U. Hlybinny, the author of the publication titled Smolenshchyna… the Eternal Land of the Belarusian People, published on the pages of the New York journal Belaruskaya Dumka (in: No. 5, New York - South River 1963, pp. 10-18), writes about the distinctive features of the Belarusian language of the Smolensk region preserved among the people. He notes that the inhabitants of the Smolensk region possess many original Belarusian lexical items, for example: bazhnitsa, kalyska, katukh, kubel, strakha, khata; bokhan, kalduny, krupnik, shmalets, strava, bulba; andarak, kamizelka, namitka, svitka, khustka; khadaki, charaviki; kravets, shavets; krynitsa, etc. All these words — notes U. Hlybinny — testify to the connection of the Smolensk lexical stock with the general Belarusian one.
Moreover, each of them serves as a good indicator of the Belarusian character of all life circumstances of the Smolensk peasant. Rich material is provided by the Smolensk Regional Dictionary of Dobrovolsky. The Belarusian composition of the folk language of the Smolensk region is confirmed, for example, by the following conversations of coachmen at an inn with the tavern-keeper, as recorded by Maksimov: - Randar, randar! Open the gates: give us vodka! Oh, what a blizzard: we’ve completely frozen, and the horses can barely pull, and the night is dark, nothing is visible, and the road is so covered that you can’t find it. Randar, randar, open the gates, pour the vodka! (ibid., p. 16.) There even exist proverbs that clearly testify to the Smolensk people’s awareness of their distinctness from Russians, for example: When a Muscovite says it’s dry, get up to your ears: for he’s lying, or You can cross yourself from the devil, but you can’t pray yourself away from a Muscovite: cut off your coattails from a Muscovite and run (ibid., p. 15).
The study of the linguistic features of the Smolensk region could prove very fruitful for enriching the Belarusian language. U. Hlybinny cites various words recorded in the Smolensk region by Anton Adamovich, which were discussed during discussion gatherings in New York. These include, for example: asianets ‘for the weather to become autumnal’, utravets ‘to become overgrown with grass’, zairmitstsa ‘to catch fire with some feeling’, udalina ‘a foreign land’, sobstva ‘property’ (ibid., p. 16).
An enormous quantity of distinctive words is contained in the 4-volume Explanatory Dictionary of the Living Great Russian Language by Vladimir Dal. Many are also found in the well-known dictionary of Ivan Nasovich. A significant portion of these lexemes is used in other localities of Belarus as well and has entered the literary Belarusian language.
Unfortunately — writes U. Hlybinny — the study of the language of the Smolensk region in the Soviet era was greatly hindered by its inclusion in the composition of Russia. Therefore, Belarusian linguists from the Institute of Linguistics of the Academy of Sciences of the BSSR in Minsk were forced to limit the scope of their research to the borders of present-day Belarus. It is true that in the 1920s the Smolensk region was studied by Belarusian scholars, and much was accomplished at the Institute of Belarusian Culture, and at the beginning also at the Belarusian Academy of Sciences in Minsk — the author emphasizes in his publication in Belaruskaya Dumka. U. Hlybinny notes that in the BAS publication titled Songs of the Belarusian People (Vol. 1, Minsk 1940), many Belarusian songs recorded in the Smolensk region were included, collected by such renowned ethnographers as Vladimir Dobrovolsky with his Smolensk Ethnographic Collection (Part I, 1891; Part II, 1893, Part IV, 1903), Ivan Nasovich, Yaudakim Ramanaу, and others (ibid., p. 17).