In the publication Smolenshchyna… the Eternal Land of the Belarusian People, Uladzimer Hlybinny writes about the distinctive features of the Belarusian language of the Smolensk region preserved among the people (in: Belaruskaya Dumka, No. 5, New York - South River 1963, pp. 10-18).
According to his assertions: “the most Russified are the cities, but in the countryside the vitality of the Belarusian language with all its distinctive features is well manifested, and better in the south than in the north. The ‘Bryansk region’ all the way to Oryol has preserved the Belarusian language very well. All of its distinctive features are encountered here. In the Smolensk region, Belarusian is also well preserved, although not in all districts (worse in the eastern ones than in the western). It is interesting that even Smolensk itself does not look terribly bad from a linguistic point of view. People speak here with respectably preserved features of the Belarusian language. Akanne [unstressed ‘o’ pronounced as ‘a’] and dzekanne [soft ‘d’ before ‘e’ and ‘i’] have been especially firmly retained. Further north, Belarusian is relatively well preserved all the way to the town of Bely” (ibid., pp. 13-14).
U. Hlybinny notes that in the literature about the Smolensk region there are many facts confirming its belonging to the Belarusian ethnographic area. Thus, for example, Professor P. Chernykh appended a Dialectological Map of East Slavic Languages to his work Historical Grammar of the Russian Language (second edition, Uchpedgiz, Moscow 1954), according to which the entire Smolensk and Bryansk regions are attributed to the territories of the Belarusian language. Eloquent evidence of the Belarusian character of the Smolensk region also appears in the work of the tireless scholar in the field of historical dialectology of East Slavic languages, student and follower of A. Shakhmatov — Pavel Rastarhueu, author of such works on the Smolensk region as: The Northern-Belarusian Dialect, Dialects in the Territory of Smolenshchyna. A detailed study of the dialects of western Smolenshchyna was personally conducted by P. Rastarhueu in 1929-1931. P. Rastarhueu backed up his observations with responses to the Questionnaire on the Dialects of Smolenshchyna, which was printed by the Research Institute of Languages in Moscow and sent by the author to schools in the Smolensk region in a quantity of 510 copies. In addition, P. Rastarhueu conducted a detailed analysis of rich dialectological materials and compared them with data from archaeology, history, the history of material culture, and ethnography. He also used the Smolensk Ethnographic Collection by V. N. Dobrovolsky, manuscript materials of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR and the Russian Geographical Society, as well as other materials. P. Rastarhueu conducted his historical-dialectological study using a scientific-linguistic method, selecting from the vast material only those facts that were well documented and had the exact address of the person and locality where the recordings were made (Uladzimer Hlybinny, Smolenshchyna… the Eternal Land of the Belarusian People, ibid., p. 14).
In the historical section, P. Rastarhueu designated the Smolensk region as a territory occupied by the Smolensk Krivichs, whose dialectal boundary runs along the linguistic divide between Belarusian dialects and Central and Southern Great Russian dialects. It was in the Smolensk region that the historical junction of the Belarusian and Russian languages began. Western Smolenshchyna preserves the Belarusian character of its language, although the many years of influence of the Russian school, administration in the Russian language, the absence of the Belarusian book, and the exclusive use of Russian literature, radio, and theater are doing their work in terms of the gradual loss of distinctive linguistic features — notes U. Hlybinny, who relies on the research of P. Rastarhueu. Rastarhueu showed how, as a result of resettlements and mixing of the population in the territory of the Smolensk region, Russification encompasses an ever-increasing number of Smolensk residents. Some of P. Rastarhueu’s conclusions evoke pessimistic thoughts. Emphasizing the process of linguistic changes, the researcher writes about tendencies of linguistic movement toward the Russian language.
“The state of these features — writes Rastarhueu — in the dialects of the Smolensk region is such that one can speak of the development of the dialects along the path of losing their native Belarusian features and replacing them with Russian ones (p. 181)” (ibid., p. 14).
P. Rastarhueu provided rich material from the fields of phonetics, morphology, vocabulary, and syntax of the language of Smolensk residents. This language positively shines with such Belarusian features as: dissimilative akanne, dzekanne and tsekanne, the presence of the Belarusian “h” sound, the transition of “v” to “u” or “w”, and the predominance of past tense verb forms ending in “u” instead of “l” (ibid., pp. 14-15).
U. Hlybinny notes that the inhabitants of the Smolensk region possess many original Belarusian lexical items, but about this listen next week.