Quote=taty. no. what I ment was they speak standard " white" russian,
not belarussian, I disagree on the fact that belarussians dont speak belarussian, they take great pride in the difference between the two, but when they speak they almost always use standard russian and never bellarussian, I find that very weird. but yes. I have heard the republic
of belarus is trying to take bellarussian out of schools. quote " closed boarders" not in 1980, maybe the year 1200 a.d.! russian was creathe by a monk around that time, and from then on people started to create their own dialect of it. eg.polish, slovak. ukrine....

sorry for the misunderstanding.