>While the nationally conscious intelligentsia in Vilnius and Minsk greeted the expansion with enthusiasm, the transfer met significant opposition from the local population in the areas merging with the BSSR.

>Many people in this region did not identify themselves as Belarusians. On the contrary, many of the residents of the area preferred to speak Russian and opposed enforced Belarusization. The residents were mostly ignorant of Belarusian, as there had been no publications in Belarusian in the Homel’ and Rechitsa areas prior to 1926. Given their unfamiliarity with ethnic identities, the local inhabitants thought of themselves as nonBelarusian since the territory in which they lived had not been included within the borders of the restored SSRB in 1920.

>Further, the regional population displayed a near-total absence of a Belarusian national consciousness, and no identification with the Belarusian language. On the contrary, the people surveyed were strongly opposed to the policy and practice of Belarusization in the neighboring BSSR.

>Yet opposition to the Belarusian language often came from the Belarusian-speakers themselves, who often found the Belarusian language “harmful.” Often, these native Belarusian speakers did not understand the literary Belarusian language that was being constructed by national intellectuals. Most native Belarusian-speakers dismissed their language as a “servile,” “peasant” language (kholopskii iazyk) or even “a canine tongue” (sabachaiu movu), unsuitable for use outside the village. Others denied the existence of a Belarusian language outright.

>The local populations had been largely indifferent or even opposed to the numerous geopolitical changes during the past decade. The creation of the Belarusian People’s Republic, the SSRB/BSSR, and LitBel, and its four border revisions received little acclaim among the peasant masses. The creation of a Belarusian nationality was not carried out in response to popular demand. Rather, Soviet nationalities policy was based upon the assumption that Belarusians were entitled to nationhood, whether they desired it or not.

>By the stroke of a pen, millions of people were assigned a new ethnicity and a new nationality. Thereafter, the government intended to assign them a new language in accordance with this new identity. The “enlarging of the proletarian base” of the republic came at a high political and social cost. The transfer was carried out regardless of the desires or consent of the prospective new Belarusians themselves. The enlargement of the republic thus added a dissatisfied mass of people who often detested their redesignation as Belarusians and resisted the Belarusization policies. The opposition was particularly strong in the east. People in Orsha complained that Belarusization limited their social mobility.