MINSK, 7 June (BelTA) – Belarusians and Russians are fraternal peoples that perceive each other's cultures as part of a common culture. This is one of the reasons for maintaining bilingualism in Belarus. Belarus is the only CIS country where both Belarusian and Russian have the status of official languages, Head of the Center for Belarusian Studies of the Institute of Europe at the Russian Academy of Sciences Nikolai Mezhevich said at a round table dedicated to Russian Language Day and the 223rd anniversary of Alexander Pushkin's birth.
Language is part and parcel of interstate relations and relations between people, the expert believes. “Of course, it is important how our countries are called, but more important is how people live and communicate there, how social and political contacts work. And in this regard, Belarus and Russia have many centuries of common history, and those who wanted to divide us could not do anything about that. These attempts to divide us were frustrated not only by the Russian language that is broadly studied in Belarus, but also by our history, culture, as well as the fact that we understand at the level of genetics that it is much easier for us to live together than separately,” Nikolai Mezhevich is sure.
In his opinion, in the near future we will see an increasing role of the Russian language in Belarus and the Belarusian language in Russia. “This will happen after we jointly resolve the most difficult problems. Russia has already decided to withdraw from the Bologna system, which means that we will return to the principles that were common in the USSR. Classics of Belarusian culture and literature received education at the St Petersburg university. Let's think what we can do so that new classics also study there. And we will be happy to cooperate with universities of Belarus. We are actively working on this with rectors of many universities,” the expert noted.
