Country History Outlook: Belarus

I love Belarus, my home country. I thought it would be fair if I started out writing to the blog with an article that was publlished in 'Trans-national Voice': a magazine of Central European University Business School. I fine-tuned it a bit, so please welcome its 2012 edition.

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History of Belarus in 900 Words

Belarus? Yeah, I heard a little about it… it’s part of Russia, isn’t it? I’ve encountered this question quite often when making friends with people abroad. Folks barely ever knew it was a single country; nor did they know the country’s location. In fact, Belarus is located in the geographical center of Europe and is greater in area than Austria, Netherlands, Belgium, and Switzerland put together. Home to Mark Chagall and Thaddeus Kosciusko, Belarus has always been at the crossroads of two worlds, European and Russian, which dramatically affected lives of all Belarusian generations.

Starting from the tenth century, the conquerors from the East furiously attacked the Principality of Polatsk, the first known state to establish here. Consequently, the Principality was subordinated to Kievan Rus, a stronghold of Moscow’s future speculations that the peoples of Russia, Belarus and Ukraine descended from one nationality. However, most scientists agree that Belarusians, unlike Russian and Ukrainian Slavs, came from the merge of Slavs and Balts, a Scandinavian people. This fact made the culture of the people inhabiting my country somewhat different from the bordering ones.

That couldn’t but arouse people’s interest in creating an independent state in the Belarusian land. Small principalities of Central and North-Western Belarus consolidated into the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (GDL). The name 'Lithuania' belonged to the whole territory of modern Belarus, south Lithuania, some parts of south Latvia and north-east Poland; one shouldn't confuse the name with the current Republic of Lithuania. Grand Duchy of Lithuania had by the middle of the sixteenth century grown into one of the biggest states in Europe. As it later grew into the area between the Baltic Sea and the Black Sea, it drew all the wars in the region. But then again, Tsars in Moscow continuously claimed the land belonged to Russia and by all means, including wars and assimilation through religion, tried to seize the land. GDL, as a pro-Western catholic state, didn’t accept the ideas implemented by orthodox Moscow and sought for closer cooperation with Poland on the West.

GDL and Poland eventually amalgamated, creating an even bigger country, named the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. By the end of the 17th century, its political center gradually shifted from Lithuania to the Polish side. Lithuanian unique culture started experiencing a decline as it was oppressed by Warsaw. Subsequently, Belarusian language was prohibited everywhere; instead, Polish was recognized as the only language of the state. Moscow, in turn, applied its politics of “religious intervention,” that is, convinced Belarusians to adopt Orthodoxy.

Many Lithuanians indeed switched to the Orthodoxy, patronated by Moscow. Coming from a slightly different origin than that of Russians’, those who took up Orthodoxy still drew in a great deal of Russian culture into Belarus. However, there also remained Catholics – chiefly the rich class, who lived up to the Polish way of life; in addition, the whole population of Western Belarus professed Catholicism. All that, together with the originality brought about by those who still maintained the culture of Eastern Slavs and Balts, archetypal for Belarus, mixed together to create something new. It was a society of tolerance and hospitality, bearing cultural particularities of all bordering countries. The wealthy had a rather progressive mind-set, and in 1791, together with the Polish, accepted the first Constitution in the continent, second in the world after the USA and first in Europe. The commons, on the other hand, preferred to stay calm and obedient as it came to politics.

The Belarusian society today in many ways resembles that of the end of the eighteenth century. Having survived through the Russian Empire’s intervention starting in 1795 and then through the hardships of the Soviet Union, Belarusian folk failed to maintain control over their own authenticity. In fact, even the word 'Belarus' was brought to the land by Russians in the 19th century. In order to complicate the rise of patriotic feelings among the former-Lithuanians, the Russian Empire separated GDL's capital (Vilnius) from Belarusian lands and created a small state, the modern Lithuania, while giving a new, more 'slavic' name to the Belarusian lands. Use of Belarusian language was banned until the mid-1920s, the time when communist Moscow searched for support among periphery republics. However, Stalin repressions of the 30s and the World War II, in which Belarus lost every forth man, added up conservatism and reluctance to get involved into politics to the character of a common Belarusian.

Only after the USSR collapse in the 90s, Belarusian identity started reviving. Events of the history left their trace on what Belarus is now. Conservatives and liberals today represent confluence of two different world perceptions, offspring of the ever-lasting struggle of the West and East.

The current political regime, whatever is said about it, attracts a great deal of support among Belarusians. There are many reasons for this, and it will take another long paper like this one to describe them all. In order to sustain the current economic model, the government is poising on the political, financial, and cultural support from Moscow. Hence the average modern Belarusian, who mostly speaks Russian, knows more about WWII than about GDL, is afraid to speak out, ask questions, and face the government, is ready to accept arguments offered by wholly state-owned mass media, and is inclined to silently bear the hardships imposed by the largely ineffective and poorly-managed economic model.