NATIVE-LANGUAGE NEWSPAPER THREATENED IN MINSK.

NATIVE-LANGUAGE NEWSPAPER THREATENED IN MINSK.

The biweekly Nasha Niva, one of the last surviving Belarusan-language newspapers, with a circulation of only 5,000, faces charges in a Minsk court today. The State Committee for the Press, a censorship authority, accuses Nasha Niva of using the pre-1933 Belarusan orthography. The State Committee recently warned Nasha Niva that “it is forbidden to deviate from the generally accepted linguistic norms” which are in effect since 1933.

In that year, the Stalinist regime changed the orthography in order to efface specific features of the Belarusan language and to blur its distinctiveness from the Russian language. The case is being heard today in an economic arbitration court, one that the authorities have used on several previous occasions in order to ban opposition and native-language periodicals. (Belapan, August 10)

WESTERN-ORIENTED YOUNG MEN RISING IN GEORGIA’S LEADERSHIP.