Russian language in Belarus

Russian is one of the two official languages of Belarus (the other being Belarusian). Being dominant in the media, education and other areas of public life, Russian is de facto the main language of the country.

After 1995
In 1995, according to the results of the 1995 Belarusian Referendum, the Russian language was declared the second official language. According to the Belarus Census (2009), 41.5% of the Belarusian population declared Russian as their mother language whereas Belarusian is the mother tongue of 53.2% of the population, and 70.2% declared Russian "the language spoken at home" (the second language-related question of the Census). However, minorities do speak Polish, Ukrainian and Eastern Yiddish as well.