceptance of a single standard form or koine as “the” national language.

4.3.1. Language Structure

As was noted in section 2, the findings of traditional dialectology and dialect geography confirm the East Slavic (more specifically, Belarusian and transitional Belarusian-Ukrainian) linguistic character of the dialects of the eastern Białystok region and western Hrodna region. However, as sociolinguistic research has repeatedly demonstrated, geographical variation is only one dimension of language variation; in the same location, considerable differences in linguistic structure and function can be observed, which reflect differences in age, gender, social status and other social parameters. Moreover, as is now widely recognized (at least in academic circles), it is impossible to extrapolate from purely linguistic data the ethnolinguistic or national identity of dialect speakers.
Apart from strictly linguistic data, which in accordance with traditional historically-oriented dialectological methodology were obtained primarily from the oldest living dialect speakers, the Atlas of East Slavic Dialects of the Białystok Region also includes information on the communities investigated, including the extent to which the dialect was still used by the local population. The sociolinguistic data indicate that by the 1960s, the rural population in the western third of the East Slavic speaking area was in the advanced stages of language shift to Polish. More recent observations have indicated a further reduction in the number of rural communities where East Slavic dialects remain the primary means of communication. Nevertheless, overall, the Belarusian dialects as spoken by fluent younger speakers do not differ significantly from those spoken by the older generation (except, perhaps, for the degree of lexical influence from Polish).
As regards the Belarusian dialects on the Belarusian side of the border, the data from the Belarusian Dialect Atlas present a generally static view of the linguistic character of the region. As confirmed by my fieldwork on the Belarusian side of the border in 1996-97, there are numerous signs in the local Belarusian dialects of convergence with Russian in the speech of the generations born after WWII. The ultimate linguistic result, if we compare the Belarusian dialects on the Polish and Belarusian sides of the border, is dialectal divergence in apparent time, with the dialects of the older generations within the same dialectal area on both sides of the border showing minimal differences, while the younger generations have either shifted altogether to the dominant languages (particularly in the cities and towns), or speak increasingly different varieties characterized by greater structural conservatism (on the Polish side) or convergent structural innovation in the direction of the dominant standard language, Russian, and to a much lesser extent, toward standard Belarusian, on the Belarusian side.
One of the most readily apparent signs of a “border effect” in the post-WWII evolution of the Belarusian dialects of the Białystok and Hrodna regions is a growing divergence in the lexicon. At the beginning of the 20th century, the Belarusian dialectologist Jawxim Karski noted that the dialects of both the Białystok and western Hrodna region shared a relatively large number of lexical polonisms as compared with other parts of the Belarusian speech territory. By the end of the century, we find that the number of lexical borrowings from Polish in the Belarusian dialects of the Białystok region has remained relatively stable, at least in those communities where the dialect continues to serve as the primary means of communication for the majority of the older inhabitants. There is, however, some regional variation on the Polish side of the border with respect to lexical borrowing from Polish. In general, the number of lexical polonisms is higher in the predominantly Catholic area to the north of Białystok, while the dialects of the predominantly Orthodox areas to the east and south of the city have remained somewhat more resistant to Polish lexical influence, at least with respect to basic vocabulary. I found, however, that Orthodox villagers in the Catholic-dominated north, for example in the Orthodox village of Jałowo, do not differ significantly from their Belarusian-speaking Catholic neighbors in their use of lexical borrowings from Polish, with the exception perhaps of some religious terminology. Some typical examples of lexical polonisms encountered both in Jałowo and the Catholic village of Hało further south include: dz”is’ ‘today’ (< Pol. dziś, cf. St. Bel. sjónnja), k’edy ‘when’ (< Pol. kiedy, cf. St. Bel. kali), teras ‘now’ (< Pol. teraz, cf. St. Bel. zaraz, cjaper), v’él’k’i ‘large’ (< Pol. wielki, cf. St. Bel. vjaliki), zmenčyccą ‘to get tired’ (< Pol. zméczyćsié, cf. St. Bel. stamicca), etc.
On the Belarusian side of the border, we find that among the generations born after the 1930s, the number of lexical Polonisms has shown a significant decline, accompanied by a marked increase in the number of lexical borrowings from Russian. This influence is particularly noticeable in larger communities with stronger ties to urban centers, in particular the villages of Indura and Luckawljany, just south of Hrodna. In some cases, these borrowings include function words and other basic vocabulary, as shown in the following examples: kahdá ‘when’ (< Rus. kogda, cf. St. Bel. kali), s’ičás ‘now’ (< Rus. sejčas, cf. St. Bel. zaraz, cjaper), pašc’i ‘almost’ (< Rus. počti, cf. St. Bel. amal’), očan’ ‘very’ (< Rus. očen’, cf. St. Bel. velmi), nastajaščy ‘real’ (< Rus. nastojaščij, cf. St. Bel. saprawdny), etc. All of these examples were taken from the oral interviews conducted in the villages.
Of far greater structural significance, however, is the linguistic divergence occurring at the phonological, morphological and morpho-syntactic levels in the two groups of dialects. That this linguistic divergence is a consequence, rather than a possible motivation for, the present political border is reflected in the fact that the relevant innovations show clear differences in apparent time, with older dialect speakers on the two sides of the border differing less in their speech than younger speakers. The apparent time evidence, together with real time data taken from Federowski’s dialect texts from the 1880s and 1890s, suggests that most of these changes have occurred over the course of the last 50 years, that is, since the establishment of the contemporary Polish-Belarusian border.
Divergence at the dialectal level between the Belarusian dialects on the two sides of the border has increased the significance of the standard Belarusian language as a possible link between Belarusian-speakers on the two sides of the border. However, when communication takes place between dialect speakers from the two sides of the border, it usually takes place in one of the dominant state languages: whether Russian or Polish. Even in the case of standard usage, there are noticeable differences between the Białystok region and the Hrodna region. One noticeable tendency is for the Belarusian-language press in the Hrodna region to increasingly use more Polonisms, as a means of distancing the language vis-а-vis Russian, while in Belarusian-language publications from the Białystok region, the number of lexical Russianisms is often higher, due to a similar attempt to distance the language vis-а-vis Polish.
The increasing dissimilarity of the Belarusian dialects on the Polish and Belarusian sides of the border is not, however, the only type of linguistic discontinuity found in the region. As I have already noted, even on the same side of the border there are significant linguistic differences between some of the dialects whose speakers regard themselves, or are regarded by others, to be Belarusians. On the Polish side of the border, as we have already seen, the Belarusian movement is in fact strongest in those areas to the southeast of Białystok where the dialects are transitional to Ukrainian.
The problematic nature of the use of linguistic structure alone as a criterion for group membership is highlighted by the emergence over the last decade or so of two new linguistic movements in the region: the Podlasian Ukrainian and the Polesian/Jatvingian movement. Given the linguistic ambiguity of the East Slavic dialects in the region south of Białystok, it was inevitable that they would be claimed by the Ukrainian movement as well as the Belarusian; certainly for some of the dialects, the Ukrainian case is perhaps even stronger. It was precisely on the basis of linguistic (and to a lesser extent, cultural) criteria that a branch of the Union of Ukrainians in Poland was established in Bielsk. The organization of Ukrainian cultural life in the region has also proceeded apace, with regular meetings and cultural events in both Bielsk and Białystok. However, despite the new signs of Ukrainian activity in the Białystok region, the numbers of those who claim Ukrainian nationality there are still very small. According to one recent survey, for example, less than 1% of the region’s population consider themselves Ukrainians.^[14]
On the Belarusian side of the border, there has not, to my knowledge been a similar expansion of pro-Ukrainian activities among the local population in west Polesia (the Brest-Pinsk region), where the local dialects, typologically closer to Ukrainian than to Belarusian, are similar to those spoken southeast of Bielsk on the Polish side of the border. On the other hand, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, a movement among part of the Polesian intelligentsia, represented by the newspaper “Zbudinne” (Awakening), promoted the idea of a distinct “Polesian” nationality, which in the ideology developed by the founder of the movement, the linguist and journalist Mikola Sheliahovič, was in fact made up of the Slavicized descendents of the Baltic Jatvingians.^[15] Some members of the Belarusian intelligentsia denounced this movement, seeing in it a Moscow-inspired attempt to weaken and divide the newly-emerging Belarusian nationak movement. By the late 1990s, however, the Polesian movement had subsided; despite the very salient linguistic and cultural differences between the inhabitants of West Polesia and the rest of Belarus, the majority of the population of this region continues to regard itself as Belarusian.

4.3.2. Language Use and Language Functions

If we look at actual language use in the Białystok and Hrodna regions, we find that there is no clear connection between this aspect of language behavior and national identity, inasmuch on the Polish side there are now many Orthodox, both Poles and Belarusians, who speak Polish as a first language, and many Catholics on both sides of the border who are speakers of dialectal or standard Belarusian. In addition, on the Belarusian side of the border, we find many Belarusians and Poles who speak primarily Russian in the home.
The data from a 1993 survey by Sadowski include responses to questions about the language used at home, which provides a rough indication of the first language of the respondents (in contrast to “native language” (Bel. ródnaja mova, Pol. język ojczysty, Rus. rodnoj jazyk), which in the context of the borderlands, as we will see later, is a highly ideologized concept that does not necessarily reflect actual linguistic behavior). Sadowski’s survey, based on a representative sample of the population of the Białystok region (excluding the exclusively Catholic regions), indicates that 83% of Poles and 25% of Belarusians speak Polish at home. Of the Poles, an additional 14% claimed to speak Belarusian or a Belarusian dialect, while 15% claimed to speak a Polish dialect (in other words, some respondents indicated the use of more than one language in the home environment).^[16] With regard to the term “Polish dialect,” it should be noted that many Belarusian-speaking Catholics consider their dialect a variety of Polish rather than of Belarusian. Among Belarusians, 20% claimed to speak Belarusian, while the majority, 73.9%, claimed to speak a Belarusian dialect at home.
Statistics from a 1989 survey of language use in the Hrodna region as a whole indicate that roughly 16.3%% of Belarusians and 16.2%% of Poles claimed to use Belarusian at home, while 41.3% of Belarusians and 33.3% of Poles claimed to speak a mixture of Belarusian and Russian at home. In addition, 42.5% of Belarusians and 27.1% of Poles indicated that they spoke Russian in the home environment. Only 13% of the Polish population indicated that Polish was the language of the home.^[17] Sadowski’s 1993 survey of the westernmost rajons of the Hrodna region gave the following results: 19.4% of Belarusians and 14.6% of Poles claimed to use Belarusian as the home language, 38.3% of the Belarusians and 34.4% of Poles claimed to speak a dialect of Belarusian, and 44.4% of Belarusians and 40.6% of Poles claimed to speak Russian in the home environment.^[18] The higher figures for Russian in Sadowski’s sample may reflect the greater urban bias of his survey, with more than a third of respondents from the city of Hrodna.
The statistics on language use, however, do not reveal an important function of language in the construction of national identity – its symbolic status as a marker of membership in the nation. The linguistic ideologies of 19th century European Romantic nationalism have had a major impact not only on how modern nationalist movements look at language, but how the public (and even many in the scholarly community) conceive of language issues as well. On the basis of content analysis of the western European press, the Dutch sociolinguists Blommaert and Verschueren note the extent to which the popular media in Europe have internalized the ideological framework of ethnolinguistic nationalism, particularly in the coverage of issues relating to stateless peoples: “[d]escent, history, culture, religion, and language are treated as a feature cluster. Their identificational function implies separability, a natural discontinuity in the real world. These discontinuities are ‘nations’ or ‘peoples,’ i.e. natural groups... If feathers are predictive of beaks, eggs, and an ability to fly, so is a specific language predictive of a distinct history and culture... Thus, the absence of the feature ‘distinct language’ tends to cast doubts on the legitimacy of claims to nationhood.”^[19] There is little doubt that a similar study of the press of East Central and Eastern Europe would reveal a very similar picture. The question is, to what extent does the simplistic equation between language and national identity presented in much of the European popular media reflect objective reality, and to what extent does it influence the identities, attitudes and linguistic choices of non-elites?
From its inception in the late 19th century, the modern Belarusian national movement assigned a preeminent position to language in defining the nation, and the “language as national identity” motif has remained central to Belarusian nationalism throughout this century – despite signs of progressing language shift toward Russian (and Polish on the Polish side of the post-WWII border) in recent decades. The notion that ethnic Belarusians are inherently Belarusian speakers is even reflected in the title of a Belarusian language textbook for Russian speakers: Belorusskij jazyk dlja nebelorusov (“Belarusian for Non-Belarusians”) implying that only non-Belarusians need instruction in the Belarusian language. In the context of ongoing language shift, the notion of the language as something rooted in the genetic make-up of the nation, even if only employed as a metaphor, also becomes an important motif in the discourse of language advocates. Thus, in a recent issue of “Litaratura i mastactva” the weekly newspaper of the Belarusian creative intelligentsia, we read: “only the language of this land, encoded in our genes, is capable of forming a fully realized individual, a true citizen, and assist in the development of all the potential and abilities of the child.”^[20] A similar stance is noted by Alexandra Jaffe in the case of Corsican language advocates in contemporary France: “every true Corsican is represented as a potential natural, authentic speaker. Those who do not speak the language have simply not actualized instinctual cultural abilities.”^[21]
Elite notions of a coterminous relationship between nationality and native language have been accepted to a large extent by the population of the Polish-Belarusian border region, as least as far as can be determined from survey data. However, the concept of the “native language” is just as problematic in this region as the concept of national or ethnic identity. In my own fieldwork I encountered speakers of what was essentially Belarusian-accented Russian (such as the wife of a collective farm chairman in the village of Indura on the Belarusian side of the border), who claimed that their native language was Belarusian. In the same village I met a Catholic woman who spoke a fairly conservative variety of the local dialect, but claimed that Russian was her native language. On the Polish side of the border, I spoke with Catholic Belarusian dialect speakers in the village of Hało who all insisted that their native language was Polish. Thus, it would appear that self-declared native language, as reflected in official census data and other types of surveys, is more an indicator of a specific ideological or cultural orientation than of actual linguistic competence and language use.
In the chart below, I cite the results on native language from Sadowski’s 1993 survey of the population on the two sides of the border. With respect to the data from the Białystok region, the most striking finding is that over 95% of Polish respondents consider Polish their native language. In other parts of Poland (excluding, perhaps, Kashubia and Silesia) this would not be a surprising result, but given the fact that many Catholic settlements to the north and east of Białystok are still Belarusian-speaking (at least among the older and middle generations), we must consider this a reflection above all of the national identity of the respondents. This is also suggested by the fact that among those in the Białystok region who consciously identify themselves as Belarusian, the percentage of those who claim Belarusian or a Belarusian dialect as a native language increases to nearly 65%. This figure is comparable with that for Belarusians on the Belarusian side (78%), for whom, however, standard Belarusian (rather than Belarusian dialects) is the primary symbol of national affiliation, reflecting perhaps the dominant view (promoted primarily in the educational sphere) that the standard language is the sole legitimate form of the national language.

<img src=http://abimperio.net/pics/wolh1.jpg>
Fig. 1. Native Language of Respondents in the Białystok and Hrodna Regions62

Significantly, only 30% of Poles on the Belarusian side indicate Polish as their native language, while even fewer (between 13% and 18% according to Mikulič and Sadowski) claim to use Polish as the language of the home.^[22] In my data from the mixed Catholic-Orthodox villages of Indura, Luckauljany and Malaja Berastavica, as well as the all-Catholic village of Љuryčy on the Belarusian side of the border, out of some 80 Catholic informants, only one (a woman in her 70s) claimed to use Polish in the home.
The low numbers of Poles claiming Polish as a native language have been erroneously interpreted by some western scholars, such as Gordon, who writes of Polish “linguistic assimilation” to Belarusian in rural areas in the Hrodna region.^[23] However, as attested by historical and ethnographic data, the majority of these Polish communities have not “lost” their Polish, but rather simply never had the opportunity to acquire it, at least as a first language. In other words, we are speaking here of the absence of assimilation to Polish, or at best, the loss of non-native competence in Polish within a community for which Belarusian dialect is the native vernacular. The absence of a strong correlation between Polish nationality and Polish as a native language in the Hrodna region may be said to reflect the still ambiguous nature of the Polish identity on the Belarusian side of the border, being transitional between the traditional confessional and cultural conception and the modern ethnolinguistic model.
In my own sociolinguistic survey of the villages on the two sides of the border, I also investigated the relationship between self-declared nationality and self-declared native language. Overall, in the Orthodox village of Jałowo, 33% of Belarusians claimed Belarusian as their native language, while 67% indicated that pa-prostu (Belarusian dialect) was their native language. With respect to Orthodox Poles, 83% indicated Polish as their native language, while only 17% indicated pa-prostu. In the Catholic village of Hało, on the other hand, all informants indicated Polish as their native language, although most of the informants indicated that they used the local Belarusian dialect (pa-prostu, pa-svojmu) with nearly all members of their family (with Polish predominating only in communication with grandchildren and children born after 1960).
On the Belarusian side of the border, on the other hand, we find that the category “mixed language” (zmešanaja mova/zmešany jazyk) has largely supplanted pa-prostu or pa-svojmu among speakers born after the 1930s and 1940s. Overall, 82% of Belarusians and 61% of Poles claimed Belarusian as their native language, while 12% of Belarusians and 19% of Poles gave Russian as their native language.
One factor that could have contributed to the higher figure for Russian among Poles is that two of the predominantly Polish communities investigated, Indura and Luckauljany, are closer to the regional urban center Hrodna (however, among the Orthodox in Indura, only 16% gave Russian as their native language as opposed to 38% of Poles, while in Luckauljany, the percentage of Poles and Orthodox Belarusians claiming Russian as a native language was the same, 20% for both groups).
The fact that there is a significant gap between language use and the function of language as a symbol of national identity in the Białystok and Hrodna regions is also highlighted by Sadowski’s data concerning the views of respondents as to the characteristics required for an individual to be considered a member of a given nation. In the Białystok region, 82.3% of Catholics and 75.2% of Orthodox indicated that to be a Pole, one must speak Polish. In the western Hrodna region, 72.1% of Catholics and 74.1% of Orthodox indicated the importance of speaking Polish for a person to be considered a Pole.^[24] In the case of being Belarusian, 69.8% of the respondents on the Polish side, and 72.8% on the Belarusian side said that one must speak Belarusian (the data are not broken down by religion of respondents).^[25] However, at a more concrete level, i.e. at the level of the individual respondent, we find that language is less central in conceptions of national identity. Thus, in response to the question, “what unites you with your nation above all?”, having one’s own distinct language was indicated, among other criteria, by 41% of Poles and 59% of Belarusians in the Białystok region, and by only 26% of Poles and 27% of Belarusians in the Hrodna region.^[26]
Languages, especially in their standard written form, can also function as an instrument of assertion of state sovereignty and border delineation. The Polish-Belarusian border is in this sense a symbolic border (as understood at the official level) between the Russian- and Belarusian- speaking worlds and the Polish speech community. The official conception of state border as linguistic frontier is reflected in the symbolic space created by the language of street names, roadsigns, store signs, advertisements, signs on government buildings, posters, etc. All of these visual manifestations of linguistic territoriality constitute what Landry and Bourhis term the “linguistic landscape.”^[27]
In the years following 1990, in the Białystok region the private sector made some concessions to regional linguistic diversity by posting signs in Russian aimed at traders from Belarus and Russia; of course these signs were clearly oriented toward the “other”, i.e. not the local East Slavic population. In the political sphere, the appearance of campaign posters in Belarusian during the 1989 elections and after aroused considerable emotion; in many cases, such posters, viewed as a challenge to the hegemony of Polish on the territory of the Polish state, were torn down immediately. Similarly, the demands of Belarusian organizations such as the Belarusian Democratic Alliance to permit the visual presence of Belarusian in the form of bilingual road signs and signs on public buildings in areas with an Orthodox majority met with resistance and open hostility on the part of the regional authorities and part of the local population.
On the Belarusian side of the border, Russian had become the dominant language of the linguistic landscape by the 1960s, although Belarusian-language texts continued to appear sporadically in the public arena, particularly in the cultural sphere. In 1989-1994, however, some efforts were made to increase the number of Belarusian-language signs, including road signs and street names, as well as some shop signs. Since the private sector was still virtually non-existent, and government regulations restricted the use of languages other than Russian and Belarusian even in commercial signs, the visual presence of Polish in Hrodna and other smaller communities along the western border was minimal.

4.3.3. Language Attitudes

The construction and reproduction of ethnic and social boundaries through language are grounded not only in objective differences in linguistic form, but also in culture-specific and ideologically-loaded conceptions of what aspects of linguistic structure and language use are relevant in determining group membership. What ordinary speakers believe about the relationship between language and group or national identity, and about the sociolinguistic hierarchy of language varieties in use in their own linguistic repertoires and those of neighboring communities, is thus of central importance for understanding the structure of the local speech economy and the functional allocation and social distribution of linguistic resources within the community. Such local conceptions do not, however, arise in a vacuum; they are, at least in modern societies, crucially shaped by government policies which seek to promote among speakers of diverse vernacular language varieties subjective identification with, and sociolinguistic subordination to, a codified language variety that is commonly designated the “national language.”
The process of the attitudinal and functional subordination of non-standard and minority language speakers to a codified national standard language comes into sharpest relief in border regions such as the Polish-Belarusian border region. The choice of linguistic identities on the part of local populations in such border regions is to a significant extent constrained by state-managed identity planning policies, implemented via the educational system, mass media, and other institutions, which tend to focus populations on a single national language and culture. However, the homogenizing influence of national languages and cultures on local populations must not be overestimated; various forms of overt or covert resistance to dominant linguistic ideologies are often observed among borderlands populations. In many cases, on the same side of the border, different sub-groups within local communities of vernacular speakers may respond differently to official identity-planning policies as a consequence of preexisting socio-cultural divisions.
As Labov has argued, in sociolinguistic terms a speech community is defined less by a high degree of congruence in the use of certain linguistic structures than by the presence of a shared system of language norms, as reflected in both overt attitudes and abstract patterns of linguistic variation associated with different contextual styles.^[28] In order to determine whether we can still speak of the dialects of the Belarusian-Polish borderlands as still constituting a single speech community in the Labovian sense, in this section I will examine differences in language attitudes (toward the local dialect, standard Belarusian, Russian and Polish) among dialect speakers on both sides of the border.
In order to investigate some of the affective correlates of language use and the ideological construct of “native language” in the Polish-Belarusian borderlands, I included in the sociolinguistic questionnaire the questions “Which language do you like to speak most?” and “Which language do you like most of all?”. The results are shown in Figures (2) and (3) below.

Fig. 2. Which language do you like to speak most of all?

<img src=http://abimperio.net/pics/wolh2.jpg>

P = Poland
B = Belarus
† = Roman Catholic
‡ = Orthodox

Fig. 3. Which language do you like most of all?

<img src=http://abimperio.net/pics/wolh3.jpg>

On both sides of the border, we find that in everyday communication a majority of respondents prefer to use a non-standard variety, whether dialect (pa-prostu) on the Polish side, or mixed Belarusian-Russian on the Belarusian side. The preference for what are designated as mixed Belarusian-Russian varieties in intra-group communication on the Belarusian side of the border suggests that although the traditional dialects no longer function as the primary markers of local identity, neither standard Belarusian nor standard Russian have acquired a fully hegemonic position in the local speech economy. It could be argued that the attraction of the mixed Belarusian-Russian varieties to villagers lies in the fact that mixed language allows them to assert two identities at once: loyalty to the local “team”, and “modernity”, which is associated with urban (i.e. primarily Russophone) culture.
In the questionnaire, I also investigated possible links between the traditionally most salient marker of supra-local identity, religion, and language, by posing the question: how would you feel about the use of Belarusian in your church? Respondents in Hało on the Polish side of the border were perplexed – such a possibility had never even occurred to them. When I reformulated the question, asking whether they would approve of the use of their native dialect, pa-prostu, in sermons, the liturgy, and prayers in place of Polish, most became highly indignant (it will be recalled that all informants in Hało indicated that their native language was Polish). In contrast, in the Catholic village of Љuryčy, on the Belarusian side of the border, all informants but one (a ten-year old girl) indicated that they had a positive view of the use of Belarusian instead of Polish in church. Not surprisingly, a majority of respondents in Љuryčy (83%) also gave Belarusian as their native language. The degree of acceptance of Belarusian in the religious sphere showed similar, if slightly less dramatic, differences among Orthodox respondents on the two sides of the border. In the Orthodox community of Jałowo in the Białystok region, only 20% of informants approved of the use of Belarusian in church instead of Church Slavonic, Polish and Russian; in contrast, in the Orthodox community of Macveewcy-Ulezly on the Belarusian side, 78% expressed support for the use of Belarusian in church.
Since the standard language is considered the primary linguistic measure of national identity, in the written questionnaire, informants were asked a number of questions concerning the language varieties in use in the community, including the following: “Would you like to be able to speak Belarusian the way it is spoken on Belarusian radio and television?” The language of the electronic media was specifically chosen as a point of reference, since for most people in the region, this is the most common source of exposure to the standard language. Out of 160 respondents, 93% said that they would like to be able to speak standard Belarusian, while on the Polish side of the border, 50% of the respondents (out of a total of 38) answered in the affirmative. Significantly, however, on the Polish side of the border there was a marked discrepancy between Belarusian-speaking Orthodox and Catholics with respect to their attitudes toward standard Belarusian: in the Orthodox village of Jałowo, 60% of the respondents gave a positive answer, while in the Catholic village of Hało, only 40% answered in the affirmative.
In the sociolinguistic questionnaire, respondents were also asked to indicate, if possible, the reasons for their answers. These explanations are also revealing with respect to popular conceptions of the standard language and its relationship to national identity on both sides of the border. Among the positive responses, the most common related to such criteria as: 1) aesthetic qualities/correctness; 2) native language; 3) national identity; 3) and usefulness (“it may come in handy”; “it’s good to know more than one language”; “one should know the language of one’s neighbors,” etc.).
Orthodox respondents on both sides of the border were more likely than Catholics to make reference to aesthetic and ethnolinguistic criteria in their evaluations of standard Belarusian, e.g.: “I like the way it sounds”, “”it’s a beautiful language,” “because it’s more attractive than Russian,” “because it’s closer to me than Russian,” “because we speak Belarusian”, “because it’s my native language,” “because I am a Belarusian,” “because we live in Belarus,” although utilitarian motivations are also common, particularly on the Polish side of the border, for example: “it may come in handy” (“moža prydasca”), “it’s good to know several languages, “ etc. At the same time, it should be noted that on the Polish side of the border, attitudes toward local speech forms are also quite positive among most dialect speakers; one Orthodox informant in his 20s replied that he wouldn’t want to speak literary Belarusian, “in order to preserve the language of our fathers” ( “kab zaxavac’ movu bac’kow”), while others simply stated that “our way of speaking is better” ( “pa-svojmu lepej”).
Significantly, among the 40% of respondents in the Belarusian-speaking Catholic village of Hało who indicated that they would like to be able to speak literary Belarusian, the explanations given were exclusively utilitarian, reflecting the absence of any emotional ethnocultural attachment to the Belarusian standard language: “Belarus is our neighbor,” “Belarusian is somewhat similar to Polish.” The only markedly emotional responses were those of the other 60% who indicated a total lack of interest in being able to speak standard Belarusian: “I hate it”, “what good is it?”, “it’s an ugly language”, etc.
Interestingly, however, while Belarusian-speaking Catholics on the Polish side of the border have a generally neutral or negative attitude toward the Belarusian standard language, their attitude toward their local dialect is as positive as that of their Orthodox neighbors (in Hało, for example, 80% indicated that they considered their local dialect beautiful, as compared with just over 80% in the Orthodox village of Jałowo).
On the Belarusian side of the border, overt attitudes toward the local dialect are much less favorable, the majority of respondents preferring either standard Belarusian or Russian. For most villagers on the Belarusian side of the border, literary Belarusian is viewed essentially in the same terms as literary Russian – that is, as a related code, but distinctly different from what they speak (even though the dialects of this region are quite close to the literary standard in most respects). While the older generations, particularly those born prior to 1940, generally refer to their home language as “pa-prostu” (“the simple way of speaking”), “prostaja mova” (“simple language”), “pa-svojmu” (“our way of speaking”), “svaja havorka” (“our own dialect”), the generations born after the 1940s increasingly designate their speech as “zmešanaja mova/zmešany jazyk” (“mixed language”), usually implying by this a mixture of Belarusian and Russian, and in some cases, Polish. This evaluation, as the linguistic data from the region testify, is a fairly accurate assessment on the part of younger villagers of an ongoing breakdown in the intergenerational transmission of traditional dialect features.
Thus, the data on language attitudes suggest that the sociolinguistic integration of Belarusian dialect speakers on the two sides of the border into two different regional and national speech communities is as yet incomplete and shows some contradictory aspects, but appears to be progressing apace. On the Polish side of the border, the majority of Belarusian speakers can be said to be integrated to a significant extent into the Polish speech economy regardless of the language used for in-group interaction. The local dialects, still generally referred to as pa-prostu, serve primarily as a marker of local, rather than ethnic identity for most respondents. On the Belarusian side of the border, the majority of the rural population are integrated into a Russo-Belarusian speech community, in which Russian and Belarusian are complementary and at times overlapping “High” forms of language, while mixed Russo-Belarusian forms of speech have largely supplanted the traditional dialects as markers of in-group, local solidarity in rural communities.

5. CONCLUSION

The ways in which national identities, developed in and propagated from political or ethnolinguistic core areas, are adopted, modified or resisted by the populations on the periphery is a question of fundamental impo