According to UNESCO, the Belarusian language is in a catastrophic state. "Potentially endangered" - that is the diagnosis received by the language of the indigenous population of the country, which was even marked on a symbolic map called "World Languages in Danger". Why does he disappear? The answer is simple: they are almost never used in everyday communication. A small share of the intelligentsia, part of the conscious youth and the elderly - these are the main speakers of the language, which was used by millions 50 years ago.
"Nasha Niva" counted five dozen reasons why the current youth does not want to speak Belarusian. To do this, we interviewed about 300 students of the main universities of the country ( with someone talked in person, someone answered on Twitter and others in social networks ).
We have selected the 50 most interesting answers: some of them are quite reasonable, others are primitive but sincere, some are obscure and even offensive. But it is these answers that best reflect the "achievements" of the authorities in the development of linguistic culture and national consciousness.
You will not find explanations in this material - only 50 answers to the question "Why don't you speak Belarusian?" Draw your own conclusions.
1). I don't know Belarusian at all.
2). Not taught from childhood.
3). No one speaks Belarusian to me, so I do the same.
4). I don't know enough to speak it easily.
5). Not enough time to study it.
6). I have been outside of Belarus for a long time. The Belarusian language is simply not needed.
7). If I start talking, they won't understand me at work.
8). School, university, family - everything is in Russian.
9). Despite the fact that the language is beautiful, there is an opinion that only collective farmers speak it. It is unenviable to appear the same in the eyes of society.
10). I do not fully feel like a Belarusian as a representative of the nation.
eleven). My parents never insisted that I take the Belarusian language seriously.
12). Do not know much. I am a perfectionist. Either I do great, or I don't do it at all.
13). I have basic knowledge, I can even keep up the conversation. But somehow I find it easier to communicate in English.
14). This is neither necessary nor meaningful.
15). This language is more suitable for grandparents, but not for young people.
16). There is no patriotism.
17). A system of communication in Russian or English has been established for a long time, no matter what it is - a store or an office.
18). I like the Belarusian language, but it is not the leading one for me (acting or alive).
19). I like Russian better.
20). At school, he was allowed to play truant.
21). I'm afraid they will.
22). I do not like the sounds "g" and "h".
23). Has entered honey and has ceased.
24). I'm waiting for Apple to release IOS in Belarusian.
25). I'm shy.
26). I talked for about 2 months. Tired. Hard.
27). My parents won't understand me if I suddenly start speaking Belarusian. They have been educating me all my life in Russian, and I am here “in the language of the first”.
28). As soon as we enter the EU - so immediately.
29). Today it is the language of the opposition. If you speak Belarusian, then you are going against the system.
thirty). I have enough of it in the subway.
31). There is little modern literature, there is nowhere to draw knowledge from.
32). Don't know! I envy Ukrainians a little. Austria-Hungary helped them, as they still say in the West. And all of us have been weathered for a long time.
33). Politically unsafe language.
34). What will change if I start talking?
35). He's a little funny.
36). Today it has become artificial.
37). The language did not take root in modern society, I personally speak the language of the majority.
38). I don’t recognize Trasyanka for language, but I don’t know how to do it differently.
39). "Belarusian language" is a Polish anti-Russian project. He has little more than nothing to do with the Belarusian people.
40). It is difficult to speak Belarusian when everything around is in Russian.
41). Because it's not easy with anyone.
42). I often use obscene language, but there is none in Belarusian. Seriously, I just don't know.
43). It is difficult to speak your native language, since its use is minimal, and some look at you as if you were an alien.
44). To my shame, I can't. I think in Russian.
45). I don’t know well, but speaking half-Russian-half-Belarusian is not entirely decent.
46). I do not want to stand out, and there is little practice.
47). Understand correctly, but somehow from birth I feel more Russian, although the Belarusian Polish surname. Somehow I like that direction.
48). For 300 years we have actually been part of Russian Empire. How can one speak Belarusian in such a situation?
49). It's more comfortable for me.
50). Does anyone need it?
Leave your comment. Let's formulate 50 ways to bring life back to the Belarusian language!
Belarusians are a people that originated at the confluence of the East Slavic and Baltic tribes.
The second (considered obsolete) name is litvins (Russian), litsvins, litvins (Belarusian). The total number of Belarusians is about 9.4 million people.
They live compactly in Eastern Europe, mainly on the territory of the Republic of Belarus (area 207.6 thousand km 2), where they make up 83.7% of the population (about 8 million people). The rest of the Belarusians are dispersed by country former USSR(mainly in Russia and Ukraine), Poland, USA, Australia, Canada and other countries of the world.
Belarusians: 200 years of destruction of the nation, name and history
The preservation of Belarusians as a people and the existence of their own state can be called a miracle against the backdrop of the disappearance of dozens European nations and nationalities under the pressure of stronger neighbors. But if in Western Europe during the conquest of the territory, the invader did not destroy the national characteristics of the local population, then the lands of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (hereinafter referred to as the GDL - the old name of Belarus) underwent two hundred years of continuous destruction of the nation, name and history.
background
Our Grand Duchy in the era of the XIII-XVIII centuries, perhaps, did not differ fundamentally from other European states. Castle country, vast empire of Eastern Europe, Magdeburg law, a variety of religious confessions, interstate alliances with Poland and Sweden, numerous Lithuanian gentry as the basis of the state, entertainment of the aristocracy, printing houses, its own constitution in the form of three Statutes, the Litvinian state language (the prototype of Belarusian), courts, army, numerous external wars.
There was everything - both victories and defeats, and the pressure of the Commonwealth, and conflicts with the Germans - the usual ups and downs of the European life of that era. Sometimes those times are called the golden age of our people, but we will not idealize them - rather, it was a stage in the normal development of Belarusians.
Destruction of culture and assimilation of Belarusians
The catastrophe (this is the most appropriate word) began immediately after the divisions of the Commonwealth and the entry of the territory of our state of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the people of Litvin-Belarusians into Russia. Former enemy and competitor, Russia decided to simply wipe it off the face of the earth, to erase everything that would remind of its former greatness and, first of all, memory, that is, in the end, gradually turn the Litvins into Russians.
Destruction of the Lithuanian (Belarusian) nobility
To fulfill these plans, it was necessary to act gradually, to begin with, to destroy the numerous small and medium-sized Lithuanian gentry - the main bearer of the state and national idea of the Grand Duchy. The first blow was dealt to the rights of the gentry, almost thousands of gentry families were deprived of all titles and privileges (often their property). To keep the gentry title (now under the Russian name of a nobleman), it was necessary to pass hard way evidence, including humiliating trips to St. Petersburg to officials from the new occupation administration.
The absolute majority of the gentry could not do this, as a result, vast land holdings were transferred from the hands of the Litvins to the Russian ruling class - by the right of the conqueror. Only some wealthy families managed to confirm the nobility, which, due to their small number, no longer posed a threat in terms of maintaining the Litvinsky (Belarusian) language. national identity.
In view of the fact that the entire gentry, who had lost their rights and property, at that time performed the role of the national intelligentsia, this was an irreparable loss for the people. The headless nation lost its memory - the goal was achieved.
Destruction of the self-name of Belarusians - "Litvins"
The second blow fell on the name of the people and their land. After all, even if the peasants continued to call their homeland Lithuania (as it has been for 600 years), then sooner or later the people's memory could lead to independence. But Lithuania was just beginning in Vilna, the conditional center was rather Minsk-Litovsk (the official name of the city during the reign of the Russian Empire). The planting of the Russian version of the name began, which had never been used before - western Russia, the northwestern region, etc.
There was even a new ideological trend - Western Russianism, designed to propagate that former lands The Grand Duchy is western Russia. At the same time, among the peasantry, not without the help and propaganda of the remaining Lithuanian gentry, an alternative name was fixed, which was more regional and less detrimental than Western Russia - this is Belarus (Belarus). Many Litvins, fearing complete national annihilation and becoming Russians, adopted precisely this self-name - Belarusians. A certain compromise was reached between the invaders and the population in the names and the inculcation of ideology " Western Russia"For the Grand Duchy, it was temporarily suspended. For the sake of preserving at least some kind of identity, most of the Litvinians became Belarusians - this preserved our ethnic characteristics.
Uprisings of Litvin-Belarusians
At the beginning and mid-nineteenth century, the Litvins made three armed attempts to restore their independence, this is an alliance with Napoleon and two gentry uprisings. During the last uprising, led by Kalinovsky, the rebels began to use in their ideological tactics a new name for their people - Belarusians. After the suppression of the uprising and the massacre of the remnants of the gentry of the Grand Duchy, the Russian authorities were afraid that the name "Belarusians" also contained a hidden potential for independence, so a second attempt was made to impose Western Russianism - but, fortunately, it ended unsuccessfully.
There were also funny incidents in this story, the censors began to correct the names of Litvin in many books for Belarusian, because no one knew that Belarus would someday gain independence, the Internet would appear and all fakes would emerge.
Belarusian church ban
A separate black page is the prohibition of the Uniate Church on our lands - the national church of the Litvins. Thousands of Uniate churches were transferred to the Russian Orthodox Church, an invasion of chauvinistic and great-power priests began, the purpose of which was the Russification of the new flock. Since that time Russian Orthodox Church in Belarus became a conductor of the tsarist ideology of autocracy, and Orthodoxy for Belarusians began to mean belonging to the Russian world.
At the end of the 19th century, when the Russian authorities realized that it was impossible to fully Russify the lands of the Grand Duchy, and when Belarusians began to be recognized as a separate nationality, the question arose of Belarusian history. This was an important element in consolidating the successes achieved in the assimilation of Belarusians. The main task The Russian version of Belarusian history was to turn the concept of Belarusian statehood upside down, that is, to say that this statehood simply never existed and that the Grand Duchy of Lithuania is not the homeland of the Belarusians, but their invader. Considering that their own intelligentsia (gentry) practically did not exist, and there was no one to oppose such a historical libel from Russian historians, this humiliating version of our history has existed until recently.
The main idea and purpose of such a story is not to let Belarus and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Belarusians and Litvins, the names of one people, be linked together. And this was the correct calculation of Russia: after all, as soon as any information or relationship between Belarus and the ON arises, the danger of the revival of Belarusians and the independence of Belarus immediately arises.
Attempts to retaliate by the Belarusians in a new capacity were not long in coming. The former Lithuanian gentry Grenivitsky kills the Russian tsar, the former Lithuanian rebel Bogushevich creates a new independent Belarusian ideology, directly connected with the Grand Duchy. This gives rise to Belarusian political parties beginning of the 20th century, thanks to which both the BPR and the BSSR arose.
The Rise of Belarusian National Self-Consciousness in the First Half of the 20th Century
In 1918, the Belarusians managed to restore their statehood only for a few months in the form of the Belarusian People's Republic and in 1919, the prototype of the BSSR arose - a semi-state entity within the USSR.
Taking advantage of the temporary romanticism of the communist ideology in the 1920s, the descendants of the Litvins managed to take a leading position in the institutions of culture and education, with an eye on the Bolsheviks and self-censorship, they launched a widespread Belarusianization that reached all strata of society. At the same time, in western Belarus (the Western part of the GDL), which became part of Poland, Belarusianization also began, though on a smaller scale, but on the basis of the history of the Grand Duchy and without the ideology of the Bolsheviks.
The period of Belarusianization did not last long. Seeing the danger of self-determination of Belarusians, both Poland and the USSR began a policy of anti-Belarusization. And if in Poland everything ended with the closure of our schools and the so-called "sanation" policy, then in the USSR the Belarusian national intelligentsia and administration were physically destroyed - prisons, camps, executions.
Belarusians and World War II
During the Second World War, the role of the invaders was taken over by the Nazis, who used not only a stick, but also a carrot - they allowed limited Belarusianization with the condition of mentioning the ideas of German Nazism. Many Belarusians, who knew the national oppression both from the side of nationalist Poland and from the USSR, willingly agreed to the cynical conditions of the German administration and in this short period, for 3-4 years, along with the henchmen of Nazism, thousands of young Belarusians were brought up in the spirit of the history of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, many of whom died either in the meat grinder of hostilities or in Stalin's camps.
The results of the disappearance of ON for Belarusians
To summarize, without touching on recent history and modernity. Now it is clear on what basis and on what prerequisites the emergence of the Republic of Belarus became possible. Nevertheless, after the destruction of the GDL and until today, our people and our national idea suffered enormous losses. We list some of them:
1. Destruction of our country - the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.
2. Destruction of the Lithuanian gentry as an estate. Confiscation of all property, titles and privileges.
3. Destruction of the name of our land and an attempt to plant "Western Rus'".
4. Physical destruction or references to certain death of our rebels with the confiscation of their property.
5. Destruction of the Belarusian Uniate Church.
6. An attempt to ban our second self-name "Belarusians".
7. Repressions against Belarusians in interwar Poland.
8. Physical extermination or exile to camps of representatives of the Belarusian national intelligentsia and administration in the USSR.
9. Massive losses of Belarusians in the Second World War.
But for each of these losses, we had our own victory, as a result of which a unique European people- Belarusians, and we will gradually deal with the names ourselves.
And the last thing worth noting. In the destruction of the Litvins and, later, the Belarusians, there is not a single gram of guilt of the neighboring peoples. Genocide is arranged by the authorities, ideologists, political groups under the influence of extreme nationalist ideas. The Russian people have always experienced oppression from their own rulers, and blaming them as a whole for all troubles means inciting ethnic hatred. We must forgive but remember.
Belarusians
Who are Belarusians?
Belorussians (Belarusian: Belarussians; Russian: Belorussy) are an East Slavic ethnic group living predominantly in present-day Belarus and adjacent regions. The total number is more than 9.5 million people in the world, the vast majority of Belarusians live on the territory of Belarus, as well as in neighboring countries, where they are an autochthonous minority.
Where are Belarusians settled?
Belarusians are East Slavic ethnic group inhabiting most of the Republic of Belarus. Some Belarusians inhabit territories adjacent to Belarus: Ukraine, Poland (especially the Podlaskie Voivodeship), Russia and Lithuania, where they are a national minority. At the beginning of the 20th century, Belarusians actively settled settlements around the city of Smolensk in Russia.
A significant number of Belarusians emigrated to the United States, Brazil and Canada in the early 20th century. During the Soviet era (1917-1991), many Belarusians were deported or migrated to various regions of the USSR, including Siberia, Kazakhstan and Ukraine.
After the collapse of the USSR in 1991, several hundred thousand emigrated to the Baltic countries, the USA, Canada, Russia and the EU countries.
Belarusian language
Belarus has two official languages: Belarusian and Russian. Russian is the most used language in colloquial speech- it is used by about 72% of the population, while Belarusian is spoken only by about 11.9% of the population in Everyday life. According to studies, to one degree or another, the vast majority of residents speak the Belarusian language: 29.4% are fluent, can read and write in it, 52.5% can speak and read the language, 8.3% understand , but cannot speak or read it, and another 7% can understand only those words of the Belarusian language that are similar to words in Russian. The Belarusian language is one of the group of East Slavic languages.
Origin of the name "Belarus"
The name "Belarus" can literally be translated as "White Rus'", which was a historical region in the east modern Republic Belarus, called in Latin Ruthenia Alba (White Rus'). This name was used for some time mainly in Western Europe, while the Belarusians themselves called themselves "Rusyns", "Belarusians" (not to be confused with the political group of "White" Russians who opposed the Bolsheviks during civil war in Russia), as well as other similar forms of words showing their belonging to the people of Rus'.
The term "Belarusians" spread mainly during the 19th century, when the Belarusian lands were part of the Russian Empire. For example, this can be traced in the studies of the folklorist Ivan Sakharov, in the publication of which in 1836 the Belarusians are called "Litvins", while in the edition of 1886 the words "Lithuania" and "Lithuanian-Russians" (Rusyns) are replaced respectively by the words "Belarus" and Belarusians.
History of the Belarusian people
original culture Belarusian people began to take shape during the existence of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and earlier during the Kievan Rus and the Principality of Polotsk. Most Belarusians are descendants of the East Slavic tribes of the Dregovichi, Krivichi and Radimichi, as well as the Baltic tribe of the Yatvingians, who inhabited the west and northwest of modern Belarus.
Belarusians, as a nation, began to appear during the 13th-14th centuries in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Mainly on lands in the upper basins of the Neman, Dnieper and Zapadnaya Dvina rivers.
In the 13th-18th centuries, Belarusians were mainly known as Litvins/Lithuanians and Rusyns, who belonged to the eastern region of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (Lithuania, Great Lithuania). In the 13-14 centuries, the lands of White Rus', Black Rus' and Polissya were part of the GDL, on the territory of which the "Rusyn language" developed and gradually became dominant written language in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, replacing Latin. The Sudebnik of Casimir of 1468 and all three editions of the Statutes of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (1529, 1566 and 1588) were written in Rusyn (Old Belarusian) language. From the 1630s, it was replaced by the Polish language, which gained more and more authority in the Commonwealth as a result of the rise of Polish high culture.
Based on the dominance of the Ruthenian language (which later transformed into modern Belarusian and Ukrainian languages) and cultures in the eastern parts of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, some "modern" Belarusian scientists and residents of Belarus believe that the GDL, during its existence, was part of the Belarusian state.
Between 1791 and 1917 most of Belarus, with its Christian and Jewish population, became part of the Russian Empire through conquest and diplomatic maneuvering, and became part of the region known as the Pale of Settlement.
After the First World War, the Belarusians began to revive their statehood with varying degrees of independence - first as the short-lived BPR under German occupation, and then as Byelorussian SSR from 1919 to 1991, which merged with other republics to become an integral part Soviet Union in 1922. Belarus gained full independence with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
Belarusian cuisine
Belarusian cuisine has the same roots with the cuisines of other eastern and northern European countries. It is based mainly on meat and various vegetables, the cultivation of which is typical for the region.
On August 5, 1772, the first partition of the Commonwealth took place. Austria received Galicia, Prussia - western Prussia, and Russia - Belarus.
Russians and Belarusians admit that we differ little from each other. But still we are different. How Belarus was formed and what makes it unique
History of White Rus'
The ethnonym "Belarusians" was finally adopted by the Russian Empire in the XVIII - XIX centuries. Together with the Great Russians and Little Russians, the Belarusians in the eyes of the autocratic ideologists constituted a triune all-Russian nationality. In Russia itself, the term began to be used under Catherine II: after the third partition of Poland in 1796, the empress ordered the establishment of the Belarusian province on the newly acquired lands.
Historians do not have a common opinion about the origin of the toponyms Belarus, Belaya Rus. Some believed that White Russia was called the lands independent of the Mongol-Tatars (white is the color of freedom), others raised the name to white color clothes and hair local residents. Still others contrasted white Christian Rus' with black pagan Russia. The most popular was the version of Black, Red and White Rus', where the color was compared with a certain side of the world: black - with the north, white - with the west, red - with the south.
The territory of White Rus' extended far beyond the borders of present-day Belarus. From the 13th century, Latin foreigners called White Russia (Ruthenia Alba) North-Eastern Rus'. Western European medieval geographers almost never visited it and vaguely imagined its borders. The term was also used in relation to the Western Russian principalities, for example, Polotsk. In the XVI- XVII centuries the concept of "White Rus'" was assigned to the Russian-speaking lands in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and the northeastern lands, on the contrary, began to be opposed to White Rus'.
The accession of Ukraine-Little Russia to Russia in 1654 (it should not be forgotten that along with the Little Russian lands, part of the Belarusian lands were annexed to Moscow) provided state ideologists with an excellent opportunity to put forward the concept of the brotherhood of three peoples - Great Russian, Little Russian and Belarusian.
Ethnography and potato pancakes
However, despite the official ideology, Belarusians had no place in science for a long time. The study of their rituals and folk customs was just beginning, and Belarusian literary language took the first steps. Stronger neighboring peoples who experienced a period national revival, primarily Poles and Russians, claimed White Rus' as their ancestral home. The main argument was that scientists did not perceive the Belarusian language as an independent language, calling it a dialect of either Russian or Polish.
It was only in the 20th century that it was possible to single out that the ethnogenesis of the Belarusians took place on the territory of the Upper Dnieper, Middle Dvina and Upper Ponemanye, that is, on the territory of modern Belarus. Gradually, ethnographers singled out the original aspects of the Belarusian ethnic group and, in particular, Belarusian cuisine. Potatoes in the Belarusian lands took root in the 18th century (unlike the rest of Russia, which knew the potato reforms and riots of the 1840s) and by the end of the 19th century Belarusian cuisine was full of an assortment of potato dishes. Draniki, for example.
Belarusians in science
Interest in the history of Belarusians, the emergence of the first scientifically substantiated concepts of the origin of the ethnic group is the work of the beginning of the 20th century. One of the first to undertake it was Vladimir Ivanovich Picheta, a student of the famous Russian historian Vasily Osipovich Klyuchevsky. Based on the settlement of the Slavs according to the Tale of Bygone Years, he suggested that the ancestors of the Belarusians were the Krivichi, as well as the neighboring tribes of Radimichi and Dregovichi. As a result of their consolidation, the Belarusian people arose. The time of occurrence was determined by the separation of the Belarusian language from Old Russian, in the XIV century.
The weak side of the hypothesis was that the annalistic tribes have been disappearing from the pages of annals since the middle of the 12th century, and it is difficult to explain the two-century silence of the sources. But the beginning of the Belarusian nation was laid, and not in last role due to the systematic study of the Belarusian language. In 1918, a teacher at Petrograd University, Bronislav Tarashkevich, prepared its first grammar, normalizing spelling for the first time. This is how the so-called tarashkevitsa arose - a language norm, later adopted in the Belarusian emigration. Tarashkevich was opposed by the grammar of the Belarusian language of 1933, created as a result of language reforms 1930s. There was a lot of Russian in it, but it was fixed and used in Belarus until 2005, when it was partially unified with Tarashkevitsa. As a noteworthy fact, it is worth noting that in the 1920s on the official flag of the BSSR the phrase "Proletarians of all countries unite!" was written in four languages: Russian, Polish, Yiddish and Tarashkevitse. Tarashkevitsa should not be confused with tarasyanka. The latter - a mixture of Russian and Belarusian languages, is found everywhere in Belarus and now, more often in cities.
Belarusians from ancient Russian people
After the Great Patriotic War national question in the USSR, it also became very aggravated on this basis, in order to prevent interethnic conflicts in the ideology of the Union, a new supranational concept, the “Soviet people”, began to be widely used. Shortly before this, in the 1940s, researchers Ancient Rus' substantiated the theory of "Old Russian nationality" - a single cradle of the Belarusian, Ukrainian and Russian peoples. There were few similarities between these two concepts, but their active use by the USSR during this period is striking. Such features of the ancient Russian nationality as “a common territory, economy, law, military organization and, especially, a common struggle against external enemies with the awareness of their unity” can be safely attributed to Soviet society in the late 1940s-1960s. Of course, ideology did not subordinate history, but the structures by which historians and politicians-ideologists thought were very similar. The origin of the Belarusians from the ancient Russian people filmed weak sides"tribal" concept of ethnogenesis and emphasized the gradual isolation of the three peoples in the XII - XIV centuries. However, some scientists extend the period of formation of the nationality to late XVI century.
This theory is still accepted today. In 2011, at the celebration of the 1150th anniversary of the Old Russian state, historians of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus confirmed its provisions. During this time, archeological data were added to it, which showed active connections of the ancestors of Belarusians with the Balts and Finno-Ugric peoples (this is where the versions of the Baltic and Finno-Ugric origin of Belarusians were born), as well as a DNA study conducted in Belarus in 2005-2010, which proved the proximity of three East Slavic peoples and large genetic differences between Slavs and Balts in the male line.
Other Rus'
In the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, which included in the XIII - XVI centuries almost the entire territory of modern Belarus, the Old Belarusian language (that is, Western Russian) was the first state language- all office work was carried out on it, literary works and laws were recorded. Developing in a separate state, he experienced a strong influence of Polish and Church Slavonic, but remained bookish language. In contrast, colloquial Belarusian, experiencing the same influences, developed mainly in rural areas and has survived to the present. The territory of the formation of Belarusians did not suffer so much from the Mongol-Tatars. The population constantly had to fight for their faith - Orthodoxy and against foreign culture. At the same time, many of Western European culture took root in Belarus faster and easier than in Russia. For example, book printing, started by Francis Skaryna almost 50 years earlier than in Muscovy. Finally, another important factor in the formation of the Belarusian nationality was the climate, milder and more fertile than in Central Russia. That is why in Belarus, potatoes took root 75-90 years earlier. The Belarusian national idea was formed later than that of other peoples and sought to resolve issues without conflicts. And this is her strength.
Belarusians have no signs of a clear ethno-cultural identity. And the intervention of politics, mixed with the skillful manipulation of the media and the lack of knowledge of the history of Belarus among the population of the post-Soviet space, makes it necessary to deeply dive into the history of the formation of the Belarusian identity. Otherwise, it is impossible to stop the wave of myth-making about Belarusians.
Diversity as a factor of Slavicization of the Balts
The Slavs were ahead of the neighboring Baltic peoples in socio-economic development: by the 9th-10th centuries, the Russians already had early feudal statehood, cities, crafts and writing. The Balts had none of this, they were at the primitive level of tribal communities. The Balts, adjacent to the Slavs, were subjected to assimilation by them. This process began around the 6th century.
The less developed people are always assimilated by the more developed ones. This is clearly seen in the example of the Celts in Western Europe and the Finno-Ugric peoples in Eastern Europe. People perceive higher first material culture and gradually language and religion. Assimilation was stimulated by the active interaction of peoples, due to their mutual interest due to different levels development.
The primitive Balts were a profitable market for ancient Russian artisans, as they valued their products more than their compatriots. A product is valued higher where it is not produced, and all trade is built on this. The main consumer of handicraft products is the most solvent part of society. As a rule, these are all sorts of elites. They also need a material designation of their position. Imported expensive goods always perform the function of attributes of social status.
The Baltic nobility, thus being the most active consumer of handicrafts, was interested in the physical resettlement of Russians to their lands in the Neman River basin. This is the reason for the appearance of ancient Russian cities on the territory of the Baltic settlement. The cities of Grodno (Garodnya), Volkovysk (Volkovysk), Slonim (Voslonim), Novogrudok (Novogorodok) have been known since the 11th-13th centuries.
There was no shortage of arable land and pastures at that time and, accordingly, there could not be any serious land conflicts between peoples in principle. Trade between people engaged in hunting, gathering and fishing, and sellers of handicrafts was carried out in the form of an exchange in kind in an equivalent much more profitable for the latter. A similar situation takes place now in the deaf depressive regions of Siberia and Far East, where Russian merchants exchange cranberries, pine nuts, furs with local residents for industrial products. Trade was cashless, since the Balts had neither statehood nor money.
One of the places of such an exchange was located on the border of the Baltic and Russian lands, not far from the city of Zaslavl, on the banks of the river, called Menka. Later, a permanent settlement was formed there, known since 1067 as Mensk. Under the influence of the Polish language, the name was transformed into Minsk.
Subsequently, with the appearance of an external threat (crusaders and Tatar-Mongols), joint defense was added to the trade mutual interest. Diversity implies not only the division of labor in economic activity, but also the division social roles. So, the less well-to-do people are much more willing to take on military security functions. And for this reason, the Balts were also of interest to the more advanced Russians, especially since they themselves took the initiative. All this led to the Russification and Orthodoxy of the Balts. From the annals, we do not know about the presence of any problems in the language communication between the Balts and the Slavs. This suggests that by the 12th century, when the first written sources appeared, the Russification of the Balts was already quite significant.
Not a nation, but an empire
By the middle of the 13th century, when the region was invaded by the Tatar-Mongols from the East and the German crusaders from the West, the Russian principalities and the Baltic tribes united into the early feudal state "The Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Russia and Zhemoytskoye" (GDL). By the XIV-XV centuries, it occupied the territory of present-day Lithuania, Belarus, half of Latvia and most of present-day Ukraine. It was no longer a nation state, but an empire state, because, unlike Kievan Rus or the kingdom of Hungary, it was not mono-ethnic, but poly-ethnic and, accordingly, multicultural. By the 14th century, the region began to come under Polish influence. In 1385, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania entered into an alliance with Poland.
Polish culture had a powerful impact on the entire region, but the Russian population turned out to be resistant to it. The Russian population in the vicinity of Brest (Berestie), despite the close proximity to the Polish territory, as it was Russian-Orthodox, and continued to remain so. The Balts, by that time not completely Russified and superficially orthodox, even living at a distance of 400–500 km from Polish lands, began to gradually become Polonized. And so it happened that today's Catholics in the Republic of Belarus do not live along the Polish border, but along the Lithuanian and even Latvian ones. There are no Catholics in ancient Russian Brest.
It seems that Russian assimilation was replaced by Polish due to the fact that by that time the Balts as a whole had pulled themselves up to the level of Russians in their socio-economic development and the latter had lost their assimilation resource. The Poles, on the contrary, began to have superiority in development.
Like Russification of the Balts in late Middle Ages, their polonization in the New Age had a very uneven depth in different groups population. In the cities and among the nobility, it had maximum degree- up to the fact that people directly called themselves Poles and spoke the Polish language, although its local dialect. A typical example is the poet Adam Mickiewicz. The rural population, on the other hand, spoke "simple language" - the peasant dialect of this dialect - and called themselves "tuteishy", which in Polish means "local". By the way, in the Orthodox regions, people said: “We are a Tutosh people.” Both the "local" and the "tuteish" lived relatively conflict-free. Any serious religious conflicts between ordinary people was not in Belarus.
Bi-ethnic people
The initiative to unite Catholics with Orthodox came from the West, which was interested in the separatist weakening of the Russian Empire. The accession of the Catholic minority, which in 1898 accounted for 24% of the population, to the Orthodox majority created a hybrid people, separating it from the Russian and making it only a “brotherly” people in relation to the Russian. Having Catholics in their composition, Belarusians are already ceasing to be Russians and are turning into a convenient preparation for creating a buffer-limitrophe state between Russia and the West.
This initiative was actively supported by the elites of the Catholics, the Polonized gentry, who acutely felt their marginality due to non-integration into the elite of the Republic of Ingushetia, unlike other ethnic groups. The protest dissatisfaction of the Polonized gentry against the Russian authorities was previously expressed in support of Napoleon and the uprisings of 1830 and 1863. Now she was given the opportunity to become a national elite.
In the pre-war years, many writers appeared who literary processed the language (“uparadkavali simple language”), the rare texts of which had previously existed in Latin. The result was translated into Cyrillic and called Belarusian language. But a particularly powerful surge of their activity occurred in Soviet years when these "letters", literally on empty place, created national literature. The vast majority of them were Catholics.
Before late XIX century, there was no stable concept of the “Belarusian language”, since there were no reliable texts proving the fact of its existence. If we conduct a content analysis of the Belarusian language, we will see that those of its words that are not similar to Russian, 90% lexically coincide with Polish. Words that are similar to Russian in it also sound approximately the same in Polish. The main difference in these languages is syntactic and phonetic. Even from this we can conclude that the Belarusian language is rather the result of some Russification of the Eastern dialect of the Polish language, rather than the Polonization of the Western Russian dialect. In the Russian Empire, "prosta mova" was officially considered a dialect of the Polish language.
One way or another, but the political adventure of rejecting the Belarusians from the Russian people by slipping them an artificially fabricated language failed. To date, there are no areas in Belarus where the population would live compactly, using the Belarusian language in everyday communication. That is, not only the Orthodox Belarusians did not switch to the language of Catholics, but the Catholics themselves forgot the language of their ancestors.
In addition, the percentage of Catholics themselves is decreasing. In 1990, they were 15% of the population, now 14%. In Catholic areas in rural areas, there are remnants of the dialect that used to be called "Prosta Mova", the remnants of the Belarusian dialect of the Russian language in Orthodox areas are called "Trasyanka".
Thus, the Belarusian language does not exist as social phenomenon and does not serve as a means of communication. He is exclusively ideological concept. "Svyadomaya" (conscious) intelligentsia is trying to shame the Belarusians for forgetting their native language, replacing it with Russian.
The initiative of such a hybridization of Orthodox and Catholics into a single nation is called the "project of Belarusian nationalism." This initiative was put into practice, since it was subsequently supported by the Bolsheviks, since the idea of the international and self-determination of nations was at the heart of their political platform. For the Bolsheviks, the more peoples there were in the Soviet country, the better.
In order to solve the problem of the purity of understanding the identity of Belarusians, it is necessary to eliminate the conditions in which the problem exists, that is, to consider the people of Belarus not as a mono-ethnic nation, but as a bi-ethnic political people, following the example of Belgium or Canada. Accordingly, the independence of the state should be based not on an ethno-cultural basis, but on a socio-economic one, as is the case in Switzerland, Singapore, and Canada.
Why is it beneficial for us to “break the pattern” of Lithuanian-Belarusian nationalism and stop considering Orthodox and Catholics as a single ethnic group?
Firstly, this is an elementary restoration of historical justice, a return to the natural state of things. Neither Orthodox Belarusians, nor Catholics within the current borders have ever been a separate nation - either individually or together, but always only as part of empires: ON, RI, USSR. And everywhere the Belarusians were either the titular people, or part of the political core. The BSSR in the perception of its inhabitants was more of an administrative unit. Its population identified itself more with the Soviet people than with any ethnocultural entity. For this reason, the joint ethno-identification imposed on the Belarusians with the “tuteish” Catholic Lithuanians did not take shape.
Secondly, joining the Orthodox Belarusians with the Catholic “tuteishy” and slipping them the non-Polish “simple language”, named after literary processing Belarusian language, destroys the idea of the trinity of the Russian people. This deprives Belarusians of their shared rights to the greatness of Russian culture, reducing their international status, since belonging to a world-class culture is a powerful resource in world politics. On the other hand, this also confirms the usurpation by the Great Russians of the brand “Russians” and the rights to a common Russian culture.
Two approaches to Belarusians: Litvinism and Western Russianism
Before the First World War, the population on the territory of Belarus was clearly divided into Orthodox Belarusians and Catholic Poles. Moreover, the Belarusians were officially considered as a branch of the triune all-Russian people and were part of titular people empire. This is reflected in the 1898 census.
The situation changed before the start of the First World War. Catholics and Orthodox began to be seen as a single people. A new approach to the consideration of Belarusian history has appeared, conditionally called Litvinism. In a more or less radical form, it still exists inertially. Its rather mild form was in the Soviet years official version stories. She remains so today. It is based on demagogy, based on the substitution of concepts, in particular the Litvins as an ethnonym and as a polytonym.
The version of the history of Belarusians and their identity presented here is called Western Russianism. This historical school considers Belarusians as a Western variety of Russians, as a subethnos of the all-Russian superethnos. The founders of this doctrine were scientists M. Koyalovich and E. Karsky. Today, the weak point of most Western Russian scholars is the inability and unwillingness to separate the ethno-cultural from the political-administrative.
The special wisdom of the peoples of Belarus
The Belarusian society is not just multicultural, as in Switzerland, Belgium, Latvia or Kazakhstan. Its multiculturalism is historically opportunistic. The dominance of the East and the West changed, followed by the self-perception of the indigenous people. The grandfather considers himself a Pole, the father is a Belarusian Catholic, and the son is already an Orthodox Belarusian. Due to the obviousness of this, the Catholics here, like the Orthodox Belarusians, perfectly understand this opportunistic nature of ethnic cultures at the level of mass consciousness. This understanding underlies what is called the tolerance of our people, and clearly shows the local inhabitants that culture is just an outer shell of the inner essence of a person. And this shell, as it turns out, is quite interchangeable. Apparently, this is the fundamental reason for the special wisdom of the Belarusian people, which is the foundation of their comparative well-being.
Man's worldview flakes off from ethnic culture. This is impossible, for example, for the Chinese and Jews, they do not see (and never have seen) their collective being outside their culture. Their ability to abstract from culture is available only smartest people, philosophers and thinkers. And on Belarusian land any inhabitant sees the essence and purpose of a person in a form purified from conventions. And this mission is creative creativity and endlessly free choice between good and evil. And as you know, both a Catholic and an Orthodox can be a scoundrel and a decent person.
