National awakening and national consciousness in Belarus (original) (raw)

1999, Nationalities Papers

A frequent assertion about the recent events and pervasive mood in Belarus-the apparent efforts to reunite with Russia, the virtual denial of a Belarusian identity by a Russophone president, official nostalgia for the time of the former Soviet Unionis that national consciousness is somehow retarded or delayed, and national development is lagging considerably behind that of its neighboring states, Lithuania and Ukraine. This article seeks to address the question of national self-awareness in Belarus from three angles: those of demography, culture, and language. Was development of the republic in the Soviet period different from that of the other republics, and is that development responsible for what has been described as the "national nihilism" of today? Is that mood likely to change with a new generation of Belarusians? How far is President Alyaksander Lukashenka, the first president of Belarus, who was elected in July 1994, responsible for the present situation and how far is he a symptom of the notable lack of self-assertion of Belarusians? My presumption is that the lack of independence historically is not necessarily a detriment to the formation of a nation state in the post-Soviet period. For example, the tradition of national statehood in the three Baltic states was limited to the interwar period. Ukraine arguably enjoyed a few weeks of statehood, mainly under German auspices in 1918, and the two parts of Ukraine were briefly united in 1919, but historically Ukrainians have also been largely a stateless people. Evidence also suggests that Belarusians were making some progress along the road to cultural self-awareness in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. According to the census of 1897, over 50% of the hereditary nobles living in Belarusian regions declared themselves to be Belarusians according to their native language. The birth of the Belarusian literary language also dates from this period. 1 This cultural rebirth continued in the early Soviet period, and ended only around 1928. Thus the cultural retardation of Belarus is a phenomenon of the Soviet period beginning with the Stalin years. Politics and Social Change At the same time the historian faces the paradox that the Soviet period also promoted national consciousness by uniting Belarusian ethnic territories. The Belarusian Soviet Socialist Republic (BSSR) was in part a revival or continuation of the shortlived Belarusian People's Republic of 1918. Though initially truncated, the BSSR ex