Assessment of reliability of results of the 2019 Belarus population census based on an analysis of changes in the ethnolinguistic composition of the population

Abstract

The article examines the dynamics of the ethnolinguistic composition of the population of Belarus in the period between the 2009 and 2019 censuses. It is shown that for a number of indicators (the population of certain nationalities by region, the share of Belarusian, Russian and ethnic languages as mother and home languages) there is an anomalous dynamics, which is expressed, first of all, in multidirectional and non-uniformly scaled changes in these indicators in different regions, which was not observed in previous censuses, an abnormally sharp increase in the share of the Belarusian language and some other characteristics in certain regions, the manifestation of a number of features almost exclusively within the administrative boundaries of certain regions. As a result, analysis of the complex of anomalous results of the 2019 population census suggests that these results are due to a distortion carried out in order to obtain politically desired results: despite the very sharp and opposite dynamics of various indicators across the regions, changes on a national scale turned out to be very insignificant compared to 2009 and correspond to ideological attitudes - the shares of both the Russian and Belarusian languages, both native and home languages, increased by a small amount among the general population and major nationalities. Thus, the official results of the census made it possible to preserve the symbolic status of the Belarusian language as an element of ethnoconsolidation and national identification, although in fact the indicators of the use of the Belarusian language continue the downward trend expressed since 1999, and the majority of the population considers Russian as their native and home language.