Was it possible to strongly Russify Ukrainians and Belarusians in the 20th century?

Too much emphasis is being put on language, Germany doesnt have just one language, France doesnt have just one language, Italy doesn't have just one language etc etc
What's important is cultivating a shared identity and that's very doable especially in Belarus.
 
Too much emphasis is being put on language, Germany doesnt have just one language, France doesnt have just one language, Italy doesn't have just one language etc etc
What's important is cultivating a shared identity and that's very doable especially in Belarus.

You see - not just on this board but in most geopolitical commentary - that Americans and Europeans often aren't aware that monoethnic/monolingual states are the global exception, not the norm. You really just see them in post-WWII Europe and a couple other places (such as Korea, Japan).
 
You see - not just on this board but in most geopolitical commentary - that Americans and Europeans often aren't aware that monoethnic/monolingual states are the global exception, not the norm. You really just see them in post-WWII Europe and a couple other places (such as Korea, Japan).
As a Canadian I'm not sure If I should be offended by this generalisation.
 
Russification is certainly possible. Stalin himself dabbled in linguistics and had he decided that Belorussian and Ukrainian were "low" or "primitive" forms of Russian, and had his legacy survived his death, it may have continued. The "problem" is that the Soviet ideology lacked the requisite Slav nationalist component until World War II and after that was not played up to the right volume, nor was it ever institutionalized.

In China, the centralized government forced what was essentially Beijing Mandarin upon millions of educated and literate people in the southern and eastern parts of the country, places where the local spoken language was maybe 10 percent intelligible with the declared standard--far more divisive than Ukrainian and Russian. Widespread proficiency in a form of Mandarin that actually matches this standard is a relatively recent phenomenon, created by compulsory education and media infrastructure. Along with this, Chinese ethnic policy created (reinforced) a Han race out of a group of people as large and arguably as diverse as the population of Europe.
 
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