Cyril and Methodius against the Latin Ghetto

The ex-chairman of the Belarusian Popular Front Leonid Borshchevsky suggested using the Latin alphabet for Belarusian spelling. Say, this will allow to keep up with the trend, which consists in the fact that today the entire technical part of our life (computer technology, electronic means) is organized, communications and programming languages ​​are in Latin. The fact that all of the above is available in Russian, which is the state language in Belarus, of course, remained behind the scenes. But first things first.

A bit of history

The history of the Belarusian language, like the Ukrainian one, goes back to the Old Church Slavonic language. The Belarusian version of the Old Church Slavonic language was used as a dialect in the territories of modern Belarus and Ukraine as early as the 11th century. Saints Cyril and Methodius, using the new alphabet to compile many liturgical books, for the first time streamlined the language of the Orthodox ritual. Since the language of Orthodox worship was understandable to the simple Old Russian people, who had already been baptized by that time, it was then that the Cyrillic alphabet began to enter our lives so firmly. With the Cyrillic alphabet, not only writing begins, but also education in the East Slavic countries.

However, in the ancient Russian state, the Belarusian dialect as such had not yet been formed. Indeed, the features of the Belarusian language manifest themselves in the era of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the creation of which brought many Russian lands together. However, as E.F. Karsky, the official language of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania was Russian. This is even stated in the name of the principality itself - "The Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Russian and Zhomoyt". And the statute of this state is also written in Western Russian (a mixture of "Ukrainian" and "Belarusian" versions of the Russian language) in Cyrillic, not Latin.

The Latin alphabet as an indicator of the expansion of the Catholic Church

The Latin alphabet penetrates into the Belarusian environment not in the XIV-XVI centuries. according to Lyavon Borshchevsky, and much later - in the 17th - 19th centuries, when Belarus was part of the Polish state. The main variants of Christianity in the Commonwealth were Catholicism and Uniatism, and Catholic worship was held in Latin, therefore it was in the 18th century that the Latin alphabet became part of the life of Belarusians, since many Orthodox priests were forcibly driven into the union for subsequent “Catholicization”, and therefore “Romanization” . Those clergy who refused to accept the union or serve according to the Latin rite were killed. An example of this is the feat of Athanasius of Brest, who was brutally killed and tortured by supporters of the Uniate faith.

This trend of "latinization" is suspended after the divisions of the Commonwealth and the entry of Belarus into the Russian Empire. However, in the 19th century, the Latin alphabet was actively used by the Polish propaganda machine during the uprising of 1863 by Kostus Kalinouski, whose Mużyckaja prauda is supposedly the first Belarusian newspaper (actually Polish) and is published in the Latin alphabet. In 1912, the Belarusian language returns to itself the Cyrillic alphabet, as Borshevsky says. And in the BSSR, as you know, the Cyrillic alphabet was used in their everyday life.

Thus, if the adoption of the Cyrillic alphabet in Belarus had an educational character, then the use of the Latin alphabet by Belarusians became an indicator of the expansion of Catholics to the East.

The Cyrillic alphabet is one of the few assets that our ancestors managed to preserve today. If we return the Latin alphabet to everyday life and start using the Belarusian language in the Latin version, this will inevitably lead to the displacement of the Cyrillic alphabet from our everyday life. We will forget our history and culture, allowing the West to re-occupy the East.

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