[LINK] Window on Eurasia on Belarus

[rfmcdonald]

Window on Eurasia is a blog that has to be taken more critically than most. Its author, Paul Goble, has a certain anti-Russian slant that can be quite counterfactual: Russian Muslims, for instance, do not have a TFR in excess of 7 or 8 and are not going to dominate the country. Still, there are some interesting and verifiable bits therein. Below are two.

• First, Goble tackles the question of Belarus' name. In the English language after fall of the Soviet Union, the country names "the Ukraine" and "Byelorussia" changes, "the Ukraine" dropping its article and "Byelorussia" settling after "Byelarus" on "Belarus." In Russia, it seems, non-government experts have decided that the old Russian-language names won't change on grounds of their normativeness.


• Second, Belarusian identity seems to be strong, that half of a polled population identifying themselves as belonging to a Belarusian nation, 40% as belonging to a "triune" East Slavic nation also incorporating Russia and Ukraine, and a vanishingly small minority identifying themselves as Russian. Although Belarusian identity is somewhat stronger in less Russophile West Belarus and among educated people, it's fairly uniformly distrubted, with obvious consequences for relations with Russia.