Belorussia: The Making of a Nation — A Case Study [Reprint 2014 ed.] 9780674436640, 9780674436633

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THE RUSSIAN RESEARCH CENTER The Russian Research Center of Harvard University is supported by a grant from the Carnegie Corporation. The Center carries out interdisciplinary study of Russian institutions and behavior and related subjects.

RUSSIAN RESEARCH CENTER

STUDIES

1. Public Opinion in Soviet Russia: A Study in Mass Persuasion, by Alex Inkeles 2. Soviet Politics — The Dilemma Barrington Moore, Jr.

of Power;

3. Justice in Russia: An Interpretation 4. Chinese Communism

5. Titoism and the Cominform,

of Soviet Law, by Harold J. Berman

by Adam B. Ulam

7. The New Man in Soviet Psychology, 9. Minerals:

by

and the Rise of Mao, by Benjamin I. Schwartz

6. A Documentary History of Chinese Schwartz, and John K . Fairbank 8. Soviet Opposition

The Role of Ideas in Social Change,

Communism,

by

Conrad Brandt, Benjamin

by Raymond A. Bauer

to Stalin: A Case Study in World War II, by George Fischer

A Key to Soviet Power, by Demitri В. Shimkin

10. Soviet Law in Action: The Recollected Berman and Boris A. Konstantinovsky

Cases of a Soviet

Lawyer,

by Harold J.

11. How Russia Is Ruled, by Merle Fainsod 12. Terror and Progress USSR: Some Sources Dictatorship, by Barrington Moore, Jr. 13. The Formation Richard Pipes 14. Marxism:

of the Soviet

Union:

of Change

Communism

and Stability

and Nationalism,

Soviet

igij-jgzj,

by

Economy,

by

The Unity of Theory and Practice, by Alfred G. Meyer

15. Soviet Industrial Expansion,

jgzS-içsi,

by Donald R. Hodgman

16. Soviet Taxation: The Fiscal and Monetary Franklyn D . Holzman 17. Soviet Military Law and Administration,

Problems

of a Planned

by Harold J. Berman and Miroslav Kerner

18. Documents on Soviet Military Law and Administration, Harold J. Berman and Miroslav Kerner 19. The Russian Marxists and the Origins of Bolshevism,

edited and translated by

by Leopold H. Haimson

20. The Permanent Purge: Politics in Soviet Totalitarianism, 21. Belorussia:

in the

by Zbigniew K . Brzezinski

The Making of a Nation, by Nicholas P. Vakar

22. A Bibliographical

Guide to Belorussia, by Nicholas P . Vakar

BELORUSSIA THE MAKING

OF A

NATION

BELORUSSIA THE MAKING

OF A

NATION

A CASE S T U D Y

By NICHOLAS

P.

VAKAR

HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS Cambridge, Massachusetts 1956

Copyright,

1956, by the President

Distributed

and Fellows

in Great Britain

GEOFFREY

of Harvard

by

CUMBERLEGE

Oxford University Press London

This volume was -prepared under a grant from the Carnegie Corporation of New York. That Corporation is not, however, the author, owner, publisher, or proprietor of this publication and is not to be understood as approving by virtue of its grant any of the statements made or views expressed therein.

Library of Congress Printed

Catalog Card Number

in the United States of

¿4-3634

America

College

PREFACE Until recently, Belorussia, or White Russia, has been little known to the Western world. The large European reference books and encyclopedias have scarcely treated the subject as a separate entry. Today, however, Belorussia is a member of the United Nations, equal in dignity and honor with the United States and Great Britain, even with the USSR, of which it is, in fact, a part. No other Soviet Republic, except the Ukraine, has been granted this status — outranking that of Russia itself. The situation requires a detailed study. Two forces have been remaking the map of the world, nationalism and Communism. The interplay between these two is not always clear. Emerging as a nation from the conflict, Belorussia tells a story, significant in its relationship to the larger pattern. This is not a comparative study. M y modest aim has been to collect, to describe, and to evaluate the available data which others might use for a more general work. The notes, even if somewhat disproportionate in size, intend to offer only documentation of specific points mentioned in the text. The study is based on historical research. The process of national self-determination is traced from ethnic pattern to group consciousness, from literary to political nationalism. Every group in this narrative — and the reader will be surprised to find how many there are to the story — had its own concepts of right and wrong. The reader is free to take sides according to his own judgment — political, moral, or otherwise. Over two thousand primary and secondary sources have been consulted in the course of this study. For the sake of economy of space, most bibliographical references are limited to the name and number under which the work is listed in A Bibliographical Guide to Belorussia (Harvard University Press, 1956). Hard as I have tried to be objective and fair, I expect to be exposed to fierce criticism from several quarters. But I wish to protect those Belorussian, Russian, Lithuanian, and Polish friends who have helped me most generously in this work, and to whom I wish to express my warm appreciation and gratitude. Their views are often so varied and, in fact, so completely remote from my own, that they cannot bear any responsiblity whatever for the way I have used the information received from them.

vili

PREFACE

My thanks are due, first of all, to Michael Каф0У1сЬ of Harvard University and Philip E. Mosely of Columbia University for having encouraged this study, and to the Russian Research Center, Harvard University, for having made it possible. In particular, I wish to express my sincere appreciation to Clyde Kluckhohn, the first Director of the Center, to Helen W. Parsons, the Administrative Assistant, and to the staff of the Center for their cooperation, understanding, and, indeed, extreme patience with the slow progress of the work so often interrupted by my teaching obligations. The grant I received from the Center permitted the defraying of the expenses of traveling, gathering source material, and preparation of the manuscript. I am also very grateful to the Committee for the Promotion of Advanced Slavic Studies and to the Humanities Fund, Inc., both of New York, and again to the Russian Research Center at Harvard, for their financial assistance in publishing both this present volume and A Bibliographical Guide to Belorussia. The latter, a separate volume, will, I hope, be helpful to students of the area. Warm thanks are also due the Widener Library staff and photostat service for their effective cooperation in preparing the Guide. I am particularly obliged to the Reverend John Tarasevich, of St. Procopius Abbey, who generously offered the use of his unique collection of Belorussian publications and contributed several pages of his own memoirs; to the Belorussian organizations in the United States of America and abroad who graciously sent me their publications or lent material from their libraries; and to all the persons who kindly gave their valuable time in interviews and lengthy discussions with a foreign scholar who, they know, was not there to espouse their political cause. At the end of World War II several hundred thousand Soviet citizens chose to remain in Western Europe as displaced persons rather than return to the USSR. These émigrés have been supplemented by a steady flow of fugitives from the Soviet zone of Germany. To tap this storehouse of eyewitness knowledge, the Russian Research Center of Harvard University, with financial support from the Air Force's Human Resources Research Institute, sent to the American Occupation Zone in Germany in 1950 a team of social scientists to conduct an extensive series of interviews with former Soviet citizens there. Other researchers made personal contacts with Soviet citizens who had fled to the United States. An additional 2,500 émigrés in Europe and America not reached by these direct methods answered an exhaustive written questionnaire on their detailed experiences behind the Iron Curtain. An impressive store of reliable data has resulted, the large part of which has already been processed and made available to students. At the same time, the Research Program on the USSR at Columbia University, established in June 1951 by the East European Fund, Inc.,

PREFACE

ix

has assisted ex-Soviet scholars and experts to recover and develop their capacity to carry on independent, objective research, and contribute the results of their experiences to our general fund of knowledge about the Soviet system and related subjects. Testimonials, affidavits, and other eyewitness data have been piling up at the Archives of the Jewish Scientific Institute, New York; the Rand Corporation, Washington, D. C.; Russian, Ukrainian, and Belorussian refugee institutions in Europe and America; and other organizations. The wealth of unpublished information is great, and the privilege granted me to partake of it for this study is gratefully acknowledged. Chapters 12 and 13 draw heavily on material collected by members of the Project on the Soviet Social System of the Russian Research Center, Harvard University, under Contract A F No. 33(038)12909 with the Human Resources Research Institute, Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama. In particular, extensive use has been made of interview material as well as of unpublished documents in the personal files of Alexander Dallin, gathered as part of his forthcoming study of the German occupation of Soviet territories during World War II. Regular use was also made of data collected under the Harvard Project by Herbert Dinerstein, Michael Luther, and John S. Reshetar. I wish hereby to express my admiration for their work, and my gratitude for having been permitted to benefit by it. Various parts of the manuscript have been read by Alexander Dallin, Kamil Dziewanowski, Merle Fainsod, Michael Karpovich, Talcott Parsons, Demitri Shimkin, and Wiktor Weintraub. I am most grateful for their comments, criticism, and suggestions. Acknowledgments are due to Elsa Bernaut for the material she kindly permitted me to use, and to George Bentz, Ronald Bollenbach, David Grindell, Helen Constantine, Ann Chvany, Boris Pross, Raymond S. Goodlatte, John Willison, Mary McCarthy, Claire Pratt, and Ann Staffeld, who contributed to the preliminary, intermediate, and final editing of this study. More especially I wish to thank Gertrude, my wife, who at every stage of this work has been my encouragement and the most effective assistant. Nicholas P. Vakar Wheaton College Norton, Massachusetts

CONTENTS 1

PROLOGUE:

WHAT'S IN A NAME?

THE LAND

AND

THE PEOPLE

5

The Linguistic and Ethnic Boundaries. The Vilna Controversy. Religion and Nationality. The Political Territory. Transfers and Migrations.

2

THE TRADITIONS

17

Home and Family. Concepts of Justice. Idiom. The Economy. The Town.

3

Folklore.

The

THE ORIGINS

57

Concepts of Nationality. The Racial Theory. The Polotian Rus — Legend and History. The Lithuanian-Russian State. Lithuania and Poland. The Lublin Union. The Third Lithuanian Statute.

4

BETWEEN

THE

WEST AND

THE EAST

51

Western Russian — Francis Skoryna. Religious Struggles. The Brest Union. The Polonization of the Gentry. The Uniates and the Schismatics. The Resistance Movement. The Muscovite Factor.

5

THE RUSSIAN

EMPIRE

65

Partitions of Poland. The Uniate Church. The Polish Uprising of 1831. The Insurrection of 1863. Kastus' Kalinoüski. Russification.

6

THE NATIONAL

SELF-DETERMINATION

75

The Polish Writers. The Belorussian Vernacular. Literary Beginnings. In the i86o's. Cultural Nationalism. The Revolutionary Movement. The Revolution of içosThe Nasa Niva Period. Achievements.

η

WAR AND REVOLUTION The Vilna Confederation. The Russian Revolution. Bolshevik Revolution. The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. laration of Independence. Consecration of a Myth.

Ç3 The Dec-

8

PARTITION

OF BELORUSSIA

107

The BNR in Ernie. The Soviets and the First BSSR. The Polish Occupation. The Second BNR. The Union with Poland. The Second BSSR. The Treaty of Riga.

9

WEST

BELORUSSIA

iig

The Polish Policy. Belorussification. Reaction. Subversive Propaganda. The Pacification. Literary Nationalism. A New Wave of Oppression. Political Emigration. On the Eve of World War II.

10

EAST

BELORUSSIA

/j;

Communism and Nationalism. Belorussification. Education. National Minorities. Ideological Adjustments. Conditional Surrender. The Purges. The Reorientation of Belorussian Culture. New Purges. The Stalinization of Nationalism. Russification.

1 1

THE

REUNION

155

Partition IV of Poland. The Incorporation of West Belorussia. The Adjustment Period. Nationalism Revived. The Purges. The Soviet Claims. The Ideal and the Reality.

1 2

THE

GERMAN

OCCUPATION

lyo

The Germans Hailed as Liberators. Military and Civilian Policies. Collaborationists. Local Administration. The Racial Theory. The Jews. The Russian Nationalists. Belorussian Nationalism.

13

THE

GUERRILLA

WARFARE

Between Soviet Terrorism and German Repression. Second Belorussian Convention.

14

THE

SOVIETS

iqi The

AGAIN

207

War Devastation. Statistics and Realities. National Symbolism. Literature and Science. The Intelligentsia and the Masses. Belorussian Nationalism in Exile. Ideology and Politics.

TABLE

OF TRANSLITERATION

NOTES INDEX

226 231

OF NAMES

GENERAL

283

INDEX

289 xii

ILLUSTRATIONS 1.

The Belorussian Soviet Socialist

2. Area of the Belorussian

Republic

Speech

3. The Belorussian Territorial Claims

facing page i 7 9

4. Jan Czeczot

76

5. Jan

Barszczewski

79

6. V.

Dunin-Marcinkevii

81

7. J.

Nesluchouski

S3

8. The Polish-Soviet War and the Treaty of Riga

117

Ç. The Belorussian Generalbezirk, 1Ç41-1Ç44 (from E. Engelhardt, Weissruthenien. Volk und Land, Amsterdam-Prague-Vienna, 1943)

182

10. Janka

Kupala

facing page 210

11.

Kolas

facing page гю

12.

Jakub

K.Krapiva

13. E. K. Cikocki

facing page 210 facing page 210

Ч

^««•»tu

L I T H U A N I A N 5.

S.

LATVIAN

R.

I. The Belorussian Soviet Socialist

Republic

A BIBLIOGRAPHICAL GUIDE TO BELORUSSIA

PROLOGUE WHATS

IN

A

NAMCf

The name Belorussia * is not well known outside the Slavic world. The area is more frequently referred to as White Russia, a literal rendering of the native term into English. Some historians, such as Herberstein and Leroy-Beaulieu, believe that the name originated from the white clothing worn by the people of this region since time immemorial; others, including Tatiscev, think it originated from the deep snow which covers the country from October to April; still others, among them Karski and Pervolf, believe it comes from the light complexions of the people, and a similar explanation is offered by Zograf for the name Black Russia, applied to the westernmost part of the country, where the inhabitants used to wear black caps and black coats. However tempting such theories may be, something more is involved than a mere nicknaming of a people with one of their environmental colors. The name of White Croats, White and Black Huns, Black Bulgars and Black Ugrians, who were known long before White and Black Russia, .obviously cannot be accounted for by habitat, clothing, or complexion. Various explanations have been offered, not always consistent with historical facts.f The origin of the term "Black" was sought in the Chinese tradition, according to which black is the color of the north; the area in question, however, is located in the west and the theory leaves the term "white" without explanation (Vernadsky) The Greeks used "white" to distinguish the pagan Croats and Serbs from those who were baptized, but all the Slavs were christened by the time the name White Russia first appears in documents. Perhaps the country was named belaja (white), from the city of Belsk situated between the rivers Belaja and Belianka and surrounded by the towns of Bela, Beloveza, and Belostok (Iljinski), just as the southwest area was nick• The spelling "Byelorussia" is preferred by some. The author, however, feels that the spelling "Belorussia" is adequate. The use of у as a consonant softener is unfamiliar to the English-speaking reader, and is more likely to confuse him than to aid in pronunciation. t Only a brief summary of the existing theories is given here ; for a detailed examination, see Nicholas P. Vakar, "The Name 'White Russia,' " The American Slavic and East European Review, V I I I (1949), no. 3. t For references, see Nicholas P . Vakar, A Bibliographical Guide to Belorussia (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1956).

2

BELORÜSSIA:

THE MAKING

OF A

NATION

named cervonaja (red) from the city of Cerven' (Potebnia) ; but, although there exists some historical evidence in support of the latter theory, there is none in support of the former; and both theories are questionable from the linguistic standpoint, since the adjectives cervensk{t]) and cervon{yj), belsk{i}) and bel(yj), are not interchangeable (Rastorguev, Vasmer). In ancient times, bela, bël, were words used for money. The term appeared more frequently in documents concerning the territory of present Belorussia than the rest of the Slavic area (Grigorovic), and theories have been ventured that Belaja Rus' might have come simply to mean wealthy or prosperous part of the country. Unfortunately, bël(yj) (white), and bëla (money), have different etymologies (Vasmer), and no historical dictionary suggests that the Slavs ever conveyed the meaning of material wealth to the adjective bël(yj). In 1826, according to Makarov, a theory was formulated tracing the name of Belorussia into prehistoric times, to an obscure Slavic deity, Belbog (white god). An association with Bäldäg of Teutonic mythology was made and, on that basis, Belorussians were identified with Baits* (Kryvic, 1923). Consequently, claims today are made that Belorussia be severed from the Slavic world and form a "Federation of Baltic Peoples" — together with Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Finland, Norway, Sweden, and Denmark (Bac'kaüscyna, Veda, etc.). Most of these theories disregard the fact that the term White Russia does not appear in documents before the end of the fourteenth century (Karamzin), and when it did appear it sometimes embraced the territories other than Belorussian. Latin documents describe Ivan III of Moscow as loannes, dux albae Russiae (1472). The Poles and the Lithuanians will soon call the Muscovite Russia "white," and White Russia "black." Even the Ukranian lands of Kiev and Volyn' were at one time included in the term White Russia (Potebnia). The meaning of the term is better understood when it is recalled that most Russian lands were conquered by the Tatars (1240-1480). The Asian hordes consisted of the ruling clans and their dependent tribes: the former were nicknamed white, and the latter black (Vladimircev, Vernadsky). Correspondingly, the territories under their control were divided into the white lands, that is, those free from duties, and the black lands, those under tribute (Chlebnikov). Abundant evidence exists that the terms passed from the Orient to the Slavic area, with these meanings, even before the invasion. Subsequently, bel(yj) (white) has become in the Muscovite State a legal term for those who were exempt from taxation, and ¿ern(yj) (black), for those "who bore the whole burden of state taxes and services." Thus we have belye zemli (white lands), belaja gramola (white charter), belomestcy, belo* Cf. Lithuanian báhas, "white."

PROLOGUE

3

sosniki, belopascy (tax exempt townsmen and peasants), belovodje (unsettled lands) on the one hand; and cernye zemli (black or taxed lands), cernoslobodcy, cernosoiniki (taxed townsmen and peasants) on the other. In literature and folklore the term "white" is often found as a synonym of "free" (Dahl). It also is associated with the idea of purity, moral cleanliness, or lofty ideals, as in Teutonic mythology. More often, however, the association is with social privilege, disinclination to work, and "blue blood" (Ushakov). Common are the expressions bela'ja kost' (white bone) for people of noble descent, and cernaja kost' (black bone) for those of humble origins. Russian writers speak of "people of white and black bone" (Tolstoy), "black-bone students" (Miliukov), and Soviet textbooks describe "the victory of the blackboned proletariat over the worthless white-boned bourgeoisie" (1946). The metaphor is a current idiom in Central Asia, presumably the country of its origin. Borrowed from the Orient, the term "white" was naturally applied to "the Lithuanian possessions torn from the Muscovites [and thus] rescued from the Tatar yoke" (Larned). As long as these lands managed to preserve their independence within the political boundaries of the Grand Duchy they were white Russia, and those lands which passed over to the Lithuanian overlords formed black Russia in the western part of the country (Dragomanov). By the time Moscow threw off the Tatar yoke, however, and itself became "white," all the Russian lands in Lithuania "had passed from white to black" (Potebnia). In other words, the terms, white Russia and black Russia, were not proper names but described the rather fluctuating legal status of the lands and the people. In 1667, Tsar Alexius of Moscow ordered the name Belaja Rus', White Russia, to be applied to the lands "rescued from the Lithuanian Polish domination" by the Treaty of Andrusovo. But the term white imposed under these circumstances did not sound true for the natives, since from their point of view any power other than of patrimonial origin was foreign. The name was rejected, and revived in a new form over a century later. With the partitions of Poland (1772-1795), the provinces "torn away from Russia and returned" were named Belorussija by an imperial ukase. After the Polish revolt of 1831, however, the country was renamed West Russia from fear that symbols of a historical past might foster secessionist trends. But the identity of the natives, somewhat different from that of other Slavs in the empire, called for some special name, and Belorussian, banned from the administration, persisted as an ethnographical term. However trivial, the event proved to be a turning point in the history of the people. Their country may have been known, historically,

4

BELORUSSIA:

THE MAKING

OF A

NATION

as White Russia, but they had simply called themselves Russian. They now had a name, the symbol of different identity, and around that symbol a movement of national self-determination soon began to crystallize. As a rallying point of the new nationalism, the term Belorussian presented certain inconveniences. Semantically, it was too close to Russia. The early attempts to replace it by the term Kryvican (from the name of an ancient Slavic tribe on the territory of present Belorussia) failed, but were renewed after the Revolution (Lastoüski and others), and more recently by political émigrés after World War II (J. Stankevic and others). The use of the term Kryvican, however, is prohibited in the Belorussian SSR and there is no evidence, at this writing, that it has been widely recognized by the Belorussians abroad. The inconveniences of the name Belorussia are particularly great in foreign relations. The common translation, White Russia, negates even the little difference that exists in the native idioms, Belarus\ Belorussija (White Russia), and Rossija (Russia). Furthermore, the Russians who fought against the Soviets in the Civil War of 1918-1920 were also called White Russians. In the Slavic tongues, the terms belorussy, the ethnic group, and belye russkie, the political group, are easily distinguishable, but the distinction is not clear in the literal translation into most European languages. To avoid confusion, a Latin term, Ruthenia, was introduced, and White Ruthenian delegates appeared in the European capitals in an attempt to persuade public opinion that the Ruthenians and the Russians belonged to two different races. Eventually, the term was accepted by the League of Nations (Treaty of Riga, 1921). After World War II, however, the United Nations replaced it by "Byelorussia," which, with this spelling, has since prevailed in official documents and literature. But no uniformity has been achieved in Belorussian writings. Different transcriptions and spellings of the national name symbolize different schools of political thought and, dividing the people against itself, impede consolidation of the nationalist doctrine.

1 THE LAND AND THE TEOPLE Serious difficulties are encountered by the ethnographer attempting to determine the number of Belorussians, and the exact limits of the territory which they occupy. Political and religious passions have exerted a profound influence on statistics, and the matter is further complicated by the fact that there are obviously different degrees of national self-consciousness among the natives. In 1943, the Germans came to the conclusion that the only reliable sources still were an ethnographic map drawn by A. Rittich in 1875 and the Russian imperial census of 1897. Confidence in that old map may have been influenced by the fact that Rittich was a "deutschblütiger Generalstäbler der Russischen Armee.'" ^ Nevertheless, the map is a good one, which strikes a generally fair balance between Polish, Russian and contemporary Belorussian claims. It is, moreover, corroborated by the general census of 1897, the accuracy of which has not seriously been questioned by any party.^ Population Statistics According to Rittich, there were 3,745,219 Belorussians in 1875, and of that number 151,162 lived in other parts of the empire.® As the Great Russians * at that time numbered about 34,400,000, the ratio was one Belorussian to nine Great Russians, or more exactly, 1:9.19. A similar correlation (1:9.46) existed twenty years later when the census of 1897 established the total number of Belorussians at 5,886,000, and that of the Great Russians at 55,675,000.^ Assuming that the same proportion should hold true for our own day as well, nationalist writers estimated the Belorussian population at approximately 12,000,000 in 1917-18, as compared to the Great Russian population of 108,000,000 at that time.® After World War I, Belorussia was split into two parts, one Soviet, the other Polish, and the statistics kept by both governments gave a * A s opposed to Little Russians (Ukrainians) and White Russians (Belorussians).

6

BELORUSSIA:

THE MAKING

OF A

NATION

total of about 7,000,000 Belorussians for both parts of the country. Later, official data showed 4,017,300 Belorussians in the USSR (1926) and only 1,035,000 in Poland (1921). In the Belorussian SSR, however, only 3,350,700 persons spoke Belorussian, the remainder declaring Russian, Polish or Yiddish their mother tongue.® The official number of Belorussians in the USSR increased to 5,267,400 in 1939, a gain of 33.3 per cent over a twelve-year period {sic). Yet the relation of Belorussians to Great Russians fell from 1:9 to 1:16, and their total gain was only 5.4 per cent since 1897^ while the number of Great Russians increased 59.8 per cent during the same period. It looked as if the Belorussian people were becoming extinct at a rate known previously only in the cases of the Lapps and the American Indians.'' However, after West Belorussia was incorporated into the USSR (November 1939), the three million Belorussians who had vanished in Poland suddenly returned to life. As of June i , 1941, the Soviets estimated the population of the BSSR at 10,525,511, of which 80.6 per cent were Belorussian, 8.2 per cent Jewish, and 7.2 per cent Russian.® Unable to take a general census in the Ostland during the war (1941-1945), and having little confidence in either Soviet or Polish sources, German statisticians, after much labor and highly complicated calculations, produced the following round figures: In the Belorussian SSR, 5,000,000; in other parts of the Soviet Union, 1,000,000; in Poland, 2,500,000-3,000,000; in Lithuania and Latvia, 50,000-100,000; in emigration, 100,000; total, 8,550,000-9,200,000.' Since the total does not differ significantly from the Soviet estimates, we can assume it to have been approximately correct for that period. If so, it shows a decline in the Belorussian population amounting to a loss of about two millions against what would be expected had the normal ratio of 1:9 prevailed, since the Soviet census of 1939 registered 99,000,000 Great Russians. The birth rate cannot account for such a decline. In Soviet Belorussia, the natural increase of the population has always been one of the highest: 19.5 as compared with 17.4 for all Russia.^® In Poland, fourteen Belorussians were born each year for every twelve Poles.^^ Yet we know that the number of Belorussians in Poland decreased from 3.9 per cent of the total population in 1921 to 3.1 per cent in 1931 (last census). It is likely that the Polish and Soviet population statistics reveal not physical extinction but cultural and linguistic denationalization. That process, and the factors which might have naturally or forcibly determined it, will be examined later. The Linguistic and Ethnic Boundaries The linguistic criterion alone cannot permit valid identification of Belorussians. Some characteristics {isoglosses) of the Belorussian

THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE

7

speech are observed as far east as the Moscow districts of Rusa, Volokolamsk, and Mozajsk (M. Kolosov) ; as far west as Avgustovo on the ancient German-Russian border (A. Rittich) and the Novo-Aleksandrovsk district in present Lithuania (A. Kirkor); as far north and northeast as the province of Pskov (except for the Porchov district, the southeastern part of the province of Kalinin and the southern strip of the Leningrad province) ; in Vologda province (R. Jakobson) ; and as far southeast as 2izdra, Mosal'sk, Trubcevsk, Sevsk and Karacov districts in the provinces of Kaluga, Briansk and Orel (DeLivron).^^ To eliminate confusion, a set of linguistic requirements, based on a combination of typical characteristics and not on single isoglosses, was drawn up by Karski and N. Durnovo. Maps drawn in 1 9 1 5 - 1 9 1 7 according to this method established the frontiers of Belorussian speech as shown in the map below.^^ These boundaries very nearly coincide with the map of Rittich (1875), except in the Avgustovo district, where the linguistic boundary now was removed thirty to fifty kilometers farther east," and in the

2. Area oj the Belorussian

Speech

8

BELORUSSIA:

THE MAKING

OF A

NATION

south, where Rittich included the territory of Polesie, generally omitted on the other maps. Polesie is a vast region on both banks of the Pripet, covered with swamps and forests. Only two railroads cut through it, connecting Pinsk, Turov, and a few other towns with the civilized world. The inhabitants are known as Polescuki (Polesie-people), and linguistically they belong to the Ukrainian family. In their ways of life, customs and psychology, however, they are closer to the Belorussians — a fact which is recognized by Ukrainians." A map published by the London Geographical Institute includes Polesie in the area of Belorussian speech. The British ethnographers fix the linguistic boundary with Polish about eighty miles west of the Grodno-Warsaw railroad and about forty miles south of Bialystok. They extend the limits of spoken Belorussian deep into Lithuania, to a point twenty miles east of Kaunas; but south of this line, they clear both sides of the Vilna-Grodno railroad down to Avgustov, leaving the Belorussians only a small island around Troki. Although they place the linguistic boundary farther south and east from Daugavpils (Dvinsk) than Karski did, they locate several islands of Belorussian speech among the Latvian populations north of the city, where neither Karski nor Durnovo had seen evidence of Belorussians. The London compilers also place the southern boundary farther south, at the expense of the Ukrainians to whom, however, they leave the region of Brest, which is generally acknowledged as Belorussian. Belorussian ethnographers, of course, take a larger view. In their claims at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, they included the whole territory of Brest and Polesie, as well as the cities of DaugavpilsDvinsk (Latvia) and Velikie Luki (Russia) in the northwest, and Briansk (Russia) in the east, within the boundaries of modern Belorussia.^® In addition, they cut a wedge into Poland in the west, deep enough to establish a common Belorussian-German frontier eighty kilometers long in the region of Grajow-Avgustov-Suwalki. The reasons for these discrepancies were not so much ethnographical as political. Belorussia in 1919 was trying to organize itself into a sovereign state, and it pressed extreme territorial claims while its neighbors hotly contested what they called Belorussian imperialism. The Latvians claimed Daugavpils (Dvinsk) ; the Lithuanians, Vilna, with a rather wide strip of land around the city; and the Poles contested the whole western boundary from Vilna south to Brest; objections also were raised in Russia and in the Ukraine. Although the latter two countries were not admitted to the peace conference, their point of view was not unknown. In the end the Belorussian claims were rejected by the Allies." The Polish ethnic boundary roughly corresponded with that of the

THE LAND

AND

THE

PEOPLE

/¡ЬсОМ/пм

3. The Belorussian Territorial Claims. From Whiteruthenia: Outlines of Whiteruthenia and the Whiteruthenian National Movement (published in English by a group of Belorussian displaced persons in Germany in JQ47), this map presents the optimum claim of the Belorussian nationalists. The map, with slight modifications in the north, was reprinted by a Belorussian group in the United States and distributed by the Belaruskaja Trybuna (Wollington, New York), Spring igsi.

partition of Poland (179s), and ethnographic maps drawn in the nineteenth century acknowledged the fact.^® In 1897, Czynski, except in some minor details, confirmed Erkert's (1864) and Rittich's (1875) maps. He even found that between the region of Grodno-BialystokBelsk (which he gave to Belorussia) and the German-Russian border at Avgustovo-Grajewo, only a strip of land about thirty kilometers wide was Polish; and he recognized unhesitatingly both the city and the province of Vilna as being Lithuanian-Belorussian. Czynski's map, which was reprinted in 1909, was more or less in agreement with the Russian maps drawn by Karski and the Moscow Dialectal Committee (1915-1917).^® Modern Polish ethnographers, however, adopted a different view.^° Out of their collective efforts came the map presented

IO

BELORUSSIA:

THE

MAKING

OF A

NATION

by the Polish National Committee to the Paris Peace Conference at the beginning of 1919.^^ The whole region of Grodno-Bialystok-Belsk, the whole province of Vilna, two large ethnic islands on the southern bank of the Dvina, and the triangle of Novogrodek-Slonim-Sluck, where Poles had previously composed from 20 to 50 per cent of the population, were now represented as being solidly Polish. The Vilna

Controversy

Polish claims to Vilna * and Grodno were particularly insistent. The general census of 1897 recorded the distribution of ethnic nationalities in the city of Vilna and in the district of Vilna (including the city) as follows: City Russians Belorussians Poles Lithuanians Latvians Jews Total, including other nationalities

30,967 6,54

47,795 3,238

District 37,906 93,896 73,088

76,154

184 61,847

211 77,224

154,532!

355,213

Belorussians and Lithuanians thus formed the majority of the population in the region around Vilna, while Jews, Poles, and Russians made up the majority within the city itself. With the beginning of World War I, however, the Poles insisted that they alone constituted the absolute majority within the city (53 per cent), although still a minority in the region.^^ In the middle of September 1915 the Russians evacuated Vilna in the face of advancing German troops. Shortly thereafter a special committee with Captain von Beckerath as chairman was ordered to ascertain the actual strength of the various nationalities in both city and province. What procedure the captain used is not known, but he reported to his superiors that both Vilna and Grodno showed a large majority of Poles and Jews against a small percentage of Lithuanians and other groups.^® Polish accounts of subsequent developments are not clear. According to Smogorzewski, for example, the results of the census "completely suφrised the German authorities," who, "having learned of the numerical strength of the Poles in that region, began to support the Lithuanians and to persecute the Poles." How they could hope to raise the Lithuanians to a position of dominance over the Poles when the • Vilna is Belorussian, Wilno Polish, and Vilnius Lithuanian spelling, t 209,000 in 1939.

THE LAND

AND

THE

PEOPLE

II

Lithuanians made up "4.3 per cent of the population," is hard to see. Smogorzewski explains that the Germans were "stupid people" and the Poles cleverly responded by further increasing their own numbers.^^ Consequently, a few years later the city was reported to have 195,000 inhabitants "of whom 128,60 were Poles, 54,600 Jews, 7,400 Russians, and about 2,000 Lithuanians." The Belorussians had altogether disappeared from the map.^® No longer a Polish island in a Lithuanian Belorussian sea, the city, writes a Polish historian, now "lies in a country which has a Polish majority and which is closely linked ethnically to the main body of Poland." Much the same thing meanwhile had happened in Grodno, as the accompanying table shows. ETHNIC DISTRIBUTION OF POPULATION IN VILNA A N D GRODNO (in per

Belorussians Vilna district, including Vilna City

cent)

Poles Lithuanians

Jews

Russians and others

Source

26.3

20.4

10.4

20.1

21.3 20.9

21.6

26.8

21.2

II.O

Census 1897 Local estimates

70.0

3-S

23-9

—

German census

lO.O

80.0

S-o

4.0

I.O

Poland, 1921

65.8 65-7

5-6 5-7

1.4

19.8

6.3

1.4

27.2

—

Census 1897 Local estimates

S4-6

ΐ·5

37-7

—

German census

S4-0

1.6

10.6

0.3

1915-16 · 2.8(?)

1916

Grodno district, including Grodno city

191S-16· 6.2 ( ? )

1916

33-S

Poland, 1921

•Estimates made or accepted by Polish ethnographers: see A. Krzyzanowski and K. Kumaniecki (211), and E. Romer (286).

How such a complete ethnic transformation of a region as large as Belgium could occur within less than a generation is not known. There were no mass migrations, no transfer of populations, no mass epidemics among the Belorussians and Lithuanians, no abnormal increase in the Polish birth rate. More bafHing still is the fact that while the population in these regions remained 65 to 70 per cent peasant, the Polish element was described as concentrated "over 60 per cent in the upper and middle classes." " Discussion of East European statistics is useless. The truth is that the regions in question have always been Polish to the Poles, Lithuanian to the Lithuanians, and Belorussian to the Belorussians, irrespective of the actual distribution of their populations.

12

BELORUSSIA:

THE MAKING

OF A

NATION

Religion and Nationality The Poles explain the situation in the following manner. First, the process of natural assimilation of Belorussians by the Poles, noted by many observers before, accelerated at the beginning of the century, and became still more rapid and effective after the formation of the Polish state. Second, the old Russian statistics "did not conform to modern scientific requirements" and were "surely garbled to the disadvantage of the Poles." Moreover, the linguistic criterion, although it may be effective under normal circumstances, cannot apply in this part of Eastern Europe, where circumstances have never been normal. "Religion, historical tradition, and political ideas," the Poles say, "play a more important part here even than the native idiom." Aside from the persons who "undoubtedly are Lithuanian, Belorussian or Latvian," there are people who are "one thing by their language and quite another thing by their mental make up and ways of life." "There are," we can read, " 'Lithuanians' who do not speak Lithuanian at all; there are patriots who are devoted body and soul to the Polish cause, and who use Lithuanian, Latvian, or Belorussian dialects in their homes ; finally there are the tutejsi, the 'local people' {Hiesiger), who speak a vernacular of their own and for whom religion, and not language, is the factor of national self-determination." Indeed, we are told, "it is common to find families where brothers identify themselves as being of different ethnic groups." In other words, people called Belorussians "are nothing more than raw ethnic material; they have no self-consciousness and cannot be treated as a separate nationality." Consequently, Belorussians vanished statistically in the region of Polesie. The "Polesians" appeared instead, an old name assuming new significance and legal status.=^« The situation was further complicated by the fact that, according to Polish writers, "people of the Greek Orthodox faith have been under Russian influence, and those of Roman Catholic faith have been influenced by the Poles . . . Belorussians who once were able to absorb Lithuanians and Latvians in the province of Vitebsk, themselves fell under the sway of the Poles in the west, or of the Russians in the east . . . Belorussians of the Roman Catholic faith may therefore be considered in general as Poles." Some justification for this point of view can be found in historical precedent. Under Paul I and Alexander I, the population of the Belorussian provinces was divided into Russian and Polish according to religion, and not according to language or origin. The terms pravoslavnyj (Orthodox) and russkij (Russian) had been interchangeable for centuries. In fact, Karski believes that the general census of 1897 registered " a large number of Roman Catholic Belorussians as Poles."

THE LAND

AND

THE PEOPLE

13

The Russian officials continued this policy almost up to the Revolution.3® Polish postwar officials followed the Russian practice. Roman Catholic Belorussians (Eastern Rite, uniates) were considered as people gente Russus, natione Polonus, and were called biatopolski, "White Poles." Indeed, only 60,123 Roman Catholics registered as Belorussians in 1921. The Polish census recorded the Orthodox in the provinces listed as follows: Vilna, 261,426; Novogrodek, 421,556; Bialystok, 197,407; Polesie,491,510; total, 1,371,899. This may explain the total number (1,035,000) of Belorussians in Poland as given by official estimates at that time.®^ The practice continued throughout the period of the Polish Republic and, later, Belorussians in D P camps in Germany complained that "even the American officials treated them as Poles, thus creating great confusion everywhere." It is in good faith, then, that the Poles claim that it was extremely difficult to determine the number of Belorussians on their side of the border. During the census of 1921, many of these people "did not know what nationality they were, and as late as 1931, some were unable even to tell what language they spoke." The census takers were given instructions to interpret "mother tongue" as jezyk najbardziej blizki sobie (the language with which one is most familiar). They had thus no difficulty in finding that "fifty-five per cent of the people spoke a Polish dialect of Belorussian" while others conversed in a mixture of either Belorussian Russian or Belorussian Ukrainian.®® The bilingual populations could hardly be blamed for their ambiguous answers which permitted the officials to list 707,10c people as "undetermined" in Polesie alone, that is, 62.5 per cent of the whole population of that province.®^ Under the same test, the total number of Belorussians in Poland fell to 989,ooo.®® The Political Territory During the interwar period, the Belorussians claimed a territory of more than 280,000 square miles, of which 200,000 square miles was in the USSR, about 80,000 square miles was in Poland, and small areas were in Latvia and Lithuania.®® But the Poles recognized no Belorussian territory within the boundaries of their state. Neither did Latvia and Lithuania. The Soviets recognized the territorial principle, but first they cut the total claim of the Belorussians to the limits indicated by the Moscow Dialectal Committee, and then gave political form to only a small part of the area claimed.®'' It must be noted that not until 1926 were the political boundaries of the Belorussian Soviet Socialist Republic established, and neither the Smolensk nor the Briansk and Trubcevsk areas came to be included

14

BELORUSSIA:

THE MAKING

OF A

NATION

in it. The territory of the new republic was to cover 49,022 square miles, with a population of 5,567,976 distributed as shown in the following tabulation (in per cent).®® Urban Belorussians Jews Russians Poles Ukrainians Latvians and Lithuanians Others

38.3 40.2 15-6 2-3 0.9

Rural 89.2 1.6 6.1 1.9 0.6

Total 80.7 8.2 7-7 2.0 0.7

0.6

0.4

0.4 0.3

—

—

After the partition of Poland in September 1939, the four Polish provinces of Vilna (except for Vilna city and the adjacent region, ceded to Lithuania), Novogrodek, Bialystok, and Polesie, and a wedge into ethnic Poland at Lomza, were incorporated into the BSSR. The total population of the republic (estimated as of June 1941) thus became 10,589,000, distributed according to the following tabulation.®® Belorussians Jews Poles Russians Ukrainians Lithuanians Germans Others

Round numbers 7,880,000 935,000 925,000 590,000 162,000 90,000 6,500 11,000

Per cent 74-5 8.8 8.7 5-6 1-5 0.9 0.06 0.1

The republic retained the former Polish administrative divisions but gave them Belorussian names. Polesie was made into two provinces, with Brest and Pinsk as their capitals. During the German occupation (1941-1944), the Weissruthenien Generalbezirk consisted of five territories {Hauptbezirke), Baranovici, Minsk, Mogilev, Vitebsk, and Smolensk, subdivided into thirty-eight rural and five city districts. We have no information as to whether the Smolensk Hauptbezirk followed the linguistic Belorussian boundary in the east, or whether, indeed, it had any fixed boundaries.^" After Germany was defeated, the Soviets returned the district of Lomza to Poland. Later the western boundary was again revised, and other sections of territory, including the city of Bialystok, were ceded to Poland. The boundaries of November 1939 with the Lithuanian, Latvian, and Russian Soviet Republics were restored. The territory of the BSSR now came to cover 89,000 square miles, with a population of 10,386,ooo.^^

THE LAND

AND

THE PEOPLE

15

Transfers and Migrations Before the war, the Polish and Jewish minorities constituted up to seventeen per cent of the total population. The Jewish communities were decimated by the Nazis. After the war, Poles in the BSSR, and Belorussians in Poland, were to be exchanged, but no treaties concluded to this effect have ever been published in full, and no information has been made available as to the exact number of persons transferred.^^ If the loss of the Jewish and Polish minorities were complete, the total population of the BSSR would be reduced to 8,529,000, to which must be added a certain number of persons, by no means large, who were transferred from Poland and later returned from exile.^® Another unknown is the number of war casualties never accounted for by official sources. Unofficial estimates place these losses as high as twenty-five per cent of the total population, and perhaps even higher. There are indications in the Soviet press that considerable numbers of Belorussian farmers have been settled in East Prussia and other parts of the Union.^^ One must wait until a new general census is taken to know how many people now live in the territory of the BSSR. Meanwhile some indication can be gleaned from the fact that 4,727,950 "electors" were registered in the republic in elections to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR on March 12, 1950. We know that at the end of 1937 the total population of the USSR was about 167 million, of which 94.1 million, or 56.35 per cent, had the right to vote in elections to the Supreme Soviet. If there was little change in the age structure of the Belorussian population during and since the war, the number of 4,727,950 electors would correspond to a total population 8,390,000.

On the basis of the Union election figures and the republic election figures, respectively, Mr. Shabad found that the total population of the BSSR was estimated by the Soviet authorities at 9,300,000 in 1946, and 7,220,000 in 1947. The two million discrepancy is explained by the fact that the electoral districts for the 1946 Union elections were apparently based on prewar population data and thus "do not present a true picture of the population of the USSR immediately after the Second World War." On the other hand, the electoral districts for the 1947 republic elections "appear to have been revised on the basis of postwar data." Since the 1950 Union election figures indicate a general increase in the Soviet populations of about 5 per cent (since 1947), a guess that the total population of the BSSR, including all the non-Belorussian minorities, hardly could exceed 8,000,000 in 1951, would not appear as unreasonably far from the truth and, in fact, is optimistic. A few facts stand out significantly, although they cannot yet be translated into

i6

BELORVSSIA:

THE MAKING OF A NATION

reliable statistics: The Polish and Jewish elements have greatly decreased if they have not altogether disappeared since 1 9 4 1 , while other non-Belorussian ethnic elements may have immigrated. Should their proportion to Belorussian-speaking natives have remained the same as before, the number of Belorussians proper hardly would exceed 6,500,000 at this writing.^® Even this number may prove high, since the available information suggests that the natives who have moved, or who have been moved, out of the country since World War I I , have far exceeded in number the migration figures of previous years.^^ Nothing but misinformation or wishful thinking can account for claims of the Belorussian writers in exile that their nation now consists "of from 15 to 18 million people."^® Their estimates might have been correct had there been no revolutions and no wars for the last fifty years.

2 THE TRADITIONS No comprehensive study of Belorussian society is to be found and, in fact, until recently one hardly could speak of the Belorussians as a distinct society. The upper social strata felt that they were either Polish or Russian, and there was, until the end of the nineteenth century, no general agreement about what ethnic group the mass of natives should belong to. Indeed, the latter never called themselves Belorussians until that name was imposed upon them by Polish and Russian scholarship or administration.^ Traditionally, the peasantry from the Vilna and Smolensk or from the Grodno and Polesie regions, were more conscious of their differences in speech and habits than they were of their common origins. And if, in spite of these differences, they formed a world apart from other Slavs, they did not themselves become aware of that fact until, from the mass of ethnographic material gathered in the course of the last century by foreign scholars, one could select certain characteristics which form a totality unique with the Belorussian people.^ Home and Family Before the Revolution, nearly nine out of every ten Belorussians (87 per cent) were farmers or city workers closely tied to the village. Eight of every ten were still occupied in agriculture in 1939.® The Belorussian man was generally described as being thickset rather than well built and hardly ever of more than medium stature, often giving an impression of being slightly bloated. In general, conscripts before the Revolution were "about one inch shorter than the average in European Russia." "The face is round, the hair light colored, and the small deep-set eyes are generally grey. At the age of forty or fifty, he looks like a very old man. Women are blonde and look fresh and attractive when young, but they fade faster and earlier after marriage than in many other parts of Eastern Europe. Hard work and pitiful diet are, in general, responsible for the quick aging of the Belorussian peasant."

18

BELORUSSIA:

THE MAKING

OF A

NATION

"Clothing is of almost primitive simplicity, and white is the most favored color. Men used to wear white jackets, white shirts and trousers, and white linen belts. The women wear white skirts, aprons and kerchiefs. Except for footwear there is not much difference between summer and winter garb, nor between holiday dress and work clothes. Boots are rare; bast sandals are most common. Only in the style of their headgear are the people somewhat fanciful. They wear peaked caps of cloth or leather, or high felt hats with the brims turned up or without brims at all. Some wear a round cap of cloth, felt, or sheepskin all year round; others, a kind of four-cornered hat. . . There are no valuable necklaces, earrings or rings among the people. The only trinkets are cheap beads, artificial Jet, or the simplest of copper ornaments; silver is seldom worn." The meal of the Belorussian peasant consisted chiefly "of milk and cottage cheese, potatoes, cabbage, beets, beans and peas in winter; pot herbs, sorrel, and the like, in summer." "Bread is badly baked from whole rye which, in many homes, still is ground by hand." Earlier observers insist that "only the fairly wealthy eat this well, and then only in a good year." ® The Soviets have not changed the general appearance of the man nor have they noticeably improved his habitual diet. In fact, the picture of Belorussian life today does not much differ from what it was half a century ago. Houses, in general, retain their primitive character, are crowded and ill-ventila ted by one or two tiny windows. They are built of logs, roofed with crude shingles or straw, and often have no chimney but a hole in the roof above the hearth. "The odor of human and animal sweat is stifling and, in summer, houses are infested with flies and cockroaches. . . ." Until recently kerosene and candles were luxuries, and the houses were lighted with burning pine splinters (lucina) stuck into the wall. Not many a peasant could afford even a match. It was cheaper to get fire directly from dry wood by primitive methods. Most villages consist of from two to ten households. They are scattered throughout the forest and swamps, often in places almost inaccessible even to the peasant wagons called kolesa, or "wheels." In all reality, these consist of little more — four wooden wheels (frequently birch, unbanded) on axles set in a single crossbeam. The sides, when in use, rest on the crossbeam and are supported by vertical spikes opposite the four wheels, forming a V at the front and rear of the cart. Horses and harness match the vehicle. The harness is of rope or of bast. Belorussian cows are no better than the horses, though before collectivization they were the pride of the farmer and represented a large part of his material wealth. Both horses and cows are small, thin, and lacking in strength. Until recently the soil was cultivated with

THE TRADITIONS

19

antediluvian plows, and agricultural methods were highly primitive. Consequently, harvests were poorer than they need be, since the soil could produce several times more than it did. In this, as in many other aspects of his economy, the Belorussian farmer did not differ from most Russian and Polish peasants except in degree of poverty, ignorance, and complacence. One might expect that the Revolution, made in the interest of the "workers and peasants," should greatly have improved their lot. Indeed, we read of the erection of large plants and factories, modern buildings and monuments in the cities, of the introduction of tractors and other modern agricultural equipment to the fields, and of the electrifying of peasants' homes. Yet, as before, the traveler can see "thousands of miserable huts with small dusty windows and rotten thatch roofs, exactly as the Great Socialist Revolution had seen them twenty years before. . . As before, people keep young calves in their huts, only they have fewer calves now. Men sleep on the clay stoves or on wooden benches, covering their bodies with a sheepskin coat instead of a blanket. The family eats from a common bowl, and they light an oil lamp just for the time necessary to eat their supper. . . You travel the long muddy roads, along which no car can run in the autumn or spring. . . In remote villages, people continue to live without schools, medical help, or any other benefit of civilization." ® Apparently things do not change fast in the Belorussian land. The Soviet era of "industrialization, mechanization of agriculture, and education of the masses," has not uniformly stirred the Belorussian waters, no matter how stormy they may have appeared at times. Under Poland, the western part of the country was little touched by civilization. Under the Soviets, some effort was made to rescue the people, but they proved conservative in their customs and habits and, as all peasants, reluctaht to accept sudden reforms. Evidence abounds that the outlook of the Belorussian peasant on life and work, his position in the family and in the community, and even his language, are still reminiscent of the most remote times in Slavic history. Until lately, households of the zadruga type, or "joint families," were common, particularly in Minsk province, although they may not have sheltered all of the members under one roof. "The father will build a separate hut on his farm for each of his married sons, and the land, the cattle and the farm equipment will be owned by the whole family as before; they will work together and eat together; and they will own separately only their clothes and maybe a few other personal things. In fact, though in separate huts, they still will live and work as if they were under the same roof." It was not unusual for such a family to have fifteen to twenty-five, or sometimes up to fifty members, united under the authority of a common head.

20

BELORUSSIA:

THE MAKING

OF A

NATION

The common head was not necessarily the natural father or grandfather, "since the joint family often included distant relatives and even strangers." The position of the latter {semjanin, zdol'nik) depended on the conditions, oral or written, under which they had first been adopted. A zdolnik could enter the family for life, or for a term, and he himself and his legal heirs were treated as all other members of the family. Labor invested in the farm, rather than blood relation, was the factor holding the group together, and this concept has persisted to our day. Generally, the natural father would be at the origin of a joint family. But after his death any one of his sons, the eldest or the ablest, or his brother, or even a zdolnik, might become head of the group. Unlike similar usages in Great Russia and in the Balkans, the position carried no definite title.* The family called their head haspadar (master), or chaziain (boss), or bac'ka (father), or dziadz'ka (old man), or simply by his personal name. No reports mention elections, but the agreement on the successor had to be unanimous, and somehow it was reached to the satisfaction of all the members of the family.^ An adult member might require separation at any time, but custom did not favor it. The practice, however, has become more common in modern times. The head of the family decided the share to be given out and, usually, called a kind of a family council to discuss the matter. As a rule, the share was determined by the labor performed, not by birthright. A son who had been away from the farm for some reason did not receive an equal part with his brothers, and might get no part at all. The custom says, "It is not enough to be born or adopted into a family; it is necessary to have worked in it and contributed to its welfare." ® Some time before the Revolution large families, particularly in the more industrialized western regions, began to disintegrate. The head's authority, however, was not diminished, nor his responsibility for all the members of his household. He supervised their morals, and saw to it that their personal activities and ambitions did not interfere with the general interests of the farm. On the farm, his will was sacred and without appeal. "All members of the household, in their quarrels, seek justice from him . . . He has the place of honor at the table, right under the icons {red corner) ; men, in the order of precedence, sit with him, and the women at the other end of the table. He says grace, and he is the first to eat from the common bowl." The custom has persisted into Soviet times and is acknowledged by the Soviet Belorussian novelists (Jakub Kolas and others). The habit is supported by an ancestor cult (dziady) which, in Belorussia, has perhaps been stronger, and more consistently observed, than in any other part of the Slavic world.® Belief in the "home spirit" • BoViak, in Russia; domaiin, in Yugoslavia.

THE TRADITIONS

21

{damavy, damasnik) is expressed in a great variety of forms, and until the forcible collectivization of farming (1928-1934), the protection of the boundaries of a homestead was entrusted to a family goblin {cur) rather than to the law. The cur had been a minor deity common to all eastern Slavs, witness to which are such linguistic survivals in Russian and Ukrainian as curban, curatysia, cur menta, etc., but nowhere outside Belorussia has his cult persisted to our time. There, as of old, within the family circle, the father acted as priest and king, saying prayers and incantations to the dziady (fathers) and babki (mothers), saving food for them after the family supper, and performing other acts reminiscent of ancient pagan sacrifices. In many parts of Belorussia the newly married still are called knez (king) and knehinia (queen) in the wedding songs, while the literary standard uses the word haspadar for both the head of the nation and the head of the family (farm).^® The father, or the head of a larger family, directed the work of the men, and his wife the work of the women, and no one could undertake any job on the farm without permission or assignment. They could hire out any member of the family, or send him to make money in the city. The father held the legal title to the property, but his power to dispose of it was no less constitutional than that of the King of Britain. He was in fact a trustee, not the owner of the family estate, and could not sell or trade it away as long as there were legal heirs. Dovnar-Zapolski reports the case of a widower who sold his lot of land and went to work in a factory; when his legal heirs came of age they claimed the farm for themselves, and the rural court, supporting custom against the law, annulled the deal: "Having legal heirs, a man has no right to alienate his property forever." " Before the Revolution, the law generally gave way to custom in the rural areas of the empire." With certain exceptions for unmarried daughters, man and woman were equal in relation to family property. What he or she may have brought into marriage remained his or hers throughout life, and only that part which they had invested in the farm, and the farm itself, formed a common estate. After the death of the spouse, his or her personal property went over to his or her legal heirs or, in the absence of any such, was returned to the home from which he or she had come, while the common part was taken over by the living spouse. Generally, the widow kept the common purse and the eldest son directed the work of the men and represented the household in community affairs. The obligations of men and women were strictly divided and, in general, it was degrading for a man to do anything which was considered woman's work. "A man might be dying to eat after a long day in the fields, but he never would himself take food from the oven and

22

BELORUSSIA:

THE MAKING

OF A

NATION

put it on the table: this was up to his mother or wife." " Money the woman might make from selling mushrooms, berries, flowers, or any surplus from the vegetable garden, was her personal property over which the family had no right or authority. Earnings of a daughter outside the farm, though handed over to the family, also constituted her personal property. With her mother's advice she could use this money for clothes and jewels, and she could take the remainder with her when she married. Children under fourteen years of age were entirely under their mother's care and the father could not interfere. The wife was not responsible for her husband's debts, though he was for hers, as the custom required that the family have but one legal representative. Generally, "in the sphere of her own competence, the mother's will was as supreme as that of the father; she vowed obedience to her husband, but she was by no means his thing or property: in fact, she was his assistant and adviser and, as a rule, he treated her as an equal and very well." Indeed, her position compared very favorably with that of the woman in Russia and in most parts of the Ukraine. "Cruel treatment of the woman is very rare indeed among the Belorussians," concluded the observer.^^ Marriage was a matter of mutual consent, but the custom also required the consent of the families concerned. The young couple knew that they might have to live with the old family, and more often than not marriage was a matter of compromise. The bride was expected to bring something with her into her new home. But so also was the groom. It has already been mentioned that their respective parts, unless invested in the new farm, could not merge into common ownership. More often than not, however, labor was the only capital they had to invest. "The beauty, and very often the wealth of the bride, are of little consequence to the Belorussian. What he values above all in his wife is a good field worker and housekeeper, and only these qualities of a woman always stand high in his mind." If the woman wouldn't work, the family could refuse her food. The principle, "He who does not work shall not eat," had been known in Belorussia long before the Soviets." The Belorussian required high moral qualities in his spouse. Virginity of the bride was "a necessary prerequisite for marriage," and so, in some parts of the country, was the virginity of the man. Should a wrong be discovered after the wedding, the marriage might be discontinued without further procedure. The decision was entirely up to the wronged party, who might elect to take the sin of his spouse unto himself and to continue conjugal life.^® Before the Revolution a church wedding was required by law, but its importance was small compared to the very elaborate custom rite persisting to this day. The bride was

THE TRADITIONS

23

selected by the young man, or by his family for him, and a trusted man {svat) was dispatched with some vodka and food {zakuska) to her home to talk the proposition over with her family. If the parties agreed, the svat would make another trip to the bride's house, this time with the groom and his relatives. Again they would bring vodka with them, but this time the bride's family would provide the food. At the party, the young couple would have an opportunity to become better acquainted, and small presents would be exchanged. The ceremony, which was known as zapoiny, "drinking the business over," might be repeated several times and, in general, it took the place of betrothal (zarucyny)P Either party might break the engagement, but he or she had then to refund to the other party all expenses incurred, and sometimes her family would receive compensation for "the slight." The wedding was celebrated in both houses, and expenses were shared by both families. In some localities the bride was put to a symbolic test to prove her virginity {sadzic' na pasad), and if she faltered, the marriage was declared nul and void and her family publicly humiliated. Divorce was by mutual consent, and neither the civil nor the canon law had been able to supplant the custom.^® When a son-in-law came to live with the family of the bride, he was treated on the same footing as daughters-in-law generally were; that is, he acquired no right to property through his wife, though he might eventually win it through his own labor, or be admitted "in son's stead" (za syna). Children owed obedience to both parents, and the community was very strict in this respect. Court records show that once a peasant in the Causy county drowned his disobedient son in the lake; he was arrested and tried, and the rural court condemned him to three months in jail, not for murder but for inability "to instill in his son the respect for parents." Conflicts between parents and children were seldom brought to court, and it did not do any good for either party if they were. Rural justice made it clear that disobedience of children also is the parents' own fault.^^ Children were entirely emancipated from parental authority only when they established their own homes. The custom required them, however, to take care of their father and mother in their old age. An aged father might transmit his authority to his eldest son and then, though he still lived on'the farm, he would owe his son the same obedience as his son had owed him before. Daughters, as a rule, had no share in the family estate. If, after the death of the father, the farm was divided among his sons, their unmarried sisters might only receive a share in the last harvest. Brothers, however, were under the obligation to marry off their sisters decently and a part of the family cattle would be reserved for that purpose. But when there were only daughters in the family, they inherited the whole

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estate, and the husband of the eldest took care of the younger ones until they married. He received no compensation for the guardianship and was personally responsible to his wards for any losses incurred in his management of the estate.^^ Illegitimate children {znajdennye, bohdanovy, bankortyki, bankroty, krapivniki, bajstruki, etc.; the variety of terms seems to point to the frequency of occurrences) were treated without discrimination. They were given the mother's or the godfather's name, seldom the name of the natural father. By custom their right to inheritance was the same as that of legitimate children, though the custom conflicted with the law of the empire.^® Since, under the imperial law, only a church wedding made a marriage legal, most illegitimate children resulted from the common-law unions, particularly among the sects rejecting the church ritual. Daughters enjoyed considerable freedom. They were assigned lighter jobs in the homes, and when possible, their labor was dispensed with altogether. They had many opportunities to meet young men, with whom they mixed freely. Several times a year there were public gatherings in a larger village, or in the town, on the occasion of fairs (kirmasy), religious festivals (chvesty), or pilgrimages (proscy) to a miraculous well, source, chapel, or perhaps to a cross erected at a road intersection or deep in the woods. The inhabitants of the whole region would sometimes thus gather. Old people would come to pray, or to see their relatives from distant villages, or to buy something from peddlers. The young people expected to have fun taking part in the customary rites. On such occasions, girls would wear red skirts and white blouses, loud kerchiefs, copper and silver plate ornaments, and white jackets over their shoulders. The boys would be in high boots, black or blue coats with metal or glass buttons of various colors, wide belts, white woolen overcoats and high white felt hats, now supplanted by modern caps with leather visors. These were great occasions for dancing, singing, and playing games. But at home, also, there were open-air dances (ihrysca) in the summer, and evening parties (vecorki) in the winter. Girls would gather in one of the houses to weave and sing, or to listen to a story teller. "Boys would get wind of it and come to see their girls home late at night, and many couples would be married in the following spring." Concepts of Justice Before the Revolution, rural justice in both the village (sel'ski sud) and the district (valastny sud), as a rule, ignored the written law. More often than not customs would conflict with it, and people who appealed to the higher courts were frowned upon, witness to which are such de-

THE TRADITIONS

25

rogatory terms as suciaha, sudainik* No clear distinction was drawn between civil and criminal offenses. Murder often was settled with a sort of wergild {vykup), paid by the criminal to the relatives of the victim, t Generally, crime was understood in terms of material damage and the custom of vykup was common for all sorts of physical offense, including rape. Although it was against the law, the community held the view that the case was closed as soon as the offended party had accepted compensation from the offender Customary, though also illegal, was moneylending at 20 per cent interest from March to November, sometimes with an additional charge of a certain amount of oats or rye to each ruble. The statute of limitations was not commonly recognized: "An offense is an offense as long as it is remembered, and it is never too late to settle it." For affairs which, in the opinion of the village, should not be brought to the courts, private arbitration was widely practiced. Decision of the arbiters was final. Rural judges, little concerned with legality, often acted as private arbiters in cases which normally should have been taken to the criminal courts. As punishment, rural justice preferred fines and public work to jail, and the latter was seldom inflicted for more than a few days. Until recent times, public flagellation (porka) was common. No oath was taken from witnesses, and before the Revolution, when the court was unable to make a decision, the parties would be taken to church and, should the defendant kiss the cross in sign of his innocence, he would be acquitted.^' Sometimes, the whole community would inflict punishment without any process of law (samasud), as in cases of horse stealing and arson. It was also used against "traitors" by the guerrillas during the last war. In such cases, the criminal was tortured and killed with bestial cruelty, while public beating and parading through the village with a rope around the neck was the penalty for minor offenses. The general tendency, then, was to keep out of the courtroom, and it found expression in the saying: "The criminal is ours, and so is the right to do justice with him." The collectivization of farming since the Revolution has eliminated most causes for land and money conflicts, yet "the illegal practices" of the peoples' courts {narodny sud), supporting customs against the law, are constantly reported in the Soviet press. Folklore Belorussian folklore reflects pagan and early Christian times, carrying the medieval outlook into our own day. The Soviets acknowledge their failure in eradicating the century-old habits and beliefs. Ethno* The accepted translation is "barrator," but the English word does not convey the depth of opprobrium and contempt which the Slavic word contains, t Cf. vira, golovitìzna, in Medieval Russia.

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graphic expeditions of the Belorussian Academy of Sciences report that the old tradition has not been entirely superseded by social and economic reforms, nor by modern education. This is corroborated by what one can read in Soviet Belorussian novels,^® as well as by testimonies of people who have left the country during and since World War II. Animistic beliefs or superstitions, and not simply material poverty, may account for the fact that a primitive equipment of fire-making {ahnevica) until recently has been, and perhaps still is, used in some parts of the country.^" Even in the better-off communities, fire sometimes was made in this manner on the church porch, and bonfires were built with it around the village, to repel evil spirits during times of calamity. Permanent fire maintained in the oven is transferred, with appropriate ritual, to a new home. Popular holidays such as St. John's Eve, Shrovetide, the Green Week, and others, still bear the traces of ancient fire worship. A self-respecting peasant still carries in his pocket ñint, steel, and tinder {cyr) in a little bag known as ahnevica, mahalejka, or kalita in different parts of the country, and he would not for anything light his pipe or cigarette with a match. Incantations {zahavory) to the elements, dating from prehistoric times, are transmitted from father to son. With the coming of Christianity, songs celebrating ancient festivals such as the advent of spring, sowing, harvesting, marriage, funerals, were modified in their wording to fit the new religion. Lately they have become — at least in the Soviet recordings — colored with words and phrases borrowed from the Communist vocabulary.®" Specifically Belorussian are the bohohlasniki or psalmniki, composed for singing at religious festivals. Based on Bible stories, lives of the saints, and folk cosmogony, they are sung by crippled and blind beggars. Some of them show the inñuence of Polish and Greek religious hymns, and others strikingly resemble the Negro spirituals of America. In the seventeenth century, mystery plays presented with puppets {batlejka, from "Bethlehem") were widely performed; they gave birth to the "people's theater," which eventually shifted to such lay themes as "The Peasant Macej and the Doctor" {Muzik Macej i Doktar), "Anton Leads the Goat" {Anton kazu viadzëc), "The Fortune-Teller {Baba-varazbitka), and the like, all composed by anonymous authors and performed by village casts. It may seem strange that the Christian inspiration should not have produced anything outstanding in the matter of folklore during the last two centuries. Indeed, the hutarka has become the Belorussian's most popular form of poetic lament over his unhappy lot. These are sometimes real epics, and the most noteworthy of them is the Kazan'ne, written down by Nosovic in 1848 in Mogilev, and by Sejn in Vilna

THE TRADITIONS

27

province. Other secular forms, the basni (folk tales), bajki (true stories), and kazki (satirical or moral stories, sometimes with a sharp political slant), have also appeared. They all have a characteristic style which carries over even to tales borrowed from other peoples. To these, the Cossack, soldier, and cumak * songs can be added, as well as stories, proverbs, riddles, and sayings, in which the people's mind freely expressed itself. The general impression is that the "manner of life" {byt) of the Belorussian people has been extraordinarily stagnant in spite of their contacts with other Slavs and foreign invasions of their lands.®^ Since the Revolution thousands of new songs and tales have appeared on the Soviet Polish war, collectivization of farming, the German invasion, and on such subjects as the Soviet Constitution, the Five Year Plans, the Red Army, and the Soviet guerrillas, with Stalin and other Communist leaders as heroes. Their authenticity as folklore is questionable, and it is explicitly denied by the Belorussian émigrés. But they skillfully follow the older models in style, general outlook, and language. Sometimes they reflect real hopes and griefs of the people, and one can then hear the old familiar lament. It is significant that Soviet literature has not been able to replace the outdated forms of popular expression, or even noticeably to reduce their part in Belorussian life.®^ The Idiom Belorussian folklore impressed its early collectors by its unusual wealth of form, variety of subjects, and, particularly, by great variations of the spoken idiom. At first it appeared that the natives spoke in a language mixed now with Russian, now with Polish or Ukrainian, and difficult to identify entirely with any of the known Slavic idioms in phonetics, morphology, vocabulary, or syntax. Very soon it was noticed that transcriptions by means of the Polish or Russian alphabet did not render the sounds of the Belorussian speech correctly. Bezsonov found it necessary to introduce the symbol y (Latin u) to transcribe the sound similar to English w in widow, and foreign to the Polish and Russian standards. Then Nosovic compiled the first Belorussian dictionary, and more regional dictionaries have appeared since, to show that the Belorussian vocabulary, besides the common Slavic stock, was full of words of various origins and unfamiliar to other Slavs.®® In fact, the Belorussian vernacular showed little uniformity, and Karski counted up to twenty local dialects differing from one another nearly as much as they differed, in one respect or another, from Rus• Peasants who used to go to the Crimea with a cum (wagon) to get salt for their côutitry.

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sian, Polish, or Ukrainian.®^ Most single characteristics (isoglosses) of Belorussian dialects were found in other Slavic dialects, and only their unique combination in the Belorussian vernacular made it a different and, indeed, a separate form of the Slavic speech. Within its own area of distinction it formed, according to A. Sobolevski, two, and according to J. Stankevic, three or four, larger groups of subdialects: first, (a) the southwest group, including the regions of Minsk and Grodno and the southern part of Vilna province, and (ô) the northeast group including the rest of Vilna province, the Vitebsk, Mogilev, and Smolensk provinces, and a part of Kalinin (Tver) province;®® second, (a) the central group, (6) the Vilna-Oämiana group, (c) the southwest group, around Grodno, and (á) the northeast group of dialects, beginning west of Polock and going north and east far into the territory of the RSFSR.®® Whatever grouping we accept, the fact remains that the language did not begin to evolve a common literary standard until the publication of the first Belorussian grammar in 1918.®^ For their transcriptions of the vernacular, the Belorussians used now the Latin {lacinka), now the Russian {hrazdanka) alphabets, adjusting them, but not always or uniformly, to their phonetic needs. The first grammar used the Russian print which eventually prevailed over the whole territory of the Belorussian SSR. But the Latin characters continued largely to be used in Western Belorussia between the two wars-and still are used by some Belorussian groups outside the USSR. Using the lacinka (for the sake of technical convenience in this writing), the most outstanding characteristics of the Belorussian speech may be described as follows: 1. Change of the historical 0 for a, and e for ja {га), in the unaccented syllables of the word; thus, halavd for Russian "golova," Ukrainian "holova," Polish "giowa"; slóva, for Russian and Ukrainian "slovo," and Polish "stowo"; niamy, for Russian "nemoj," Ukrainian "nimyj," Polish "niemy"; etc. This phenomenon is known as akanie and yakanie, respectively, and, in various degrees, it is also common to most South Russian dialects. 2. Absence of the palatalized and i' sounds for which the palatal sibilant affricates ¿z' and c' are substituted respectively; for instance, miadz'vedz for Russian "medved'," Ukrainian "vedmid'," Polish "niedzwiedz." 3. Absence of the explosive g sound, in place of which, as in Ukrainian, a fricative variant (Ä) is used; for instance, halava for Russian "golova," Polish "gtowa"; cf. Ukrainian "holova." 4. Hardened labials and velars, and the universally nonpalatal r — phenomena which, in various degrees, are also observed in Polish, Ukrainian, and a few Russian dialects. 5. Use of nonsyllabic й and Ì for и and i after words ending in a

THE TRADITIONS

29

vowel, and of и and й when, in a similar position, ν or I are more common in Slavic. Thus, jal vy; voitk for Russian "volk," Ukrainian "vovk," Polish "wilk"; Ьуй for Russian "byl," Ukrainian "buv," Polish "byt"; etc. 6. Substitution of the groups vo for the initial "o," and he, for the initial "è" (back vowel) under stress; for instance, vózera for Russian "ozero," Polish "jeziero"; hety for Russian "ètot"; etc. These and other features, combined in a single phonetic system, distinguish the Belorussian speech from other Slavic idioms. Words in common with Polish sound differently because of different syllables under stress, and the shifting stress often is different from that of Russian, while less often so from that of Ukrainian.®® In morphology, many Church Slavic and Old Russian survivals bring the Belorussian grammar close to the Ukrainian. Strong influences of Polish can be observed in the vocabulary, and often in the syntax, of both languages. Yet the peculiar habit of akanie makes the Belorussian speech sound very different from Ukrainian. While the habit of dzekanie and other features make it different from Russian as well, greater affinities can be observed with many local Russian dialects in their archaic moφhology, vocabulary, and syntax.''® Many common traits point to a common origin of the Belorussian, Russian, and Ukrainian speeches. The vernacular of the masses has not been greatly affected by literary movements in the Slavic East until the most recent time. But the nationalist philology likes to see direct succession of Belorussian from Proto-Slavic. According to these theories, the beginnings of Belorussian specialization are tentatively located "in the fourth or fifth century A . D . , " and all concepts of a subsequent "common Russian (East Slavic) period" are discarded as wrong, imperialistic, and unscientific.^" Little evidence, of course, can be produced in support of such a theory since no written documents earlier than the eleventh century are known to us in the Slavic East. In fact, Jakobson places the first specializations of Common Russian (East Slavic) in the tenth to the twelfth century.^^ Sachmatov admits that the local vernaculars probably began to differ from one another "some time before" the first known written documents appeared and, in accordance with his theory, Karski draws the pedigree of the Belorussian speech according to the accompanying chart.^^ The theory has lost much ground since its criticism by Porzesinski and Rastorguev.^® Trubeckoj contends that no specialized isoglosses in the East Slavic common speech "could even begin to form" before the end of the thirteenth century,"^ and R. Jakobson does not believe that the distinct phonological characteristics of Belorussian first began to show before the fifteenth to sixteenth century.^®

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Common East Slavic (Old Russian)

Southern Group (ancestor of Ukrainian)

Northern Group

Northern Russian dialects {okanie, and g sound)

Southern Groups {akanie, and h sound)

Western Group (dzekanie) BELORUSSIAN

Eastern Group (south Russian dialects)

The Economy For the slow changes in his way of life the Belorussian had more than one excuse. It would indeed seem that men and nature conspired in letting him down. His country is a low marshy plain, sloping slightly to the south and east. Only in the north and northeast are there elevations of the soil, the highest of which may not exceed one thousand feet. There, river beds are interrupted by small waterfalls caused by outcrops of rock, and rocks also appear in most fields. In the basin of the Pripet, the landscape changes from woodland to extensive marshes, where the country is flooded in the spring and the rare villages look like desolate islands lost in the great expanse of water. All work and communications are then interrupted for several weeks. But where the swamps have been drained the harvest is good. In general, however, the soil, being mainly of the ash-colored forest type, with some clays and sand, is not very favorable for cultivation. Forest and shallow lakes cover more than one half of the whole land. Winters are relatively mild, and summers somewhat cooler than around Moscow or Kiev. Crops are liable to be damaged by humidity rather than by droughts. Few are raised, in any case, except in the more favored regions of the east, fish and potatoes being the staff of life for most Belorussian peasants.^® Historically, the usual chasm between the lord and the serf was widened by their differences in religion and language. Indeed, the peasantry were called bydlo (cattle) and treated as such, or even worse. "We have found that the Russian serf was certainly better off than was the Belorussian on the lands annexed from Poland," remarks the historian Batiuskov. Incoφoration into Russia little improved his lot. As a rule, the manor exacted three working days a week, or one hundred fifty-six working days a year, from every man and woman

THE

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31

{panscyna). Other landlords preferred cash to labor, and charged every farmer's household on their estates fifteen to twenty-two rubles {obrok). This was a large sum of money at a time when a chicken cost ten kopeks and a pig would sell for less than one ruble. Indeed, in Mogilev and Minsk provinces, for instance, only 3 per cent of the peasant population were able to pay the obrok.^^ In addition, landlords had other resources. "One of the most shocking malpractices was that landlords leased their serfs in hundreds and thousands to contractors who were engaged in earth moving in different parts of the empire. These poor people were used, for the most part, in building roads and canals. The landlord took the responsibility of delivering a certain number of men for a set fee, and the only obligation of the contractor was to keep them from starving to death. Indeed, government officials supervising the public works demanded from the contractor nothing more than that these unhappy people be kept half alive" (N. I. Turgenev). The Belorussian peasant was freed, in 1861, at the depth of the economic depression that had been creeping on in the country since before the partition of Poland. Freedom improved his lot but did little more than save him from starvation. True, the imperial law limited the peasant's yearly payment to three rubles or twenty-five workdays, and it was not surprising that, when Polish landlords called upon the Belorussian peasant to support their insurrection against the empire in 1863, he did not respond. But the individual households had obtained lots of only 2.7 to 54 acres, depending on the number of males in the family, and this was far from enough for subsistence on the Belorussian soil. Consequently, many a farmer had to contract part of his labor to his former Polish master as before. Retaliating against the Polish insurrection, the imperial government canceled such "contracts," and increased the individual lot to 15.12 acres in Minsk province, 13.23 acres in Mogilev province, 10.26 acres in the western and 12.15 acres in the eastern parts of Vitebsk province, and so on. Even the formerly landless were alloted 8.10 acres per "soul." This was better, but not enough. In 1885, the governor general in the Northwestern provinces reported that "in Vitebsk region, peasants hardly know what bread is. They live on mushrooms and wild herbs and berries, with widespread illness and disease. Their poverty is unspeakable . . . The vital forces of the region are fast being drained, both in a spiritual and the physical sense . . ." Various factors accounted for this situation, and there was no government policy to remedy them. In 1897 there were twenty-seven providers for every hundred persons in Russia as compared with thirty-eight in the United States in 1900, while there were only twenty-four in Belorussia. It has been ob-

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served that the three-field system of farming practiced in Belorussia could not support more than fifty persons to one square versta (one versta equals 0.663 miles) of useful land (Oganovski). T h e Belorussian population exceeded that norm b y nearly 50 per cent, Vilna province having seventy-three, Vitebsk seventy-eight, Grodno seventy-four, Minsk seventy-three, and Mogilev eighty-six persons to one square versta. T h e useful land was distributed as follows: state and church, 5.4 per cent; communal, 34.3 per cent; private, 60.3 per cent. Farm homesteads were grouped in small hamlets amidst meadows and forests rather than in large villages. With each generation the family lots broke up into smaller lots, or had to support a larger number of persons. Periodical redistributions of communal land were not customary in Belorussia. T o the "one-soul lot" obtained in 1863, there were often five or six living souls twenty years later. The diminished farmer looked for some land to rent. This was available on the neighboring private estates, and often a tenant had again to till two acres for one of his own in order to make a living for his family and himself. With his outdated equipment and methods, he harvested hardly onethird of what his brother in East Prussia was getting from the same acreage. But even tenures were getting scarce. Large estates of absentee owners were not profitable, since labor was no longer free, and the sown area began to decrease. T h e country had to import more and more grain from other parts of the empire.^® Overpopulation of the rural areas naturally came to entail the concentration of useful land in the hands of a few stronger farmers, dispossession of the weak, and proletarization or emigration of the latter.®" T h e process was accelerated b y two factors: the impoverished gentry's selling out, and the government's establishing a Peasants' Land Bank to help the successful farmer. In the 1890's the economic situation began to show great improvement, and even the social structure of the country began to change. B y 1905, besides 26.5 million acres of communal land, the Belorussian peasantry already owned privately 8 million acres. Soon the large landownership had sunk from 48 to 27 million acres, and the small farmers' holdings went up from 22 to 40.5 million acres. In 1911, the average size of a peasant farm reached 48.6 acres. Five years later, the Belorussian peasantry owned 92.9 per cent of all the sown area in Smolensk, 91.8 in Vitebsk, 89.9 in Minsk, 86.9 in Mogilev, and 88.9 in Vilna provinces. Concurrently, 94.4 per cent of all horses, 94 per cent of all cattle, 98.4 per cent of all sheep, and 97.4 per cent of all pigs, were owned by peasants. While the sown area had decreased by about 20 per cent since the abolition of serfdom, the over-all yield of crops in 1913 was three times higher than that of i860. B y 1917 the cycle had almost closed: large ownership (state, church, and gentry)

THE

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33

owned 9.3 per cent, and the individual farmers 90.7 per cent, of all useful land in Belorussia.®^ Yet the picture was deceptive in many ways. While the number of cattle had doubled, its proportion to the population remained about the same as before.'^ Hardly 5,000 out of 800,000 farms used hired labor for any length of time in the course of a year.®® Only one farm out of five owned more than one horse, and no mechanical power was used anywhere except on a few large estates. The historian estimates that only "61 per cent of the Belorussians occupied in agriculture could indeed consider their position economically secure on the eve of the Russian Revolution." The remainder of the Belorussian peasantry formed the pauper class {batraki.) From 16.5 per cent in 1897, their number had already grown to 26 per cent of the total rural population of the country. About one third (37.3 per cent) found temporary employment on farms; others went into day labor, or domestic service, or simply hung around.®® Presently, social and economic differences had sharpened to a degree the Belorussian rural community had not known before. The Town Unfortunately the city and the town were not able to absorb the surplus manpower. Growing and prosperous in the sixteenth century, the town had gone into a decline with the expansion of the "golden liberties" of the rural gentry (szlachta). Landlords, envying and fearing the successful burger, were trying to keep him down as a social and, eventually, political menace. Townsmen were forbidden to wear silk and furs, to drive in luxurious carriages, or to show any other marks of social distinction. The policy of price ceilings, high tariffs, and other restrictions ruined business. Theoretically, larger cities still enjoyed the Magdeburg privileges, but the people sought in vain the protection of the law. Squeezed between the manor and the village, the urban middle class began rapidly to disintegrate and, in the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, thousands of urban families emigrated abroad.®® A century later there were hardly four hundred thousand inhabitants in all the seventy-nine towns and cities of the Northwestern Provinces, with one-eighth of that number in the city of Vilna alone. In the small mestecko — half town, half village — the nonagricultural population made up hardly 7 to 10 per cent of the total. The proportion reached 13.4 per cent in 1913, but one should not overlook the fact that only seven out of seventy-six towns and cities registered at that time could count more than two thousand families.®^ In the country the manor was either Polish or Russian, a few shopkeepers were Jewish, and the mass of the population was the Belorussian-speaking

34

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peasantry. In the towns that proportion was reversed. Indeed, the urban community consisted almost entirely of non-Belorussian groups : Russian officials, Polish gentry, Jewish businessmen, and a rather small number of Belorussian-speaking workers and domestic servants. In fact, the Jews made up 43.5 per cent of the total population in the city of Vilna, 63.7 per cent in the city of Grodno, and up to 90 per cent in lesser cities and towns. The Jewish populations were not permitted agricultural occupation. Consequently, small trade and artisanship were almost entirely in their hands. They lived in closed communities, cultivated Yiddish, and did not mix freely with the gentiles unless educated in Russian schools, which was not often the case. The poetry of Bialik, stories by Sholem Asch, paintings by Marc Chagall and Mane Katz, give an idea of their life in that part of Europe.®^ This lent a peculiar color to the Belorussian mestecko, and often to larger cities. The traveler was depressed by the view of dilapidated houses and slums on both sides of the muddy street, dominated by a few official buildings and a church. In larger cities, a few paved avenues and an anemic public garden enlivened the landscape. Most townsmen kept a cow, a few pigs, and some poultry in their back yards, and lived off their own vegetable gardens all year round. In the business section one would see a long row of untidy shops, basement stores, public stalls and booths, and peddler stands "selling anything they had been able to get hold of on a commission basis, and owning nothing." Even in Vilna and in Minsk, "one could not find a single store which might deal in anything else than the left-overs from Poland and Russia." Somewhat contradicting this description is the fact that there were as many as 35,308 licensed trade shops in 1908, with an annual turnover of 270,000,000 rubles, that is, about 7,60c rubles per shop. True, the bulk of trade was concentrated in twenty-three cities or towns, and the cities of Vitebsk, Vilna, and Minsk alone absorbed one-third of the total. It is also significant that the total trade turnover was three times as large as that of national industries.®® Belorussian industry began in the eighteenth century when Count Antonius Tiesenhausen started a textile plant in Grodno, which he meant to be " a scientifically organized and managed enterprise." The project came to employ 3,000 workers, but ended in " a tremendous financial crash." Yet it greatly benefited the country in that several foremen hired by Tiesenhausen in Europe remained in Belorussia after the collapse of his enterprise. They offered their skills to the wealthy landlords, and a few new industries appeared on private estates, some of which have continued into the Soviet times simply changing the title of ownership.®®

THE

TRADITIONS

35

Belorussía exported lumber, flax, and honey, and imported grain, salt, herrings, finished products, and a few luxuries such as wine and furs. The economy had a predatory character. Lumber was floated down to the Baltic and Black Sea ports, while only 13 per cent of the annual cut went to the country's own mills.®^ In fact, most local industries consisted of small distilleries on private estates, a tiny glass factory here, a textile workshop there. Only in the Grodno region were there factories able to process 1,500,000 pounds of native wool. Before the Revolution, Bialystok, a city with a population of 50,000, was the industrial center of the country. Although the total production of native industries reached 98,000,000 rubles in 1 9 1 3 , the per capita output hardly exceeded i c rubles, the equivalent of $5.00 at that time.®^ The general census of 1897 registered 20,000 rural artisans in the six Belorussian provinces. Primitive in their equipment and technique, they helped the farmer to continue in natural economy well past the first years of the Soviet Revolution. In the meantime, the first groups of urban proletariat began to form and, in 1 9 1 3 , they represented in Belorussia about 3.5 per cent of the total number in the empire. Although the tendency toward concentrating capital and production had been growing in the empire, small industries prevailed in Belorussia. On the eve of the Soviet Revolution, there were 10,000 industrial enterprises employing together fewer than 70,000 workers. On an average, the industrial manpower was distributed 6.56 men to one enterprise. Industries were specialized in the following manner in Minsk, Mogilev, Vitebsk, and Smolensk provinces:

Industry Food Textiles Wood Minerals and ceramics Paper Animal Products Chemicals Metallurgy Others Total

Per cent increase since I8Q3

Enterprises

Workers

4,016 284 261 683 SS 532 2,140

10,007

36.6

5,574 3,993 6,180 1,686 2,469

72.7 283.4 107.7 91.0 62.8 243.8 166.1

31 45

3,735 i,3SS 1,236

8,047

36,23s

77-4

Altogether, the proportion of the population occupied in industry was considerably smaller than in .the whole of European Russia, where it was 1.43 per cent of the total population. In Belorussia it did not ex-

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ceed 0.5 per cent of the population, and it is significant that a considerable proportion of that number were Russians.®® Except for an obscure agricultural college in Mogilev province, there were no institutions of higher learning in the country before the Revolution of 1917. Secondary schools followed the general Russian pattern and existed in the larger cities only. Very few in number, they were accessible only to the children of the better-off families, while the Jews were subject to restriction irrespective of their economic status. In the rural areas, schools were rare and what few there were offered instruction in Russian, not in the native idiom. The literacy rate for Belorussia was the lowest among the peoples of European Russia, though a few decades before the Revolution programs of self-education and traveling libraries had been launched by rural cooperatives in many parts of the country.®^ Poor communications and the need of child labor on the farm limited their benefits.®® In general, cultural activities were concentrated in Vilna, Minsk, and two or three other cities, while the rest of the country dwelt in poverty, stagnation, and indifference. It will be useful to retain this picture while studying the currents which stirred the Belorussian political waters.

3 THE ORIGINS We generally think of a man's nationality as referring to a given political state. But in central and eastern Europe the concept of nationality is divorced from that of citizenship. Such current concepts as the Carpatho-Russian, Lusatian Sorb, Lemko, Jewish, Gypsy, Cossack, and other "nationalities" refer not to national status, but to racial, tribal, linguistic, or other ethnic groups, and have reference to the frame of mind rather than to political facts. The common terms "Tatar nationality," "Ukrainian nation," and so on, simply point to a different degree of group-consciousness in the process of self-determination which may eventually, though not necessarily, result in a separate "statehood." ^ Belorussians have passed, in this respect, through the usual stages. They first became conscious of their differences from others in their spoken idiom, then in their customs and beliefs, and, finally, in their historical origins. Along with the growing recognition of differences from others came the realization of a certain unity within the group. But it was not primarily from immediate observations that the sense of unity sprang. It was the awakened consciousness of history and manifest destiny that became the force behind the movement. Indeed, memory of a common historical past has proven to be the most compelling factor in promoting the movements of national self-determination which have swept Europe in the course of the last hundred years. Where the historical past was inadequate, appropriate myths have been created to give the movement the meaning and djmamics of a national revival. It is essential, therefore, to see what the modern Belorussian thinks of his past and what, for that reason, he claims for the present and expects from the future. The Racial Theory The Belorussians consider themselves the oldest and purest branch of the Slav family, tracing their origins to three ancient Slavic tribes:

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the Krivici, Dregovici and Radimici. These tribes, at the dawn of history, lived in the upper reaches of the Western Dvina and the Dnieper, and along the banks of the rivers Pripet and Sozh. They are believed to have been the autochthonous population of present Belorussia, "having come from nowhere, and having mixed with no other tribes." 2 Whether or not the Slavs were the original inhabitants of the Dnieper valley is a controversial question. There is, however, no doubt that the territory of Belorussia was settled in prehistoric times. Archeological investigations have uncovered numerous camps of neolithic man in the vicinity of Vitebsk, Vilna, Minsk, and Mogilev. In Polesie there are remains of prehistoric pile dwellings. Soviet archeologists have discovered camps of the paleolithic period near Berdyz, in Gomel' province (1926), and near Juravici on the Pripet near Mozyr' (1929) ; still other findings have been more recently described. Not only was the region inhabited in ancient times, but there is evidence that the density of the prehistoric population was greater in this area than in other parts of the Slavic East.® The question remains who these people were. Racial distinctions for that period are not clear. Herodotus refers to the Budini, a people dwelling in northern Scythia "in forests where there are large lakes," presumably the territory situated between the Pripet and Dnieper rivers. Philologists believe that the word Budini is a variation of Vudini, Venedt, Veneti, Vendi, known to Tacitus and later identified as Slavs (Jordanes, Fragonarius). Consequently, Niederle, Safarik, and some other authorities regard the Budini as the most ancient of Slavic tribes, who may indeed be the remote ancestors of the present day Belorussians.^ The antiquity of the Belorussian stock seems to be well established. It is more difficult to demonstrate its purity. Modern Belorussian writers contend that through their entire history of descent from the first Slavs, "the Belorussians did not mix with other tribes." This, says U. Ihnatoüski, "was not true of the Great Russians and Ukrainians, who lived under such circumstances that it was impossible for them to keep their ancient ethnic type. . . But as far as the Belorussians are concerned, we know that the Turko-Mongol avalanche did not touch them, and they never lived with Finnish tribes as neighbors." He concedes that "Lithuanian and Polish blood may have mixed with the Belorussian," but this influence "was negligible" and, after all, "the Lithuanians were Aryans like the Belorussians." One can see in this a reflection of well-known Polish racial theories (Potocki, Duchinski) advanced in the nineteenth century and revived in German literature after World War I.® The implications were not at first realized in the USSR, and Ihnatoüski's book, in spite of some factual errors.

THE ORIGINS

39

was recommended for use in the schools. In Poland, however, his concepts were judged "no longer satisfactory to Belorussian society." When the Soviets also realized their mistake, the historian paid with his life for his excessive zeal in creating a national myth.® The inflated nationalism strove to prove that the ancestors of the Belorussian nation were not only the purest Slavs, but also the most cultured Slavs. A serious obstacle, however, was the account of the eleventh-century Kievan chronicler who described them as follows: They lived in the forest like any wild beast, and ate unclean things. They spoke obscenely before their fathers and their daughters-in-law. There were no marriages among them, but simply festivals in the villages. The people gathered together for games, for dancing and other devilish amusements, on which occasions the men carried off wives for themselves, and each took any woman with whom he had arrived at an understanding.'' Belorussian historians point to the fact that the same chronicler, while "besmirching the cultural life of our ancestors," also indicated the existence of many cities in the region, and that therefore "life was not confined to the forest." Ancient foreign observers, including the Byzantine writers and Arabian travelers, agree on this point. The city of Polock is mentioned in the Scandinavian sagas. The city of Vilna existed as early as the twelfth century, and Polish historians place its founding in the tenth or even the ninth century. The city of Minsk (Mensk, Menesk, Minesk) is first mentioned in the chronicles in 1066, but recent archeological findings point to its existence in prehistoric times. Civilization of the cities situated along the Varangian trade route cannot have been much different from that of Kiev or Novgorod. Evidence to this effect is found in excavations of countless mounds. It has been said that "the objects found in burial mounds of Polesie are made of more precious material, and are more varied in form, more intricate and even more artistic than those of the present day made by the people in the same region" (Zavitnevic). No modern student will quarrel with the Belorussian historians on this point, although he may not accept their far-reaching generalizations. Along with the Budini, Herodotus also mentioned the Nervy, whom Karski believes to have been Slavs and others consider Finns (Niederle, §achmatov). No one, however, includes in the Slavic groupings the Stavanes of Ptolemy, a tribe which lived "on the Boristhenes" (Dnieper). The Cimmerians — a race of mysterious origin — also dwelt in this region, and they have left their traces in such Belorussian family names and toponymies as Kimbary, Kimbarovici, Kimbarovka, and others (O. Tatur). Non-Slavic tribes, like the Jatvagi, roamed and traded in the area. Huns and Goths also wandered through the land. The Primary Chronicle mentions the Goliad', a non-Slavic people who

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lived between the Krivicans and Radimicans on the rivers Ugra and Drotva.® The population of Belorussia was by no means homogeneous at the time when its written history begins. Archeological findings indicate that in the eighth to eleventh centuries at least two different races lived in the area and buried their dead in the same graves. Later, Tatar emigrants and prisoners of war settled in considerable numbers among the Lithuanians and Belorussians, and many of their descendants may be identified today. Czech, Polish, Russian and Ukrainian, Latvian, German, and Greek traders and farmers settled in the country, and the Jews formed majorities in many cities and towns. Indeed, a cursory glance at history will show that in the areas which came later to be called black and white Russia, Slavic blood was mixed with Gothic, Tatar, Finnish, Lithuanian, Polish, Jewish, Swedish, and German. In fact, physical anthropologists see in the Belorussians as many as nine different racial strains. The racial theory nevertheless has been revived in postwar Belorussian literature. The writers (in exile) insist that the Belorussians represent "a pure Balto-Slavic blend," possibly with "some Germanic (Nordic) admixture"; that their biological structure has determined the people's "national character and mentality," and that it may explain their "political sympathy for the Baltic States" (Scandinavia, Latvia, Lithuania) on the one hand, and their "historical aversion" for Russia and Ukraine on the other.® The Polotian Rus — Legend and History In the middle ages, the Eastern Slavs were known as Rus\ a term which included both the people and the country. In Latin documents, the land was referred to as Russia, sometimes as Ruthenia or Russinia. When a more specific geographical or ethnic designation was necessary, the name of the principal city was used: Kievan Rus', Polotian Rus', Novgorodian Rus', Muscovite Rus', and so on. In time, the city principalities became so numerous that they lost all significance as political divisions. Then new terms appeared to designate larger regions, or old terms assumed a broader meaning. Western Russia, before it came to be called "white," was thus referred to as Polotian Russia, from Polock, its strongest and most advanced principality. In the Nikon chronicle there is a statement to the effect that in the ninth century two Scandinavian knights, Askold and Dir, conquered Polock and wreaked havoc on its inhabitants. From this, the Belorussian historian has deduced that "the legend that the Varangians were invited to rule over the Slavs does not apply to us." Unlike Novgorod, the land of Polock "did not need help from strangers to put their house in order."

THE ORIGINS

41

In the last quarter of the tenth century, Rogvolod (Ragnvald, in the Scandinavian sagas) ruled over Polock. The chronicle contains no information regarding the origin of this prince. It is not known whether he was a direct descendant of the local ruling house or whether he was himself a Varangian. Dovnar-Zapolski, who admits that Rogvolod probably was a Varangian, believes that he could not have been a member of the house of Rurik. Indeed, the Russian Primary Chronicle tells us that in 860-862 [Rurik] "assigned cities to his followers, Polock to one, Rostov to another . . ." It might very well be that not all of the retainers of Rurik were of Scandinavian origin; the old documents supply no evidence either w a y . " Prince Vladimir of Kiev, a descendant of Rurik, killed Rogvolod and his sons, but married his daughter, Rogneda (Ragnheid). Four sons and two daughters were born of this marriage. The oldest son was Iziaslav. According to tradition, Rogneda attempted to kill Vladimir at night to revenge the death of her father. ("It is evident that it was not completely safe for a Russian prince to keep even his wife near him, if she was from Polock," remarked a Belorussian historian.) Vladimir seized his sword, but the young Iziaslav took the part of his mother. Delighted at the daring of the child, Vladimir gave him the principality of Polock, and the princes of Polock from that time on all were known as "sons of Iziaslav" or "grandsons of Rogvolod," as distinguished from the house of Rurik elsewhere in Russia. Kiev was given by Vladimir to his son Jaroslav, born of a different mother. Wars between the "sons of Iziaslav" and the "sons of Jaroslav" ensued and went on for several centuries. The Belorussian historian Ihnatoüski insists on the "dynastic difference," and notes it as late as the fourteenth century. Thus the "first independent Belorussian State" was created (Ihnatoüski). Under Vseslav (1044-1101) it grew rich and expanded at the expense of its weaker neighbors. Trade relations were maintained with Greeks, Arabs, Scandinavians, and Germans. Wars with Kiev and Novgorod on the one hand, and with Livonia on the other, continued with varying success. Jaroslav twice drove Vseslav from Polock. But Vseslav, described in the "Tale of Igor" as a king vested with magic powers, managed to return to his native city. He ruled for fiftyseven years, and after his death Polotian Rus' went into decline. In 1084, the wars of Vladimir Monomach destroyed Minsk, "leaving neither calf nor cow, but only charred ruins." Finally, Prince Mstislav of Kiev drove out the Iziaslav dynasty and installed his own sons and relatives as rulers. The land deteriorated and the cities were deserted. The peasantry were taken into slavery and sold on the markets of other Slavic principalities, and in Greece and in Asia. But in 1132 the citizens of Polock rose and drove out the "foreign princes." The

42

BELORUSSIA:

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popular assembly {vece) called back the Iziaslav dynasty, the "grandsons of Rogvolod." After the death of Vseslav II, the people, reluctant to have another prince, selected thirty elders and turned the principality into a republic (ca. 1190). About this, the historical sources agree. Belorussian writers, however, insist that the tradition of the vece was particularly strong in the Polock land. As a matter of historical fact, written evidence of the vece is scant, and the city of Polock occupies no prominent place in it. It is also doubtful that the wars of that time were "wars of political independence," since each faction fought for its own local prince, and there were in the twelfth century as many as fourteen independent princes in the Minsk region alone. The consciousness of being Belorussian, or even of being Polotian in a broader sense, could not, of course, have existed in that period.^^ Historical skepticism of this nature, however, is powerless to affect a national myth. Belorussian historians cling to a theory that may be summed up as follows : 1. A thousand years ago the Belorussian people were already politically independent. 2. The tenth to thirteenth centuries were a period of struggle between the native Polock dynasty and the predatory Princes of Kiev, "foreigners by blood and in custom." 3. This period was distinguished by an unusual cultural development in the territory of Polock. The twelfth century produced the glorious names of Euphrosyne (Pradslava) of Polock, Clement Smoliatic, Cyril of Turov, Abraham of Smolensk, and other writers. Local monasteries, libraries, and luxuries were not inferior to those of Kiev and Novgorod. Indeed, for two centuries Polotian Russia was "iÄe center of Eastern Slavic culture." 4. The earliest period of Belorussian history was characterized by the dominance of "democratic ideas" in the societal structure of the country; there were "no class divisions and struggle, and the keynote of the period was social equality." "We know of no other Slavic tribe in which these characteristics were so well developed as in our own ancestors," says Dovnar-Zapolski. For many years such a concept of early Belorussian history was taught in schools in both eastern and western Belorussia. Eventually it was replaced by textbooks more congenial to the Soviet and Polish political theories respectively. After World War II, it was revived with new vigor by Belorussian emigrants from both the Soviet Union and Poland.^® The Lithuanian-Russian State The Belorussian interpretation of the next historical period, the fourteenth to eighteenth centuries, is rejected by the Poles, half-

THE ORIGINS

43

heartedly accepted by the Lithuanians, and supported, with some reservations, by the Russians. West of the land of Polock dwelt the Lithuanians, wild and pagan tribes. They successfully resisted Christianization by both the Germans and the Poles, and in the thirteenth century they became politically organized. Their princes, although illiterate and uncouth, were daring and shrewd military leaders. They invaded the land of the Krivicans, annexed Vitebsk, and took a number of other old Russian cities. The city of Polock regained its independence from the Lithuanians, but then fell for a time into German hands. When the Germans attempfed to impose the Roman Catholic faith on the Orthodox population, the latter turned to the pagan Lithuanians for assistance. The Lithuanians obliged and conquered Polock from the Germans. What happened immediately after that is not clear. But at the end of the fourteenth century the entire land of Polock was annexed to Lithuania. Other Russian lands were incorporated later, and soon the new LithuanianRussian state reached its greatest extent (1350-1430). By the middle of the fifteenth century it included the following cities and lands: Vilna, Grodno, Kovno, Suvalki, Podolie, Volyn', Minsk, Mogilev, Vitebsk, Smolensk, Kiev, Cernigov, Ekaterinoslav, Cherson, Orel, and parts of Kaluga and Tula; the political boundary stretched from the Baltic to the Black Sea, and the easternmost Lithuanian posts were situated only sixty-five miles from Moscow. The Belorussian historians claim that the western Russian principalities united with Lithuania of their own free will — either by dynastic marriages or by agreements made to protect themselves "from their restless and greedy eastern neighbors" ; at any rate, they were not "conquered" by the Lithuanians (Dovnar-Zapolski). Indeed, many Russian princes and their bodyguards sought refuge at the Lithuanian court. The very growth of a political state "in dark pagan Lithuania was inspired by the Russian emigrants of that time" (Ihnatoüski). There is truth, though perhaps not the whole truth, in this story. The Lithuanians lived in the forests on the lower Niemen, the lower Dvina, and their tributaries.^^ They were organized in small clans, gathering together from time to time for military campaigns, or to defend themselves against their neighbors. In the middle of the thirteenth century, Prince Mindovg (Mindangas) stood at the head of the decimated, badly organized tribes. It is quite probable that emigrants and refugees from West Russia, who were better educated and more experienced in military matters, actually aided the unification and construction of the Lithuanian power. In fact, it expanded more rapidly than could possibly be warranted by the primitive culture and the numerical strength of the people. At the time of Grand Duke Olgerd (Algirdas), Lithuanians constituted only "one-fifth of the

44

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whole population of the state." A few decades later their rule extended over all the cities formerly held by the "sons of Iziaslav," as well as the southern patrimonies of the "sons of Jaroslav." Eventually, Russian lands constituted nine-tenths of the territory of the Grand Duchy. In order to manage this vast Slavic world, the Lithuanians themselves adopted "Russian culture and the Russian language." In 1323 the Lithuanian capital was moved from Novogrodek (Novgorodok) to Vilna. The city was divided into five sections. The Russians occupied the center and the eastern, or "the greatest and the best parts" of the city; the Lithuanians dwelt in the north, the Germans and Jews in the west; and "merchants of all nationalities had their places of business in the southern part of the city." A traveler described the capital as being "as large as the city of Cracow in Poland, with houses built among orchards and vegetable gardens, and with two strong fortresses, one on the top of the hill, and another down in the valley; Tatar settlers live in the suburbs which are assigned to them; they cultivate their land in our fashion and also trade in the city although they speak their own tongue and believe in Mohammed." The capital reflected the multinational character of the state, and the Belorussian historians insist that "our ancestors, the most advanced element in the city, occupied a prominent place in the political and economic Hfe of the country." They even believe that "the ruling class of the state was not native Lithuanian, but rather was descended from those Russian princes who, at the beginning of the previous period, fled to Lithuania to avoid the confusion which prevailed in Polotian Russia at that time" (Ihnatoüski). It was indeed true that Russian was the official language of the Lithuanian state, that Russians had political equality with Lithuanians, and that Grand Duke Olgerd called himself Rex Litvinorum Ruthenorumque. Western Russian principalities maintained their traditional individuality and government, which was guaranteed by charters: "The monarch will not destroy the old, nor introduce anything new." It seemed that Russia was at that time growing west, not east, of the Muscovite border. "Russian letters and arts were blooming in Vilna, and peace and freedom reigned there" — while Kiev lay in ruins, Novgorod was torn by internal dissensions and Moscow still struggled under the Tatar yoke. The state was Lithuanian "in name only." " Whether the western Russian lands were incorporated into the Grand Duchy by violence or by consent, is irrelevant. Actually no single pattern of expansion could have accounted for the rapid growth of the new state. The Lithuanian princes were excellent military leaders as well as shrewd politicians. What is important is that the Russian-Lithuanian union broke the traditional ties politically and

THE ORIGINS

45

culturally uniting eastern Slavdom. The Russian nation was now forming around two political centers, Vilna and Moscow. Lithuania and Poland By the Krevo Act of 1385 the Lithuanian-Russian state was joined to the kingdom of Poland, which union was sealed by the marriage of Olgerd's son, the Grand Duke Jagiello, to Queen Jadwiga of Poland. Jagiello, son of a Lithuanian father and a Russian mother (Princess Yuliana of Tver), gave his written bond that he would unite his possessions forever with those of Poland, be baptized into the Roman Catholic faith, and have his subjects baptized. Legally, "the LithuanianRussian state seemed to have disappeared completely as an independent entity, and to have become part of the Polish political system" (Ihnatoüski). Only a few nobles and princes, however, not even all the brothers of Jagiello, accepted the Roman faith. The country as a whole rejected their lead and the Russian lands remained Orthodox, the Lithuanian, pagan. Eventually, King Jagiello was forced to allow the Grand Duchy to retain its political freedom. In 1388 he gave the Lithuanian throne to his brother Skirgailo, a man of Russian culture. Four years later. Prince Vitovt (Vytautas), cousin and life-long rival of Jagiello, allied himself with the Germans and besieged Vilna. In order to assure his own safety and peace, the King was forced to give the Grand Duchy away to Vitovt in exchange for a rather vague promise that Lithuania would "assist Poland with arms when and if need should arise" (Act of Ostrov, 1392). Skirgailo was moved to Kiev, and after his death Vitovt annexed his lands as well. It is true that in 1410, Vitovt, fresh from a Tatar defeat on the river Vorskla, recognized his subservience to the Polish king and promised that the Grand Duchy would be returned "after his death." Victory over the Germans at Gruenwalden (1410) again changed the situation. In 1413, at the Conference of Horodlo, it was mutually recognized that Lithuania and Poland were each sovereign states, and that the Grand Duke was equal to the King in dignity, honor and power. A Lithuanian Council of State (Rada) was established, similar to, but in no way dependent on, the Polish Senate. The dynastic bond was interpreted as follows: if Vitovt died first, Jagiello was to succeed him on the Lithuanian Russian throne; if Jagiello died first, Vitovt, and not Jagiello's son, would succeed him as King of Poland; after the death of both, the dynastic union would continue, but it simply would bind Lithuania "not to choose a Grand Duke without the consent of the Polish King," and the Poles "not to elect a King without the advice of Lithuania." Eligible candidates, of course, were understood to be confined to the House of Jagiello.

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T h e Russian lands of the Grand Duchy were ignored by the Charter and, in fact, no Russian prince and not a single noble of the Greek Orthodox faith was invited to the Conference at Horodlo. Presniakov interprets this fact in the sense that the West Russian principalities were united to Lithuania in the person of the Grand Duke, and were not considered as incorporated into the S t a t e . " T h e clauses of the Horodlo Charter, however, were not long observed by the Lithuanians. After Vitovt's death, they elected Svidrigailo, brother of Jagiello, to the ducal throne, and in so doing did not ask the advice of the Poles. An armed conflict loomed, and hostilities had already begun when Svidrigailo was assassinated. He was succeeded b y Vitovt's younger brother, Sigismund I. T h e dynastic tie with Jagiello's house was not restored until 1440, when Jagiello's younger son, Kasimir, well known for his interest in Russian language and letters, was elected to succeed Sigismund I. With Kasimir's subsequent election to the Polish throne, the union with Poland become personal again. Once more it was disrupted after his death and restored a decade later by his son Alexander. T h e only political tie that endured was the fact that constantly the Lithuanian Grand Dukes were elected Kings of Poland.* During this period, several attempts were made to bring both countries closer together, notably in 1401, 1413, 1447, 1451, i 4 S 3 , 1501, 1564, and 1567. T h e dates show that, under threat from Moscow or Livonia, Lithuania moved closer toward union, but as soon as the danger vanished, she returned again to the old order. When, in 1501, a treaty was concluded in Melnik providing that the joint ruler of both states should be chosen by a common assembly {sejm), the Lithuanians refused to ratify the act and repudiated the ambassadors who had signed it. The principle of sovereignty and independence was solemnly confirmed in the "privileges" of 1492 and 1506, and was embodied in the constitutional law of 1529, which is known as the First Lithuanian Statute. T h e law was revised and expanded in 15641566 (Second Lithuanian Statute), and Sigismund I I August took an oath binding himself and his successors to recognize the autonomy of the Grand Duchy with its own government, money, army, and laws. For 184 years, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, while acknowledging * The Lithuanian and Polish successions were as follows: Russian-Lithuanian State Vitovt (Vytautas), 1392-1430 Svidrigailo, 143с>-14зГ Sigismund I, 1432-1440 Kasimir I, 1440-1492 , , Alexander, 1492-1500 Sigismund II, 1506-1548 Sigismund III August, 1548-1572

Kingdom of Poland j

f S

Jagiello-Wladislaw II, 1386-1434 Wladislaw III, 1434-1444 as Kasimir IV, 1447-1492 Jan-Albrecht, 1492-1501 Alexander, 1501-1506 as Sigismund I, 1506-1548 as Sigismund II August, 1548-1572

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a common dynasty with Poland, had successfully defended its political and cultural independence.^® The year 1569 was a turning point. In that year, Sigismund II August forced Lithuania formally to renounce her independence. The Lublin Union The significance of the Lublin Act is a point of sharp dispute among Polish, Russian, Lithuanian and Belorussian scholars. The Poles maintain that the two powers merged voluntarily into one, with a single government, and Polish literature praises Sigismund for his wisdom in bringing about the unification to the advantage of both countries. The meager accounts of the Lublin meeting which appear in Polish chronicles corroborate this view, and it has become generally accepted in Western Europe. Consequently, during the Polish revolt of 1830-31, Polish émigrés in Paris contended that "all these lands, under the banner of Poland, have for centuries constituted a national and political whole, unquestioned and unquestionable." The theory still holds that "a community of spirit, customs, and historical traditions" continued to exist "throughout the partition of the common fatherland" up to our time. Today, it forms the basis of Polish claims to the territories of historic Lithuania, including the city of Vilna and the western parts of Belorussia and Ukraine. For some time this interpretation was also accepted by Russian statesmen and scholars. Reversing policies of Catherine II, the Emperor Paul I inaugurated a process of re-Polonization of the provinces torn from Poland-Lithuania by his mother. Under Alexander I, the city of Vilna became a center of Polish culture, and the education of the natives was entrusted to the Poles. The geography textbook required in Russian schools read that the Poles constituted "the absolute majority of the populations in the Kingdom of Poland, and in the provinces which have been detached from it" (K. Arseniev). Subsequently, however, documents unearthed from the Lithuanian archives brought forth a new historical view.^® As early as the 1840's Salvandi noted: "The Lithuanians signed the Act of Union for exactly the same reasons that they raised walls and built fortresses arouçd Vilna. Nevertheless . . . the two states and their courts stood as far apart as ever." What did actually happen in Lublin in 1569? Pressed by the "Muscovite expansion under the terrible Tsar Ivan IV," the Grand Duchy of Lithuania "overcame the ancient antipathy . . . and undertook the obligation of not separating its fate from that of Poland" (Salvandi). The two states were welded into one under the name Rzecz Pospolita Polska, that is, Polish "Republic," or, as it is sometimes translated now, Polish "Commonwealth." The head of the new

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political entity was to bear the title "King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania and Russia." He was to be elected by representatives of the Commonwealth assembled in Warsaw, and crowned at Cracow. Consequently, the Lithuanian and Russian gentry lost the right both to elect separately the Grand Duke and to hold separate assembly {sejm). From then on, only the common {spolny) Sejm would exist, convening in Poland. Furthermore, all decrees and laws in force in the territory of the Grand Duchy which were not in accord with the act of Union were to be repealed. First of these to go were the restrictions concerning the acquisition of real estate and the holding of office by Poles. The political boundary and the tariff barriers between the states were abolished. The territories of Volyn', Podolie, and Polesie were separated from the Grand Duchy and declared "lands of the Crown," that is, incoφorated into Poland proper, while Livland was to become dependent on both the Kingdom and the Grand Duchy. The rights and privileges of the Lithuanian Russian nobility and lower gentry were confirmed by the King-Grand Duke, and a uniform currency was introduced into the whole territory of the "Commonwealth." The minutes of the Lublin Sejm present a dramatic picture of the debates. Lithuanian-Russian delegates were humiliated and distressed. Their representative, Jan Chodkiewicz, delivered a speech during which "even the Polish delegates were moved to tears." But the Polish nobility and gentry were adamant. The treaty was concluded "forever," without time limit or right to revoke. Actually, it was an act of "forcible incorporation into the Kingdom of Poland." ^^ The Third Lithuanian Statute Forced to accept the Polish terms, the Grand Duchy did everything possible to nullify them in practice. Hardly had the delegates returned to Vilna when the State Council (Rada) demanded the return of lands annexed by the Polish Crown. The Grand Duchy was even on the point of backing the demand with force, but it was discouraged by the general political situation which promised no chance of winning a war against Poland. The country had no choice but to accept the territorial losses, but it was still unwilling to renounce its liberties. A committee presided over by the Bishop pf Vilna, and composed of representatives of the nobility and townsmen, was set up immediately (1569) to revise the terms of the Union. At first Poland's strength and Lithuania's weakness did not favor their task. But, in 1584, at the Conference of Vilna a new constitutional law for the Grand Duchy (Third Lithuanian Statute) was presented to replace "the humiliating clauses" of the Act of Lublin. King Stephan Batory accepted it and promised to support it before the Spolny Sejm. He died before he was able to. take action.

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The interregnum which followed gave a new opportunity to the Lithuanians. They demanded that the promise of the late king be fulfilled and the Act of Lublin revoked. The Poles refused. The Vilna government then presented the Poles with a jait accompli. Acting as if there were no Union at all, they began negotiations for peace with Moscow, and for election of the Muscovite Tsar Fedor Ivanovich to the Grand Dukedom. In the meantime, the Polish Sejm selected two kings at the same time, Sigismund of Vasa and Maximilian of Habsburg (1587). Lithuania did not recognize either of them, but sent ambassadors to both, informing them of Lithuanian demands (Vilna Conference of November 8). Sigismund defeated Maximilian in the battle of Byczyna and ascended the Polish throne. At his coronation, a Lithuanian embassy again presented the November demands before recognizing him as Grand Duke, and Sigismund, weakened in the internecine war, accepted. The Third Lithuanian Statute restoring the pre-Lublin liberties was immediately enacted in Vilna (1588).^® Supported by the king and bearing his signature and seal, the statute did not receive the consent of the Poles. Poland, however, was not in a position to enforce the Lublin Act. It remained on paper, and the Third Lithuanian Statute became the actual law of the territory of the Grand Duchy. Although the Statute of 1588 did not assert claim to the lands surrendered to Poland at Lublin, Articles I, IV, and V affirmed the sovereignty of the Grand Duchy as a state independent from Poland, and guaranteed its territorial integrity. Polish nationals were again forbidden to own real estate and to hold office in the Grand Duchy. The law, in fact, treated them as foreigners without the rights or privileges of citizens. The statute further outlined the basic political structure of the state, governed by the Grand Duke together with the representatives of the people (Rada). It codified fundamental laws, organized the administration and the courts, revised the civil and criminal codes, and introduced legal procedures, quite independently of Polish law. The Spolny Sejm of the Polish-Lithuanian-Russian "Commonwealth" established in 1569, was transformed into a Conference between two sovereign states, presided over by the common monarch. The Conference was to meet alternately in Poland and Lithuania. The Lithuanian Russian delegates also had the right to meet separately, and they did so throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries until the time of the Partition. Laws affecting both countries were enacted separately in the kingdom and in the grand duchy. Power was exercised in Poland in the name of the king, and in Lithuania in the name of the grand duke. Command of the armies was separate. In fact, the Lithuanians often threatened military defense of their rights against the Poles.

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For two centuries, there were no common ministers either for internal or foreign affairs; no common military command, except the monarch himself; and no common superior court. Actually, the King of Poland was Grand Duke of Lithuania not ex officio but by separate election by the Lithuanian people. When the King-Grand Duke resided in Poland, he was surrounded by Polish ministers and his Polish court, and his ambassadors represented him in Lithuania. When he moved to Lithuania, the Lithuanians formed his court; Poles were left in Warsaw and their ambassadors came to Vilna on state business. The boundaries between the kingdom and the grand duchy were reestablished and jealously observed. They were checked several times by mixed commissions of both states. In fact, and in law, the Third Lithuanian Statute abolished the "Commonwealth" and restored the earlier personal union under the King-Grand Duke. In the middle of the seventeenth century, even this union was threatened as the grand duchy contemplated the dissolution of the dynastic tie with Poland in favor of a similar union with Moscow or with Sweden. The political independence of the Grand Duchy was well known in the Slavic east. Moscow diplomacy in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries kept the two states meticulously separate and pursued different policies toward them. The first common executive organ for Poland and Lithuania was the Commission for Popular Education, founded in 1 7 7 3 . But even this became possible solely because the Commission "did not have the character of a state power" and was only a "legal entity" to which was entrusted the management of property formerly belonging to Jesuit educational institutions (Kutrzeba). It is worth noting that this occurred in the period between the first and second partitions of Poland. A year later, the Permanent Conference {Rada Nieustajqca) was set up to coordinate better the policies of both states. Even the Polish historian has recognized that only the Constitution of M a y 3, 1 7 9 1 , fully embodied the idea of Polish Lithuanian Union (Kutrzeba). That constitution was annulled by the Targowice Confederation ( 1 7 9 2 ) , and thus it became merely a document "expressing the plans and wishes of a part of the gentry in a country already in its death throes" (Lappo). Although the enactment of the Third Lithuanian Statute was a unilateral decision, and the Lublin Act was never repealed, it is evident that the fusion of the Polish Kingdom and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania projected in 1569 was, as a practical matter, never consummated. But however unsuccessful or incomplete the Union may have been politically, it undoubtedly paved the way for cultural absorption of the country by Poland.^^

4 BETWEEN THE WEST AND THE EAST In the Grand Duchy of Lithuania neither the government nor the population was interested in the promotion of Lithuanian letters.^ Russian was the official language of the state, confirmed in the following terms: "The scribe shall write legal acts with Russian characters and in Russian words only, and not in any other tongue or idiom." ^ There were many reasons for adopting Russian as the language of public affairs. For one thing, it was the language of the large eastern dependencies. The Germans in the west were the common enemy. The Poles, though less aggressive, blocked the way for expansion to the south. On the other hand, the Russians, torn by internecine wars in their own principalities or threatened with invasions from the east, often sought Lithuanian protection and alliance, offering the Lithuanian princes their swords, higher culture, and daughters in marriage. The matrimonial policy was by no means a negligible factor in the territorial expansion of the Grand Duchy. Princes Mindovg, Gedemin, Olgerd, and Vitovt all had Russian wives. Olgerd married a daughter of the Prince of Vitebsk after whose death he became Prince of Vitebsk himself. In a like manner, his brother Lubart became Prince of Volyn. Olgerd's second wife was Yuliana of Tver. Vitovt married Anna of Smolensk. Finally, Grand Duke Alexander married Elena, daughter of Ivan I I I of Moscow. Toward the end of the fifteenth century, no fewer than sixteen Russian women were married to Lithuanian princes. There is no historical evidence that Russian wives were forced to learn Lithuanian. They brought with them to Lithuania their own servants and friends, and Russian was spoken both in the home and at the court. According to the Gustyn' chronicle under the year 1246, Grand Duke Mindovg and his boyars were the first to adopt the Christian faith. Whether this was of the Orthodox or the Roman rite is controversial. Orthodoxy, however, was making more converts among the Lithuanian nobility, for, once the Russian idiom was mastered, it was more natural to worship God in Slavic than in Latin. True, the Chris-

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tian zeal of the early Lithuanian converts has been doubted by historians. But it is significant that Mindovg tried and Vitovt succeeded, if only temporarily, in establishing an autonomous Orthodox Church in their lands ( 1 4 1 6 ) , and that the Lithuanian religious terminology has preserved until now traces of its Russian origins.

Western Russian — Francis Skoryna For centuries West Russian writings formed a common stock with the literature of Kiev, Novgorod, and Moscow. There is a distinction, however, between religious and secular writings. While the former long remained uniform for all the Eastern Slavs, the latter soon began to absorb the local peculiarities of the common speech. Indeed, the legal acts and documents show considerable differences in the spoken idioms of Vilna, Smolensk, Novgorod, Lvov, and Moscow as early as the thirteenth century.® In the fifteenth century, elements of the western vernaculars can already be found in both secular and religious literature. Writings become invaded with words and phrases borrowed from Czech and Polish, and sometimes from German and Lithuanian. Finally, West Russian became "one of the most distasteful mixtures one can imagine" (Bodianski). Yet the natives continued to call it Russian, considering it a more advanced and elegant form than that used in Moscow and Kiev at that time. In Moscow they described the language as Lithuanian, in order to distinguish it from their own form of Russian. In the Ukraine, its written form was known as Russian, and the vernacular as Lithuanian. The Poles referred to both by either name. The term Lithuanian, of course, referred to the geographical location of the idiom, which, in fact, was Russian. Local scholars Lavrenti Zizani (Vilna, 1 5 9 6 ) and Meleti Smotricki (Evje, 1 6 1 9 ) gave it a grammatical organization which was used in all Russia until the Lomonosov reform ( 1 7 5 5 ) . In 1483 the first Russian printing press was set up in Cracow, and in the same year the first Russian printed book, the Cvetnaja Triad', appeared. Belorussian historians like to stress the fact that this happened "exactly twenty-eight years after the first Bible was printed in Nuremberg, twenty-two years before the first Polish, and eighty years before the first Russian book came off press in Moscow" (Lastoüski). Four more books were printed there before 1 4 9 1 , but circumstances were not very favorable to Cyrillic printing in the Polish city. Consequently, literary activities moved to Bohemia where a Lithuanian College founded by Queen Jadwiga had existed since 1397. There Francis Skoryna published his Russian version of the Bible, using the famous Venetian edition for the vernacular translations ( 1 5 1 7 ) . Since Francis Skoryna was the first to introduce West Russian provincialisms

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into a religious text, he is considered "the father of West Russian literature." Skoryna was born about 1490 in "the glorious city of Polock" into a family of well-to-do merchants and was baptized into the Greek Orthodox faith.^ Polock was at that time one of the wealthiest cities in the country, paying to the state treasury an annual tax of 400 kop hrosej, while the city of Minsk (present capital of Belorussia) paid only 6o.® Francis received his education first in Vilna, then in Cracow, Prague, and Padua, and, after extensive travel abroad, returned to his native land with a Medical Doctor's degree. His vernacular translation of the Bible was reprinted in Vilna by the brothers Mamonic, who set up the first printing press there in 1525. Skoryna subsequently abandoned medicine and dedicated himself entirely to translations of religious texts into "the simple Russian language." His purpose was to make them more comprehensible to the common man, "since even many of the clergy were no longer able to understand Church Slavonic very well." β The demand for literature in the vernacular soon became very great. Printing presses sprang up in Polock, Minsk, Mogilev, Nesviz, Zaslavl', Evje, Suporosl', and other places. There were about forty at one time. The books were translations of religious and secular works from Church Slavonic, Czech, Polish, Latin, and German, and soon some original works, written or compiled by local clergy, merchants, and gentry, appeared. The gentry were engaged primarily in polemical literature directed now against Poland, now against Moscow, and showing strong Russian Lithuanian patriotism.'' Religious works, of course, were more conservative in style than the secular writings. Legal acts and documents were particularly free from conventional bonds. The "Magna Charta" (Zemskie privilei, 1457) and the Common Law Code {Sudebnik, 1468) are stamped with differences in vocabulary and syntax which received literary recognition only a century later. The chancellery style and the literary style, however, interacted in spite of the efforts to keep them apart. Intercourse with the Western powers was increasing and new ideas were invading the country. Terms for their expression in Russian had to be borrowed from the Western languages, particularly from Polish, since most foreign contacts came to the Grand Duchy through Poland. Already Skoryna's translations were marked with "barbarisms" inacceptable in any other part of the Slavic East.® Eventually West Russian naturally became that "distasteful mixture" which shocked the Russian purists (Bodianski, Holovacki, Sreznevski), and permitted the Poles to treat Belorussian as tak bardzo do Polszcyzny zblizony dyalekt* * " A dialect so closely related to Polish," S. B. Linde, Pamiçtnik (1816), 126.

Warszawski,

V

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Under Sigismund I I August, the ideas of Martin Luther spread rapidly in the Grand Duchy in spite of the violent opposition from both the Roman Catholic and the Greek Orthodox churches. The ground was well prepared by earlier contacts with Central Europe. The Magdeburg Statute granted to the Russian Lithuanian cities in the course of the fifteenth century,* and certain privileges granted to the Jews in 1388, had created a rather strong and independent economic middle class. Their youth used to go West for education, if only for a few years. Typical were the stories of Michail Glinski, who spent twelve years studying military art in the armies of Albrecht of Saxony and Emperor Maximilian, of Ivan Sapieha in Rome, and of Prince Svirski, Francis Skoryna, and others who were granted academic degrees in Cracow, Prague, Padua, Iena, or Paris. These became zealous advocates of the Western way of life. Interrupted by wars, contacts with Novgorod and Moscow would often cease for decades. With its decrease in the East, cultural and business intercourse developed in the West. Poland and Lithuania offered a most cordial hospitality to the Hussites and, later, to other Christian heretics. Then, the Reformation came like a wind sweeping the country. The young Grand Duke corresponded with Zwingli, Luther, Calvin, and Melanchthon, and submitted a petition to Pope Paul IV to permit church services in Russian. Rejection by Rome led to an open revolt against the Catholic Church. The closest friends and advisers of Sigismund I I August, Prince Nikolai Radzivill, nicknamed "the Black," and his cousin Nikolai "the Red," whose sister was married to the Grand Duke, both went over to Protestantism with their families and all their servants. They founded an evangelical church in Vilna and chapels with parsonages on their country estates in Nesviz, Olyka, Kleck, Brest, and other places. A printing press was established in Nesviz to reprint Calvin's works. The Radzivills were followed by Kiska, Chodkevic, Sapieha, Рас, Volovic, Visnevecki, Oginski, Gorski, and other lords and magnates who only recently were the pillars of either Orthodoxy or Catholicism. The Chancellor Jan Kiska took to Unitarianism, sparing neither time nor money in the teaching of Socinus. This period was marked by an increase in the use of the vernacular, which in turn was invaded by foreign words and phraseology. The Catechism published by Simeon Budny in Nesviz (1562) contained the most venomous attacks on both the Greek Orthodox and the Roman Catholics and became a very popular book of the time. Protestant • T h e cities of Brest and K o v n o (Kaunas), in 1 4 0 8 ; Troki and Grodno, in Polock, in 1 4 4 4 - 1 4 3 6 ; Belsk and Vitebsk, in 1 4 9 5 ; Minsk and Borisov, in 1496.

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schools were opened and theological discussions in the common idiom became fashionable. T h e dangerous trend was countered by an increase in Orthodox and Catholic literature, the latter chiefly in translations from the Polish. But the defense of the established churches reluctant to use the common idiom was not cleverly handled. T h e y continued rapidly to lose their flocks. In Novogrodek alone, out of six hundred Orthodox families of the gentry only sixteen remained faithful. For the first time in Russian Lithuanian history there was not a single Catholic among the members of the Senate {Pany Rada). B y the end of the century over seventy Christian sects of different denomination could be counted in the country. The Brest

Union

It was, then, only natural for the Orthodox and Catholic clergy to plan an alliance against a common enemy. Historically, they maintained rather friendly relations in the Grand Duchy. The municipal laws required an equal representation of the two faiths in the city councils. T h e y were admitted on an equal footing to guilds and associations of various kinds. Political restrictions against the Orthodox, occasionally enacted, had no bearing on the eastern provinces of the Duchy. T h e Orthodox clergy in the Grand Duchy took a sympathetic attitude toward the Union of Florence (1439) and would not have rejected it save for the direct pressure of Moscow. Both the Orthodox and the Roman Catholic authorities were dismayed at losing ground and Valerian Protasevic, bishop of Vilna, called on the Jesuit Order for assistance. T h e Jesuit fathers knew their business. T h e y did not try to force the lost sheep back into the flock, but concentrated on the younger generation. Jesuit schools and colleges mushroomed. In a very short time their network included Vilna, Polock, Vitebsk, Smolensk, Nesviz, Minsk, Grodno, Orsha, Mstislavl', Mogilev, Slonim, Dvinsk, Pinsk and Sluck. Missionary work used the local idiom and met the "heretics" on their own ground. In a most spectacular way, it scored victory after victory. Families split. Four children of Radzivill the Black, the most active supporter of Calvinism, went over to Rome. T h e y were followed by Ivan Chodkevic and his son, former protectors of the Lutheran church in Vilna. Under pressure from members of his family. Lev Sapieha, Vice Chancellor of the Grand Duchy, let himself be converted, and with him a large number of the nobles and gentry returned to the Catholic Church. Within five years 6,000 persons in the city of Vilna alone, who had previously abandoned the Catholic or the Orthodox faith, now shifted to Rome.® T h e Orthodox church had no share in this spectacular victory, but

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it succeeded in holding its own among the provincial gentry, townsmen, and peasantry. Peter Skarga, President of the Jesuit Academy in Vilna, tentatively invited the Orthodox to reinstate the union of Western and Eastern Christianity promoted by the Council of Florence. The higher Orthodox clergy, impressed by the smashing success of Rome, thought that the union might improve their own position. Eventually, the Metropolitan of Kiev and the bishops of Luck, Vladimir, and Cholm declared themselves for the union. T h e y met with the opposition of the bishops of Lvov and Przemysl, as well as of the lower clergy, and negotiations continued secretly for some time. Finally, in 1595, Kiril Terlecki and Ipat Pacey, bishops of Luck and Vladimir respectively, went to Rome on a journey sponsored by King Sigismund I I L In the name of the Orthodox Church of the Grand Duchy, they negotiated with Pope Clement V I I I the terms of the union. The Orthodox clergy would be permitted to worship in Slavic, to maintain their eastern rite and canons, and to discard celibacy; in exchange, they were to accept the dogmatic innovations of the Roman Church and pledge allegiance to the supreme authority of the Pope. Clement V I I I ordered a medal stamped with the words Ruthenia receptis, while Sigismund I I I consecrated the Union by a royal decree in both the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The Orthodox congregations, however, demanded a church council to discuss the essence and the terms of the Union before they would accept it in good faith. T h e council was called in the city of Brest, in 1596, but the parties were not able to come to an agreement. T h e y held their councils separately and ended by anathematizing each other. Yet, the royal decree was not repealed and the Vatican declared the Union consummated. The Orthodox who accepted the Union were given the protection of Rome and were commonly to be known as "Uniates." Those who rejected it were to be considered "schismatics," their churches closed and services prohibited in cities and towns, though still tolerated in rural communities. The Polonization of the Gentry The Brest Church Union was a logical sequence to the Union of Lublin. What the Poles were not then able to attain politically, they achieved through Brest. Lithuania and Poland, politically independent though they were, began to merge into a cultural and spiritual whole. T h e rivalry of Polish and Russian cultures can be traced back to the days of Jagiello, but Lithuanian contacts with Poland commenced at an even earlier date. Prince Gedemin ( 1 3 1 6 - 1 3 4 1 ) married one of his daughters to Kasimir, son of the Polish K i n g Wladislaw Lokietek, and another to Boleslaw, Prince of Masovia. But the impact of foreign

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husbands on Lithuanian ways of life was not to be compared to that of foreign wives. Indeed, no Polish influence is noticeable in Lithuania until Jagiello married the Polish Queen Jadwiga in 1385, and, on that occasion, adopted the Roman faith. Three years later a Roman Catholic Pole was installed bishop of Vilna, which office remained Polish, until it was decided in 1431 that only natives could hold that see. T h e natives reacted unfavorably to the infiltration. T h e Poles were neither trusted nor liked. Y e t Lithuanians were becoming more Polish in their manners and their speech. Russian culture, having been cut off from its sources, lived on its past glory. On the other hand, the golden age of Russian Lithuanian literature tended to move toward the West. And the w a y to the treasuries of Western culture led through Poland. Modern legislation, such as the establishment of serfdom in 1457, organization of the gentry {szlachta), replacement of the ancient Russian system of vece by the Magdeburg Statute, and certain novelties in the legal procedure, though enacted in the Russian language, bore a noticeable Polish stamp. T h e language itself, as we have seen, had become adulterated with Polish words and idioms, since neither Church Slavonic nor the West Russian vernacular could keep pace with the lexical and semantic changes produced by the constant flow of foreign ideas into the country. Still more awkward had become the situation of the Orthodox Church. T h e Russian language was protected by law; the Russian faith was not, since its legal status was equal to that of all other religious faiths in the Grand Duchy. It was only natural that the Catholics should develop more missionary zeal in a country they wanted to conquer than the Orthodox, whose utmost ambition consisted in being able to hold their own. A s a rule, the Catholic missionaries were Polish, and the infiltration of the Polish language and manners went apace with the spreading of the Roman faith. In 1498 a Bernardine monastery was founded in Polock, the stronghold of Russian Orthodoxy. Three years later the Dominicans established themselves in Vilna. These were followed in 1565 by the Jesuits. Trained in the West, they offered the native youth a better education in their schools. For many, conversion to Catholicism became an initiation into a higher form of civilization and a mark of distinction. T h e third wife of Sigismund I ( i 505-1548) was Italian and a devout Catholic. Toward the end of his reign, fifty-six Roman Catholic monasteries and churches were functioning, while eighty Orthodox ones existed at that time. T h e Lithuanian Sejms in 1542 and in 1544 complained that, despite the legal restrictions, all the offices in administration and in courts were given to Poles. When the Reformation was accepted, it also came through Poland, and translations from Polish again invaded the country. Naturally there were people who wanted to read the ori-

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ginals and discuss the ideas in the language of their origin. Among the upper classes, Polish began to assume the part which French came to play in Russia three centuries later. Catholicism not only regained its former position but made spectacular headway. In 1563 the prohibition of the Poles' acquiring real estate in the Grand Duchy was repealed. Reaffirmed by the Lithuanian Statute of 1588, it never became effective again. From 1569 to 1596, forty-four new Roman Catholic churches and monasteries were founded and endowed with large land estates. In Catholic homes, Russian began to give way to Polish. Ivan Melesko, the Smolensk chamberlain, complained at the Warsaw Sejm, in 1589, that "there are many of us here who, being of our own bone, have clothed it with the flesh of a dog." And Smolensk was deep in the heart of the Russian lands. B y the end of the sixteenth century little indeed distinguished the Lithuanian Russian gentry from their Polish counterpart. Fighting against political absorption by the state, they became the most effective agents of its Polonization. The Union of Brest broke the last barrier. "Having accepted the spiritual supremacy of Rome, the upper classes abandoned their native Church and disassociated themselves from the people; they moved even closer to Poland in religion and culture, and began to forget their national character" (Lappo). The Untales and Schismatics The peasantry did not count for much, since, presumably, they would follow their lords in due course. But the urban middle class, which had grown in number and importance in the course of the last century, remained immune to Polish Catholic propaganda, and its resistance had to be broken at any cost to make the victory complete. The historians agree that the period of religious persecution which followed the Union of Brest was comparable to the Inquisition, although other parallels can be as effectively drawn from more recent times. A Uniate monastic order, copied on that of the Jesuits and dedicated to Saint Basil, was founded by Fathers Rutski and Kuncevic in 1617. With the tacit consent of the government, the Basilians undertook the unification of the country under one spiritual shepherd. Zealots worked with fire and sword. Orthodox services were prohibited and Orthodox churches turned over to the Uniates. The schismatics were persecuted and publicly humiliated. In Vilna, for instance, they were forbidden to carry their dead out of the city through the gates commonly used, even by the Jews and by the Tatars, but were directed to the gates through which only refuse and garbage were carried. "Monks who rejected the Union were arrested, beaten up and thrown in jail, and even water was refused them." " In Polesie, Archbishop

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Kuncevic ordered the dead Orthodox dug out of the Christian cemeteries, and their, bones thrown to dogs." Open revolts broke out in different parts of the country. The Basilians turned to the state authorities for protection and assistance. The Chancellor of the Grand Duchy, although himself a devout Catholic, tried to talk reason to them, and the letter he sent to Archbishop Kuncevic is worth quoting at some length: . . . I have no wish to argue with Your Eminence, but seeing with what obstinacy and disregard for reason you defend your convictions, I am forced to reply to your ill-founded letter . . . In the Sejms, you say, voices now are heard which are harmful not only to the Union, but the Roman Church as well. Whose fault is this? . . . Y o u violated people's consciences, closed their churches so that they should perish without divine service and rite, like the heathen . . . The King has ordered you to unseal and reopen the churches in Mogilev, of which I advise you hereby according to his order. Should you fail to carry this out, I shall myself, by order of the King, issue orders to have the churches returned to the Orthodox so that they may worship God according to their faith. The Jews and the Tatars are allowed to maintain their synagogues and mosques in the Grand Duchy, and you close down Christian churches! . . . M a y the Almighty bless you with the spirit of humility and brotherly love. [Lev Sapieha, March 12,1622.] ^^

But the situation needed more than admonitions. Coercion continued and violence knew no recess. "Orthodox priests were no longer allowed to appear in the streets lest they be jailed; children died unchristened, people lived unwed, and the old died without extreme unction; their bodies were not buried, but thrown to dogs in the field." The great symbol of Orthodox piety, the image of the Holy Virgin placed over the Ostrabrama gates of Vilna City, was handed over to the Catholic Order of Carmelites. A convent founded by Saint Euphrosyne in the twelfth century in Polock was turned into a Uniate institution. Finally, "the Holy See stretched both its wings, the Catholic and the Uniate, over the Grand Duchy, and the Orthodox Church ceased to exist as an organized body" (Lappo). The Resistance Movement To the common people, the new proselytism appeared Polish rather than Catholic or Uniate and hurt their national pride as well as their religious feelings. The faithful began to organize their own defense, and it assumed two forms: Orthodox "fraternities" in the urban centers, and armed uprisings in the countryside. The original purpose of the fraternities was the financial support and legal protection of religion, the improvement of the lower clergy, social work, and general education. They built schools, published service books, and supported homes for the sick and aged. Their member-

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ship included enlightened townsmen and gentry, and even a few provincial magnates and overlords. With the Union of Brest, they became centers of resistance to Polonization. Orthodox churches and monasteries which had been closed down in cities were reopened on private estates. Prince Olelkovic built a monastery and a school on his lands at Sluck. Prince Ostrozski invited Greek and Yugoslav bishops to a monastery he founded on his estate at Stepancy to provide for the needs of the disorganized Russian clergy. He also founded a Theological Academy, with library and printing press, and supported more than six hundred congregations out of his own purse. Furthermore, he and his friends tried to promote an alliance of the Orthodox and the Protestants, and in 1599, representatives of the West Russian Orthodox and Calvinist congregations met in the city of Vilna in an attempt to coordinate resistance to Polish Catholic and Uniate proselytism.^^ The fraternities spread in the cities, where the Magdeburg laws gave them protection. As a rule, the local chapters included gentry, merchants, workers, and peasants on an equal footing. Any adult of the Orthodox faith could become a full-fledged brother. Activities were partly open, partly underground. In 1624 the Basilian Order reported to Rome that under the cover of social work they [the Orthodox] have organized Fraternities in all the cities. They make their own laws, and appoint officials. They impose a special tax on their own estates, make regular collections at their weekly gatherings and may, when need arises, levy an extraordinary tax. . . They have multiplied rapidly, and now they act as if they were a state within the state, which is very much worrying both ourselves and the Government.^® But this was an unequal struggle. For the reasons outlined before, the West Russian aristocracy were abandoning their people. Among those who went over to the side of Rome now were the sons of that very Chamberlain of Smolensk who denounced Polish culture as "the dog flesh clothing our Russian bones," two sons of Prince Olelkovic, and even the youngest son of Prince Ostrozski, the great protector of the Orthodox faith. Other noble families followed, and by the middle of the seventeenth century, the fraternity movement faded away, although some sporadic activities continued through the following century.^® The peasantry, however, attempted to protect the faith and language of their fathers. On the eve of the Brest Union, Nalivajko, son of a furrier on the estate of Prince Ostrozski, organized armed bands against "the oppressors of True Religion and of the Russian people." In 1595 he captured Sluck, Mogilev, Recica, and Pinsk. Finally, in 1602 he was captured and tortured to death in Warsaw. He was succeeded by Savula in 1600, Summa in 1 6 1 8 , and a number of others. In

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1 6 2 3 the mob was led to an open revolt in Vitebsk. T h e Uniate archbishop Kuncevic was killed and his body thrown into the river. Consequently, Pope Urban V I I I urged King Sigismund "to revenge the martyr" and make "the heretics understand that there is no quarter for such an abominable crime." T h e King obliged. Civil liberties in Vitebsk were abolished and one hundred persons condemned to death. A wave of terror swept the countryside and kept it quiet until a rumor spread that the Ukrainian Cossacks under Bohdan Chmelnicki had arisen against the Poles and defeated the King's army ( 1 6 4 7 ) . T h u s inspired, the peasants armed themselves to the number of 100,000 men, and in a sweeping drive overcame Gomel', Loev, Pinsk, Mogilev, and Mstislavl'. T h e government moved the army led by Prince J a n Radzivill against them. But defeated in one place the rebels would emerge in another, and soon the cities of Sluck, Bychov, Cernobyl, Recica, Bobrujsk, and M o z y r fell into their hands. Wherever they passed, the Catholics and Uniates were murdered, their churches burned, private homes plundered and destroyed. When, finally. Prince Radzivill suppressed the revolt, he retaliated b y a wholesale extermination of the Orthodox populations in the cities of Mozyr and T u r o v . " T h e popular uprisings produced no spiritual leaders of any stature and hardly can be described as a religious war.'® In fact, the Soviet historians point to the socio-economic and the Belorussian historians to the national rather than religious character of the struggle. T h e religious, economic, and nationalist aspects can perhaps be reconciled in that the peasant revolted against authority which oppressed him economically in the person of the landowner, who was, in most cases, Catholic in faith and Polish in his w a y of life. But it is significant that there was no evidence of plundered estates being divided up or otherwise appropriated. N o wishes for social and economic reforms were formulated. In the rare occurrences when the aims of the revolt were stated, they invariably read, " F o r defense of the Orthodox faith and the native speech." Since the faith and the speech determined nationality, the movement can very well be described as one of "national emancipation," and, in fact, it was treated as such by the Poles. T h e government was forced to make concessions. A t the coronation of Wladislaw I V in 1 6 4 2 , a royal decree was issued legalizing the Orthodox faith and confirming the rights of the Russian speech. Although the social and economic status of the peasantry had not changed, the movement subsided, and forcible Polonization was resumed. T h e Orthodox were again deprived of their rights of election to the Sejms, and presently they also lost the rights of election to the local tribunals and public offices. Together with the Protestants, their legal status in 1 7 9 2 was restricted to that of the Jews. T h e Sejm decreed the death penalty in 1 7 6 4 for anyone who should renounce Catholicism for any

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other faith and approved the proposal of Bishop Soltyk in 1766 that "anyone who should dare to defend the non-Catholics be declared an enemy of the people." Since 1697, the Russian language had been banned from courts and offices: "The scribe must write in Polish, and with Polish characters only." In fact, the Western Russian literary standard had long been dead before its burial. The educated Russians in the Grand Duchy saw in their mother tongue only the language of the lower social strata. An attempt by the Academy of Peter Mohila in Kiev to restore its purity and glory failed. The ecclesiastical writers continued in the Church Slavic tradition, while the educated split into two hostile camps, one following the lead of Warsaw and the other that of Moscow. "Only the toiling classes have remained true to their native speech. Polish lords closed to them the doors to science and literature. A writer could not develop from the people, and actually there was none" (Harecki). Occasionally there still appeared religious and school drama, or intermedes, in which the educated spoke in Polish and the commoners in Belorussian. The Uniate clergy published the works of Metropolitan Lev Kiska written in the vernacular. All this, however, was not literature but " a series of chance occurrences appearing from time to time against the dark background of general decline in our letters" (Ihnatoüski).

The Muscovite Factor Moscow had never ceased to look on the West Russian lands as parts of the Rurik patrimony, temporarily in foreign hands. Ivan I I I , his son Vasily I I , and grandson Ivan IV made very clear statements to this effect. Moreover, since the fall of Constantinople to the Turks ( 1 4 5 3 ) , Moscow considered itself as the natural protector of the Orthodox faith anywhere, and the Orthodox in the Grand Duchy often turned to the Grand Dulces of Moscow for assistance and protection. Ivan I I I was the first to interfere actively on behalf of "our brothers," and more than one war with Poland and Lithuania has since been fought in the interest of religion, or under the pretext of protecting it. In the war which followed the secession of the Ukraine from Poland, the Muscovite armies virtually occupied the whole Lithuanian territory ( 1 6 5 4 - 1 6 5 6 ) . The Uniate congregations were disbanded and the Catholic population was given a choice between adopting the Orthodox faith or leaving the country. In the meantime, on October 1 7 , 1656, a peace was negotiated upon the terms of which Tsar Alexius should succeed Kasimir after his death both as Polish King and as Grand Duke of Lithuania. The agreement was rejected by the Sejm, and war with Moscow was resumed. The Muscovite armies were finally driven from the country, but the Grand Duchy by the Treaty of Andru-

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sovo, 1667, had lost the whole province of Smolensk and the cities of Nevel, Sebez and Veliz to Moscow. The treaty contained a clause giving Moscow the right to interfere in behalf of the Orthodox in Lithuania and Poland, and this was confirmed again by the agreement of 1686. Subsequently, "there was not a single year when Russian ambassadors in Warsaw would not demonstrate to the Government of Poland that its treatment of the Orthodox populations was contrary to the obligations imposed upon Poland-Lithuania by the treaties." One may question the real motivations of the Moscow government, but the Orthodox in Lithuania and Poland liked to believe that their "religious brothers in the East" were not entirely indifferent to their fate. In 1767, five years before the first partition of Poland, the nonCatholic gentry and townsmen called a conference in Sluck to demand equality of Christian faiths, and asked Russia and the Western Powers for protection. Catherine I I supported their demands, and the Polish Sejm, succumbing to the pressure of the Russian Ambassador, granted the Orthodox complete equality of treatment with the Catholics. On the eve of the first partition of Poland (1772), Joseph Poniatowski reported to King Stanislaw that the populations in the eastern provinces were "obviously on the side of Russia," and, indeed, their reasons may have been other than only a common faith. Russia, however, treated the Catholics and Uniates very much as Poland treated the Orthodox: on either side there was little mercy for, or consideration of, "common blood." Neither was the common faith a really binding tie. During the war of 1654-1656, the Muscovite armies destroyed two hundred West Russian cities and towns. Though of the same church, the "liberators" did not get along very well with the natives. The City of Minsk, for instance, readily surrendered to the Orthodox tsar, and revolted against him a few years later. So also did the City of Vitebsk, in 1660. For two centuries hostihties continued almost without interruption, the native populations shifting from one side to the other, and peace treaties with Moscow were concluded only for periods of five, or six, or twelve, or "thirteen years and one half year" (Andrusovo). Peter the Great, in 1706, ordered the cities of Minsk and Vitebsk burned simply "because Karl X I I of Sweden stayed there for a month or so." Once the "glorious city of Polock" had 100,000 inhabitants and was larger and wealthier than London, but there were only 360 frame houses, inhabited by 437 Christians and 478 Jews in 1780. In modern Belorussian history books, this is described as "a typical result of Russian assistance to their brothers in faith against the Latins." Great as were the ruins wrought upon the country by the Muscovites, they might have been compensated for by Russian contributions in spiritual values, but the part of Moscow in the cultural life of the

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Grand Duchy was very small indeed. Modern Belorussian nationalism sums up this period as follows: 1. The Grand Duchy of Lithuania was predominantly Russian, and not Lithuanian, in population. The Lithuanians occupying the westernmost corner of the country were, in fact, a racial minority in their own state. 2. The term "ancient Russian" is generally used to designate common East Slavic literature in the eleventh to fourteenth centuries. In the Grand Duchy, a Western Russian, or "Old Belorussian," variant emerged which, in the fifteenth to sixteenth centuries, "eclipsed all Slavic literature." The purists may very well describe that language as "an artificial mixture of terms and phrases which no one could speak or ever did" (Holovacki), or as "a language of the upper social class subjected to Polish culture" (Sobolevski) ; the Belorussian scholars insist that it basically contained "all the phonetic and morphological characteristics of modern Belorussian" (Harecki).^^ 3. While the upper class and a large part of the middle class eventually adopted Polish culture, the masses of Belorussian peasantry "remained faithful to the oral tradition, through which they have brought their beliefs, customs and the spoken idiom over to our time" (Piceta). 4. Had it not been constantly weakened by wars with Moscow, the Grand Duchy might very well have held its own against Poland. The Muscovite policies were largely responsible for the decline and death of Western Russian culture (Ihnatoüski). 5. The Polish Lithuanian Union was similar to an anicent republic "with a small class of masters ruling over a class of slaves" (Piceta). But a union with Moscow would have been still more disastrous for the people, whose way of life was "completely and inherently incompatible with the social structure and moral climate of the Muscovite State" (Ihnatoüski). 6. All in all, "there was nothing in the glorious past of the Belorussian nation" which might suggest to modern Belorussia a feeling of sympathy or gratitude to either Poland or Russia: "Bitter reminiscences of the past turn the Belorussian away from both, with an equal disgust" (Lastouski).^® The student of history may disagree, but he could hardly convince the nationalist who claims political independence for Belorussia.^^

5 THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE Between 1772 and 1795 the territories of the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania were partitioned between Austria, Prussia, and Russia, and the Pohsh Lithuanian Union, or Rzecz Pospolita, ceased to exist as a political entity. T h e political boundaries that separated the Belorussian populations from Russia in the past had disappeared, but the Belorussians were not to form a separate unit within the empire; they were divided again, though along a different line. The territories received in Partition I formed a separate "Belorussian Government General" under the administration of Count Zachar Cernysev. Ethnically, their populations were not recognized as Belorussian or Lithuanian: persons of the Roman Catholic or of the Uniate rite were considered Polish, and those of the Orthodox faith, Russian. T h e latter were, for all practical purposes, assimilated by the natives, while the Poles were given certain privileges in education and self-government. T h e name Belorussian was used only in a geographical or. historical sense. Before Partition I I I , a large number of the Orthodox remained within the reduced boundaries of Poland. T h e imperial policy in their regard vacillated. A t first, Catherine I I consented to their exclusion from the Polish Senate and executive offices, the Spolny Sejm having not more than three non-Catholic delegates, mixed courts being abolished, and public burials of the Orthodox being forbidden in Poland ( 1 7 7 5 ) . Later she insisted that an Orthodox bishopric be established at Sluck, churches taken by the Uniates be returned to the Orthodox, and certain improvements be made in the position of the non-Catholic populations in general (1785). Instead of improving it, her interference rendered the situation worse. Suspicious of Russian expansion, the Polish government began to see imperial secret agents in every group whose political, economic, or cultural interests were supported by the court of St. Petersburg. In order to test their loyalty, Warsaw summoned the delegates of Polish Orthodox communities to a conference in Pinsk and suggested that the Orthodox Church in Poland leave the

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jurisdiction of the Holy Synod of Russia for that of the Patriarch of Constantinople. T h e delegates agreed, and in 1791 the religious tie with Russia was cut. This gave Russia one more reason for Partition II. In a letter of December 22, 1792, to the Russian Ambassador in Poland, Catherine II pointed to the "necessity of saving from oppression and corruption these lands and cities that once belonged to us, and were founded and ever since inhabited by the people of our blood and of our faith." This she did a few months later; a commemorative medal was minted in St. Petersburg representing a map of the "saved" regions with the words Ottorzennaja vozvratich ( " W h a t had been torn away, I returned"). Partition I I I followed two years later, and Russia conceded to Prussia a little wedge in the Belorussian territory at Bialystok. In 1807, however, the Bialystok district also was incorporated into the Russian empire by the Treaty of Tilsit. T h e political dreams of Grand Duke Vasily of Moscow and of tsars Michail and Alexius had been more than fulfilled. T h e whole territory of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and a sizable part of the Kingdom of Poland, were now Russian. The lot of the Belorussian population of the annexed territories, however, did not change in any noticeable way. Catherine I I extended to the inhabitants of these territories "all the rights and privileges that the Russian subjects enjoyed." T h e imperial government, however, never guessed that two different cultures had been in struggle in these regions, and even if it had known, " b y its very nature it would not have been able to base its policy on support by the peasantry and middle classes" (Dovnar-Zapolski). The government was seeking the support of the gentry who were either Polish or thoroughly Polonized. A s a result, paradoxical as it was, Polonization of the region increased under the Russian rule. In the words of a Polish nobleman, " W e feel as though we were still in Poland; life is even better than it was within the boundaries of the Commonwealth." Indeed, "there was no mention of the Belorussians or of the Lithuanians as a people distinct from the Pohsh in the literature, of that period." ^ In 1815, of the six provinces that formed the Grand Duchy of Warsaw, created by Napoleon, two were returned to Prussia (Poznañ and Bydgoscz), and the remaining four (Kalisz, Plock, Warsaw, and Lomza) formed the new Kingdom of Poland united to Russia in the person of Alexander I. T h e kingdom had its own government and parliament, its own courts, and its own army and currency. In fact, diminished Poland became to Russia what the Grand Duchy of Lithuania had been to Poland. Y e t there was a substantial difference. What was natural in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was somewhat out of date in the

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Age of Enlightenment. Russian policies were extremely mild and tolerant in Poland and in Finland, and no attempt was made to convert these peoples to the Russian way of life or to the Orthodox faith. On the contrary, they were granted more administrative and cultural autonomy than the Russians themselves. T h e y were allowed to rule the territory of the Lithuanian Belorussian provinces as if it were still their own. Paul I restored the Lithuanian Statute, and Alexander I the self-government of the local gentry (sejmiki). Against all expectations, the Jesuit college in Vilna was not discontinued but changed into a University and handed over to Polish scholars. Thus, Vilna was made the educational center of the annexed provinces, and the office of the curator of schools was given to Prince Adam Czartoryski, a scion of a Belorussian family completely Polonized. In schools, the Polish language "was taught by a senior instructor, while Russian was handled by an assistant having the same rank as instructors of foreign languages and of drawing." ^ Polish landlords, meeting periodically in the district assemblies {sejmiki), ruled the land as before, under the indifferent eyes of the Russian authorities. T h e Catholic Church, however, was taken under the supervision of the imperial Ministry of Justice, and the clergy forbidden "to make public use of any papal encyclic or statement before it had been examined and authorized by the Governor General and the Monarch himself." But, provided that they recognize "no authority beyond the boundaries of the Russian empire," the Catholics preserved all their former privileges, and were granted more. T h e Jesuit order, disbanded by Pope Clement X I V in 1773, for instance, continued in Belorussia by a decision of the Russian imperial court, and Jesuit colleges were opened in Mogilev, Mstislavl', Cecersk, Orsa, Vitebsk and Dvinsk, as well as nine grammar schools in other places. In 1812 they were placed under the control of the Jesuit Academy in Polock, which obtained equal status with the University of Vilna. The Orthodox populations were protected, of course, but the Roman Church was given "all assistance by the government in converting the Uniates to the full Roman rite." ' The Uniate

Church

T h e position of the Union Church had become very awkward indeed. It was leaning too far east in its ritual to please the Catholic West, and too far west in its dogma and practices to please the Orthodox East. T h e Orthodox looked at the Uniates as renegades, and mistrusted and disliked them even more than they did the Catholics. And the Catholics, though for different reasons, also mistrusted and disliked the Union, and treated it as a lower form of Christianity. Both to Russia and to Rome, as Paul I aptly put it, the Uniates were "neither flesh.

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nor fish, nor fowl." * Their congregations had been taken away from the jurisdiction of the Roman Catholic Archbishop, but, unlike the Roman Catholics, they were not granted a central administration of their own and were, in effect, pressed either to return to Orthodoxy or to turn completely Roman. Only three Uniate bishoprics thus were maintained in the annexed regions, while the Roman Catholics had six. The Union Church, however, had taken root among the lower classes. The clergy used the vernacular in their services and sometimes in their writings; they turned now against the Poles, now against the Russians, protecting the interests of the native as best they could. In a sense, the Union had gradually become a sort of national Belorussian Church, though one not yet conscious of its role. This was but another reason for both the Poles and the Russians to desire its dissolution, though neither wanted the other to benefit by it. After Partition I, over 1,500,000 persons returned to the Russian Orthodox Church. About whether the conversion was forced or spontaneous, the Polish and Russian sources disagree. But under Paul I certain restrictions were imposed on the Uniates returning to the Orthodox faith, and the movement slowed down. On the other hand, the Basilian Order, entirely Romanized by that time, urged pupils in their twenty-six schools to abandon the Union for the Roman Catholic rite. As a result, during the first two decades after Partition III, there were among the Uniates "perhaps as many Catholic as Orthodox converts, and probably more." ® The Polish Uprising of

18ji

Opinions differ as to whether the Russians or the Poles were responsible for ending the period of the benevolent attitude of St. Petersburg toward Poland. At any rate, the Russian policy soon began to take a new course. The change was promoted, perhaps even determined, by the formation of secret Polish societies, such as the szubravcy, filomaty, filarety, and others, in different parts of the country, and of the Patriotic Association in Warsaw ( 1 8 1 9 ) , all aiming at the restoration of Greater Poland. The Patriotic Association conducted secret negotiations with Russian conspirators, but the Polish claims proved incompatible with the idea of a Free Slavic Federation held by the Decembrists.® The Polish conspiracy was discovered and suppressed. Prince Czartoryski lost his position as curator of schools. The Jesuits had already been expelled from the region (182c), and all education was now put under the direct control of Russian authorities. Novosilcov, the new curator of schools, ordered Russian history, literature, and language to be given preference over Polish in the school curricula. The Uniates were encouraged, even pressed, to return to the Orthodox Church, and a gov-

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ernment decree forbade their conversion to Catholicism (1827). Those who remained faithful to Rome were now protected by law from the activities of Polish priests and teachers, and an independent Uniate College was founded on May 8, 1828. The Poles took this as an insult. Since they also had other serious reasons for discontent, an armed uprising followed, turning into an open war between the kingdom and the empire (1831).'' The insurgents' hope for assistance from the Western powers was deceived, and efforts to raise the Belorussian provinces failed. The revolt was suppressed, and its defeat precipitated the further Russification of the western lands. As the Russian language had been banned by the Poles from local courts and administration in 1697, so now was Polish by the Russians. Vilna University, the hotbed of Polish nationalism, was transferred to Kiev, and the Russian language, history, and statistics were introduced into its curriculum on an equal footing with Polish, eventually to supersede it completely. In the Roman Catholic seminaries instruction was to be given in Latin or Russian, and not Polish (1833). Out of 304 Catholic monasteries 197 were closed, and new Orthodox bishoprics were established in Vilna and Polock. Within two years, 1,714 Catholics and 122,416 Uniates, with 91 churches and 9 chapels, joined the Orthodox Church. In 1839, the Union was entirely suppressed. The use of the Belorussian vernacular, at that time still considered in St. Petersburg as a dialect of Polish, was prohibited. The Lithuanian Statute, misunderstood as a product of Polish culture, was abolished (1840). The Catholic Theological Academy was transferred from Vilna to St. Petersburg ( 1 8 4 1 ) . Finally, the very names of Belorussia and Lithuania were discarded and replaced by Severo-Zapadnyj kraj (Northwestern Province). The imperial government was not taking any chances. Surprised and frightened by the revolt, it now believed that anyone who was not Orthodox in faith and Russian in speech was an actual or potential enemy of the empire. Although the Belorussian masses had had no part in the Polish uprising, they suffered from repression even more, perhaps, than the Poles. The abolition of the Union Church was the hardest blow. It was preceded by a Uniate Council at St. Petersburg (1834), after which 1,305 Uniate priests demanded readmission to the Mother Church. Finally, on February 12, 1839, the Uniate bishops Joseph Semaâko, Vasily Lüzinski, and Anton Zubko met in Polock and agreed to sign a petition to Nicholas I to reunite them and their flocks with the Orthodox. This the Holy Synod of Russia gladly did, and a medal was stamped to commemorate the event.® Yet the country was far from united. By imperial decree (March 25), 1,500,000 Uniates were registered Orthodox, although no one had

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been asked whether he really wished it that way. Some local resistance developed, and fifteen Uniate priests were deported to Siberia. T h e unrest was quelled, but the church merger did not become more complete or sincere and the government decrees remained inoperative. T h e Polish gentry, intelligentsia, and business class continued to reign in the region. In schools, Polish soon was again taught as the first language, and Russian as the second. Roman Catholicism, freed from its ambiguous alliance with the Union, took deeper root. Everywhere, the Poles were regaining their former positions. In 1 8 5 5 , Metropohtan Semasko besought St. Petersburg "to send more Russian officials" to the country since all the offices and courts were "infested with Poles." But the government, again seeking the support of the landowner, could not help the situation.®

The Insurrection oj 186j T h e abolition of serfdom in the Russian empire ( 1 8 6 1 ) shook the ground under the feet of the local gentry and loosened their hold on the country. Once more the Poles rose against the empire. The revolt surprised the Russians and made even the liberals angry with the P o l e s . " First, it appeared that the "ungrateful Poles" not only wanted separation from an empire which had granted them more liberties than the Russians could afford for themselves, but they also claimed the poHtical boundaries of 1 7 7 2 , with "the Russian historical cities of Polock, Vitebsk, Minsk, Mogilev and T u r o v . " Second, it was found that the masses had remained loyal to the empire, and only "landlords, the gentry and the Polish-educated intelligentsia" took an active part in the revolt. Indeed, not only would the peasantry outside the ethnic boundaries of Poland not listen to the enticing promises of the Poles, but "they helped the Tsarist police to arrest the insurgents, and often they did justice themselves upon them." Wounded and disillusioned, the imperial government felt justified in suppressing the revolt with an iron hand.^^ There was no complete agreement and harmony among the insurgents. T h e revolt was inspired, and to a large extent organized, from Paris, where the Polish political emigrants formed two groups, the democratic " R e d Committee" and the aristocratic " W h i t e Committee." The Reds were headed by the historian Lelewel, and the Whites by Prince Czartoryski. Their common aim was the restoration of the Polish state as of 1 7 7 2 , but they differed sharply on social and economic reforms. E a c h group had its own supporters in the old country, as well as in the Lithuanian Belorussian provinces. Both parties were represented in the Central Polish Revolutionary Club in St. Petersburg, which played an important part in staging the insurrection. T h e Central National Committee defined the aims of the revolt as

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"complete independence of Poland, Lithuania, and Rus', indivisible parts of one Polish State" (March 3 1 , 1 8 6 3 ) . On July 4, Wladyslaw Mickiewicz, son of the famous poet, wrote to Napoleon I I I : "On ne peut pas plus concevoir la Pologne sans ses provinces méridionales que l'Italie sans Naples et la Sicilie" ( " T o conceive Poland without her southern [eastern?] provinces is as impossible as to. see Italy without Naples and Sicily"). And to a remark by Alexander Herzen that the populations should in the first place be asked whether or not they wanted to be Polish, he answered: " C e n'est pas plus utile que de demander aux habitants de Moscou et de Tver, s'ils sont Russes" ("This is as pointless as asking the inhabitants of Moscow and of Tver whether they are Russian"). According to that view, reconstituted Poland was to continue "its historic mission among the Belorussian and Ukrainian peoples." Later, this also was to be the Polish position at the Paris Peace Conference ( 1 9 1 9 ) , and it was to drive Poland to Minsk and Kiev in the PolishSoviet war of 1 9 2 0 - 2 1 . But the concept of a greater Polish State was opposed by the Lithuanian Section (Oddzial) of the insurgents, who aimed at a restoration of the Lithuanian Grand Duchy as of the sixteenth century. They wished union with, and not incorporation into, Poland. They were, in the first place, "Lithuanian," and not Polish, patriots, though hardly any of them spoke Lithuanian. The disagreement led to an open breach with the Poles. Originally the Oddzial had had on its seal the two coats of arms of Poland and Lithuania. In June the Polish symbol was removed, and the seal now read: " T h e Committee Governing Lithuania." Separation became formal a few months later, but the revolt was virtually over by that time.

Kastus'

Kalinouski

The man primarily responsible for the separatist trend was Kastus' (Constantine) Kalinoüski, whose name was eventually to become a symbol of Belorussian political independence. Son of a petty landlord in Grodno province, Kalinoüski studied at St. Petersburg University. As a student, he professed radical ideas and was an ardent admirer of the great Russian revolutionary Alexander Herzen ( 1 8 1 2 - 1 8 7 0 ) . After graduation, twenty-four years old, he came to Vilna looking for a job. Before he found one, he joined the local group of revolutionaries conspiring against the empire, allying himself with the democratic " R e d Committee." As the only native of Grodno province in that group, he was appointed military commissar of Grodno as soon as the insurrection broke out.^^ Although there is no evidence that Kastus' had ever practiced his radical ideas on the estate of his father, he spent his youth close enough

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to peasants to speak their idiom and understand their problems. He began his revolutionary activities by publishing a clandestine newspaper, MuUckaja Frauda (Peasant's Truth), in the Belorussian vernacular, filling every page with his own writing under different names. He advocated political autonomy of the ancient Lithuanian Belorussian lands, social equality, and vast land reforms." During the insurrection he succeeded in organizing about 1,700 men into small armed bands,^^ which were soon dispersed by the Russian police. Kastus' fled to Vilna, and was immediately given a leading position on the Lithuanian Insurgents Committee, the Oddzial. When, a short time later, all other members of the Oddzial were arrested or had fled, Kalinoüski became the "dictator" of the Lithuanian insurrection. For several months he was hiding from the Russian police, trying to revive the dying revolt. Finally he was betrayed by his own supporters and arrested. He was tried by a military court, and was hanged in Vilna on March 7, 1864. Before he died, Kalinoüski wrote from jail a note (zapiska) to the Russian authorities, telling the story of the revolt and explaining his own attitude (February 28). This is a moving confession of a sincere and confused youth. His political ideas are vague and naive and, in general, give little support to the myth that has been created around his name. He accepted his fate with resignation and humility. "With the conviction that I am not a criminal by nature, but by the force of circumstances," he did not beg for clemency.^® Kastus' Kalinoüski was a patriot who gave his life in the service of his cause. Although his name holds no prominent place either in official histories of the revolt or in the "memoirs" of the insurgents, it has grown to heroic proportions in modern Belorussian literature. The Belorussian writers emphasize the fact that he never shared the Polish aims of the revolt, but fought for the restoration of the Russian Lithuanian state of old. Poland was to him "only a natural ally in the liberation of his native land." To be sure, Kastus' described himself as a "Lithuanian," not a Belorussian, but he knew no word of Lithuanian and his organ, the MuUckaja Frauda, as we have seen, was published in the Belorussian idiom "suppressed by the Lithuanian Poles 166 years before." Thus, Kastus' life was "a most significant landmark in the history of Belorussian national revival," since he led the struggle "against both the Polish nationalism and the Russian imperialism." He failed because the Russians represented him as "an enemy of the Belorussian people, and hanged him as such a one." "The Belorussian rabble rejoiced . . . Yet, years have passed, and . . . today, flowers are brought to Kastus' grave from all parts of the Belorussian land." " This may not correspond exactly with historical truth, but a legend has been created and the anniversary of Kastus' Kalinoüski's death is a holiday for Belorussian nationalists.

THE RUSSIAN

EMPIRE

73

Russification The Russian authorities, taken aback by the insurrection, looked askance at everyone. Perhaps Kalinoüski's publications in the Belorussian vernacular were responsible for the fact that the punitive expedition of Muraviev treated the Belorussian population hardly any better than the Polish. The fact, however, that the peasants had not been active in the uprising against Russia could not pass unnoticed." Public opinion began to realize that populations annexed from Poland in 1772-1795, though largely Roman Catholic and Uniate, were not ethnically Polish. They were in fact "Russian" and that was the reason why they would not follow the Poles in the insurrection. The Den' of the Aksakovs and the Moskovskie Vedomosti of Katkov, the two most influential organs of Russian nationalism, did penance because they had overlooked the existence of "our brothers in blood as well as in faith." The term "Historical Lithuania" was now coined to distinguish the historical region from ethnographical Lithuania. The archives of the Grand Duchy had been opened to scholars a long time before, but their work had largely been ignored. Now a flood of books, monographs, magazine articles, and pamphlets invaded literature as if everybody wanted to know more about this region and its true relation to Russia. Linguistic studies established that the local vernaculars were "dialects of Russian," not of Polish. Ethnographers swarming over the country recorded folklore and found that it was different from the Polish while very similar to the Russian and the Ukrainian. For the first time the question arose whether religion could be a proper standard in classifying various groups of Slavs.^® Hard as it is now to believe, it took one hundred years for the Russians to discover that the lands annexed from Poland and Lithuania "were Russian indeed." " The result was twofold: ( i ) the Poles were completely eliminated from administration in the Northwestern Provinces, not solely because of their "disloyalty," but also and primarily because they were now seen as strangers to the native population, and (2) measures were taken to arouse the natives to the fact that they were truly "younger brothers of the Russians." After three centuries of Polonization, the populations now had become subject to Russification. The region was divided into six provinces {gubernii)·. Vilna, Vitebsk, Minsk, Mogilev, Kovno, and Grodno. It is curious that the provinces of Vilna and of Vitebsk were given coats of arms reproducing the historical symbol (pogon', pahonia) of the Grand Duchy, while the very name of Lithuania was to be discontinued.^" More Roman Catholic monasteries were closed, and the clergy put under the supervision of local administration. The use of Polish and Lithuanian was

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permitted only at home, and not in the schools. The peasantry were freed from obligations to Polish landlords contracted since the abolition of serfdom, and the law protected them from further abuses. In fact, land reform beneficent to the farmer was carried out with somewhat better care than in the rest of the empire. Along with the forceful Russification, a natural denationalization of certain segments of the Belorussian population could be observed. The gentry and intelligentsia, freed from Polish cultural tutelage, were now "Muscovized" and "Peterburgized" as quickly as they had been Polonized in a former age. In only one year, 1865-66, more than 30,000 nobles and gentry abandoned the Catholic for the Orthodox faith, thus passing, in their minds, from having been Polish yesterday to becoming Russian today. Among these were the illustrious families of Prince Radzivill, Prince Liubecki, Despot-Zenovic, Belinski, and others. The movement swept the country. Not only was Russian now the only language of administration, education, and law; like Polish in an earlier age, it had become a mark of cultural and social distinction. The Russian-educated class, however, did not attempt to carry the mass of the people over to a higher culture. The country continued to have the highest rate of illiteracy in the European part of the empire. The common people were left to local customs and beliefs and to oral tradition in literature. They were losing their national memory, revived at such cost during the Polish Lithuanian insurrection of 1863. When asked who he was, the Belorussian used to answer that he was neither Russian nor Polish, but tutejsi or tutasni (local), that is, one of the native race. He seldom used the term Belorussian, and when he did, he was rather ashamed of it. Indeed, what little he knew of civilization now was associated with "Russian" in his mind: "Deprived of all rights," says a Belorussian writer, "he began even to hate his mother tongue, and rejected it." ^^ Toward the end of the nineteenth century, the student would find the Belorussian group limited, geographically, to an area of local dialects overlapping now with Russian and Ukrainian, now with Polish, and, sociologically, to the lower strata of the native population.®^

б THE NATIONAL

SELF-DETERMINATION

Against the background outlined in the preceding chapters, the Belorussian movement of national self-determination began late in the nineteenth century.^ Its beginnings were vague and uncertain. The native tongue, generally recognized as a test of nationality, had no literary tradition, not even a written form of its own. Indeed, Polonized on the one hand. Russianized on the other, the Belorussians "were as if they did not exist at all as a people" (Cvikevic). The Polish

Writers

The glorious past of the Lithuanian Russian state and the Golden Age of West Russian literature had left no heritage; their memory was distorted, or entirely gone. The new middle class — the standardbearer of democracy and nationalism — had only begun to form in the empire, and was but embryonic in Belorussia. The concept of Belorussia as a nation rather than a region could come from no quarter in the country. When it did come, it came from the studies of alien scholars, Polish and Russian. Indeed, it had its origins in ethnographic research undertaken first in Vilna, then in Moscow, Kiev, and St. Petersburg. Scholars were to lay, or to rediscover, the foundations of Belorussian tradition, and writers adequately to articulate it, before it could be ready for political distribution. We may conventionally accept that epoch as the beginning of national self-determination which then pursued the usual course, from ethnic to literary, and from cultural to political, nationalism. The interest in Belorussian folklore was awakened by Polish collectors who looked upon it as a variety of Polish. A group of students at the University of Vilna published the first collection of Belorussian folk songs, transcribed according to the rules of Polish orthography. At first moved by curiosity, the group soon took up their studies more seriously, and their work represented a valuable and, indeed, unique contribution to the ethnography of the region. Particularly distinguished were T. Narbutt, eventually the author of the first history of

7б

BELORUSSIA:

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OF A

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the Lithuanian people, and Jan Czeczot, who was the first to collect folklore and compile a brief dictionary of the Belorussian speech.^ Other members of the group — A. Kirkor, A. Rypinski, D. WerigoDarewski, Jan Barszczewski — contributed greatly to a better knowledge of the region. Lecturing in Paris, К5ф1пзк1 stated that Belorussia was and "will always be Polish, since the language itself is binding the people with Poland, not with Moscow." At his suggestion the term "White Ruthenians" was introduced in the foreign press to make more evident the distinction between Belorussians (White Russians) and Russians.

4. Jan

Czeczot

Jan Barszczewski (1790-1851), an impoverished member of the Polish Belorussian gentry, studied and taught at Vilna University. When the university was closed by the Russian authorities in 1831, he went to St. Petersburg as a tutor. There he met Adam Mickiewicz, Nikolay Gogol, Taras Shevchenko, and other writers. Under their influence, he returned to his native land and began to collect folklore, rewriting it in a poetical fashion. His works were published in St. Petersburg, and his talent was recognized. Had he written in Russian, he might have aroused as widespread interest and sympathy for Belorussia as Gogol's Evenings at a Farm near Dikanka did for the Ukraine. But, transcribed in Latin characters, the Belorussian words looked Polish. The Polish reader was impressed. Many people in Poland and in the Northwestern provinces "perhaps for the first time realized that the

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Belorussian peasants were not bydlo [cattle], but had human qualities, and even some very fine ones." ® It also was discovered that Belorussian folklore, while having some characteristics common to Polish, Russian, Ukrainian, or Lithuanian tradition, also had many significant and important traits of its own, and even carried the marks of greater antiquity than the others. Voices arose that the people must be educated, and assisted. In the numerous writings that followed in the wake of Czeczot's and Barszczewski's publications, scholarly interest in the region was marked by a sentimental slant and mixed with compassion. T h e school texts claim that modern Belorussian literature began in that period. But the student is not sure whether this was Belorussian literature in Polish, or simply a Belorussian trend in Polish literature. Indeed, the ethnic consciousness and provincial patriotism were Belorussian, but "their essence was Polish." * In Moscow and St. Petersburg, as we have seen, it was commonly believed that the Roman Catholic population of the Northwestern provinces were a separate people from the Russians (inorodcy). Their mass conversion to Orthodoxy under Nicholas I had not entirely destroyed this belief. On the other hand, literary works of Czeczot, Narbutt, Barszczewski and others could not but confirm it. In the i86o's, however, the negative attitude of the Belorussian masses toward the Polish revolt against the empire (1863) revived the scholarly and public interest in the region on a different basis. Scientific and humanitarian expeditions streamed to the country. Russian collectors of folklore swarmed into the villages. Toward the end of the century, hundreds of volumes had appeared and a new attitude toward Belorussians was generally accepted. T h e natives were described with sympathy and compassion for their miserable lot; their modesty and humility were praised; their simple manners and deep devotion to the native woods and swamps inspired adniiration. Provincial patriotism assumed new significance; though Belorussian in form, it was Russian in essence. The Belorussian

Vernacular

A s "little brothers" of the Russians, the Belorussians were recognized in academic circles as an ethnic group in their own right, though it was not yet clear whether the group had its own language, or spoke a dialect of Russian, possibly even a dialect of Polish. Some scholars did not hesitate to discuss the Belorussian vernacular on an equal footing with other Slavic idioms. In the introduction to his Dictionary (1807), Samuel B. Linde recognized that it significantly differed from both Polish and Russian.® Johann Christoph von Adelung (1809) distinguished "Suzdalan, Little Russian [Ukrainian], Rusniak [Galician, or West Ukrainian] and Krivican [Belorussian]"

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as different forms of the East Slavic (Russian) speech.® The Czech P. Safarik (1848) counted four basic East Slavic languages: Great Russian, or Muscovite; Little Russian, or Ukrainian; White Russian, or Belorussian; and Novgorodian {sic).'' These views were shared by some Russian students. Maksimovic saw "three groups of vernaculars in Russia, the Great Russian, Southern Russian [Ukrainian], and Belorussian," ® and Nadezdin divided the Russian language into three groups of speech: Pontic Russian (Ukrainian), Baltic Russian (Belorussian), and Great Russian.® Against a general background of linguistic studies, however, these were isolated opinions. When Spilevski, in 1846, and Niedziecki, in 1854, compiled Belorussian grammars, their work was rejected by the Imperial Academy of Sciences on the ground that dialects may not have grammatical categories of their own. The view indeed prevailed that the Belorussian vernacular was not a language, perhaps not even a dialect, but simply a "combination of phonetic peculiarities in the pronunciation of Russian words." ^^ It was not until 1904 that the first scientific evidence of the independent status of Belorussian was produced by Karski," and not until 1918 that the Belorussian language was given its first grammatical organization by Taraskevic.^^ Literary Beginnings Long before their language had won academic recognition, however, the Belorussians began to use it as the proper expression of the spirit which permeated their civilization.^® They decided to write, each in his own local idiom, using the Polish or Russian characters for phonetic transcription as best they could. In the 1870's, Bezsonov introduced a special symbol y to transcribe the sound which does not exist in either Russian or Polish and resembles the English w in widow, but, for technical or other reasons, it was not at once adopted. Writers continued to transcribe the sound each in his own manner. The more writings thus produced, the harder appeared the task of agreement on a standard.^^ Writings, however, did not begin to grow substantially in volume until the very end of the century. In fact, their history before the 1900's makes a very short story. One may go back to the eighteenth century and find a few short plays written for schools, where the text was in Latin or in Polish, but the rural characters, stupid and uncouth, spoke in Belorussian to amuse the audience. Valuable though these may be as linguistic documents, they are not literature. At the beginning of the nineteenth century the first work written entirely in the vernacular appeared, and its purpose also was to make fun of the language rather than to promote it as a literary medium. This was the Eneida Navyvarat, an imitation of a Ukrainian parody of Vergil's Aeneid. The epic was com-

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posed in the Smolensk dialect, and its authorship was attributed to different persons at different times. It was soon followed by another anonymous poem, Taras na Parnase, describing the imaginary adventures of a Belorussian peasant on the Parnassus. Both poems were circulated by word of mouth until the 1840's, when twenty-one stanzas of the Eneida Navy varai first were published, while another 303 stanzas had to wait until the end of the century to appear in print. On the other hand, Taras na Parnase, written in a similar vein, appeared in print in 1889. Neither work, indeed, can be considered the beginning of the modern Belorussian Hterary tradition." Perhaps the real history begins with Paüliuk Bachrym (1814-1898),^® a peasant boy educated in the Roman Catholic school of Krosyno, Sluck district. As he was not able to print any of his poems, only a few stanzas have survived in the memory of the people, and they were first written down by Federewski in the late i87o's.^^ W e may add the name of Syrokomlia (Kondratowicz), a Polish writer who greeted the Revolution of 1848 with a poem in Belorussian and later published anonymously a collection of revolutionary verses under the title Dobryja Vesci (Good News). This practically exhausts the hst for the earher period.

5. Jan

Barszczewski

In the i860's N o t until the 1850's do we find any writer of stature who would choose Belorussian as his literary medium. Among those who appeared then, the first place belongs to V. Dunin-Marcinkevic (1809-1884). A medical student in St. Petersburg, he did not complete his studies;

8o

BELORUSSIA:

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he entered the civil service but soon retired and spent the rest of his Hfe on his country estate, Liucinka, near Minsk. In 1846 he published Selianka (Peasant Woman), a musical play in two acts, with the score written by the Polish composer Moniuszko. In this work, modeled on the eighteenth-century "schooldrama," landlords spoke in Polish and peasants in Belorussian. But the outlook was different, and the moral of the musical was that "peasants and their masters were all equal before God." Then Hapon (1855) appeared, a didactic story in rhyme, describing Belorussian customs and conditions of life and showing that good is always rewarded while evil is punished. Among his other writings are Veczarnicy (Evening Parties, 1855), Dudarz bialoruski (Belorussian Piper, 1857), and Zal'éty (1870). But most popular was the one-act play Pinskaja szlachta (Pinsk Gentry, 1866), which still is often revived on the Belorussian stage. Classified with the school of sentimentalism, Dunin-Marcinkevic is not very highly valued by modern literary criticism. But he knew the Belorussian landscape and people and loved them, and his works were eagerly read. Historians describe him as "a Polish-Belorussian poet." But he was the first to convince the reader that the Belorussian spoken idiom could be ñexible, smooth, melodious, and as rich and expressive as any other language on the earth.^® It was natural that the moods of Polish society should have been reflected in Polish-Belorussian writings of that time. There was, in fact, a direct correlation between the Polish revolutionary movement and the beginnings of Belorussian nationalism. A political emigrant, V. Korotynski, published in Poznañ (1861), then reprinted in Paris (1862), Hutarka Staraha Dzieda (A Story Told by an Old Man) in which this question is asked: "Is it God's will that we Belorussians should remain forever under control of Moscow?" And the answer was, "The time soon will come when the Poles will fight the Russians and restore freedom to Belorussia." He also composed a poem in Belorussian promising the people, in the name of Poland, "equality and brotherhood" when "the sun of freedom has dispersed the fog of Russian domination." The poem was in line with Polish revolutionary propaganda and had little effect, hardly a dozen copies reaching the country. But we have already seen the part Muzickaja Frauda, edited by Kalinoüski, played in 1863. Its six issues, virtually composed by the hand of one man, form, indeed, the most valuable Belorussian literary document of the period (see above. Chapter 5, p. 72). To this there can be added a few leaflets and verses written by others, such as Arcimoüski, Topceüski, and Pluh — if only to satisfy the pride of the researcher, since they have left little trace in the memories of the people. Their voices all joined in the prayer to God "to help us to drive the Musco-

THE

NATIONAL

SELF-DETERMINATION

8i

vites out of our land, and to grant us true freedom and restore the faith of our fathers" {Muztckaja Frauda, no. 3). Like the writers of Polish revolutionary propaganda, the Roman Catholic missionaries also used the vernacular to serve their own ends. Among other publications, particularly significant was a reader adopted in schools for Belorussian children. Element dia dobrych dzietok katoUków (A Primer for Good Catholic Children), where, besides a table of transliterations and directions for reading, the catechism, comments on the T e n Commandments, and prayers could be found, all in Belorussian.

6. V.

Dunin-Marcinkevii

In order to counteract subversive propaganda, both political and religious, pamphlets were issued in Belorussian by the imperial government itself, and in 1863-1864, there appeared two editions of Razskazy na belorusskom narecii (Tales in the Belorussian Dialect) sponsored by the state officials; there an anonymous writer urged the natives to call themselves "Russian, not Polish," and to behave "like Russians." Admittedly, the administration still regarded the people as Polish.^" It is noteworthy that neither the Polish nor the Russian side using the Belorussian vernacular identified it with Belorussian nationality. Nor was there any such concept among the Belorussians themselves. Literary activities fostering provincial patriotism centered around a thin layer of the educated gentry, divided into two camps. There is no historical evidence that they had any response from the masses. But the important fact was that the spoken idiom received recognition as a literary medium, and now was used as such b y the very people

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who ignored it only a decade or two before. When, in 1867, the Government prohibited its use, the language gained new significance and moral strength. Cultural Nationalism Literary activities died out after the suppression of the Polish revolt. There are only a few manuscripts extant of that period, and none of literary value. But in the i88o's Belorussian nationalism received a new impetus. There appeared a patriot and writer who captured the sentiments and imagination of the new generation: F. Bohusevic (1840-1900). Born into the gentry in Vilna province, he was educated in Vilna, studied mathematics and physics in St. Petersburg, and was graduated from Nezin Law School in the Ukraine. While a student he took an active part in the Polish revolt, but somehow the police overlooked this and, undisturbed, he served as a district attorney for several years, and later practiced law in Vilna. Under that cover he became a writer, using the pen-names of Macej Buracok and Symon Reüka to conceal his identity. Since Belorussian publications were suppressed in Russia, he published his two, and indeed only, poems abroad. Dudka belaruskaja (Belorussian Reed) appeared in Cracow (1891), and Smyk belaruski (Belorussian Fiddle), in Poznañ (1894). All his other writings have been lost except for three short stories published posthumously in 1907. Bohusevic was dismayed at what had been done by the heralds of Belorussian revival. They had been squeezing the country between two millstones, Russian and Polish, disregarding the real interests of the Belorussian man. They called him "brother," but his answer had to be: Cut it out, will you, what do you need me for? T o eat your bread, or to work your bread for you?

He urged his people to be faithful to themselves. "What is Belorussia?" he wrote. "Belorussia is there, brothers, where our language is spoken and heard." The mother tongue is the highest treasury of man, and the Belorussian tongue is "as human and noble as French, German, or any other." "Once the language is lost, the nation is dead," he continued. "In cherishing our mother tongue, and in cultivating it, lies the future of Belorussia." Bohusevic's books were circulated illegally, and since the volumes were scarce, his poems were copied by hand, learned by heart, and passed by word of mouth. In general, he echoed the revolutionary agitation in the empire. But he contended that no cultural and economic development would take root in the country unless the national consciousness of the people were awakened. His poems were a program, as well as an appeal. In the history of Belorussian national self-deter-

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mination they mark the beginning of a new period, that of "cultural nationalism." The idea had already been in the air for some time. In 1884, the Russian revolutionary party Narodnaja Volia * issued in Minsk an underground newspaper, Homan (The Clamor), demanding, among other things, "cultural autonomy" for Belorussia.^^ Belorussian historians significantly point to the fact that Ignas Hrynevicki, who killed Emperor Alexander II on March i , 1881, was a scion of a gentry family in Minsk province.^^ But the youth of the whole empire was at that time agitated by revolutionary ideas. Bohuâevic was the first to give the Belorussian movement its true direction and impulse.

7. J.

NesluchoHski

A number of anonymous writings, poems and stories, soon appeared to develop the new trend. The best known are Dziadz'ka Anton abo hutarka ab usim cysta, sto balie', a camu balk', neviadoma (Uncle Anton, or a Story about Everything That Aches Though No One Knows W h y ) , and two or three Hutarki (Stories) printed in London between 1892 and 1903.^® They add considerably to the volume of native literature of that period. Other writers, among whom Jan Nesluchoüski (1851-1897) was the most distinguished, strove to awaken the national consciousness and revolutionary spirit of the Belorussian • The name stands for both "people's freedom" and "people's νιτω."

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people, but their efforts were perforce limited to circles of personal friends. Actually their works were not published until 1906, when Belorussian was at last legalized (A. Elski, Adam Hrynovic, Marja Kosic, Jazep Arloüski). The Revolutionary

Movement

In the late 1890's, clubs ostensibly formed "for the studies of Belorussian life" appeared in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Kharkov, Novaja Alexandrija, Yuriev (Derpt). Nationalist students in the Butyrki prison in Moscow organized a secret Belorussian Socialist Group, although all they could do while serving their terms was to translate some Russian subversive writings into the Belorussian idiom. A group of St. Petersburg students, founded in 1902 "for promoting education and culture among the Belorussian people," illegally received and distributed books published abroad. They hectographed small literary collections, Kaliadnaja Pisanka (1903) and Velikodnaja Pisanka (1904), and tried to organize the political underground at home. These industrious youths even dared to put the Viazanka, an allegorical story by Jan Lucina (Nesluchoüski), through imperial censorship on the ground that it was written in Bulgarian. Other young men and women from the gentry Russianized during the previous period now joined hands with the local intelligentsia which the Belorussian middle classes had just begun to produce. A group of intellectuals gathered around the new paper Minskij Listok and the publishing house Severo-Zapadnyj Kalendar', both in Minsk. A few distinguished themselves later as scholars and national leaders (Dovnar-Zapolski, Zavitnevic, Slucki, Liacki, and others). Collections of folklore and historical studies were made with renewed interest. At the same time, with the assistance of the Polish Socialist Party (PPS), a Belorussian Revolutionary Hramada was founded in 1902. The Hramada was headed by the brothers Anton and Ivan Luckevic, and at first its whole membership could find room around a family dining table. At their first meeting at Minsk in 1903, they changed their name to the Belorussian Socialist Hramada and adopted the program of the Polish Socialist Party demanding territorial autonomy for Belorussia with a popular assembly {sejm) in Vilna, nationalization of the land of the nobles, and so on.^^ Concurrently, and also with the cooperation of the Poles, a national cultural movement began to develop under the leadership of Belorussian Catholic priests. Conservative in outlook, it was not so much directed toward holding back the wave of revolution as channeling it toward different and more constructive ends. Sub rosa Belorussian circles sprang up in the Roman Catholic seminaries of St. Petersburg, Vilna, Zitomir, and Sejm. The active leader of the movement was a

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teacher in the St. Petersburg seminary, Epimach §3φί11ο, who, with the students Budz'ko, Hryskevic, and others eventually founded the Belorussian Christian Democratic Party.^® Both groups quickly ran into difficulties. The All-Russian movement of liberation was catching the imagination of the Belorussian youth who preferred to struggle for a general rather than a provincial ideal, and fight for it on the battlefield of the whole Russian empire. For many, it was more natural to join a Russian revolutionary party and to work for an over-all liberation than simply to agitate for "narrow regional interests." Indeed, would not freedom for Russia mean also freedom for Belorussia? Za vasu i nam svobodu (For your freedom and ours) was the motto of the time. In the multinational empire, the revolutionary struggle was conducted in the Russian language, and therefore the study of Russian was encouraged by nationalists in order to join the movement. Belorussians were urged to read Russian, write Russian, and speak Russian, lest they be left behind in the march toward the Revolution. Thus in the 1900's Belorussia found itself in an ambiguous position. The people preferred Russian revolutionary literature to nationalist pamphlets printed in London. Literary nationalism was out of date, and political nationalism out of place. Indeed, Belorussia was now being denationalized by its own leaders. They followed the general current, hoping that their day would come later. The Revolution of 1Q05 The Russian Revolution of 1905, though abortive, gave an impetus to the Belorussian ideal, and for the first time put it in direct and open contact with the masses. Enjoying liberties granted by the Constitution, the nationalists went to work with the Russian intelligentsia. The latter, although considering nationalism a betrayal of the universal ideal, complied with the wishes of the local clubs. The Northwestern Committee of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party ( R S D R P ) printed proclamations in Belorussian. The peasant convention called in March 1905, in Minsk, accepted the program of the Belorussian Socialist Hramada. A Belorussian Peasant Union was founded and set to work to organize "fighting brigades" {druzina) and revolutionary guerilla bands against the Tsarist police. A Belorussian revolutionary hymn, Cyrvony Znak (Red Sign), was composed and printed on postcards. So general was the confusion that the Imperial Post Office accepted them for distribution. Tens of thousands of copies of proclamations in verse, written by a young poet, Cëtka (Aloiza Paskevic), also were distributed throughout the country by mail. Events developed swiftly and the confidence of the nátionalists grew. In January 1906, the Hramada convened for the second time. It

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worked out an ambitious program demanding for Belorussia not only "cultural autonomy" but "the federation of all free peoples within the empire." The brothers Luckevic were reelected to the Central Committee, together with A. Ivanoüski and A. Burbis. The Hramada established contacts with Finnish, Polish, Latvian, Armenian, Georgian, and Russian Socialists, and also took part in the national minorities Conferences in Paris and Geneva. This brought disagreement instead of cooperation. The demand that a Belorussian Constituent Assembly be called in Vilna met with sharp objections from the Lithuanians who wanted Vilna for themselves. Negotiations ensued to determine whether a "federation of free peoples" should follow regional or racial principles. N o one had clear ideas on this, and suggestions were made — too vague to be seriously considered :— that Belorussia and Lithuania form a joint state.^® There was no general agreement about what degree of political independence from the empire was to be claimed and, in the case of Belorussia, it was by no means certain that the people would back up any such claim. In fact, there was evidence that the masses were largely indifferent to political ideas. Of course, they remained faithful to their language, customs, creed, and manner of life, and they enjoyed books printed in the native idiom. But they were in no hurry to join a movement whose aims they were still unable to understand properly. Of all the Belorussian cities, only in Minsk was the railroad strike of October 1905 effective, and only in Bialystok was a soviet of workers organized. There were no general or local uprisings, and revolutionaries were unable to seize power in towns or villages, even for a matter of hours. The revolutionary clubs in Vilna, Bialystok, Grodno, Mogilev, and Minsk have not even been mentioned by Soviet historians. The local Social Democrats (Bolsheviks), organized illegally in 1904, proved a complete failure and nothing further was heard of them until 1 9 1 5 when a certain Karl Lander started a paper Trud (Labor) in Minsk, and laid down the foundations of a new Bolshevik group. In general, the situation in Belorussia was much calmer than in many other parts of the empire.^·^ Apart from the Hramada and a small clerical group, Belorussians at that time displayed little interest in national self-determination. Their political sympathies were distributed among the Russian Socialist Revolutionary ( S R ) and Social Democratic ( S D ) parties, the Polish Socialist Party ( P P S ) , the Jewish Union (Bund), the Lithuanian Socialist Party, the Polish Democratic Party ( N D ) , the Russian Liberal Party ( K D ) , and others. Obviously, people were interested in changing the system of government in the whole empire and were little moved by a somewhat narrow nationalism, although here and there local clubs demanded "autonomy" for native Belorussian schools. And it should not

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surprise us that the peasants, expecting a new imperial decree which might complete the Abolition Act of 1861 for all Russia, disowned nationalists who spoke in their name at the session of the Belorussian Hramada in Minsk.^® Fearing to find themselves generals without an army, the Hramada boycotted the elections to the Russian Duma in 1906. T h e Belorussian population voted anyway, and sent to the First Duma 15 per cent rightists, 51 per cent liberals and progressives, 31 per cent leftists, and 2 per cent with no party affiliations, all of them running on Russian, Polish, or Jewish — not Belorussian — tickets. It is significant that during the ten years of constitutional regime in Russia not a single deputy from Belorussia ever mentioned his specific Belorussian consciousness, although Polish, Lithuanian, Armenian, Tatar, and other nationals spoke freely of theirs. It would seem that the Belorussian people, recognizing the cultural significance of nationalist propaganda, willfully rejected its political implications. Indeed, in nationalist writings, this period is described as a period of "individual fighters" {epocha adzinak), struggling with "leaflets" against the denationalization and complacency of their peo-

The Nasa N i v a Period Although Belorussian nationalism, as a political factor, failed during the revolutionary years 1905 and 1906, it would be incorrect to assume that its activities left no significant traces. Liberties gained at that period fortified the position of the middle class, which began, though not without misgivings, to provide the movement with an economic basis. General consciousness of a common historical past and culture began to increase. The Belorussian press was legalized and literature grew in volume. It assumed a new quality, too. New writers — youthful, dynamic, self-confident, and ambitious — sprang up from the lower strata of the people. T h e lessons of 1905 were understood, and the task seemed clear. T h e new leadership centered in Vilna and, in September of 1906, there appeared the first legal Belorussian paper, the weekly Nasa Dolía (Our L o t ) . This periodical, intended for "rural and urban workingmen," was printed partly in Russian, partly in Polish characters. A f t e r six issues it was suspended by the Government for "revolutionary and separatist tendencies." In its place, Nasa Niva (Our Field) appeared, "the first Belorussian newspaper with illustrations." From November 1906 it continued until 1915. Ties were established in the provincial cities and villages. In three years, the weekly printed 960 items of correspondence from 489 villages, 246 poems by 61 poets, and 91 stories by different authors. In 1910, it had 229 contributors in Vilna province alone, 208 from Minsk, 114 from Grodno, 65 from Mogilev,

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27 from Vitebsk, 15 from Kovno, and 8 from Smolensk provinces.®® This was a spectacular gain and it may give an idea of the geographical distribution of interest in nationalism at that time. T h e circulation of the paper attained 3,000 copies. This was very good indeed in a country where all the Russian and Polish papers together sold barely 150,000. Y e t this also indicated that there still was a long way to go. Publishing societies, sponsored or directly assisted by Nasa Niva, sprang up in St. Petersburg, Vilna, Mogilev, Minsk, and other cities for the purpose of printing books in Belorussian. T h e St. Petersburg publishing house Zahliane sonce i й naie vakonce ( M a y the Sun Shine in Our Window T o o ) became the second important center for the period. T h e demand for new publications was increasing. Textbooks were needed. In M a y 1907 the first Belorussian student conference was called and founded a teachers union. A student union, the Belorussian National Cheüra, was founded some time later. Wherever possible, Belorussian libraries, reading rooms, schools, musical and dramatic clubs, and credit societies were established, if only on a small scale. In St. Petersburg and N o v a j a Aleksandrija, literary and ethnographic societies set to work. T h e Belorussian People's Theater was opened. In 1910 performances were given in villages and out-of-the-way places throughout the country. In the summer of 1911 traveling companies covered fifteen spots in Vilna, Vitebsk, and Minsk provinces. The success was encouraging, but it called for caution. T h e Nasa Niva assumed a very tactful position toward the Russian, Polish, Lithuanian, and other nationalities in the region. Indeed, this brand of tolerant nationalism has been unknown there since. The editors, headed by Aleksander Ülasaü, desired "to revivify the entire country, bring back its former glory, revive that language which was once noble and respected, but is now used only among the common folk." T h e purpose was educational, not political. Writers, not always strong in grammar, aired their sufferings, sorrows, and tears, showing a deep affection for their native land, which they saw poor, neglected, and sick. For the country, this weekly paper became "the river into which all Belorussian literary creation poured." In fact, modern Belorussian literature began with it and in it. Among the members of the Nasa Niva group were the young poets Janka Kupala and Jakub Kolas whose works came eventually to hold in Belorussia a position equal to that of the "classics" in other countries. Jakub Kolas (Kastus' Mickevic) was born in 1882, the son of a forester of Minsk province. He attended school and became himself a rural teacher, but was in 1906 removed from his position for participation in an illegal meeting. He spent three years in Minsk prison and later returned to teach in Polesie. During World War I he was drafted,

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then discharged because of illness, and lived in Kursk province (Russia) until he could return to Belorussia in 1921. He began to write at the age of twelve, translating Krylov's fables into Belorussian, and has since been a prolific poet, novelist, playwright, publicist, storyteller, and compiler of textbooks. All his work, until lately, has been imbued with one concern: "the injustice to, and oppression of, the little man." His talent is deep and gracious, though lacking the sparkle which distinguished his literary rival, Kupala. The circumstances of Soviet life did not affect his position, although his writings seem to have become weaker in style and lacking in conviction. In recognition of his merits and usefulness to the Soviet regime, he has been made vice-president of the Belorussian Academy of Sciences, a "People's Poet," and a Stalin Prize laureate.®^ Janka Kupala (Ivan Lucevic), son of a tenant farmer, was born in 1882 near Minsk. Owing to lack of funds, he could not continue his education beyond primary school. He took up work in a distillery, and later served as a junior clerk in an office. After the publication of his first poem, he was sent back to school by the editors of Nasa Niva. With their subsidies, Kupala attended adult education centers in St. Petersburg and Moscow and did all he could to acquire more knowledge and broaden his vision. His strong and genuine talent soon put him at the head of the new Belorussian literary movement. Insofar as it was possible under the Soviet rule, he maintained this position in the B S S R , where until his death in 1942, he was repeatedly reëlected president of the Union of Belorussian Writers. T o Belorussian literary historians, Kupala is "the poet-awakener, bellringer, prophet" (Dvarcanin). In comparison with his contemporaries, however, his activity in revolutionary circles was not great and, in fact, did not go beyond teaching for a time in an underground Belorussian school early in 1905. A former editor of the Nasa Niva says, " T h e beginnings of Kupala's creative work were completely unconnected with the movement" (Navina). Kupala wrote his verses unaffected by the political ideas which were at that time agitating Belorussian society. He had his own dreams. His first poem, " M u z i k , " printed in the Russian newspaper Severo-Zapadnyi kraj (1905), sounded like a folk song, but it had a deeper meaning. It told the story of a peasant who, for the first time in his life, met with the civilized world; he went through "delightful and terrible pangs" in making "the two strains fuse into the new person who he became" — which was the case of many a Belorussian youth at that time, as well as of the writer himself. Kupala's adaptation to the Soviet scene was not spontaneous, but eventually it became complete. In 1941 he was granted the Stalin Prize in literature. T h e circumstances of his death the following year have not been made very clear.®^

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Besides Kolas and Kupala, not many writers of the Nasa Niva period survived into the Soviet time, and those who did have been gradually liquidated as no longer congenial with the spirit and demands of the Communist era. But the period has left an indelible mark on Belorussian culture. Dvarcanin gives an interesting picture of the social structure of the movement, and divides all the writers of the period into six categories: ( i ) writers of "transition" from the previous period who continued in the tradition of Dunin-Marcinkevic, Bohusevic, or Nesluchovski — a class that has produced no outstanding author (Jadvihin, Kahanec, Paülovic); (2) peasants, who form the largest group, among them Kupala, Kolas,, Cëtka, Harun, Lësik; (3) one proletarian, Ciska Hartny; (4) one "bourgeois," F. Aliachnovic; (5) nine intellectuals, among them Maksim Bahdanovic, M. Harecki, Z. Veras; and (6) ten "others" of widely assorted occupations, some of them not even of Belorussian origin (Stary Ülas, Santyr, etc.).®^ Biadulia (Plaünik) spoke only in Yiddish before he learned Belorussian at the age of seventeen; Krapiva (Kejris) was a Latvian by birth; and tllasau (Vlasov), managing editor of NaL· Niva, was Russian.®^ It is significant that the rustic element should have prevailed. Even the "intellectuals" in Dvarcanin's classification hardly rise above the rural level of literacy. Of all the writers of that period, only Jadvihin (1870-1925) was a university graduate. Only Maxim Bahdanovic ( 1 8 9 2 - 1 9 1 7 ) and Cëtka (Aloiza Paskevic), a peasant's daughter from Vilna province, received a more or less formal education. One may say of the others that they were writers before they had learned to write. Harun was a carpenter by trade; Ciska Hartny, a tanner; Santyr, a house painter; Cernusevic, a tailor; Hurlo, a locksmith; Paülovic, a bookkeeper for a railroad company; Plaünik, the son of a Jewish coachman; Maksim Harecki, a peasant; and so on. For most of them, literature meant social protest rather than artistic expression, and their poems were rhymed comments on contemporary conditions of life. Their lyrics were simple, unsophisticated, and told the elemental love of the peasant for his land. This was precisely what the Belorussian reader could understand, and what he appreciated. It is interesting that practically all works were published under pseudonyms, some writers using up to ten different names. Whether this was from fear of repression — and indeed one or two writers were exiled to Siberia — or from a peculiar policy of expansion, is difficult to say, since no other national minority in the Russian empire developed a similar habit, although their literatures were no less oppressed at that time.®® In 1910, the editorial staff of the Nasa Niva polled its readers to find out which of the two alphabets, Polish or Russian, theretofore used indiscriminately, was preferred. The question was decided in favor of Russian, although not by an overwhelming majority. The clerical

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groups, however, continued to use the Polish transcriptions for their periodical Belarus^ although their position was not as Polish in essence as it had been some time before. On the contrary, they carried on propaganda for the Uniate Church which they now hoped to establish as the national Church of Belorussia, as distinct from both the Polish Catholic and the Russian Orthodox Churches. Thus they fostered the Belorussian national spirit, trying at the same time to keep it away from revolutionary godlessness.®® Frightened by the revolutionary winds which swept Russia in 1905, the conservatives also tried to neutralize propaganda by encouraging cultural activities, and they assisted such organs as Belorusskaja Zizn' and Severo-Zapadnaja Zizn' (Belorussian Life; Northwestern Life), both published in Russian. They also started in Vilna publications in the Belorussian idiom: Lucyna (Lighting Chip), a youth magazine; Sacha (Plow), an agricultural quarterly; and the students' Rannica (Dawn), in which nationalistic trends were watered down to nonseditious regionalism. Achievements The ten-year period of 1906 to 1917, known as the Adradzen'ne (Revival) period, can be correctly described as the formative years of Belorussian political nationalism. Naive and sentimental concepts of revival belonged to the nineteenth century. The new generation saw its task along more practical and immediate lines. Theirs was an era of organizing the national memory, of fostering the process of national selj-determination according to the requirements of modern political science; of defining the national goal in terms of general culture and practical policies; and of educating a personnel capable of assuming the national leadership. Everything was tried to awaken and enliven the national consciousness of the people. Literature concentrated on specific characteristics of the Belorussians as a group, asserting the Belorussian culture from both historical and comparative points of view. A writer covering that period points to the fact that "even the imperial officials began locally to assume a specific individuality, which they somewhat awkwardly called Zapadno-russ [a variant of West Russian] in distinction to both Polish and Russian." Nationalist historians identified the Borysthenes with the Berezina River, and thus extended Herodotus' travels to the territory of Belorussia. Others discovered that "the average Belorussian was, in fact, two to three inches taller than he had been generally believed to be" (Skialënak). Myths were deliberately created to foster the dynamics of national revival, and to hasten the attainment of the political goal. The technique was not new, and the Belorussians

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were not to blame for using it any more than other nations before and since. Indeed, it seemed that Belorussia had everything which might be required for statehood: a territory, a people, a language. It only needed self-government to become a full-fledged nation. But it was not easy to convey this concept, still less make it the wish of the masses, woefully ignorant and indolent. The nationalist leaders realized that the nation was still in a fluid state. The territory? Polish, Lithuanian, Ukrainian, and Russian claims overlapped in such a manner that eventually only a province or two would be left to Belorussia. The language? Yes, but "time was needed to decide which local dialect had the better chance to become the basis of the common literary standard," and the time was not yet ripe for "all the peculiarities of the native idiom to become clear" (Taraskevic). The leadership? Writers unquestionably had a common outlook and an esprit de corps, but they expressed themselves in different ways and with different emphases. Their life experience seldom went beyond a native village, or a workshop. To them, the Nasa Niva symbolized a cultural, not a political goal, though it did establish and maintain ties with the discontented urban and rural populations. School teachers' unions, cooperatives, and various cultural societies had enough revolutionary ferment. Yet political organization remained weak and inefficient. This era can be described as "a period of clubs," with no unity of leadership, most of which consisted of self-educated rural "semiintelligentsia." Their loyalties, like those of the established urban intelligentsia, were divided between the Russian, Polish, and Belorussiàn political parties on the one hand; between the right, the center, and different shades of the left, on the other. In fact, the total number of active supporters of nationalism hardly exceeded the number of subscribers to the Nasa Niva, three to four thousand persons.^® In spite of some spectacular achievements in the cultural field, it was nonetheless clear that the movement was ill prepared to face the emergencies which arose with World War I and the Russian Revolution.

7 ШК AND REVOLUTION With the outbreak of World War I, thousands of Belorussian families fled to the east, and the nation, cut by the front line, was dispersed. The circumstances, however, were not entirely detrimental to the movement of national self-determination. Direct contact with life in Russia and the Ukraine brought out for the refugees the unique characteristics of their own land. In many instances, they found it desirable to keep together in order to maintain their group individuality in a friendly, yet foreign, environment. The Belorussian societies and committees which spontaneously emerged to aid the victims of war and for cultural purposes created among the refugees an atmosphere of national solidarity unknown at home. Attempts on the part of the large Belorussian community of Petrograd to publish periodicals of a political nature {Svetac in the Polish, and Dziannica in the Russian print) were shortlived, but humanitarian organizations continued to grow in Moscow, Kiev, and other parts of the empire. The Vilna Confederation Similar activities also began to develop on the other side of the front line, but they very soon assumed a different trend. The idea of a Belorussian nation as distinct from both Polish and Russian suited the policies of the Occupation Army, and negotiations were opened at Vilna toward establishing a Belorussian administration. The nationalist group was headed by Anton and Ivan Luckevic, founders of the Belorussian Socialist Hramada. At first, they had simply wanted to inform the Germans of Belorussian interests and eventually to organize an agency for the protection of Belorussian nationals in the zones of occupation. None of them had seriously considered the possibility of Belorussian statehood. When the Germans made the offer to them, however, it was too good to pass up. The sooner the state was organized politically, the better chance it would have to protect its territorial integrity at the international peace settlement after the war.

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Aware of their inability to handle the problem by themselves, the brothers Luckevic consulted with local Lithuanian, Polish, and Jewish clubs. The reconstitution of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania within its historical boundaries appealed to all four parties concerned, and the Germans were sympathetic. Consequently, the following statement, the "Universal," was published in four languages at Vilna: On December 19, 1915, members of Lithuanian, Belorussian, Polish, and Jewish organizations undertook to establish a Confederation of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. According to their plan, Lithuania and Belorussia . . . shall be independent, autonomous states . . . in which all ethnic groups shall be guaranteed their rights . . . All classes, organizations, and citizens of the country are called upon to forget slander, strife, and mistrust in view of the great importance of this historic moment and, considering only the good of their common homeland, to join in the Confederation of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.! A Provisional Council, including representatives of all the nationalities and political parties in the future Grand Duchy, was to conduct the "state affairs" and to select "a proper candidate for the office of Grand Duke." But the Vilna project was at once countered by the Supreme Lithuanian Committee in Kaunas, which wanted a Grand Duchy composed of Lithuanians and Latvians alone. In the statement of January 6, 1916, the Committee conceded, however, that "since the Belorussian lands formerly were part of the Grand Duchy, the Belorussians might, if they should so wish, join with the new state as its third member." The Vilna group ignored this and issued another proclamation defining the aims of the Confederation as follows: 1. The reconstituted Lithuanian Belorussian State shall form a sovereign nation. The parliament {sejm) shall be in Vilna, elected by universal, direct, equal, and secret ballot. All the ethnic groups living in the State shall have equal rights in this election. 2. The State shall include within its boundaries all the territories now occupied by German troops, namely: the provinces of Kovno [Kaunas] and Vilna, the Belorussian and Lithuanian parts of Grodno and Suvalki provinces, the Lithuanian parts of Courland, and portions of the province of Minsk now under the Vilna administration. 3. The Constitution of the future free Lithuanian Belorussian State shall not be granted from above, but worked out by a Constituent Sejm in Vilna, elected by universal, equal, direct, and secret ballot.^ Under the editorship of the brothers Luckevic and V. Lastoüski, a Belorussian newspaper, Homan (The Clamor), was founded to promote the idea of confederation. The paper appeared three times a week and had two editions, one printed in the Polish alphabet, the other in the Russian. The German Military Command ordered clerks to trans-

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late the word "Belorussians" as Weissruthenen, and not Weissrussen as before. T h e plan of a quadripartite federation, however, ran into new difficulties. Quarrels broke out among the four parties. Belorussians and Lithuanians contended for the city of Vilna, while the Poles claimed the right to be masters of the entire new state. Within a few months the coalition disintegrated, and the Occupation Army lost all interest in it. The Poles, who counted in their midst more professional and educated men, naturally became advisors to the German generals and took advantage of their position to quietly re-Polonize the country. T h e Lithuanian, Belorussian, and Jewish groups complained. All they eventually obtained was a Hindenburg order confirming equal rights for their languages in the occupied territories. But there was no longer any question of an equal representation in the administration. L e f t to themselves, the Belorussians set out to organize the national elements into whatever form they could. Soon there emerged a Belorussian Club in Vilna, a Scientific Society, a Teachers' Union, the educational society Zolak, and a few others. This prompted the Belorussian leaders to apply in Berlin for permission to take part, in the name of the Belorussian nation, in the "Peoples of Russia" conference in Stockholm (April 1916) and Lausanne (June 1916). Berlin agreed, and Lastoüski was dispatched abroad. Together with some other political emigrants from Russia, he signed an appeal to President Woodrow Wilson "to save the national and religious minorities of the Russian empire from annihilation." ® For the first time in its history, Belorussia appeared on the international scene. This, however, was not enough to restore German confidence in the nation, which "had never shown any tendency toward political independence in the past." ^ T h e Germans favored a Lithuanian nation, with the city of Vilna as its capital, and the Belorussian lands under occupation were included in the Lithuanian political boundaries. From a prospective partner, Belorussians were to become a racial minority in a foreign state. They accepted the reversal of their fortune graciously, and on September I, 1916, sent a telegram to the Reichstag expressing gratitude to Germany and hope that they might eventually be permitted the realization of complete nationhood.® In December, however, they submitted to the Chancellor of the German empire a memorandum restating the idea of a Lithuanian Belorussian State, "in close union with Latvia and with a firm stand on the Baltic," and suggesting that the lands not yet conquered from Russia be included in that state. After a noncommittal acknowledgment, the petition was filed in Berlin. In the meantime, the Lithuanian National Council, the Tariba, without consulting the Belorussians, offered the ducal crown to Prince Wilhelm of Urach, member of the Württemberg house, who accepted under the

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name of Mindovg II. A t the same time, the candidacy of Prince Eustace Sapieha for the Lithuanian throne was announced in Berlin, and supported b y the Poles. But the Germans showed no haste. It was evident that they had not yet made up their minds about how to finally seal the fate of the conquered country. The Russian

Revolution

With the Russian Revolution in March 1917, Minsk became the Belorussian center of gravity. Peoples of the empire turned their eyes to Petrograd as the new symbol of freedom, equality, and justice. The Belorussian War Relief, around which the most conscious nationalists had gathered, was transformed into the Belorussian National Committee. It included at once the representatives of all the important groups in the region, from Russian socialists to Polish landlords, from the Roman Catholic clergy to the Jewish Bund, and from scholars and artists to railroad workers and farmers. The membership, politically and culturally, represented a large cross section of the population, but the members were chosen through appointment and it was not very certain whether the Belorussian nation would consider the committee its legal representative.® With great confidence, however, the National Committee presented demands to the Provisional Government in Petrograd for a permanent regional assembly with advisory functions on local matters, for opening schools with instruction in Belorussian, and so on. T h e y had no effect. Apparently Petrograd, with some reason, put no trust in the National Committee. Already, the Socialists demanded loudly that "the reactionary and counterrevolutionary members" be thrown out. T h e organizations of the Belorussian refugees in Moscow, Kiev, Odessa, and other Russian cities also refused to recognize the authority of Minsk. T h e y rallied instead around the Belorussian Popular Hramada in Moscow, which presented its own demands to the Provisional Government of Russia for "territorial status" after the war, and nominated Belorussian delegates to the All-Russian Constituent Assembly (Cvikevic, Prusinski, and Turuk among others). Belorussian nationalism thus found expression in the concepts of national cultural autonomy at Minsk and of territorial status at Moscow, but no word was yet uttered about eventual secession from the empire. Even provincial patriotism typical of the Nam Niva period almost completely disappeared from literature.^ T h e more immediate social and economic issues prevailed, and the Belorussians split into innumerable political groups. Besides the Minsk and Moscow committees, a third force presently emerged in Petrograd, the Belorussian Section of the All-Russian Soviet of Peasants' Deputies.

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Then, in Odessa, the soldiers deserting the southern front formed their own organization, first called the Belorussian National Rada, and then the Belorussian National Commissariat. Other groups like the Union of Belorussian Democracy at Gomel, the Belorussian Christian Democratic Association at Minsk, the Union of the Belorussian Orthodox Clergy at Moscow, and the Union of the Belorussian People at Vitebsk, agitated in different parts of the country, recognizing no authority but their own. Finally, on June 17, 1917, a Belorussian section of the Bolshevik Party was organized in Minsk, which then issued its own manifesto to the "workers, peasants, and soldiers" of Belorussia.® Although most of these organizations were small groups of intellectuals and politicians having little contact with the masses, sometimes even no direct tie with the country, each one insisted on its exclusive right to represent "the true interests of the people." Gradually, however, the Socialist Hramada obtained full control over the Belorussian National Committee, transforming it into a Central Rada to represent only "the most progressive and democratic parties." N e w demands were sent to Petrograd, for transformation of the Russian empire into a federation, nationalization of all lands, free expansion of Belorussian culture, and so on. But this move was not supported by other gruops. T h e Belorussian center in Moscow considered it too far to the left, and the Belorussian center in Petrograd found it too much to the right — as though anyone could tell what was " l e f t " and what was "right" at that time. T h e abstract discussion went on, becoming hotter and more bitter every day, with, it would seem, little real consideration for the country and people concerned. Indeed, in the first free elections to the rural (zemstvo) and municipal governments in Belorussia, in the spring of 1917, not a single representative of the nationalist groups won any popular support. Likewise, in the general elections to the Constituent Assembly, the nationalist ticket was not able to collect more than 29,000 votes in the whole country. In fact, only one member of the Belorussian Socialist Hramada managed to get elected, having wisely hopped on the bandwagon of a Russian socialist party. N o more conclusive evidence could possibly have been produced that the Belorussian populations had as yet little confidence in their own national leadership.® In the meantime, soviets had begun to spring up in different localities. Calling themselves Belorussian, they emphasized the solidarity of the working class, first in Russia and then throughout the world. Significantly, the membership of the Social Democratic (Bolshevik) Party in Belorussia was growing far more rapidly than that of any nationalistic group. T h e party totaled 2,530 members in August, and their number was said to have increased to 9,190 by the middle of September, and to 28,508 by the beginning of October.^" T h e nationalist record of the previous decade was, as it were, wiped out in the révolu-

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tionary whirlwind. It would seem, indeed, that Belorussian nationalism was suffering a worse defeat than the one it had faced in 1905-06. The nationalists had not been able to settle their inner differences and quarrels. The movement dwindled, splitting up into lesser clubs and creating one paper organization after another. Dogmatic differences entailed personal animosities, and what was set up one day was destroyed the following morning. This looked like a petty and noisy game unrelated to the great national calamity, and people busily passed it by. One can only speculate upon what would have been the immediate future of the country had not the Russian Revolution changed its course. The Bolshevik

Revolution

It is beyond the ability of this writer to give a coherent description of the confusion which followed the fall of the Provisional Government to the Bolsheviks in November 1917. But one thing, at least, seems to stand out distinctly enough. Bolshevism gave Belorussian nationalism the break it needed most, and this it did in two different, albeit equally effective, ways. The Bolsheviks promised "the oppressed peoples" of Russia the status of sovereign repubhcs, provided they introduce the Soviet system of government in their lands. However, at the same time, national selfdetermination and secession seemed to be the only way of getting out of the Soviet system at all. Consequently, local nationalism received recognition and support, even though with different views and purposes, from both the Soviet and the anti-Soviet sides. The Soviet historians claim that local soviets had been established in the whole territory of Belorussia east of the front line by the end of November. The truth is that the situation remained fluid for several months. The anti-Soviet organizations in Minsk called a general Belorussian convention in December, in order to organize national resistance. The Belorussian Central Rada, the Central Military Rada, and the Executive Committee of the western front published a joint appeal to the people, beginning as follows: Russia is living through terrible days. The incalculable riches of the country are being destroyed by anarchy. The masses, deprived of a recognized government, are attempting to decide by themselves questions vital to us all. This can lead the peoples of Russia only toward the loss of the liberties which they bought in February [March] with the blood of their sons. . . We have decided to take energetic steps to organize the whole Belorussian people in defense of the rights and freedom we have obtained. Belorussia must be a democratic republic, united with Great Russia, and with other neighbor republics of the empire, on a federal basis. There was little to threaten the territorial integrity of the empire

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in this statement. It did, however, bring forth objections from the Belorussian center in Petrograd. Supported by the People's Commissariat of Nationalities, then headed by Stalin, it decided to call its own Belorussian Convention in Minsk, on December 15. Its appeal to the Belorussian people read in part: We see that in the process of disintegration of the Russian empire a series of small republics are being formed, such as Finland, Ukraine, Don Cossacks, Ural, Lithuania, Latvia, Siberia, the Caucasus, Turkestan. . . They can only perish in internecine war. . . Belorussia up to this moment has stood aside, and has not announced independence. It is true that a small clique of Belorussians have come out with such ideas, but theirs was not the opinion of the whole region and of the toiling Belorussian people. . . The moment has come, however, when Belorussia as a whole, and in particular its laboring peasants, must take a stand. But not in order to cause new pain to Russia and deal her a cruel blow. We must organize in order to help ourselves, and to support suffering Russia at the same time.^^ T h e struggle between the Minsk and Petrograd Belorussian centers ended in a compromise on the basis of "mutual support and unity of purpose." Accordingly, only the "democratic trends" were to be represented at the joint First Belorussian Convention. The Convention opened on December 14 in Minsk, with 1,872 delegates, of whom 1,167 had the right to vote. Every local or professional group, no matter how small, could send representatives. T h e requirement was that it have a president and a secretary, and often these, plus a rubber stamp, were its only members. But there also were segments of the population more fully represented, among them the rural zemstvos of the eastern area, the Minsk garrison, and political parties of a longer standing. Immediately, the delegates began to split into factions. Along with the various nonparty clubs there appeared Socialist Revolutionaries (Right, Center, and L e f t ) , Social Democrats (Menshevik, Bolshevik, and Internationalist), Socialist Hramada, Popular Socialists, Christian Democrats, and a number of other less clearly defined political groups. It was significant that the Russian political parties participated alongside of the Belorussian groups and, in fact, outnumbered them. A Council of Elders (Soviet Starejsin) was composed as follows: Serada (a veterinarian), president of the Convention; Vazillo (student) and Prusinski (journalist), vice-presidents; Kaliadka (teacher) and Husca (railroad employee), secretaries; H r y b (student) and §evcuk (staff scribe), assistant secretaries. T h e Convention was overwhelmingly non- if not awíí-Bolshevik. In fact, the ten Bolshevik delegates elected in Petrograd, had been delayed and did not arrive until the session was closed. A conflict with the local soviet loomed inevitable. Indeed, the issue was not so much Belorussian nationalism as the acceptance or rejection of Communism.

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This had become evident as soon as the delegates began to deliberate. The debate revolved around the question of separation from or union with the Soviets, and for the first time the idea of political independence was openly expressed. Secession was supported by almost all the intellectuals, most of them with an entirely Russian background ; ^^ union, by the peasants and a substantial number of the soldiers. Unable to reach a compromise after three days, the delegates agreed to leave the fundamental question of political independence open until the end of the Convention. But the Convention ended in a different manner than anticipated. On the night of December i8, the Red Army appeared in the hall. A commander, whose rank and name have remained unknown, came up to the platform and declared the Convention closed. When objections were raised, he ordered the arrest of the officers and most prominent delegates. It is believed that he acted on orders issued by the Bolshevik commander of the Minsk garrison, but the story has never been fully explained.^® T h e Bolsheviks arriving late from Petrograd were as surprised as anyone, and wired their protest to Lenin. Receiving no answer, they sent a wire to Stalin, People's Commissar of Nationalities. But the Soviet authority remained mute. T h e Minskans were in a quandary for about a month, when they learned that the All-Russian Constituent Assembly in Moscow was suppressed in the same manner on January i8,1918." In the meantime, those members of the Council of Elders (Rada) who had not been arrested fled to the woods. T h e y declared the union of all political organizations, establishing a single, albeit underground, authority. An exception was made in the case of the Belaruskaja Central'naja Vajskovaja Rada ( T h e Belorussian Central Military Council), otherwise known as Belvajskrada, which continued open activities under the suspicious eye of the Minsk Soviet. It managed to transfer to Minsk the 289th infantry regiment of the former imperial army, 75 per cent of whose members were Belorussians, and began negotiations with the Supreme Soviet Military Command about organizing a national Belorussian Red Army. It then established contacts with the Ukrainian and Tatar military undergrounds, planning an open revolt. When the Soviets discovered the plot, they removed the 289th infantry from Minsk (January 20,1918) and arrested the leaders. B u t the underground activities continued and the National Rada even succeeded in sending its own delegates to Brest-Litovsk to protest against the treaty. Though they were not recognized by the Central Powers, they did manage, under cover of the Ukrainian delegation, to register protest against the partition of Belorussia.

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The Treaty of

loi

Brest-Litovsk

T h e day the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was signed (February 19, 1918),* the Reds left Minsk without waiting for the Germans to enter the city/® Their flight was expedited by Colonel K . Ezavitaü, who had just escaped from jail, gathered together a group of volunteers, and appointed himself Commandant of Minsk. Within twenty-four hours some semblance of order was established, and the Rada returned to the city to represent the people until a democratically elected Constituent Assembly should decide the fate of the country. In order to give more weight to its own authority, the Executive Committee of the Rada included some Ukrainian, Jewish, and Russian representatives, picked up at random.^® T h e manifesto published by the Rada on February 20 read in part: The authorities which heretofore have governed Belorussia have now left the country. To use our right of national self-determination it is necessary to call a democratic Constituent Assembly. Until that time, the Executive Committee of the Rada of the First Belorussian Convention declares itself the Provisional Government of Belorussia, and delegates full powers to the National Secretariat to be appointed by the Executive Committee. . . The Provisional Government was formed the following day. It was composed of fifteen secretaries, who belonged to the local intelligentsia and had had no experience in business or personnel management. In the absence of any other authority, however, the citizenry rallied around them. Without further discussion, they interpreted the decisions of the December Convention as a declaration of independence. T h e full meaning of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, however, was not yet entirely clear, and the German plans remained obscure. The Austro-German troops of occupation had not yet arrived, and all connections with Petrograd and Moscow had been cut off. Men of the disbanded Polish Corps of General Dowbor-Musnicki were looting the country." A police force, summarily organized by a former captain of the Russian Imperial Army, and the First Belorussian Regiment of Volunteers, made up within two days by Colonel Radkevic, were trying as valiantly as possible to maintain order. T h e National Secretariat succeeded, however, in holding out for four days until the first German uniform appeared in the streets of Minsk. T h e occupation troops entered Minsk on February 25, 1918, and the Provisional Government hastened to pay its respects to the AustroGerman High Command. But the Germans received them rather coolly and told them that, as far as they knew, the Belorussian government was in Vilna, not in Minsk. T h e secretaries learned with astonishment • The dates given are Old Style, falling thirteen days behind the Gregorian calendar.

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that a Belorussian Assembly had convened during January 2 s to 2 7 in Vilna, and elected a R a d a under Anton L u c k e v i c . Independence was proclaimed on F e b r u a r y 18, and the administration included, among others, an Orthodox and a Roman Catholic priest, a M r . Falkevic, and a Mr. Dulka. T h e Minsk politicians were dumbfounded. T h e y knew Anton Luckevic, of course, but the names of F a l k e v i c and D u l k a were completely new to them. Moreover, the presence of two eccelsiastics in the administration terrified the revolutionary Minskans. T h e M i n s k Rada, therefore, repudiated the Vilna government and denounced Anton L u c k e v i c for associating himself with "reactionaries and clericals." On M a r c h 9 it published a Constituent Manifesto establishing "the Belorussian republic in the boundaries of all provinces with a Belorussian majority," and ordering L u c k e v i c to submit to the "sovereign will of the nation." T h e supercharged phrases of the Revolution — "state," "republic," "sovereignty," "national government" — were hurled with every type of inflection back and forth between Minsk and Vilna, each claiming the other's territory. If the sonorous language fooled anyone, it was only the participants in the pageant. T h e Austro-German Military Command saw through the situation, and M i n s k was given three days to make peace with Vilna. T h e blow was more severe than it may seem. Something more than the revolutionary pride of M i n s k was at stake. Claiming complete secession from Russia, the Vilna Rada, on February 18, justified its position as follows: . . . The Poles are nursing annexationist ambitions toward Belorussia. The Russians did not give the Belorussian people an opportunity to form their own Army, and have themselves abandoned Belorussia. Our country, in the course of her history, has proven that she is perfectly fitted for an independent political existence. The Russian Bolshevik Government uses a policy of violence, of which the dispersal of the First Belorussian Convention in Minsk is an example . . . Taking all this into consideration, the Belorussian Rada in Vilna declares all ties with Russia severed. The Rada appeals to the western powers for assistance in reconstituting the former Lithuanian Belorussian State [Grand Duchy of Lithuania] regardless of the fact that the country is momentarily divided by a war front; it appeals especially to Germany which has the most economic interests in common with the Lithuanian Belorussian State. . B u t the Minskans had aimed at a Constituent Assembly to decide the question of the Belorussian future, and the idea of a Lithuanian Belorussian State, reconstructed under the protection of the Central Powers, was entirely new to them. T h e Vilna resolution was arbitrary and undemocratic. Minsk made a bid for delay, but the Germans were adamant. Finally, after three days of futile debate, the M i n s k R a d a gave in, and the Germans called Anton L u c k e v i c to Minsk.

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Declaration of Independence The representatives of the two Radas met on March 25, 1918, and "by a majority of only a few votes, and in flagrant contradiction to the decisions of the First Belorussian Convention in December 1917,"^° declared the independence of the Belorussian National Republic {Belaruskaja Narodnaja Respublika) as follows: A year ago, the peoples of Belorussia, together with all the peoples of Russia, threw off the yoke of Russian tsarism which, taking no advice from the people, had plunged our land into the blaze of war that ruined most of our cities and towns. Today we, the Rada of the Belorussian National Republic, cast off from our country the last chains of the political servitude that had been imposed by Russian tsarism upon our free and independent land. From now on, the Belorussian National Republic is to be a free and independent power. The peoples of Belorussia themselves, through their own Constitutent Assembly, will decide upon the future relations of Belorussia with other states. . .

This statement was followed by a repudiation of the Brest-Litovsk Treaty and by a claim upon the whole territory whose people spoke Belorussian.^^ Many people felt that the Provisional Government had anticipated the decisions of the Constituent Assembly, and several groups walked out of the Rada in protest. But the declaration, approved by the German Military Command, stuck, and the reshuffled government sat down to business. The birth of the new Belorussian state was solemnly announced over the radio to the universe. A national flag with three horizontal stripes — white, red, white — was adopted. A state seal, representing the emblem {pahonia) of the ancient Lithuanian Russian state, was ordered and postage stamps of three denominations were printed. The sovereign power thus was demonstrated. A memorandum was sent to Berlin requesting that the Belorussian National Republic be recognized by the German Reich. Belorussian consulates opened in Moscow, Kiev, Odessa, Rostov, in the Northern Caucasus (Stavropol), and in Vilna, since it was not clear whether that city now was to be Lithuanian or Belorussian. Extraordinary and plenipotentiary missions were sent to the Ukrainian government in Kiev and to the Lithuanian Tariba in Vilna, as well as to Warsaw, Berlin, Copenhagen, Bern, and eventually to Paris. Dovnar-Zapolski and Cvikevic attempted to negotiate with Moscow through the Soviet delegation in Kiev. But Moscow's position was uncertain. So also was the attitude of the Lithuanians and the Poles and, above all, that of the Germans in Berlin. Life began to resume its normal course as best it could under for-

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eign occupation. An administrative system based on ancient rural and municipal self-government began to take shape. Taraskevic published his first Belorussian grammar, which helped to teach the native idiom in the schools. Newspapers and periodicals appeared throughout the country, all in the Belorussian language.^^ Later, the Germans were to be credited with "emphatically assisting the cultural development of Belorussia, and protecting the freedom of the press." But there is more reason to believe that, once the civic order was established, the German Military Command indifferently let the country go its own way. Meanwhile, the members of the Rada who had walked out after the declaration of Belorussian independence were replaced by the delegates of a new club called The Belorussian Representatives of the City of Minsk. This club, headed by R. Skirmunt and composed of landowners, homeowners, and the clergy, was the most powerful group in Minsk and was able to establish satisfactory personal contacts with the German Military Command. Its organ, Belaruski Шаек (The Belorussian W a y ) , advocated full collaboration with the Central Powers, and resisted the land and social reforms which, in its opinion, were leading the country "to anarchy and destruction." It succeeded in alienating the liberals and socialists from the German offices and began a campaign against the Vilna autonomists. Despite all expectations, the Vilna Rada did not disband after the Belorussian National Republic was proclaimed. On the contrary, it sent delegates to the Lithuanian National Tariba, and one of its members became Minister of Belorussian Affairs in the Lithuanian government, that is, in a foreign government with claims to Belorussian territory. T o the Minsk protestations Vilna turned a deaf ear. Minsk appealed to the German High Command, but the Germans had washed their hands of the affair. Vilna realized that the Lithuanian state was recognized by Berlin and the Belorussian state was not. Presently, the whole territory of the Vilna and Grodno provinces, overwhelmingly Belorussian in population, went under the administration of the Lithuanian Tariba. The Lithuanians generously consented to cooperate with the Belorussian Rada in Vilna, and, not without German prompting, accepted its delegates to the Tariba. The people were satisfied with the freedom given them for cultural and social work, and over 125 Belorussian schools were opened in the Vilna and Grodno provinces; a teachers' college in Svisloc, a chair of Belorussian studies in Vilna, and various cultural, educational, economic societies, and publishing houses were established. This was indeed enough to keep a Minister for Belorussian Affairs busy in the Lithuanian government, and it was only natural for the Vilna Rada to accept this position for one of its members. T o the ideologists of Belorussian nationalism, however, the posi-

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tion of a racial minority in the land they considered their own was unacceptable. A meeting of the natives of the Vilna and Grodno provinces was arranged by Minsk, at which the agreement of the Vilna Rada with the Lithuanian Tariba was repudiated and the Lithuanian claims to Belorussian territory were denied. On the advice of the Skirmunt group, the Minsk government sent the following telegram to Kaiser Wilhelm II: The Rada of the Belorussian National Republic, representing the whole Belorussian nation, expresses deepest gratitude to Your Imperial Majesty for the liberation of Belorussia by the Germany Army from the unbearable yoke of foreign anarchy which has been ravaging the country. The Rada has declared the independence of entire and indivisible Belorussia, and entreats Your Imperial Majesty to support the measures it has taken to protect the independence and unity of the country, in close union with the German Reich. Only under the protection of the German Reich can our country anticipate happiness in the future.^^

Publication of the telegram precipitated the first political crisis in the Belorussian republic. The Socialist Hramada fell apart, and the left wing recalled its members from the government. These were followed by the Jewish Socialists and by a group of urban liberals. A temporary Committee of Five was set up and remained in power until a new cabinet was formed by R. Skirmunt. This "reactionary government," however, could not maintain order in a country where Soviet propaganda was gaining ground even among the moderates and conservatives. Skirmunt was replaced by Serada, who attempted to form a new cabinet on a broader basis. He failed, and was replaced by Anton Luckevic, whose former associations with reactionaries and clericals in Vilna were now forgotten. An old hand at politics, Luckevic might have turned the tide, but it was too late. The Central Powers had been defeated in the West. Already the Occupation Army was leaving Belorussia, and with it went those who depended on its support. Consecration of a Myth It has been said that nationhood came to the Belorussians as an almost unsolicited gift of the Russian Revolution.^® It was, in fact, received from the hands of the Austro-German Occupation Army authorities and depended on their good will. The Belorussian National Republic held no general election, and the self-appointed administration lacked the elements necessary for international recognition. It may have been well-meaning, but it had neither the power nor the time to make reforms effective. Furthermore, its subservience to the Central Powers alienated many loyal elements in the population. Yet it cannot be denied that the ten-month period of symbolic independence has left an indelible impression on the Belorussian mind. A fact, historically accidental and trivial, has grown into a heroic legend. The date of

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March 25, 1 9 1 8 , is celebrated by nationalists as the birthday of the Belorussian state and it has now become a symbol about which all doubts are shouted down as sacrilege. Emotional nationalism cannot be argued about. Its tenets, however, have produced a rational historiography which, in a fair analysis, is not entirely based on distortion of truth. The year 1 9 1 7 - 1 8 was a time when eastern Europe began to change its political map, as new states spontaneously emerged in the territories of the Russian empire broken by war and revolution. All these needed, and actually used, foreign support to achieve nationhood. Since the Central Powers were in control of the area in question, there is no more reason for Belorussia to be blamed for her collaboration with them than there was in the case of Poland, Finland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, or the Ukraine at that time. After the defeat of the Central Powers, Poland, Finland, and the Baltic States succeeded in obtaining further support from the Allies, and Belorussia failed. This, the Belorussian writers insist, was entirely the fault of the Allied Powers, who, in their ignorance, were responsible for the fact that the lands of Belorussia subsequently became a battlefield between Poland and Russia. The argument that Belorussia was not prepared for statehood is waved away. Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia were no better prepared yet, supported by the Allies, these managed to survive and, eventually, to prosper. Had the Belorussian National Republic been given an equal opportunity, it would have done as well, and possibly better. In fact, it is pointed out, Belorussia is larger in territory and in population than all three Baltic states together, and her natural resources are greater. The nationalist writers believe that an independent Belorussia would have been a stabilizing factor in eastern Europe, and might even have "prevented or circumscribed World War I I . " This view is further strengthened by the conviction that only an independent Belorussia could have escaped Communism on the one hand, Polonization on the other, and saved its people from decimation. For the Belorussian nationalists it matters little that their theory may sometimes be at odds with historical truth. The more remote in history these events become, the stronger is their feeling that they have been cheated. Curiously enough, no sense of deep pessimism is involved, and their writings are filled with hope for the future. The following words written by A. Stankevic {1471) have become the gospel for his generation: "From people, even from those who are not our enemies, one may often hear that the ideal of Belorussian independence is a dream which can never materialize. Never mind. National ideals of many other peoples were deemed Utopian. With time, utopias have become historical facts! "

8 TARTITION OF BELORUSSIA The defeat of the Austro-German armies spelled the downfall of the Belorussian National RepubUc ( B N R ) . The pact of mutual assistance signed November 20 (December 3), 1918, between the Vilna Rada and the Lithuanian Tariba was a straw offered by one drowning party to another. On December 3 ( 1 6 ) , the Belorussian government fled from Minsk. The German troops followed on December 9(22). The country was abandoned to armed bands which rose swiftly as if from nowhere. In their footsteps, the Reds occupied Minsk on December 12(25). The BNR in Exile Members of the B N R government first took refuge in Vilna, then settled in Germany, and began to work in the manner common to all governments-in-exile. Given a semi-official status by the German authorities, they issued passports and published two bulletins: "The News of the Belorussian Press Bureau," in German, and Ζ Rodnaha Kraju (From Our Homeland), in Belorussian. Since recognition and assistance had to be sought in London and Paris, delegations were sent out to inform the Allies of Belorussian claims. The emissaries, however, were inexperienced in international affairs. In the general confusion which reigned in Europe, no one would even listen to them, and they themselves did not know to whom to turn or what to do. The petition they submitted to the Paris Peace Conference did not even get a hearing. Other practical problems, however, remained to be solved. Not all the Rada members had followed Luckevic to Berlin, and the Allies had allowed the Austro-German troops to stay for a certain time in the Baltic region and in western Belorussia. Consequently, Varonka moved his office to Grodno and succeeded, somewhat belatedly, in assembling under the Belorussian banner one infantry regiment and one cavalry brigade. In addition, he opened a national theater, established several new schools, published five newspapers, organized a cooperative union, and engaged in other spectacular and hurried activities. A new Belo-

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russian administration had thus grown up, on what legal basis no one knew, with Grodno as capital. It was, however, soon to come in conflict with the Poles. On orders from Marshal Foch, the Polish armies were moving eastward to check the advance of the Reds, and a Polish commissar appeared in Grodno. On February 13, Varonka asked Dr. Zimmerle, acting head of the German administration in Lithuania, for protection. Sadly, Zimmerle answered that his authority was gone. Varonka appealed to the Allied military mission which had just arrived in Kaunas,* but received no answer. In the meantime, the Poles seized Bialystok, Sokolka, and Belsk. Hastily, Saulis and Ezavitaü were dispatched to Warsaw to negotiate a demarcation line. The mission failed. The Poles were approaching the city of Vilna, and presently the last vestiges of Belorussian independence were abolished. Varonka and the members of his administration left Grodno, to join their fellows in exile.^ The Soviets and the First BSSR An important fragment of the BNR government — Lësik, President of the Rada; Ivanoüski, Secretary of Education; Ülasaü, former editor of the NaL· Niva; and a few others — remained in Minsk in the hope that the Belorussian state might continue with Russian, instead of German, support. Their hope was realized, though not exactly in the way they wished. After the German withdrawal, local municipalities and zemstvos took over temporarily, to be replaced by commissars from Russia, among whom many were Belorussian nationalists returning home. These were naturally hostile toward the Vilna and Minsk collaborationists and, after the November Revolution, rallied around the Belorussian National Commissariat, formed in Petrograd and later moved to Moscow.^ The organization had started as a literary club, Dziannica, headed by Carviakoü, Skorynka, and 2ylunovic, former members of the Belorussian National Committee in Minsk (1917). It then became attached to the People's Commissariat of Nationalities, headed by Stalin, and was given a free hand to rule Belorussia in the best interest of the greater Soviet community. The Reds found that the situation in Minsk had changed considerably. Former federalists were now separatists and did not want to treat with Moscow otherwise than on a power-to-power basis. The Kremlin complied on condition that the word "national" be replaced by "socialist" in the name of the republic. Thus, on January 1(14), 1919, the Belorussian Soviet Socialist Republic was proclaimed in Minsk and a Workers' and Peasants' Government was formed with •Colonel Reboul (France), president; Colonel Grave and Major Ross (the United States), and G. Watson (Great Britain).

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Zylunovic as president, and Carviakoü, Falski, Santyr, Dulo, and Cernusevic as people's commissars. When an All-Belorussian Congress of Workers, Peasants, and Soldiers was called to confirm "the will of the people" it became, however, once more apparent that the Belorussian masses were not prepared for the idea of statehood. The delegates from Smolensk, Mogilev, and Vitebsk provinces declared themselves against it, and left the Congress.® In fact, the republic found itself confined to six counties of Minsk province. The deputies adopted a summarily devised constitution, voted fusion of diminished Belorussia with Soviet Lithuania, and demanded the union of the joint state with Soviet Russia. In that manner everybody, as it were, was given satisfaction: the separatists, the promoters of the Lithuanian Belorussian state, and the federalists. Concurrently, a Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic, proclaimed in Vilna on December 16(29), 1918, also expressed a wish for fusion with Soviet Belorussia and union with Soviet Russia. On February 27 (March 12), 1919, the Lithuanian and Belorussian republics were united in Litbel, under the leadership of Kazimir Mickevic-Kapsukas, himself half Lithuanian and half Belorussian, and the Bolshevik parties of both countries merged under the management of a joint Belorussian Lithuanian Central Committee. Meanwhile, the Reds were stopped at approximately the GrodnoKaunas-Shavli line. The Poles were pressing them back in the south and, in the north, the German volunteers, supported by the Allies and the local Whites, began to clear western Lithuania and the Baltic shore. On April 22, General Pilsudski occupied Vilna. When, on May 22, Riga fell to the German Russian volunteers, the Poles already were in Minsk. The Litbel government fled to Smolensk and, in three months, the rout of the Soviets was complete. The Polish Occupation The Poles appealed to the Belorussians in the native idiom, promising them self-government and freedom, and declaring that the future of the country would be decided "by the free will of the people whose rights to self-determination shall in no wise be restricted." ^ This produced a very favorable impression. Indeed, the protection of Belorussia by Poland supported by the Allies, appeared to many as the best guarantee of peace and order. Even before the occupation, a delegation from Grodno and Novogrodek had petitioned in Warsaw for "incorporation of Belorussia into the Polish state." ® Now the country was promised even more than the people, under the circumstances, could reasonably expect. The sincerity of the Poles was not questioned, for was not General Pilsudski himself of Lithuanian Belorussian descent?

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On May 2, however, the Warsaw Sejm declared that Belorussia, "the homeland of Kosciuszko, Mickiewicz, and Traugutt, belongs to Poland and is an inalienable part of the Polish state." Liberation, it seemed, meant incorporation. The blow was hard, but it should have been anticipated. After the Soviet Revolution, two trends were evident in Warsaw, each aiming in its own way toward the restoration of Greater Poland. The parties only differed in that the one demanded annexation of, and the other federation with, the historic Polish possessions in the east. The annexationists, who were represented by the government and the Sejm, came mainly from the upper class and from the Polish nationals in Lithuania, Belorussia, and the Ukraine.® The federalists were the Polish Socialists and Progressive Democrats who were aware of Poland's political and economic weakness on the one hand, and of the advance of national self-determination in eastern Europe on the other. They proposed to restore the Polish Commonwealth "as of Jagiellonian times," that is, in the form of a free union with Lithuania, Belorussia, and the Ukraine, eventually with other states situated between the Baltic and the Black seas.·^ General Pilsudski and his group were the most ardent "federalists." As an army commander, he was responsible to Warsaw, but it was difficult to define exactly what relations existed between him and the government. Both spoke of Poland as if each were the only master of her destiny. The May resolution contradicted the April orders of Pilsudski who, apparently, decided to ignore it. There was some hope in this for the Belorussians, since Warsaw was far away, and Pilsudski in their land. Supported by the army, he might eventually impose his will on Warsaw. There was, at any rate, little choice left. Large groups of the Belorussian intelligentsia and the middle class would have preferred to accept an alliance with the devil himself rather than be thrown into the Soviet jaws. When the Polish armies entered Minsk, Pilsudski was enthusiastically greeted as the "friend and liberator of the Belorussian nation." ® The Second BNR The Poles had already disbanded the Belorussian infantry and cavalry formed by Varonka in Grodno. Belorussian administration was driven out in the western provinces, schools were closed, newspapers suspended, church property confiscated, political leaders arrested, and teachers sent to prison. The news was dismaying. The western area was, however, under the rule of Warsaw, while the eastern part of the country was under the more enlightened authority of General Pilsudski and his staff. Not only did Pilsudski permit organization of Belorussian self-government, but he also urged the natives to form their own ad-

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ministration, publish newspapers, open schools, theaters, and clubs. Expressing their loyalty to the Polish authority, the Minsk politicians asked for permission to organize Belorussian military units for the common struggle against the Soviets. This, however, Pilsudski refused. Public order was maintained by the occupation army, but the military did not unduly interfere with civil affairs and, in general, the situation began to look very much like the one under the Germans a year before. The B N R government returned from exile. Closer bonds with Poland were sought as protection for the national community. By the end of May, the Rada transmitted to the Paris Peace Conference a petition requesting that "within its ethnographic limits, White Ruthenia [Belorussia] shall be closely bound to the Polish Republic for the purpose of guaranteeing its economic and cultural development, while at the same time preserving a White Ruthenian [Belorussian] national constitution." ® The request was inspired but not sponsored by the Poles, who had not formally recognized the Belorussian republic. Under the federalist scheme of Pilsudski, the first conference of representatives was to take place at Vilna in October, and Belorussia was not invited. Furthermore, a conference in Helsinki adopted a number of recommendations aiming at the unification of economic and social policies of Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, and the Ukraine. Belorussia sent a delegate as an observer, but was refused treatment on an equal footing with "the six states lying between the Baltic and the Black seas" (September 6 , 1 9 2 0 ) . " Polish settlers in the eastern provinces were sending petitions to Warsaw requesting, in the name of the Belorussian people, pure and simple incorporation. These were forwarded to Versailles where the political boundaries of Poland were being discussed. A t the same time, political pressure from Warsaw began to stiffen in all the territories earmarked for incorporation. It was clear that Belorussia had been dropped out of the Pilsudski scheme. The new policy created unrest all along the eastern border, where local uprisings broke out. Polish officials were murdered, military trains attacked, warehouses plundered. The Poles retaliated by burning Belorussian villages. General Szepticki was reported to have said that he was prepared to plunge the land into ruin for the life of one Polish officer. The Rada protested to Warsaw and Paris. The Minister of Belorussian Affairs in Lithuania complained to the Allied governments. From Soviet Russia came the voices of Janka Kupala, Biadulia, Harun, and other writers, denouncing Polish atrocities and inciting the people to an open revolt. The anti-Polish underground spread rapidly. B y the end of the summer, Luckevic himself set off for Warsaw to try to bring the Poles to their senses. He was received by Ignace Paderew-

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ski, head of the government, and by General Pilsudski. What passed between them is not exactly known. But the Belorussian Rada was prorogued, and Luckevic was held in Warsaw for several weeks, until permitted to return to Minsk on condition that he obtain the consent of the Rada for formal union. The Polish grip related. Cultural activities were supported in accordance with Article 102 of the Polish Constitution guaranteeing the rights of national minorities and with Poland's international obligations in that regard.* Luckevic, as it were, was being given the opportunity and the time to prepare a better climate for the showdown with the Rada,^^ which on December 12 was summoned to discuss union. It was clear, however, that union meant unconditional incorporation. A caucus of the Belorussian Socialist parties, preceding the general session of the Rada, voted against the union. The Rada confirmed the Declaration of Independence by eighty-seven to thirty-seven votes, removed the government of Luckevic, and instructed Lastouski to form a new cabinet. Lastoüski invited a few members of the dismissed administration f into the new government to make it more acceptable to the Poles. He met, however, with open revolt from Luckevic who, with the thirtyseven members of the Rada, decided not to submit to the decisions of the majority. They instituted themselves as a Supreme Rada (Najvyssaja), declared the National Rada dissolved, and reinvested the Luckevic government with authority to continue as the only legitimate power in the country. The National Rada (Narodnaja), now reduced to eighty-seven members, countered by calling the opposition traitors and adventurers and inviting the people not to obey "the usurpers of the national power." ^^

The Union with Poland Polish authority, of course, could not tolerate the existence of two Belorussian administrations. Lastoüski and the more prominent members of the National Rada were arrested, others went underground or escaped to Lithuania. Luckevic reported the situation to Warsaw, where, in spite of his failure, his good will was recognized. He returned to Minsk with broader powers to pursue the cultural development of Belorussia, particularly among the Greek Orthodox. The national situation, however, had been irretrievably compromised, and chances for improvement appeared slight. Yet Belorussian nationalism had scored points. In the first place, Luckevic obtained permission to use the name of the Belorussian National Republic, as well as its flag and seal. Second, the government • Amendment to Article 93 of the Versailles Treaty. t Cvikevic, Zajac, Hryb, and Ladnoü.

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won the official recognition of Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Finland, and Czechoslovakia; subsequently, consulates opened in Prague, Riga, Libau, Mitau, and Daugapils; a military diplomatic mission was sent to Latvia; and a Belorussian ambassador was appointed to the Baltic states.^^ Finally, the Luckevic government could claim to its credit the brisk development of cultural and economic life, insofar as that was possible under foreign occupation. According to official sources of that time, 193 Belorussian schools were open in Minsk; about twenty in the Vilna and Grodno provinces; three senior and ten junior high schools in Minsk, Vilna, Sluck, and other cities; and a teachers' college in Minsk — all with instruction in the Belorussian language. A Belorussian theater and a polyphonic choir were formed and toured the country. Dramatic, artistic, and adult education clubs, libraries, and reading rooms appeared in the smaller towns and villages. An agricultural and a cooperative union were organized with 350 branches in Minsk province and the eastern part of Vilna province alone. Literary activities, of course, were caught in the double grip of the Polish civilian and military censorship, yet the country managed to publish ten newspapers and periodicals, and several presses printed texts for Belorussian schools. The clergy was permitted to campaign for Belorussian services and the establishment of the Union church as the national church of Belorussia.^® In most cases, Luckevic simply restored what had been accomplished under the German occupation and what the brief Soviet period destroyed. Yet the second Belorusisan National Republic under the Poles, in spite of its semi-official and ambiguous status, had certainly gained more culturally and internationally than the first Republic had been able to achieve under the Germans a year before. Nationalist gains could not, however, outweigh the general discontent with and growing hatred of the Poles. People were more irritated by restrictions than they were appreciative of benefits. Benevolent though it was, the attitude of the Poles was haughty. Germany was a great power, whereas eighteen months ago, it was reasoned, Poland was hardly more significant than Belorussia itself. The Great Powers had helped her to statehood, as they had done for many other small nations. For some reason, Belorussia had been left out, and her national pride was hurt. In vain the Luckevic administration tried to check the growing anti-Polish trend, but the people, it seemed, would rather jump into the big fire than burn in the small frying pan. The Second BSSR The Communist underground began to form around the Pedagogical Institute in Minsk, directed by two young scholars, Ihnatoüski and Koreneüski. The movement spread rapidly. Strikes and peasant re-

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volts broke out. The Poles, on July 15, 1920, issued a decree parceling the large landed estates among the peasantry. But it was too late. The eastern boundary of Poland was crumbling. Assisted by the village and town people, the Red Armies again were on their westward march. One must remember that no peace treaty had been signed between Poland and the Soviets. Indeed, fighting had been going on without a formal declaration of war. The eastern Polish frontier was a front line which, stabilized in the fall of 1919, ran along the Berezina and farther south, with Mozyr on the Pripet River in Polish hands. It was about 250 miles east of the line suggested later by Lord Curzon as a permanent Polish-Russian boundary, and approximately 100 miles east of the border which was to be negotiated in Riga, in March 1921 (see note 24). In the fall of 1919, secret peace negotiations started between Warsaw and Moscow through the mediation of a Polish Communist, J . Marchlewski, head of the Soviet Red Cross mission in Poland. An offer was made to accept the front line as the political boundary. The offer, confirmed by Lenin, Trotsky, and Chicherin on January 20, 1920, was discussed in a secret session of the Committee of Foreign and Military Affairs of the Polish Sejm, on February 6. Poland consented to open formal negotiations and, obviously underestimating the strength of the Kremlin while overestimating her own, ventured the suggestion that the fate of Belorussia and the Ukraine be determined by means of a plebiscite internationally controlled." At the same time, she was sounding out the Great Powers as to their possible eventual acceptance of a plan to create "several non-Communist, democratic, and ethnically non-Russian, independent states in the area between the 27° meridian in the West [Polish frontier of 1793] and the Dnieper River in the East [Polish frontier of 1772], in union with Poland." " The Soviets got wind of the maneuver and refused to meet the Polish peace delegation in Borisov. In the meantime Poland, on April 21, signed a treaty with the Ukrainian government-in-exile, taking on the task of "liberating the Ukraine" west of the D n i e p e r . O n April 26, the Polish armies invaded the Soviet Ukraine, and took the city of Kiev on May 7. The victory was spectacular — and short-lived. B y the end of May, the Reds began a counteroffensive northeast of Borisov, and in a few weeks the Poles were routed all along the front.^® On July 1 1 , the Reds reentered Minsk. A few days later, the Lithuanians, supported by Moscow, occupied the city and the central part of Vilna province. The whole of Belorussia was freed of the Poles. The Luckevic government and the Supreme Rada left the country again, taking refuge in Warsaw. The rival Lastoüski government and the National Rada remained in Kaunas, where some time before they had signed an alliance with Lithuania against Poland; and a Belo-

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russian, J . Semaska, was included among the members of the Lithuanian delegation to Versailles. A group of nationalists also remained in Minsk to form a new Belorussian government with the aid of the Soviets. For a second time, on August i, 1920, a Belorussian Soviet Socialist Republic was proclaimed. In fact, Belorussia now had three governments, with only one located in the native land. Until a Soviet Congress of all Belorussia should be called, administration was put in the hands of the Revolutionary Military Committee composed of three members of the Lithuanian Belorussian Communist Party, one member of the Jewish Bund, and one of the Minsk revolutionary organization, formerly underground. Caryiakoü, who had distinguished himself in the first Belorussian SSR, was appointed president of the Committee. The name Litbel disappeared from the scene. Indeed, the idea of a Lithuanian Belorussian state had died without even an obituary notice. The Belorussian nationalists were to accept the loss of Vilna to Lithuania or perish. There still was enough land left to them, however, and they were fortified by the hope that the future might be brighter with Russia than it would have been with Poland. On August 14, a Polish delegation left Warsaw for Minsk to beg for peace, but during August 1 6 - 1 8 the Red Armies were defeated at the very gates of Warsaw and put to rout. On their heels, the Poles reoccupied western Belorussia. On October 9, General Zeligowski seized the city of Vilna, alloted by the Great Powers to Lithuania, and made it the capital of a new state. Middle Lithuania {Litwa Srodkowa), which he formed out of four Lithuanian counties and united with Poland.^" At the same time, an uprising against the Soviets broke out in the Red Army rear, in the region of Sluck. The revolt, as it were, was anti-Russian and anti-Polish at the same time, but there is evidence that the movement was inspired by Luckevic from Warsaw and assisted by Polish money and men.^^ Insofar as one is able to put together the bits of contradictory information, the Sluck rebels seem to have rallied under the banner of "Free Belorussia," though their tracts were printed in Russian. They were led by the Sluck Rada, a self-appointed revolutionary committee headed by Praülevic, a Belorussian Socialist. Their First Belorussian Brigade, several thousand men strong, eventually joined forces with the guerrillas of General Bulak-Bulachovic, another controversial character in the story. What the latter's relation was to the Belorussian cause is not certain. It is known that he was supported by General Pilsudski on the one hand, and by the Russian anti-Soviet leader Boris Savinkov on the other. Contesting the authority of Luckevic and other leaders, and disagreeing with both Pilsudski and Savinkov, he set up his own government in the Belorussain woods and for

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some time claimed the whole region of Polesie, Sluck, and Novogrodek, all under the control of his guerrillas. There also were uprisings in other parts of the country (among them Mogilev, Vitebsk, Gomel), but they were isolated undertakings of which little is known. They harassed the Red Army rear throughout the fall and winter, but by the end of January the Soviets succeeded in liquidating the last centers of resistance.^^ The Poles had not been able to aid the rebels effectively. They themselves were poorly equipped and inefficiently led, and bogged down in the Belorussian marshes. Nor were the Reds any better off in the ruined, charred, and bloody land. The war came to a virtual standstill, stirred only occasionally by skirmishes here and there along the front. The country lay at the rock bottom of misery and despair. In March the Polish and the Soviet representatives met in Riga to discuss a peace treaty.^® The Treaty of Riga The peace negotiations went on without Belorussian participation on either the Polish or the Soviet side. Indeed, it was not easy to see who could represent the country with authority at that time. Neither the Belorussian Soviet government of Zylunovic and Carviakoü in Minsk, nor the Belorussian National government of Luckevic in Warsaw, nor the National government of Lastoüski in Kaunas was recognized by the Belorussian-speaking populations in Vilna and Grodno provinces. And the government of "Free Belorussia" formed by General Bulak-Bulachovic, the Sluck Rada in the Soviet underground, and the Belorussian Popular Assembly in Vitebsk recognized no authority but their own, each speaking in the name of the nation. It is idle to speculate upon what turn the Riga negotiations might have taken had the Belorussian nation been duly represented. The treaty, signed March i8, 1921, divided the Belorussian territory into halves; one was left to the Soviets, the other went to Poland. The Soviet government renounced all its "rights and claims to the territories west of the boundary determined by Article 2 of the Treaty," and Poland made a similar statement about the territories east of the hne. The historic quarrel was thus settled — at the expense of two peoples concerned, the Belorussians and the Ukrainians. The Great Powers did not at once recognize the settlement, which was negotiated without their consent and against their advice. Two years passed before the Conference of Ambassadors saw fit, on March 15, 1923, to accept the fait accompli. American recognition followed on April The new Polish boundary was, in fact, the result of a military conquest. The war, however, had been of the kind in which national and social issues were confused, and the populations split into fighting

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E x t r e m e » d v a n c e o f t h e Red Army ••••••••••••a

A r a i s t i c e l i n e s u g g e s t e d by M r . L l o y d G e o r g e

^ • Ι Ι Η Ι Μ Ι · !

T r e a t y o f Riga boundary Front line, April 26,

1920

Extreee advance o f the Poles

8. The Polish-Soviet

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camps irrespective of race, nationality, language, or social class. In fact, there were as many Russian, Ukrainian, and Belorussian natives who took the Polish side as there were Ukrainians, Belorussians, and Poles in the Soviet armies. Since it was generally realized that independence for Belorussia and the Ukraine was unrealistic under the circumstances, the partition seemed to many a lesser evil indeed than having all the land under either the Soviets or the Poles. Now people could align themselves with democratic Poland or with socialist Russia, according to their personal philosophies. Their cultural activities, it was reasoned, could be pursued so that the national ideal might persist on both sides of the border and perhaps, eventually, bring political and economic unity to the nation. Consoled by this thought, the nationalist leaders, on both sides of the border, made it clear that the facilities they might obtain for cultural work among the natives would determine their loyalties to the state. This was not entirely disagreeable to either Warsaw or Moscow. On the contrary, each would welcome Belorussian unity at the expense of the other, pacts and treaties notwithstanding. Who, for instance, could stop the eastern Belorussians if they wanted to join their brothers in Poland, or the western Belorussians if they revolted against the Poles? The practical question was how best to guide the people in the right direction. To Belorussian nationalists this was a godsend: with competition on both sides of the border, their cause could only gain! The impact of the Revolution was still fresh; with new enthusiasm the Belorussian leadership once again set to work, blissfully unaware of the disillusionment which was presently to come, first from the Poles, then from the Soviets.

9 WEST BELORUSSIA Polish Belorussia now occupied an area of about 38,600 square miles, a little less than the territory of the state of Kentucky. It included the former Grodno and Vilna provinces and the western part of Minsk province, extending from the Dvina River in the north to the Bug in the west and the Pripet in the south. Its population was about five millions. Canals — neglected and in places obstructed during the war — connected the Pripet River with the Niemen and the Bug, giving the country navigable outlets to both the Baltic and Black seas. T h e country possessed 1,864 miles of railroads and 4,660 miles of highways, both in rather bad condition. Except for Vilna and Grodno, there were no large cities, and the great majority of the population lived in scattered towns, villages, and hamlets. Averaging one hundred persons to the square mile, the population was engaged in raising mixed crops and potatoes, cutting lumber, and fishing. Y e t only 3 8 per cent of the land was under cultivation. One-fourth of the area was covered with forest, and the rest consisted of meadow, pasture, marsh, and sand. Agriculture, based on the three-field system, produced only ten or twelve bushels to the acre. A small proportion of the population, about 25,000 men, was occupied in factories and mills, half of this number in the region of Bialystok. Another 30,000 men were engaged in crafts: 5,000 shoemakers, hatters, and tailors; 2,000 carpenters, blacksmiths, and Jacks-of-all-trades. Economically, this part of the country was even worse off than its eastern section, in Russia. For about five years the people had lived under several different "Belorussian" governments in the establishment of which they had had little, if any, part. Indeed, Belorussian "republics" came and went on the bandwagons of the occupation armies — German, Polish, Russian — and whether they were "Democratic," "Socialist," or "Soviet," their national character lacked conviction. It was not unnatural, therefore, that the people should accept their new status with the same equanimity with which they had witnessed the rise and fall of former administrations. F o r a year or so, small rebel groups were on the prowl

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in marshes and woods, and a few intellectuals were still agitating in the larger cities.^ But at least peace — though not exactly a just one — had descended upon the country, and life was gaining a certain stability. The Polish Policy Would Poland be satisfied with her new territorial acquisitions? The Dmowski group (National Democrats) felt that before there was any further thought of expansion, she should integrate the various national minorities — racial, religious, and linguistic — which then made up 30 per cent of the total population. However, the Pidulski group (Socialists) held a different view. The mutation of ethnic minorities of various origins and culture into full-ñedged Poles seemed to them a long and uncertain process. On the other hand, by fostering and assisting their national self-determination and, eventually, the liberation of their brothers beyond the border, Poland might more certainly become a larger commonwealth again, "from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea (od.morza do morza)." Already there had been some advance to this effect. F. Bujak, for instance, proposed that the commonwealth include not only Lithuania, Belorussia, and the Ukraine, but also Latvia, Estonia, and East Prussia, with the constitutional provision that both the president of the union and the federal language be Polish. Concurrently, Kamieniecki visualized the creation of a larger "Lithuanian State" bordered by East Prussia on the west, the Baltic Sea and the Dvina River on the north, the Dnieper on the east, and the 1569 frontier in the south. It would consist of five autonomous cantons: Zhmud with Kaunas, Lithuania with Vilna, Podlaszie with Bialystok, Belorussia with Minsk, Polesie with Pinsk, and the whole united to Poland. Other writers considered that number of autonomous cantons too high, and suggested three : Belorussia with Minsk and Pinsk, Lithuania with Kaunas, and a Polish belt, or White Poland, with Grodno and Vilna. Still others insisted that a few Polish districts should be included within the boundaries of the autonomous Lithuanian and Belorussian cantons in order to make their ties with Poland proper "more tangible and stronger" (Strzewski). More cautious writers proposed that Belorussia be established only "from Minsk eastward," as a buffer-state between Poland and Russia. Although having different forms, all the projects of that kind accepted, as it were, the principle of Belorussian autonomy within the boundary of a future Polish commonwealth.^ In the meantime, the incorporated territory was divided into four provinces (wojewòdstwa), each under a Polish governor, with the right to their religion and language confirmed and protected by law. The rights were confirmed by international obligations of Poland and, since February 13, 1920, guaranteed by the League of Nations.® The Polish

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plan for the federation of the small nations in Eastern Europe was under way, but it was less clear now what place Belorussia was to be allotted in that plan.^ T h e "centralists" had already obtained important concessions. In the general census of 1 9 2 1 , all the natives of the Roman Catholic faith were registered as Polish,® and the total number of Belorussians was thus reduced from 3,700,000 to 1 , 0 4 1 , 7 6 0 . Although many of those registered as Polish could not even speak the language, it was believed that being Roman Catholic in faith, they would be "completely assimilated within ten years or s o " (Studnicki). Thus, they would be protected from, rather than exposed to, Belorussian nationalism. On the other hand, the administration was prepared to give the Belorussian nationalists every facility for working among the natives of the Orthodox faith. N o "Belorussian territory," of course, was to be cut out for them within the Polish state until they had become "politically mature" enough to become partners in the problematic commonwealth.

Belarus sification T h e Belorussian leaders protested against the 1 9 2 1 general census, and insisted on the "autonomous status" of West Belorussia. The Poles quieted them with promises for the future. T h e Luckevic "governmentin-exile" was disbanded, but certain nationalist activities were permitted in Vilna and Grodno provinces. A t the same time, substantial subsidies were granted for intensive Belorussification of the eastern region where "Orthodox" and " R u s s i a n " had been synonyms for ages. This was better than nothing, and the Belorussian leaders accepted the compromise. In eastern Europe a political compromise is not necessarily what the Western man understands by that term. There, it involves no concession of principles and no change of ultimate objective. T h e parties are fellow-travelers, not partners. T h e y may cross the sea together but each is heading toward his own goal. Polish and Belorussian interests coincided only in the conviction that all traces of Russian culture ought to be rooted out in West Belorussia before its fate could be decided. On this the parties agreed, and began to work together.® T h e Russian language was banned from all schools and the Latin alphabet, instead of the Cyrillic, recommended for Belorussian writtings. Over four hundred schools were opened, seven gymnasia (secondary schools), and three teachers' colleges, with all instruction in Belorussian. T h e Poles supported the Belorussian National Museum, the Scientific Society, the Teachers' Association, and other institutions. In addition, the Belorussian press was subsidized. T h e success was spectacular. In 1 9 2 2 the people voted their own ticket in the national elections, and sent three senators and eleven deputies to the Polish

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Sejm. Even the city of Vilna had three Belorussian deputies in War-

saw. For the first time, Belorussian nationalism had chosen its leaders by the will of the people as expressed in a regular ballot.

The delegates to the Sejm took their mandates more seriously than the Poles expected. They came out openly against the administration, which, they contended, ignored the Constitution and the international obligations of Poland. They complained that the natives of West Belorussia were treated as second-rate citizens and the land as a Polish colonial domain, while large landed estates were parceled and handed over to Polish immigrants {osadnicy), not to the natives.'^ Also, Belorussification of the Orthodox church was hindered by the Roman Catholic missionaries who wanted no Orthodox church within Poland's boundaries. Archbishop Eleupherius and Bishop Pantelejmon were arrested and confined in a Roman Catholic monastery near Cracow, and Bishop Sergei was exiled. Polish soldiers were plundering monasteries, and complaints to the police had no effect. The delegates were flooded with telegrams and petitions from their constituents. Indeed, there was hardly a session of the Sejm at which the Belorussian members did not demand the restoration of law and order. As a result of these protests, the Belorussian senators and deputies were informed that their activities and their criticism of the administration bordered on disloyalty. In fact, they were told, nationalist propaganda had made advances into Poland proper, calling for retaliation to protect the unity of the state. In other words, the Belorussians had no one to blame but themselves if they did not get along very well with the Polish authorities. This was hardly the best ground for an understanding. Polish public opinion was alarmed. Belorussianism now appeared as a menace, and was rapidly becoming the catalyst for all the discontented elements in the four eastern provinces. It seemed that, left to itself, Belorussianism might very well develop into a subversive movement of real magnitude. Even the federalists now doubted the soundness of their idea. Wasilewski expressed the general sentiment when he said: "The experience of recent years has proven that the Belorussians are not in any condition to govern themselves." It was said, further, that the Belorussians in Poland had "the lowest degree of national consciousness and differentiation", and that their agitation was nothing more than "a regional ethnic trend having a strong economic undercurrent." ® Presently, the Polish government set out to undo what it had done toward supporting the idea of Belorussian independence.

Reaction Bound by international obligations and the Constitution, the government could not openly do an about-face. But the portion of the ad-

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ministration responsible for the Belorussian provinces was given a free hand in protecting the Polish "national interest" to the best of its own judgment. Complaints made from the Sejm floor show how the local authorities had taken to their task. Three hundred and one Belorussian schools were closed, and 240 Belorussian teachers exiled to Cracow (December 14, 1924). Belorussian schools were turned into Polish, or entirely closed down — "up to four hundred grammar schools" (December 4, 1924). Postal clerks refused to accept telegrams written in Belorussian; Belorussian newspapers were not delivered to their subscribers, but were confiscated by the police and handed over to local grocers for use as wrapping paper (June 28, 1924). More than fifteen Belorussian newspapers were suspended, their editors taken to court and sent to jail (March 3, 1924). Land for railroad construction was taken from Belorussians without compensation (July 3, 1924). Officials were quartered by force in Belorussian homes and the owners were not paid (November 6, 1924). Horses were requisitioned from peasants without compensation ( M a y 12, 1925). Belorussian villages were overloaded with taxes: a fourfamily hamlet was taxed 726 zlotys; a settlement of sixty houses was taxed 2,215 zlotys, etc. (November 28, 1924, and January 20, 1925). Fifteen hundred Belorussians were arrested in a Novogrodek county in two days (April 27, 1925). A meeting of the Hramada was raided by the police in Stary Berezovy; hardly had the session opened when two hundred policemen and thirty drunken officials arrived in military trucks, and dispersed the Belorussians with swords and sticks — "the floors and walls were covered with blood" (December 10, 1926). T h e Belorussian deputies to the Polish Sejm, В. Taraskevic, S. Rak-Michajloüski, P. Valosyn, P. Miatla, J. Sabaleüski, I. Dvarcanin, Haürylik, Brusevic, Valynec, and others, protested fifty-two times against restrictions imposed on Belorussian schools, twenty-three times against forcible seizures of private land, eighty-two times against economic exploitation, 218 times against personal offenses by Polish officials — and so on.® Protestations from the floor of the Sejm had no effect. Finally, the Belorussian leaders sent to the League of Nations (fifth session) a memorandum which read in part: The Belorussian people are suffering unbelievable terror from the Poles. . . . Corporal punishment is administered to Belorussian peasants, individually and in mass. Sometimes all the inhabitants of a village are flogged. The police and landlords beat up Belorussian peasants wherever they happen to lay hands upon them, in the fields, in the woods, in their homes, at police stations, even in church. . . At the beginning of this year. Deputy Taraskevic visited Polesie province; he could not find a single village where there was even one man who had escaped merciless Polish beating {Speech of

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B. Taraskevic in the Sejm, June 6, 1Ç24) . . . The Polish police do not stop at simple beatings with gun butts, knuckle dusters, or fists. . . They have developed a system of refined torture. A n d the document cited the following instances: A. Water-torture, that is, filling the victim with two or three liters of water poured in through his nostrils, which causes unbearable head pains. {This was used on V. Sevastianovic, I. Lenkovic, and M. Kedys, on May IÇ, 1924, in the village of Zalesie, Sokolka district.) B. Beating the heels and soles of the feet with sticks, after which the victim is ordered to run about. {Protest of the Belorussian deputies to the Sejm, June 6,1Ç24.) C. Insertion of needles under the fingernails. {Fact proven in the trial of forty-five Belorussians in Bialystok, beginning of May iç2j.) D. The victim is set upon by dogs. {In this manner, I. Milenkevic was badly bitten on all parts of his body, and his genitals were chewed off; he fled to Lithuania, and his present address is 13, Mickiewicz Street, Kaunas.) E. The genital organs are beaten with rulers. {Protest of the Belorussian deputies to the Sejm, April 18,1Ç24.) F. The victim's head is bashed against the wall, then he is bound and thrown from a considerable height onto the ground. {Reported in the newspaper "Borba.") G. Roasting feet or armpits. H. Sharp cartridges or pencils are placed between the fingers or knees of the victim, after which the fingers or knees are squeezed together, so that the points enter the flesh. . . T h e document gave details of each case, pointed out the hideousness of the police crimes, and demanded an international investigation. B u t it could not find its w a y through the procedural maze of the L e a g u e of Nations.^® In a paper friendly to the Polish M i n i s t r y of Foreign Affairs, an opinion was expressed that the international obligations of Poland should not give foreign powers " t h e right to interfere with her domestic policies or hinder the natural process of assimilation of minority groups under her protection." ^^ T h e M i n o r i t y T r e a t y had no legal basis anyw a y , since the United States had never ratified it. Consequently, as stated b y Professor C y b i c h o w s k i , " e n f o r c e d unilaterally, the treaty can be denounced unilaterally as well." ^^ T h i s the Polish Minister of F o r eign Affairs did at the fifteenth session of the L e a g u e of Nations, September 1 3 , 1 9 3 4 . " Poland had not waited until the formal denunciation of the treaty to m a k e her new policy effective, b u t had begun repressive action b y the end of the 1920's. B e f o r e long, only a f e w dozen Belorussian schools remained open out of 1,631 that had been founded during the period

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of "Belorussification." Only one secondary school was in use in Vilna, and the number of grammar schools fell to sixty-nine, with only thirtyfive of these permitted to use Belorussian along with Polish as the language of instruction (szkoly ultrakwistyczne). Parents were fined for refusing to send their children to Polish schools. T h e very name Belorussian began to disappear from documents, replaced by Biatopolak (White Polish) for natives of the Roman Catholic faith, and by Rusin, tutejszy* for the Orthodox. T h e press was muzzled. A former member of the B N R government, Cvikevic, bitterly summed up the situation: Yesterday, we and the Poles were two nations on the same side of the fence. Poland, "a nation crucified," was our elder brother in the momentous struggle against Tsarism, and her example gave us strength and courage. We lived in the hope that freedom would come at the same time for both our peoples — and what happened? Revolution came and, with it, freedom for all. But as soon as Poland had risen from the dead, her scourge began to play over the white body of Belorussia. Behind the big-worded manifestoes of Pilsudski, gendarmes came to our land, and with the gendarmes, PolishAustrian (Galician) officials and Catholic priests. . . We mistook the Polish people, or to be more accurate, the Polish revolutionary idealists, for the Polish state. Life has pitilessly crushed our illusion.^^ Subversive

Propaganda

T h e harder the Poles struck the nail, the deeper it went into the wood. Tales about the Red Terror in Soviet Belorussia frightened the native no longer. Nothing, he believed, could be worse than what he suffered in Poland, and Communist agitators did not waste time making use of this situation. While in 1924 the total membership of the Communist Party in West Belorussia ( K P Z B ) was barely fifteen hundred, a year later there were eighteen hundred Communists in the local jails alone, and no one knows how many thousands at large.^® Marxists joined hands with Christian Democrats; bourgeois, with workers; dispossessed landlords, with peasants. In the country, over one hundred policemen were murdered, hundreds of homes of the Polish osadntcy plundered and burned.^® On the other hand, in the cities, subversive activity used legal devices. A political club, the Belaruskaja SialianskaRabotnickaja Bramada (Belorussian Peasants' and Workers' Association), was formed by the Belorussian deputies to the Polish Sejm, ostensibly for social and cultural work among the natives. T h e very name of that organization was ominous enough to indicate that, secretly, it carried propaganda for union with the U S S R . But Belorussian deputies were covered by parliamentary immunity, and the Polish Government let them alone until the next elections to the Sejm. » Literally, "local resident" ; "aborigine" would be the nearest translation. See Chapter I.

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Between 1925 and 1928, the Hramada succeeded in enrolling over 100,000 members from all social classes in Western Belorussia, and very nearly pushed the country into open revolt. Its activities bordered on high treason and, in the heat of general elections to the Sejm, the movement was suppressed with the full strength of state authority. Fifty-six leaders of the Hramada were taken to the courts, tried behind closed doors, without even mention in the press. Later, eye-witnesses related that Deputy Taraskevic had been brought into the courtroom in shackles. Deputies Dvarcanin and Haüryhk beaten to death, and others treated in a like manner.^'' Moscow seized upon this opportunity to offer the Polish government an exchange of the Belorussian prisoners for Poles arrested, possibly for this very reason, in the Soviet Union. Glad to get rid of the subverters, the Polish government obliged. It took Warsaw some time to realize that it should have known better. Indeed, in the eyes of the Belorussian native, it conferred upon Soviet Russia the role of legitimate protector of his interests. And more people who already opposed Polish policies now turned their hopes toward the Kremlin. Even the avowedly anti-Soviet groups were now turning against the Poles. Headed by a few deputies to the Sejm, and centered around the Belorussian Christian Democratic Party ( B C D ) and the Peasant Union, they had early come into conflict with the Hramada on ideological grounds. While the Hramada had been gaining the support of the masses, particularly of the Orthodox peasantry, the B C D "attracted to itself the most advanced, intelligent, and constructive minds. . . There were Belorussian Catholics and these made the B C D the depository and stronghold of the Belorussian national idea." This was an open and bold acknowledgment of the failure of Polish policy which had counted on their complete Polonization "within ten years." Consequently, the hammer of oppression struck the Belorussian Christian Democrats as hard as it did the Belorussian Socialists. The Archbishop of Vilna forbade the faithful to support the B C D movement, or even to read their organ, the Belaruskaja Krynica] Belorussian Catholic clergymen were ordered to remove their names from the ballot in general elections, and priests connected with the movement were censured (1928). The Polish administration even accused them of intelligence with the Communists, which they denied.^® Legal Belorussian leadership now was organized around a group of Polish collaborationists {uhadoücy), headed by Anton Luckevic and Radaslav Astroüski. In order to counter the Belorussian Institute of Economy and Culture founded in 1926 and deemed un-Polish, a Central Union of Belorussian Cultural, Educational, and Economic Organizations and Institutions was organized and supported by the Polish authorities. Reverting to the policy he had once tried in Minsk, Luc-

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kevic succeeded in obtaining from the Poles a large appropriation for building a Belorussian secondary school in Novogrodek, 2 50,000 zlotys for a teachers' college, 50,000 zlotys for the publication of Belorussian textbooks, and other forms of support intended to shift activities from political into cultural channels. The subsidized press explained that only the anti-Polish, and not the "Belorussian," activities were objectionable and that loyal Belorussians could expect full freedom of selfexpression and the support of the Government.^^ But confidence is a flower that blooms only once. T h e bribe that might have brought results some time before no longer worked. In the general elections to the Sejm, the Belorussians joined hands with other minorities: German, Ukrainian, and Jewish, in 1928; Ukrainian, in 1930.* Restricted and disorganized by the administration, and demoralized by inner strife, they were able to elect but two deputies in 1928, and only one in 1930. T h e resistance movement went underground where it met with the Polish Communist Party and joined hands with it.^^ The Pacification " F o r reasons of good neighborhood," the Kremlin had separated the Communist Party of West Belorussia from the Communist Party in the B S S R , and ordered it to merge with the PoHsh Communist Party (1923).^® Consequently, the Communists in West Belorussia formed autonomous locals of the Polish Communist Party, and their registered membership grew to twenty-six hundred by 1931.^^ In 1925, because of the unfavorable international situation, they were advised against preparing an armed revolt and urged to support the activities of the Hramada, instead. After the liquidation of the Hramada, party membership had approximately doubled, though no exact numbers are known.^® More important than party members, however, were the fellow-travelers among all the social classes in West Belorussia. Hardly two years had passed after the inauguration of the new Polish policy of collaboration when strikes, street demonstrations, and armed clashes with the Poles broke out again. Cities were flooded with revolutionary leaflets. Red (Communist) and white-red-white (Belorussian) banners appeared together bearing such slogans as "Bread and W o r k , " "Land and Freedom," "Free Belorussia," and others. Guerrillas were on the prowl in the woods, and disorders swept the country along the eastern border. Again the Polish government used force, but the situation now was more serious than before. For several months regular military operations were conducted against the insurgents. In some places, artillery was used. W e can read reports that: " T h e fighting front in Polesie was two hundred kilometers long"; "Polish vengeance was perpetrated on • The Lithuanian uiinority boycotted the elections.

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the peaceful populations as well as on the guerrillas. . . Sixty to seventy peasants were hanged daily. Women, even children, were beaten to death. . ." "The criminal and the innocent perished equally in the hands of the Polish gendarmes." Stories printed in the Belorussian press abroad may often have been exaggerated, perhaps deliberately inflated, yet to the reader they sounded true, especially since no official Polish accounts were published, and no press correspondents admitted into the regions under "pacification." Public flogging and death were not the only means of repression. The Poles wanted to get at the root of Irredentism and, in the words of a Belorussian writer, "to kill the very soul in the lacerated body of West Belorussia." "Village clubs and reading rooms were closed down. . . Adult education centers lost thousands of zlotys in cash and in securities, books, musical instruments, stage equipment, radio sets, etc., and their buildings were turned into Polish schools. . . In the rural areas, all cultural activities were stopped by order of the local authorities. . . Schools, theaters, publishing houses, reading rooms, and practically every material evidence of Belorussian self-expression was destroyed." Yet, the results were the opposite of what the Polish administration wanted. Even people who had long been indifferent to nationalist propaganda became conscious of the Belorussian cause. "Symbols of the disbanded clubs, choirs, and fellowship groups, and photographs of the arrested or exiled priests, writers, and political leaders, now were hero-worshipped in every Belorussian home." Perhaps the repression was not as mercilessly harsh as the above quotations suggest. After all, they are taken from the Belorussian press which was allowed to continue during the period of pacification, and after. Polish policy lacked consistency. Actually, central Belorussian institutions in Vilna remained unmolested. The national sentiment repressed in one part of the country was allowed to grow in another. Obviously, the situation could not be controlled in such a fashion. More Belorussians — more anti-Polish than ever — were joining the national cause. In short, the Poles had done what nationalist propaganda had not been able purposely to achieve. Literary

Nationalism

Although the Poles had succeeded in suppressing Belorussianism as a political factor, the Belorussian intelligentsia was given an outlet in literary activities, subject to censorship and police supervision.* Activi• In the general elections of 1935, the Belorussians were to lose the last seat they had in the Polish parliament, where they now were represented only by landlords and osadnicy of Polish descent. Social and educational activities were restricted. In round figures, only 2,300 pupils were permitted to use Belorussian along with Polish in schools, whereas bilingual instruction still was offered to 473,000 Ukrainians, 72,000 Germans, 70,000 Jews, i,soo Lithuanians, 1,700 Russians, and 1,000 Czechs (1934-3S)·

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ties centered around a few periodicals and cultural clubs in Vilna. While paying lip service to the Polish state, these were building in the background a new reserve of national strength. Their first task was to renew cultural contacts with the villages. The editorial rooms soon were swamped with verses and tales in which semi-literate youth poured out its soul. The editors did their best to encourage popular writings, and the back pages of the periodicals were full of notes like this: "Your poems have been received. Their spirit is fine, but they are too crude to print. We shall try, however, to edit and publish some." In this manner, a new flow was established between the city and the village, which strengthened their ties. This was a period of ideological rather than organizational formation of the resistance movement.®" Before long a few new talents appeared from among the people. The names of Vasilëk, Masara, and other peasant writers became known and praised. Often their lyrics were clumsy and naive, but a more sophisticated literature perhaps would not have been appreciated by the reader. Devotion to the native land and civic lament were the common themes. Sincerity and courage, not literary skill, were in demand. There were some writings, however, which attracted attention abroad, and the poems of Maxim Tank, J . Pusca, and a few others were translated into Ukrainian, Lithuanian, and Polish. Presently, Maxim Tank (A. Skurko) was compared to Alexander Pushkin and Adam Mickiewicz in the native press. His simple lyrics stirred the national pride, and indeed were worth more than volumes of political propaganda.®^ Young enthusiasts began to believe that, aside from their historical and political right, Belorussians were culturally equal, if not superior, to other peoples in eastern Europe. In many respects, the period 1933-1937 in Poland can be compared to that of Nasa Niva in Russia, 1906-1914. Different, of course, were the numbers of people and the range of issues involved, as well as the material achievements. Besides publications dedicated to social work and education, two magazines dealing with Belorussian history, fine arts, and literature appeared in Vilna {Kalos'se and Letapis'). Demand for books in the Belorussian language was steadily increasing. In 1936, a Day of Belorussian Culture was inaugurated, to be celebrated annually, and it met with unprecedented success. Greetings were received from Belorussian organizations in Paris, Berlin, Chicago, Prague, Riga, and Kaunas, and from the Lithuanians and Ukrainians. Conspicuously, no word came from either the Poles or the Russians. Both the Poles and the Russians, though for different reasons, looked askance at the literary revival in West Belorussia. The antiSoviet flavor it assumed irritated Moscow. Agreeable as this may have been to Warsaw, it was also alarming in that the expected Polonization of the country was not forthcoming. It was even observed that children

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of the Polish osadnicy were speaking Belorussian in preference to Polish and that sometimes their whole families, thrust into the midst of Belorussian peasantry, became Belorussianized. Still more disturbing to the Poles was the fact that those who displayed the most aggressive Belorussian spirit were the Belorussian Catholics, who had already been designated as Polish in official statistics. The clergy insisted that Belorussian be introduced as the language of instruction in the Vilna Theological Seminary and of the regular sermons. They even ventured to write to the Holy See asking that the concordat with Poland be amended (1925) and Belorussian bishops appointed in Vilna and in Pinsk (1932). Finally, they obtained from the Nuncio a subsidy for translating the Gospel and the Acts into the Belorussian language (1932). Their lead was followed by the Orthodox clergy, who demanded the same rights. Both the Roman Catholics and the Orthodox wanted Belorussian native priests to be represented in their respective diocesan administrations and the correspondence with parishes to be conducted in the Belorussian language. The Jesuits found it advisable to sponsor publication of a Uniate magazine in Belorussian using both the Latin {lacinka) and the Cyrillic {hrazdanka) alphabets. The Belorussian Christian Democrats (Catholics) even dared to take their issues to the international forum,* and maintained regular contacts with the Congress of National Minorities in Europe (1925-1938).®^ By decision of the Vilna Governor, the Christian Democrat Movement ( B C D ) was disbanded,®® its organ Belaruskaja Krynica suspended (1936), and a new purge of Belorussian organizations ordered (1937).®^ A New Wave of Oppression The new wave of oppression was significantly different in concept from that which the Polish government had tried before, and it required a more effective technique. In 1928-1932 the Poles had fought Belorussian political nationalism; they now set out to eradicate Belorussian cultural activity. Poland, of course, no longer considered herself bound by international obligations to her racial, religious, and linguistic minorities,®® and there were plenty of loopholes in the revised constitutional text of April 23, 1935. Freedoms of religion, of speech, and of public assembly were subjected to considerations of "common good," "public order and morals" (Articles 5, i i i ) and, in effect, the executive authority had been made the judge. The attack was leveled simultaneously against the press, the church, educational institutions, and community clubs. The clergy was ordered to instruct in Polish only. One hundred and forty Orthodox churches were closed, and others were * Their memorandum to the League of Nations ( 1 9 2 9 ) was suppressed by the Polish government ( M a y 6, 1 9 3 0 ) .

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compelled to use the Polish liturgical texts, even in the regions "where nobody can speak Polish, or ever did." In the belt one hundred kilometers wide along the Soviet border, the Orthodox were forced into the Catholic faith, and those who resisted were deported inland, under the provisions of martial law. The last Belorussian Catholic publications in Vilna, including the children's magazine Zaseuka, were suspended. The Cathohc priests Adam Stankevic and Wladzimir Talocka, former leaders of the BCD, were exiled, one to Slonim, the other to Bialystok. Another priest, J . Hermanovic, known under the pen name of Vinduk Advazny, was forced to leave the country for Rome. Members of the Belorussian Catholic sect, the Marianists, who had their headquarters in Druja, were arrested and deported.®® The Belorussian Institute of Economy and Culture and the Belorussian School Society were disbanded (December 2 and 4, 1936), the Union of Belorussian Teachers and the Belorussian National Committee dissolved (August 20 and November 15, 1937, respectively), and the last Belorussian Gymnasium closed.®'' On November 15, 1938, the Act of January 7, 1925, protecting the right of the natives to have their own schools, was repealed. Subsidies to the Belorussian Ethnographic Museum were cut off at the beginning of 1939.®® Only two streets in Vilna retained their ancient Belorussian names, Skoryna and Brothers Mamonic. Public meetings were prohibited, cooperatives disbanded, and community centers closed. People connected with the Belorussian movement were not permitted to vote in municipal elections, and their names were removed from the ballot. Local leaders were deported to Bereza Kartuska where a concentration camp was established for those suspected of un-PoIish activities.®® Gleaned from Belorussian publications, none of which appeared regularly in 1938, and the last of which was suspended early in the summer of 1939, are the following statements: "We have a seven-grade school in our village. Originally, instruction was given four hours a week in Belorussian, but this summer, and the summer before, only one hour has been given. No one has even bothered to explain the change." "We have «0 school here, and our children must go to a Polish school in the next village where all people also are Belorussian, not Polish. We send them there lest we be fined. The teaching is poor, and the children do not know how to read and write after four years of school (Village Malysniki, Troki County)." "The police say that possession of a Belorussian book is a sign of disloyalty." ^^ "The Polish teacher forbids the children to talk in Belorussian, and makes them stand on their knees when they are caught doing so (Village Romanovo)." "We are told by the police that children may not read Belorussian books either in the library or at home." "The officials have prohibited Belorussian plays." "Our young people are growing up unedu-

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cated. . . They do not read newspapers or books. They are not interested in the life and history of their people. Indeed, they have no cultural interests at all." The rural communities were returning to a dark age. Alarmed, the Chryscyjanskaja Dumka (Christian Thought) urged the people "to pursue self-education in the way your fathers did during the oppressive times of Tsarism: let brother teach brother, sister teach sister, neighbor teach neighbor." Upon publication of this, the Vilna governor suspended the p a p e r B e l o r u s s i a n youth was given the choice of becoming Pohsh or remaining illiterate. This choice seemed, indeed, to be the goal of the new PoHsh policy. As long as Belorussianism had been a movement away from Russia, it was welcome. But as soon as it had become a movement away from Poland, it could not be tolerated. Since the awakening of Belorussian self-consciousness was no longer safe, it was better for a man to remain at the stage in which he used to describe himself simply as tute'fsi (aborigine).^'' A blank mind was safer than an un-Polish mind. Belorussians have been described as " a flat-faced, goggle-eyed race, devoid of culture." Ignorance and poverty, it was said, would merely restore that race to its natural condition.^® The Polish economic policy in particular seems to have been in agreement with this theory. The Poles affirm that they were doing "everything that could be done toward rendering [Belorussian] economy remunerative." They maintain that "the manifold efforts . . . to develop not only great industrial centers but also smaller establishments scattered over the provinces, and to raise the level and efficiency of craftsmanship and of local commerce often greatly helped to promote the well-being of very remote and backward districts . . . This system resulting in modest but steady progress appeared to be especially well adapted to the needs and conditions of a country not endowed with remarkable natural resources." This was essentially a colonial policy. Thirty-seven per cent of all arable land in West Belorussia was owned by the Poles.^'' Native farms of five to twelve acres (39.7 per cent), others of less than five acres (21.7 per cent), covered the rest,^® and no Belorussian farmer could legally increase his holding without permission of the district administrator {powiatowy starosta)}^ Natural resources were exploited in a predatory manner. In 1937 alone, state forests in the region rendered a net profit of 42,500,000 zlotys, while the output of local industries declined 25 to 40 per cent, in the period 1926-1938.®° Besides the city of Vilna with a population of over 100,000, there were in all West Bellorussia only two cities with 50,000 to 100,000 inhabitants (Grodno, Brest), only two with 20,000 to 50,000 inhabitants, and only three with 10,000 to 20,000 inhabitants." Economically and

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culturally, the four Belorussian provinces remained the least developed sections of Poland. There were, of course, individual Poles who approached the matter sincerely and who tried to find a solution advantageous for both sides, or to raise their voices in defense of the Belorussian rights. Literature, however, has preserved no memory of any instances of public protest.®® Political Emigration Tempered in the furnace of militant nationalism for about twenty years and faced with the choice of abandoning their people or perishing, the West Belorussian intelligentsia — brought up in the Polish schools — accepted the challenge. The more active elements went underground, others continued the struggle within the framework of as much local protective legality as still prevailed, and many left the country to carry on the struggle from beyond the Polish borders. According to some estimates, over 100,000 Belorussians emigrated from Poland.®^ Perhaps one third settled in the United States, Canada, and Latin America, and others spread into various sections of Europe.®® There were many, of course, whose reasons for moving were economic, not political, but their gratitude to and sympathy for Poland were no greater for that. In fact, they provided the rank and file for the new "centers of resistance" abroad. In general, Belorussian emigrants were not able to establish useful political contacts in their countries of adoption, nor did they succeed in influencing public opinion in favor of their national cause. Foreign governments looked askance at all nationalism other than their own, and immigrant political activities were restricted. Also, to Belorussian peasants situated abroad, the educated brother from Poland was a stranger. They did not know much about the later growth of the "Belorussian idea" and, in fact, did not care to know. The political emigrants, disillusioned as they must have been, found themselves isolated. Yet their contributions to the Belorussian cause were not entirely lost. In Lithuania, the Belorussians were treated with sympathy and a liberal spirit. No distinction was made, however, between the Lithuanian citizens of Russian and Belorussian descent.®® No Belorussian schools existed there. Yet the exiles from Poland were given substantial facilities for continuing their work. Assisted by the Lithuanian government, Lastoüski and his associates founded a Belorussian Educational Society, a Belorussian Home, and a theater. In 1933 a Belorussian Center for Adult Education opened in Kaunas, with an annual subsidy of two to three thousand lits from the state. A periodical, Kryvic, edited first by Lastoüski, then by Dus-Duseüski, appeared for a number of years, and books and pamphlets were printed in the Belorussian language. The trend of the publications was mildly anti-Soviet,

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strongly anti-Polish, and they all were intended for "our brothers abroad," not for the Belorussian natives in Lithuania.®^ In Latvia, Belorussian activities first centered around the Military Mission and the Consulate, established in 1 9 1 9 and continued for some time as agencies-in-exile. Two years later, an educational society, Bac'kauscyna, was founded in Dvinsk (Daugapils), and the Latvian government appointed S. Sacharaú to organize a Belorussian section in the Ministry of Education. Soon there were forty-six Belorussian schools in the country, and Sacharaü's office had doubled its staff, from two clerks to four. The total appropriation for education of the Belorussian minority reached 95,000 lats. Yet there was only one school for every 1,500 Belorussian natives, as compared with one school for every 850 Latvians, every 800 Germans, and every 460 Russians. The Belorussian community still had the highest illiteracy in the country, 61 per cent among men and 71 per cent among women.®® The hope that their situation might improve was short-hved. In 1924, Belorussian educators were accused of subversive activities. The Latvian court acquitted them in April 1925, but the policy of the government had changed from support to suppression. Cultural activities were restricted, and the official number of Belorussians in the country began to dwindle.®® By 1937, not a single Belorussian school existed in Latvia, and only eleven hours a week were given to Belorussian studies in two mixed schools in Riga, with 170 pupils altogether. In Riga, a Belorussian Center, consisting of only a handful of political emigrants, continued to exist and its publications were allowed to appear until World War II.®" Belorussian nationalists enjoyed more freedom in the countries which did not have the minority problem. In Czechoslovakia an attempt was made to set up a center for all the advocates of a "free and independent Belorussia." After the death of P. Kreceüski in 1924, however, the center began to disintegrate and, finally, lost Czech support. But political succession was strictly observed, and the title of President of the Belorussian National Republic went to Vasil Zacharka, and after World War II, to Mikola Abramcyk, who moved the symbol of "Free Belorussia" to Paris. In France, Abramcyk had been known since the early 1930's as a successful organizer of a Union {Chaürus) of Belorussian workers and editor of the periodical Recha (Echo), which was both anti-Polish and anti-Soviet. In the United States, a Belorussian Hramada was organized in Chicago, headed by the Very Reverend John Tarasevich, President, and J . Löbach, Secretary General. Although it counted a former minister of the B N R , Varonka, among its members, it did not succeed in taking root among Americans of Belorussian descent, and its inñuence remained small.®^ On the other hand, Belorussian student groups were formed in Prague, Paris, Berlin, Rome, Belgrade, Munich, and

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other places, eventually to create an All-Belorussian Student Union abroad. T h e s e were soon to begin to display an even more aggressive nationalistic spirit than their fathers, though younger leadership did not come to the fore until W o r l d W a r I I . * T h e emigrants had at least achieved, then, political centers and a press abroad, which would have been inconceivable a generation before. T h e y e a r s between W o r l d W a r s I and I I produced nationalist leaders, made keen b y the struggle for survival. T h r o w n out of their native land, they continued to fight. Since most of them were emigrants from W e s t Belorussia, it was not unnatural that their a t t a c k s against Poland sounded louder than their invectives against the Soviets. On the Eve of World War II T h e hopes of the Polish government that the Belorussian population deprived of leadership might display more l o y a l t y to the state proved ill-founded. A n account of the situation which appeared in the Belaruski Front ( F e b r u a r y i , 1939) is worth quoting at some length: The Belorussian village is holding its breath, tensely expecting changes of some sort. . . Those who have long looked toward the East now look to all sides. In fact, the people will fall into the hands of anyone who will promise them a better lot — whether the promise be sincere or false. . . Communists have influence but, under present conditions, so would fascists, or even monarchists, if there were any around. . . Y e t some different political tendencies can be observed, and the people may be divided into several groups. The first group consists of Russophiles. They also are called "Communists," but this is not true since there is hardly any ideological Communism in the rural communities. Their attitude can be described as "orientationally" communistic, and tomorrow it could be fascistic or monarchistic, depending on who is ruling over Russia. This is particularly typical of the Orthodox populations. . . Their attitude has been described as anti-Polish, but it is also anti-German, anti-Lithuanian, even anti-Belorussian, since it is proRussian above all. They feel that our only hope is Russia, whether Soviet or otherwise. . . They do not read Belorussian publications and, in general, take no part in communal life, first because they are frightened by arrests and provocations, and also because they keep their eyes turned to Moscow, and trust no one. . . The second group, small but very active at present, are opportunists, go-getters, and adventurers seeking quick gain in anything. Some of them were with the first group at the time of the Belorussian Hramada (1924-28), but now they collaborate closely with the Polish police, army, and teachers. . . . They nearly broke their necks in the last communal elections in order to get "power," but succeeded only where the masses were completely indifferent and passive. Where there was competition from the first group or » For political emigration since the war, see Chapter 14.

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from the nationalists, not one of their candidates was elected. . . The Poles are mistaken in supporting them, since they will be the first to abandon their loyalty should the tide turn. The nationalists form the third group, now scattered and disorganized. But wherever they are, even in small numbers, they always come to the top in communal leadership. . . Generally honest, intelligent, and capable, they have influence among the more advanced and active people. The fourth group consists of the mass of peasantry whose philosophy is "Say nothing, know nothing, do nothing." These, countless in numbers, are like cattle. They can be driven anj^here by a capable leader speaking with authority. . . Hungry, destitute, illiterate farmers, they are not interested in politics or social ideas of any sort. They are used to obeying the ecclesiastical and secular authorities, but they would enthusiastically follow anyone who promises them bread, and more land to produce bread. . . The Poles ignored the warning, and suppressed the paper. But the picture given was correct, indeed prophetic. Presently, World War II found West Belorussian loyalties divided between Communism and nationalism — but with none whatsoever for Poland.

10 EAST BELORUSSIA T h e situation in East Belorussia between 1921 and World War I I is difficult to reconstruct exactly. In Poland, we have contradictory evidence, but always as a different interpretation of the known facts. In the Soviet Union, however, facts and their recording have no direct relationship; very often what is reported as fact may simply be wished or believed or feared to have happened, and there is no way always of knowing what did and what did not actually happen. Official secrecy has given birth to myths which may take more than one generation of historians to dismantle. Facts supplied by Soviet sources and by the press in exile often form entirely different sets of reference which cannot be counterchecked but must be left to conjecture. In the strange realm where fiction and reality are confused, only a few landmarks stand out which leave no room for doubt. Communism and

Nationalism

T h e theoretical position of Communism in regard to national selfdetermination needs no elaboration. T h e leaders had never concealed the fact that their policy aimed at the rapprochement of the proletarians and semi-proletarians of various nationalities "for the common revolutionary struggle" (Seventh Party Congress, March 1919). T h e Party was "properly to use national questions as a vital factor of revolutionary dynamics in exploding and breaking up the capitalist society." ^ In other words, Communism was ready to use national aspirations so far as they seemed to fit into its system, but had no desire to satisfy them. When doubts arose, Stalin authoritatively put things in their proper place (1930).^ Accordingly, national autonomy under the Soviets was understood as "an expediency aiming at overcoming the centrifugal forces," and the federal republic as "an instrument of neutralization of the national question" within the Soviet system.® Both Lenin and Pilsudski considered Belorussian national self-determination as a revolutionary dynamic and an expedient, although one

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wanted to use it for World Revolution, and the other for Greater Poland. Not unnaturally, therefore, a Belorussian "renaissance" followed a somewhat similar sequence on both sides of the border: first, the expansion of national culture to the limits of autonomy compatible only with a theoretical unity of the state; second, elimination of the national leadership formed during that period, and enforcement of the political unity of the state; third, emasculation ( U S S R ) , or eradication (Poland), of national culture to complete extinction of the national ideal. The difference lay only in the methods applied by the respective governments. In fact, Moscow had greater latitude in handling the problem than the ideological and political position of Poland could permit. Lenin certainly promised both peace and self-determination in more appealing terms than his democratic opponent. He proclaimed the right of all the peoples of the Russian empire to secession. But the liberated peoples were expected "freely" to reunite in the Soviet system, and Stalin was appointed to oversee this process as the first People's Commissar of Nationalities.^ Accordingly, in February 1918, a Belorussian National Commissariat headed by Carviakoü emerged in Moscow as the prospective government of independent Belorussia. Assisted by the Red Army, this group became the government of the First and the Second Belorussian Soviet Sociahst Republics, January to April 1919, and in July 1920, respectively. The "Sovereign" Soviet Belorussian state ( B S S R ) , as yet composed of six counties of Minsk province, with a population of approximately 1,200,000, concluded " a treaty of alliance" with the Russian Soviet Federal Socialist Republic ( R S F S R ) on January 16, 1920 (Adamovic — Karachan). Moscow used her legal position as ally to represent the "interests of the Belorussian S S R " at the conference of Riga in March 1921. Consequently, Poland was bound to recognize the Belorussian state, although its international status remained uncertain. In fact, Soviet Belorussia did not even attempt to enter into direct relations with any country outside the Soviet borders. A t the international conferences in Geneva and The Hague in 1922, all the Soviet republics were represented by Moscow. The formal union followed on December 30, 1922. It consisted of Russia, Belorussia, the Ukraine, and the Transcaucasian Federation, and the incorporation act guaranteed the nominal sovereignty of each constituent republic. Belorussian nationalism had achieved its aim: the country might have a wrong system of government, but it was now a state equal in right, dignity, and honor with Russia itself. Furthermore, Russia freely ceded the Mogilev and Vitebsk provinces to Belorussia in 1924, and the Gomel and Recica counties in 1926, thus bringing the total population of the republic to 5,000,000. Obviously, the territorial growth of Soviet Belorussia was agreeable to the views of Moscow. It certainly was

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most agreeable to Belorussian nationalists who applauded it both in the U S S R and abroad.

Belarus sification From the Soviet point of view, the establishment of the Belorussian Republic could serve a double purpose: ( i ) to attract into and maintain within the Soviet system those elements of the population to which the Communist idea might not otherwise appeal, and ( 2 ) to integrate their nationalism with world revolutionary forces. Consequently, complete freedom was given the local administration to organize a Belorussian Home. Wasting no time, the new administration set out for wholesale Belorussification of the region. Belorussian nationality was declared predominant, and Belorussian the official language. Russian was banned from schools, courts, and offices — even from homes. Presently, everything which smelled of "old Russia" was destroyed or remodeled. Native culture was fostered, incommensurate and rudimentary though it was. The people were ordered to bring their dialects into line with the national standard, though it was itself still in the making. People who spoke in the mixed idiom were denounced as "Muscovites" and deprived of rights. Although the Russians became the least considered minority in the state, Moscow remained undisturbed. Provided the Belorussian administration professed loyalty to the Soviet ideal, it was given a green light to proceed as far as it chose to satisfy the idiosyncrasies of local nationalism. Resistance soon developed among the natives themselves, since to many, Belorussianism and Communism were now the same thing. In Vitebsk province, newspapers reported the beating, even killing, of teachers by the peasants, who, unfamiliar with the southwestern dialect wanted instruction for their children in Russian. In many parts of the country, guerrillas — commonly called "the greens" because woods and swamps were their headquarters — fought against both the Bolsheviks and the nationalists. Themselves native Belorussians, they made a great point of using Russian in their communications with each other and in their printed proclamations. The authorities treated them indiscriminately as counterrevolutionaries. But, protesting against the unnatural union of Belorussianism and Communism, they were themselves as unnaturally united in a negative sense, and the movement never developed beyond occasional outbursts of popular ire. The largest known group (Listopad, Miacelski, Makaren, Kazak, Dziamidovic, Kurbyka, and others) was brought to trial and liquidated in March 1926. In the cities, however, nationalism seemed to be in complete control. T o the leaders, of whom only a few had joined the Communist Party, an alliance with the Soviets was an expedient, a good bargain

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indeed. They sat down to eat with the devil, sure of having brought with them the longer spoon. Indeed, at that time, no one could believe that the Soviets would survive long enough to rebuild an empire. It seemed reasonable to expect that Belorussian nationalism, nourished in the hotbed of revolution, would outlive it, and the cost appeared negligible if Belorussia could eventually face the world in its own right.

Education Consequently, the efforts of the administration were concentrated not so much on Sovietization as on installing and developing national culture wherever possible. Resistance to forcible Belorussiñcation continued from various groups of the population, sometimes including the local Communist Party clubs,® yet the achievements were spectacular and rapid. B y 1928 "Belorussiñcation was entirely completed in the central, province, and district institutions." ® Qualitative evaluation is difficult, but here are some figures as reported in the press at the time. An Institute of Belorussian Culture was founded in Minsk in 1 9 2 1 , to be transformed in 1928 into the Belorussian Academy of Sciences with seven departments and eight committees on research in archeology, history, ethnography, folklore, music, fine arts, language, and natural resources. Then followed a State University, State Publishing Office {Dom Knihi), National Theater, Agricultural Academy, School of Medicine, Veterinarian Institute, several teachers' colleges, museums, centers of adult education, and other institutions. In 1925, 350,000 children were attending 4000 elementary and 261 secondary schools where all instruction was now in Belorussian. Nineteen newspapers and periodicals were published, with a total circulation of 100,000. For a country which had always been the least literate part of European Russia, this was an impressive record.·^ In 1928, according to the official sources, there were already four Belorussian institutions of higher learning (504 professors, 4,632 students), six workers' colleges ( 1 2 c professors, 1,028 students), thirty technical institutes (566 professors, 5,276 students), thirty-four trade schools (408 teachers, 3,077 students), thirteen factory schools ( 1 5 7 teachers, 1,009 students), seven technical schools (45 instructors, 606 students), 277 eight-year public schools (3,077 teachers, 99,437 pupils), 4,585 four-year public schools (6,671 teachers, 309,009 pupils), and a large number of grammar schools, centers of adult education, reading rooms, and so on — down to smaller villages and hamlets.® Granted that these figures are correct, considerable evidence exists that the schools were not adequately staffed or equipped. Curricula were reduced to a minimum, and one may wonder about the qualifications of the teaching staff that the land, starting nearly from scratch, was to produce in seven years — 1 , 1 7 0 college professors, 7,748 school

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teachers, and 2,630 instructors in various fields! Y e t there is little doubt that the country was given great momentum in education in the native tongue, and that the youth responded with enthusiasm. "New men are required to change the face of the earth" was the motto, and the opportunities opened up to them seemed breathtaking.

National

Minorities

The general census of 1926 counted 80.62 per cent of the total population of the BSSR as Belorussian-speaking, of which 91.7 per cent were peasants. From that social segment the new national elite was expected to arise. In the meantime, cultural and political life was concentrated in the city, where the Belorussian element always was relatively weak. Former villagers now constituted about 40 per cent of the urban population, but only one of every five had established roots in any such occupations as business, liberal professions, "white collar," or industrial employment.® These pursuits were almost entirely in the hands of non-Belorussian groups which now were established as selfgoverned "national-cultural communities," with their own soviets.* Altogether, the foreign elements thus organized represented 19.38 per cent of the total and 60.74 per cent of the urban population. Since they legally enjoyed equal opportunity with the Belorussians, the national administration assumed the composition shown in the accompanying table. ETHNIC COMPOSITION OF THE NATIONAL ADMINISTRATION, 1927 (in per cent)

Legislative branch Central City Town Village Executive branch Administration Industry and trade Agriculture Army Technical personnel Administration Industry and trade Agriculture

Belorussians

Jews

Russians

SS-0 S4-I 53-2 92.3

19.0 30.6

IS-0 14 s 2.S 1.4

II.O 9.8

18.0 13-2 24.1 S0.8

5-8 6.7

S9-S 1-7

49-3 IO.I 36

6.3 43-9

64.0 396 59-6

22.9 42.7 16.9

S-4 11.2 12.9

7-7 6.S 10.6

SI 4 30.8

40-S 2.S 24.8

Others

3-8 3-8

* Twenty-three Jewish, nineteen Polish, sixteen Russian, five L a t v i a n , t w o Ukrainian, and t w o German soviets (1924).

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It is striking that the armed forces were almost entirely composed of non-Belorussians (98.3 per cent). Otherwise, the task of building the Belorussian National Home was about equally divided between the Belorussian and non-Belorussian leadership. A decree of July 15, 1924 confirmed "the equal rights" of the four principal languages: Belorussian, Russian, Yiddish, and Polish. Only the basic laws and the more important government acts, however, were to be published in four languages. Belorussian was given "precedence in relations between governmental, trade-union, and social agencies and organizations"; Russian was used primarily "in relations with the USSR and other Union Republics" and, together with Yiddish and Polish, in such correspondence and enactments "as might be deemed necessary." In fact, only a very few administrators were tetralingual, and not very many had even an adequate command of Belorussian. In 1927, for every twenty books in the Belorussian language, ten would appear in Russian, two in Yiddish, one in Polish.^^ Russians controlled the army and the police, and were particularly active in Communist indoctrination. But, with equal zeal, they assisted the administration in squeezing Russian culture out of the land. Early legislation required knowledge of both the Belorussian and the Russian languages for the personnel in public offices, trade unions, and social agencies, and both languages were supposed to be taught in the schools.^^ Actually, Russian had been banned from the offices, and in schools it was offered on an equal footing with German and French, as a foreign language. Unlike the Jewish and Polish communities, the Russians had no courts of justice, no high schools, and no teachers' college of their own. Terms of Russian origin were ordered out of the Belorussian technical and legal vocabularies, new terms being borrowed from the Western languages, or created off-hand by Belorussian linguists. The Academy set out to rewrite Belorussian history, and the term Kryvic reappeared in literature, in support of the contention that Belorussia had never had much in common with Russia either culturally or historically. In 1927, an attempt was made to wrench the Belorussian Orthodox church away from the Moscow Patriarchate — an act somewhat inconsistent with the theory that religion was doomed anyway.^® Belorussian nationalists professed Soviet loyalty, of course, but "pro-Soviet" was not yet synonymous with "pro-Russian" in the sense it was later forced to become. The USSR complied, being at that time for Sovietization rather than for Russification of the world. Ideological

Adjustments

The belief that national emancipation might be achieved through cooperation with Communist Russia called for a reconciliation of values, and for an adjustment to practices introduced by Bolshevism. The

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question arose as to how far one should go in the way of concessions. The nationalists, so far, had every reason to remain optimistic. Expropriations from the social upper class, by no means numerous in the country, did not contradict their concepts of democracy. Violence and excesses could be explained by the fact that revolutions are not made with hands in velvet gloves. Large landed estates, industry, transportation, banking, and trade were nationalized, but the private sector had been enlarged with the new economic policy promoted by Lenin. The village, recovering from arbitrary taxation and wholesale requisitions, was resuming normal life, even developing brisk trade with the city. Artisanship and petty trade tJφical of the country were better off than before. Indeed, it seemed for the moment that not only the lower class but also the middle class had benefited by the Soviet Revolution. Economic planning, poor and wasteful of money and men though it was, could already boast some spectacular achievements. The press reported that new highways and railroads were being built, old ones repaired and improved. Navigation was resumed on the canal system connecting the Dvina, Niemen, and Dnieper rivers. Radio stations were built in Minsk and Gomel, new public buildings arose in the cities, and 171 power plants were constructed throughout the country. Electric light appeared, or was scheduled to appear, in the rural areas where kerosene and candles had been luxuries only yesterday. The federal treasury had invested 33 million rubles in the Belorussian economy and, according to statistics, industrial output had surpassed in 1928 the prewar level by 230 per cent. Concurrently, new agricultural methods raised the yield of the Belorussian soil from thirty to eighty or ninety poods per hectare.* The figures, whether true or fictitious, were impressive. Still more so were the plans for the future. There was fear that, abandoned to their own devices, the nationalists might indeed lose their hold on the people. Literature of the Adradzen^ne (Revival) period was dedicated to a democratic, not exactly a socialist, ideal. In his play Tutejsi (Common Folk), Janka Kupala described the Polish and the Soviet occupation armies in equally repulsive colors. Ales' Harun and Jadvihin fled to Poland from the Red Terror. Jakub Kolas denounced Moscow treachery in Riga. All other writers of that school of thought claimed freedom for all men, not only for workers and peasants. Obviously, this trend had become incompatible with the situation created when the proletariat took power into its own hands, "freeing the toiling masses, and carrying out the national liberation of the Belorussian people." ^^ While the older writers hesitated, new ones were taking the lead. Aleksandrovic, Dudar, Kuzma Corny, Krapiva, Michas Carot, and others formed the literary club Maladniak (Youth), "to invigorate Belorussian literature and the • O n e pood equals 36.113 pounds; one hectare equals 2,471 acres.

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arts with the ideas of Marxism-Leninism." The Adradzen'tie trend was declared an anachronism, and its survival harmful to the people. The old guard found a temporary refuge in the literary club Uzvyssa (Excelsior) and, conceding that new literature "must be national in form, proletarian and peasant in content," refused, nevertheless, to make it "subservient to current issues of the day." But their position was untenable. The leftist periodical Polymta (Flame), supported by the might of the state, organized the majority of writers along the Party line, and the club Maladniak was actually transformed into a Belorussian Association of Proletarian Writers. Jakub Kolas and Biadulia were the first to Jump on the bandwagon. Other elder leaders followed and, finally, Janka Kupala himself translated "The Internationale" into the Belorussian language — collecting royalties for fifty thousand copies printed and sold by the state. Socialization of Belorussian nationalism may have seemed complete. But other events indicated that perhaps this was not yet entirely true. Conditional Surrender The commanding position and spectacular progress of nationalism in Soviet Belorussia, while apparently paying only lip-service to Marxism-Leninism, deeply impressed the Belorussians abroad. They began to revise their attitude toward Communism, and the revision resulted in (a) the Hramada subversive movement in Poland (see above), {b) the surrender of power by the Lastoüski government-in-exile to the administration of Soviet Belorussia, and (c) the immigration or repatriation of political exiles to the BSSR. In the winter of 1924, the President of the Belorussian Soviet government, Zylunovic, formerly an active member of the Nasa Niva group, arrived in Prague personally to negotiate repatriation of the former leaders of the Belorussian National Republic. Accordingly, Lastoüski called a conference of the members of the government-inexile in Berlin to decide whether they should continue their activities or surrender to the Soviet authority. After long hours of discussion, the government-in-exile on October 10, 1925, decided to disband and to pass on the symbolic powers of the B N R to the government of the BSSR, "the only lawful government of Belorussia." Lastoüski himself, and his former ministers, Cvikevic, Zajac, Prakulevic, Badunova, and Mamon'ka, returned to Minsk where they were received with honors and, in accordance with the terms of the deal, given top positions in the educational and cultural branches of the government. Only President Kreceuski, Minister Zacharka, and Secretary Hryb chose to remain abroad, carrying with them the striped symbol of the B N R in exile.^® The news that former anti-Soviet leaders had been pardoned, and permitted to have an active part in building the Belorussian Home

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under the Soviets, stirred the Belorussian population in Poland. For a moment, it looked as though there might be an open war of secession. Moscow generously rescued the leaders from the Polish jails and concentration camps, and offered hospitality to all the discontented and oppressed. Before long, all the leaders of the nationalist movement, except the Christian Democrats and the uhadoucy, gathered in Minsk. Among them were former Belorussian deputies to the Polish Sejm, S. Rak-Michajloüski, P. Miatla, В. Taraâkevic, Valosyn, and others; writers I. Dvarcanin, Haürylik, Valynec; scholars M. Dovnar-Zapolski, Bursevic, Kacanovic; educators, lawyers, medical doctors, engineers, and other professional men. These were followed by scores of the Belorussian intelligentsia returning from Latvia, Lithuania, Czechoslovakia, Germany, and other countries of exile. Admittedly, the Belorussian capital had never known such a concentration of the national elite as it now enjoyed under the Soviets in the years 1 9 2 5 - 1 9 2 9 . Although they assumed a Soviet personality, the returning citizens did not renounce their democratic political ideal. Indeed, employing all available legal devices to counter Communist indoctrination of the masses, they wasted no time in adapting to their own ends the circumstances over which, in fact, they had no control. Wherever they could, they used the state might and the state treasury to force Belorussification upon all phases of Ufe, public and private, instilling in the fatalistic and self-doubting people a new belief in their superior character and destiny. The Belorussian literary standard, moving farther away from the Russian, was broadened and systematized; large dictionaries of technical terms were compiled to bring Belorussian science up to the international level; new institutions of higher learning and research were opened; reading rooms and libraries were flooded with translations from foreign languages, and with original works by Belorussian writers and scholars, occasionally with casual references to Marxism-Leninism and, more often, without them. "In these years," says one historian, "the Belorussian culture, though Socialist in form, was unqualifiedly nationalist in content."

The Purges In the meantime, the Kremlin had been shifting its guns. The faith in an immediately impending world revolution had vanished. Instead, a program of building "Socialism in One Country" was promoted, making the domestic unity and external safety of the U S S R the prime concern of the Communist Party. No longer could the Soviet boat carry Communism and nationalism to their respective destinations, but it now had to be steered to one ultimate goal, all hands on deck. After having passed up the "revolutionary situation in Poland," Belorussian nationalism had lost its propaganda value. Its further growth on the

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domestic scene could bring the Soviet Union nothing but trouble. Indeed, the first Five Year Plan inaugurated in 1928 had already met with resistance from the Belorussian leadership, and brought it into open conflict with the Soviets. A similar situation had been developing in other national republics. For the Kremlin, a purge of nationalist elements had now become a matter of life and death. The blow was dealt with the usual Soviet ruthless efficacy. B y the fall of 1929, the whole Belorussian nationalist leadership found itself behind prison walls. For several months, the country had been the scene of the wholesale elimination of all opponents, actual or potential, of the new Stalin policy. N o legal procedure of justice was observed. "Thousands of scholars, writers, teachers, state officials, even students, were arrested, deported, or liquidated in jail." " The available data are scant. The police operated in secrecy and, twenty years later, there still is no way of knowing how many people were arrested and how many were deported or liquidated. In most cases, the fact that a certain person had vanished from the scene is the only controllable evidence. The historian looks in vain for documentary proof. Yet, testimonies abound that the wholesale purge which began in 1929 and continued far into 1 9 3 3 was immeasurably more ruthless than anything the Belorussian nationalists had ever experienced in Poland. Hardest hit were those who had returned from political exile upon Soviet invitation. The former deputies to the Polish Sejm, Dvarcanin and Haúrylik, who had barely lived through the beating by the Polish police, were now shot as "Polish spies." Rumors spread that RakMichajloúski was killed by guards on his way to jail. P. Miatla, who upon his arrival from Poland was appointed director of the western division of the Belorussian Academy of Sciences, was exiled to the Solovki labor camp on the White Sea, where he died in 1938. President of the Academy of Sciences, B. Taraskevic, another refugee from Poland, was first taken to Moscow, then exiled to the Russian north.^® Bursevic, Valosyn, Valynec, Kacanovic, and all other former members of the Workers' and Peasants' Hramada and of the revolutionary club Zmahan'ne in Poland were arrested and in one way or another "removed from circulation." Former Prime Minister Lastoüski, then Permanent Secretary of the Belorussian Academy of Sciences, and former Minister Cvikevic, then president of the Belorussian Red Cross, died in prison. The fate of other leaders of the former B N R is not known — but they have never been heard from since that time. Dovnar-Zapolski, the founder of the Belorussian nationalist doctrine, was sent to a concentration camp where he died a few years later, though the details are not known. Ihnatoüski, the moving spirit behind the Academy of Sciences and

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the State University, on whose textbooks a whole generation had been brought up, committed suicide rather than face the platoon of executioners.^® Janka Kupala, on whom only a few years before the title of "People's Writer" had been conferred b y the Soviet Government, stabbed himself in the stomach to escape arrest and deportation. Also arrested were Piceta, president of the State University; Lësik and Nekrasevic, who planned Belorussian education on the national level; prominent scholars, teachers, writers, artists, and hundreds of students.^» T h e purge followed the pattern which has since become only too well known. T h e arrested were accused of "bourgeois nationalism," otherwise described as a "nationalist democratic menace" {nacdemovscyna), or "driveling intelligentsia nationalism," in the Soviet press. T h e y were branded "enemies of the people," "spies of a foreign power," and "secret agents of world capitahsm and of world reaction." The victims of course all "confessed" their "crimes against the people,'' and the Belorussian Soviet government announced a mammoth "public trial." For reasons that have remained unknown the show was called off, and "the traitors" were liquidated under the cloak of secrecy and silence. Presently, all the prominent survivors, even the least important protagonists, of the Adradzen'ne period had been removed from the Belorussian scene.^^ The Reorientation

of Belorussian

Culture

It seemed as though the Kremlin had purposefully gathered all nationahst leadership together in Minsk to do away with it at once. This was, however, only the first installment of what was in store for the Belorussian national cause.^^ T h e old leadership was destroyed, but the national framework of the Republic had been wisely left intact. It had only to be furnished with a new personnel, and Belorussian life and culture oriented in a new direction. T h e direction was given in Stalin's own words: " N a tionalist in form. Socialist in content." Admittedly, there were enough native Belorussians to carry the order through, and their ranks were further increased with the "repented," "reformed," and "redeemed" nationalists. Anything that bore the traces of "bourgeois nationalism" was to be eradicated, even historical monuments and findings of scholarly research. T h e Belorussian newspapers Saveckaja Belarus' (Soviet Belorussia) and Belaruskaja V'èska (Belorussian Village); periodicals Uzvyssa (Excelsior), Belarus' Kalchaznaja (Belorussia Collectivized), Polymia (Flame), Viasna (Spring), Maladniak ( Y o u t h ) , Nas Kraj (Our Count r y ) , in spite of their allegedly Marxist-Leninist line, were suspended

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and their files destroyed. Libraries, museums, reading rooms, educational centers, and state archives were depleted. Schools were to go without textbooks for some time, since the use of old manuals was prohibited, and the new ones had not yet been compiled. How wide the scope of "cultural cleaning" was one may see from a list of printed works and manuscripts removed from stacks, burned, or sent to paper mills, in 1930: (a) All books printed in Western Belorussia; (δ) the works of DovnarZapolski, Ihnatoüski, and other nationalist scholars; (c) the poetry of Ales' Harun; (á) collections of folklore compiled by A. Serzputovski; (e) dictionaries of the Vitebsk, Cervency, Mozyr, and other local dialects; (/) articles written on the occasion of the 400th anniversary of the Belorussian print (1525-1925); (g) proceedings of the First Belorussian Convention of archeologists and paleographers, and of the Humanities Section of the Academy of Sciences (classes of philology, history, ethnography, archeology, fine arts, and common law) ; (Ä) files of the Belaruski Archiv (Belorussian Archives), an academic publication of documents; (г) new Belorussian terminological dictionaries; (j) certain files of Belorussian bibliography. . .2® Anything in literature, the arts, and the sciences that emphasized the unique destiny of the Belorussian people was earmarked for liquidation. The relics of St. Euphrosyne, a national symbol, were taken from Polock and put in an "anti-religious museum" in Vitebsk. The historical St. Sophia cathedral in Polock was turned into a storehouse. The famous Boris Rocks, the earliest monument of Belorussian history, were to be blown up to make way for a new highway to Moscow ( 1 9 3 7 ) . The use of the name Kryvici was prohibited. Pictures of Skoryna and Kalinoüski were removed from public buildings ( 1 9 3 1 ) , and orders were given to rewrite Belorussian history, emphasizing the common development of the family of nations now forming the Soviet Union. These were the years of the First Five Year Plan, and of continuous unrest and revolt among the peasantry resisting collectivization of agriculture. Having cleaned the city of "the driveling intelligentsia," the Communist Party now could and did strike against the village, and by 1 9 3 3 collectivization of farming was virtually completed.^*

New Purges The horrors of forcible collectivization and famine, and the social disturbances that resulted from the mass deportations and executions, engendered a movement in all the national republics of the Union which, had it occurred now, would perhaps have been described as Titoism. The Ukrainian Communist Party and the government of the Ukrainian S S R were accused of "nationalist conspiracy," and drastically purged. The purge was extended to Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaidzhán, Tur-

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kestan, and other lands. Evidence soon appeared that a considerable undercover opposition also existed in the midst of Belorussian Communism. A large number of Belorussian Communists had themselves been farmers, and many had been part of the rank and file in the "national revival" movement before they embraced the Leninist-Stalinist creed. For many, personal losses and sentimental attachments made their loyalties divided. The Kremlin realistically kept the position of the Secretary General of the Belorussian Communist Party in the hands of men of non-Belorussian origin, and responsible positions were held by veterans of the November Revolution and the Civil War who could not speak Belorussian. Apparently the rule was never to have Belorussians supervising Belorussians but to send them to head thé N K V D in other parts of the USSR. Likewise, the commander of the Belorussian Mihtary Area {okrug) "was never a Belorussian, and all ranks higher than commander of a battalion were held by non-Belorussians." Yet even the top Party members now became contaminated with the undercurrents of nationalism. Already in 1930, the loyalties of the People's Commissar of Agriculture Pryscepaü, his Deputy Commissar Ales' Adamovic, and the People's Commissar of Education Balicki were suspected. All three were removed. Then Party Secretary §arangovic was shot as a "Polish spy." President of the Council of People's Commissars Haladzed, who himself directed the previous purge, was arrested and liquidated. 2ylunovic, nominal president of the BSSR, was imprisoned and, while awaiting his trial, "died in an asylum for the insane." The former president and real founder of Soviet Belorussia, A. Carviakoü, shot himself to avoid torture and shameful "confession." As in 1929-30, the personnel in charge of cultural activities was hit the hardest. Among the first liquidated were D. Carnusevic, director of the Linguistic Institute of the Academy of Sciences and former member of the Belorussian Politburo; A. Hurlo, director of the Institute of National Economy; Liascinski, Deputy People's Commissar of Education; Zinkovic, director of the Institute for Retraining Soviet Educators; Slaükovic and Laürynovic, directors of the People's Commissariat of Education; Volfson and Vydra, directors of the Institute of Philosophy. The purge continued for several years, and only the Kremlin records can tell the full range of Party mobility at that period. In 1936, the new Secretary General, Valkovic, announced that 15.4 per cent of the members and 20.5 per cent of the candidates had been expelled from the Party that year, in addition to 17 per cent of the membership which had been purged three years before. Complete data are lacking, but the purge must have been wider than indicated if it was

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true that " i 8 8 out of 1 9 1 party clubs were censored in Vitebsk province, and 109 out of 1 4 3 in Gomel province." In fact, the composition of the Central Committee of the Party and of the Council of People's Commissars had been entirely changed, and new men had been placed at the head of the provincial administration and the leading cultural institutions of the republic. T h e y did not remain for long, however. More purges were ordered in connection with the Moscow trials of 1 9 3 7 - 3 8 and hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Party officials who had replaced the recently liquidated were liquidated in turn. T h e Party organizations, down to the smallest village cell, were again pruned of members whose Communist loyalty was to any degree suspected. Of the former protagonists of Belorussian nationalism — with the exception of J a n k a Kupala, J a k u b Kolas, and a dozen writers and scholars whose talents the Kremlin could use — not a single man who had labored for the establishment of the Belorussian Home under the Soviets was alive or free in 1939.^^

The Stalinization of Nationalism Unlike the Poles, the Soviets had been up against men, and not against symbols of Belorussianism. T h e uncongenial personnel was eliminated, but great care was taken to preserve Belorussian establishments while filling them with new content. The offices were being handed over to the younger generation, ideologically conditioned in the Soviet mixer. Unbelievers and waverers had been rooted out from their ranks. The idealism and sentimentalism of their fathers were scorned, intellectualism condemned. The practical problems of survival prevailed, and the Soviet form of nationalism was accepted as "the most progressive and scientifically vindicated." T h e people were made to believe that the country was offered " a system of state organization in which the national problems and the problem of cooperation among nations have been solved more perfectly than in any other multinational state" (Stalin). T h e constant menace of "capitalist encirclement and aggression" called for economic and cultural cooperation with all the Soviet republics. Talents and energies were oriented in nonideological directions. Planning had been introduced into all branches of social and cultural life. T o the ambitious youth it was clear that the future of the country lay in association with, not in isolation from, other nations of the Union. Accepting their loyalties, the Kremlin realistically made a few more symbolic concessions to satisfy their idiosyncrasies and pride. Following the pattern laid down b y Moscow in 1 9 3 4 , Belorussian literature, theater, music, and the fine arts were centralized into unions, each under the direction of a Party delegate. Union membership con-

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ferred a status without which no writer could publish, no artist could exhibit, no composer could produce his work. The unions met several times a year to plan their activities in the spirit of "socialist realism." New names came to the fore, each being glorified in the press as a new Belorussian genius apt "to make all the Tolstoys and all the Dostoyevskis look sick." A few old hands. Kolas, Biadulia, Krapiva, and Samujlënak, had been drawn into the Party to demonstrate the continuity of Belorussian culture, and Kupala was made president of the Union of Writers, although the press complained that he was "writing little lately, concentrating mostly on translations from foreign languages." Little though he wrote, he found time to compose an ode entitled: " M y Best Song Be about Stalin." A State Symphony Orchestra with five divisions was founded to entertain the people. In Minsk alone, fifty dramatic clubs were engaged in amateur theatricals. Clubs collecting folklore, or exploring national resources, or engaging in literary, theatrical, musical, and sports activities, mushroomed over the country. They were taking the youth away from "idle talking," making them believe that they also were engaged in "nationally and socially useful work . . ." The state appropriations for socio-cultural activities had increased "nineteen times since 1 9 2 8 . " ^^ "In 1 9 3 9 , " we read, "70.3 per cent of the national budget went toward socio-cultural needs of the country (609 million rubles for education, 250 million for public health, 48 million for social security . . .). The state supported and managed twenty-three institutions of higher learning, twenty-nine research institutes, and twelve theaters. . . In 1939, there were 97 technical and high schools with 33,300 students, as against only 16 such schools and 2,300 students in 1 9 1 4 . . . The Tsarist government had been spending approximately 60 kopeks per capita on education, and the Belorussian Soviet Government, 1 1 6 rubles. There were 1,184,000 children in the 7,084 Belorussian grade schools. . . Education has become universal, and illiteracy liquidated" N o less spectacular were the achievements of the rural economy We are told that "838,000 individual farms have been organized into 9,650 kolkhozes which cover 97 per cent [ « c ] of the total sown area of the republic. . . This year [ 1 9 3 9 ] , about 9,000 tractors, 4,000 trucks, over 1,000 combines, and thousands of other agricultural machines are working in the Belorussian fields. . . Last year, the government invested 42,942,000 rubles in national agriculture" (Natalevic). " T h e kolkhozes now occupy 90 per cent [ÍÍC] of the sown area of the republic. . . Each kolkhoznik owns a cow. . . A prominent place is given to the cultivation of industrial crops such as flax and hemp. Orchards are planned, and the raising of fowls has received increasing attention from the government" (Liubic-Maevski).

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" I n 1 9 3 7 , the national income of the Belorussian Soviet Socialist Republic was two billion rubles, or four hundred rubles per capita. . . Last year [ 1 9 3 8 ] , 66,072,000 rubles and this year 78,000,635 rubles were invested in national industry by the government. . . 3 5 6 new enterprises have been put into operation. . . 200,000 workers are employed by the larger industrial plants alone, as compared with the total of 13,000 workers in 1 9 1 4 . . . Belorussia has now become an industrial-agrarian republic" (Natalevic). And the city of Minsk? " I t s entire appearance has changed. From early morning late into the night, the new ten-story Government building is booming with feverish activity. . . Crowds pour along Lenin Street, from which motor traffic is excluded; this is a great shopping center now. . . T h e Red A r m y Hall is an example of architectural beauty and perfection. And so are the new quarters of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, and the National Library. . . The new editorial offices of Belorussian newspapers, the Academy of Sciences, the State University, the National Conservatory, scientific institutes and learned societies, drama theaters, a children's theater, opera and ballet houses, stand today in the city which was not so long ago a poor provincial town. . . Modern buildings are replacing antiquated ones. After two or three years, there will be nothing old left. . . T h e former Komarov wood is a beautiful park now, and there the new Pushkin Avenue begins. T h e Polytechnical Institute, a university clinic, laboratories of the Academy of Sciences, the State Publishing House, and a number of apartment houses have been built here. T h e Belorussian national motion picture industry also will be located in this section, not far from fields of rye and wheat." The changes, if true, were miraculous. But the official pictures represented separate buildings, sometimes very beautiful indeed, with a carefully eliminated background. Only a few years before, a Soviet source had stated that most of the peasantry lived "in log huts thatched with straw, and often without a chimney or windowpanes." ®® N e w highways had been built, but a Soviet official reported that he ruined his car on them.^^ W e might quote Eudocio Ravines, a member of the Comintern, who visited Minsk in 1 9 3 4 : " M i n s k has not changed since 1 9 2 9 — rags, misery, vagabonds, thieves, the people badly dressed and shod even worse. A n d yet the literature that I received during these years boasted of the success of the F i v e Y e a r Plans, the socialization of more than 87 per cent of the Soviet economy, and the removal of restrictions on food and clothing." A new Belorussian privileged class, however small it may have been, grew up, enjoying the benefits of "socialism in construction." Welfare lay in joining the Communist Party and many sought it, if for no other reason than that.

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Russification A f t e r the purge of 1929-30, a new linguistic policy was inaugurated in order to bring the national idiom close to the Russian standard (1934).®® Dictionaries were revised, obvious archaisms and localisms eliminated, and recent borrowings from the Western languages replaced with corresponding loan-words from the Russian. But there were not many competent scholars left to tackle the problem and, in 1938, the Moscow press {Pravda, M a y 1 1 ) called attention to the fact that the Belorussian language still was "littered with Polonisms of all sorts." The Kremlin invited the Belorussian Academy of Sciences to speed up the reform, and the Belorussian writers to cooperate. Special committees were formed under the chairmanships of Janka Kupala and Jakub Kolas, and the first manuals in the new series appeared in the following year, turning Belorussian spelling, morphology, and syntax in the direction indicated.®^ T h e use of local vernaculars in literature was restricted; attempts to introduce the West Belorussian vocabulary and spelling were declared "subversive" and strictly prohibited. In the meantime, the output of Belorussian printing had increased seven times as compared with the highest tide in 1928; seventy-four times higher than in 1913. One hundred and forty-nine newspapers now were published in Belorussian, and forty-eight in the Russian language, while hardly any were appearing in Yiddish or Polish. Four hundred and sixty-two Belorussian books, with a total circulation of 14,700,000 copies, were printed in 1938, and 600 in 1939. Of those published in 1939, however, all except sixteen were translations from the Russian.®® Curiously enough, the Russian language was not made compulsory in Belorussian schools until 1938. T h e Kremlin was slow to realize that a new generation had been growing up in the Soviet republics with no speaking knowledge of the federal language. Indeed, no Russian textbooks for non-Russian schools had been prepared and teachers of Russian, where there were any, often would make "six grammatical errors in only three Russian words." Russian literacy among the peoples of the Soviet Union had fallen below the level of the Tsarist time and, indeed, "years of intensive schooling will be necessary to repair the damage resulting from the incorrect and unpatriotic attitude toward the Russian language since the Revolution." ® ® T h e mistake was corrected with customary Soviet vigor and frenzy. On March 13, 1938, a decree of the U S S R made "the study of the Russian language obligatory in schools of all the national republics and regions." T h e commissars of education were instructed "to compile and to publish, before the beginning of the next school year, Rus-

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sian primers, readers, and grammars, taking into practical consideration the natural difficulties of individual nationalities in learning Russian, such as peculiarities of the native speech, local environment, customs, etc." " T h e order meant that, by September i , within five months, textbooks and equipment had to be prepared, Russian teachers trained, for eight thousand Belorussian schools! T h e Belorussian People's Commissar of Education himself had no adequate schooling in Russian. There were no teachers at hand, nor could they have been sent over from the U S S R at that time. T h e Central Committee of the Belorussian Communist Party decided to appoint all available Party members who could speak Russian to teaching positions. There were not enough and, in most cases, instruction in the Russian language, history, and literature had to be temporarily entrusted to Red A r m y officers of the local garrisons. In the following year, a large number of native Russian instructors were imported, textbooks were printed, and E a s t Belorussia moved toward more complete integration into the general Soviet pattern. T h e plan had not been completed when, in the fall of 1 9 3 9 , the incorporation of West Belorussia into the republic raised new problems.

11 THE REUNION In the course of the twenty years of separation of the two Belorussias, the degree of unity achieved before partition was lost. A new generation had grown up in two cultures, developing independently in Vilna and in Minsk. With Polonization on one hand and Russification on the other, the two centers came to differ widely in their language, literary standards, and education generally, drawing further apart every year.^ In the western part, a free economy continued its traditional path, and the social class structure remained more or less the same. Meanwhile, in the eastern part, all economy had become subject to state planning and regimentation, and the private sectors reduced to proportions never known before. Theoretically, economic security minus freedom, in the east, contrasted with freedom minus security, in the west. Although, in fact, there was not much of each on either side of the border, the people were confronted with problems of adjustment and survival substantially different in their every day practical aspects. The nationalist ideology had assumed two different aspects: political, in Vilna; historico-ethnological, in Minsk, though both were soon defeated. In the west, Belorussianism lost its institutions but saved its leadership — a wandering spirit in search of a body. In the east, the spirit was captured and the body placed in an iron lung; the old banner of independence fluttered over it, but it was in the hands of men whose first loyalties were for other than their own homeland. On both sides the people were dispirited and silent, and the nation seemed hopelessly split — when all at once it found itself reunited as suddenly as it had been partitioned a generation before. Partition IV of Poland On September i , 1939, the German armies invaded Poland. Before they had reached the Bug River, the Soviets also moved into Poland "to protect the lives and property of the people of Western Belorussia

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and Western Ukraina" (September 17). The Poles were confused, now greeting the Soviet armies as their allies, now resisting them as the allies of the Germans.^ Some days later, on September 28, the entire territory of Poland was divided between the German Reich and the USSR. The Soviets received "one-half of Poland's entire territory and almost two-fifths of her population." ® With the exception of a wedge in the Bialystok-Lomza region, the Soviet-German demarcation line followed, in generally, the Curzon line suggested in 1920 by the Great Powers as a permanent Polish-Soviet border. Whether the Soviet occupation was motivated by the desire "to liberate their blood brothers from Polish national oppression" ^ or to protect them from German domination is unessential. The Soviet press has since acknowledged the fact that the USSR "only recuperated such non-Polish territories as were torn away by Poland in the war of 1920-21, and before." As a matter of historical record, the SovietGerman agreement actually did restore the northwest boundary of 1795.® The Soviet-German partition of Poland is viewed differently by various historians and it is not the intention of this writer to enter the debate. To the Belorussians, at any rate, it meant the restoration of their own territorial integrity long disrupted by wars and revolution. They could feel that their country was a full-sized nation at last. Quarrels were forgotten, all problems seemed solved. The Soviet press was ñooded with descriptions of mass enthusiasm in West Belorussia and the picture, overdrawn though it may appear, was not entirely incorrect. People naturally rejoiced at seeing their land and kin reunited, their dignity and freedom apparently restored. Polish speech disappeared. The radio, loudspeakers, newspapers, posters, and leaflets spoke in the native idiom, sparing no promises, fostering the people's hope and new faith in the future. Villages were decorated with garlands and flags. The liberators, in accordance with an old custom, were offered bread and salt in the streets. "The century-old dream had come true" (J. Kupala), and, in the excitement of the moment, the Seventeenth of September was declared a national holiday. Except for the relatively small groups of citizens who knew that there would be no room for them in the Soviet realm, people seemed to have no fear of Communism. Embittered outcasts that Poland had made of them, they thought that nothing could be worse than the life they had suffered under the Polish rule.® Those who were skeptical kept silent, and some who felt they knew what was going to happen fled to the German zone or to Lithuania. Others, particularly the Polish and Jewish communities, remained either because they had no chance or no time to escape or because, anti-Communist though they were, they still preferred Soviet to German domination. The Second World

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War had just begun, the world political map was being remade again, and whatever power might arise locally seemed temporal indeed. In the meantime, the Soviet occupation might save the people and their homes from the German fury. Wishful thinking made more palatable the incongruities of the moment, and for the moment at least, the good will of most of the populace was assured to the occupants. The Incorporation of West Belorussia The Kremlin sized up the situation very well, and was wise enough not to introduce at once into West Belorussia the policies it had carried out at home. During the first weeks of occupation, the situation was handled with unusual subtlety and skill. Civil authority did not closely follow the Red armies, and the military, as a rule, did not interfere with local affairs. Elections were coming up and the people were told that they were free to decide their own future. The Polish administration continued unmolested in some places, and in others it was replaced by provisional town committees which emerged from the people. After a week or two, these were reinforced with "instructors" from Soviet Belorussia. A certain number of Polish officials, field gendarmerie, osadntcy, large landowners, prominent businessmen, clergymen, and some members of the Polish political parties, the Jewish Bund, and a few antiSoviet clubs were arrested. But, in most cases, the arrests were made by the local, not the Soviet, police, and often the arrested men were released by order of the higher Soviet authority, who were playing a nationalist game.^ The West Belorussian leaders were invited to take part in the election campaign. Luckevic was appointed technical adviser to the provisional administration in Vilna. Other Polish collaborationists, uhadoucy, were likewise treated with deference and respect, even permitted certain freedom of speech, travel, and public activity. Janka Kupala and Jakub Kolas, whose personal prestige had remained great in West Belorussia, were dispatched from Minsk to stir up the national feelings of the people. . . This all served to create friendliness toward the occupation power. On October 6, the Soviet Military Command announced that general elections to a National Assembly of West Belorussia would take place on October 22, based on the universal, equal, direct, and secret ballot. Franchise was granted to "all men and women over eighteen years of age, irrespective of race, nationality, faith, education, property rights, or former political affiliations and activities." The elections were to be run on the basis of a single ticket. Consequently, nomination committees were appointed in all the towns and villages by the local assemblies of workers, peasants, the intelligentsia, and the Workers' Guard hastily organized by Soviet instructors. The occupation

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army was ordered to cooperate closely with the population. T h e campaign was directed by the Committee of Supervision formed at Bialystok and, to many, it seemed only natural as a matter of gratitude and hospitality to include among the committee members the two highest officials of the Belorussian Soviet Socialist Republic, Natalevic and Hrekaü, three Red A r m y commanders (Gajsin, Markeev, Spasov), and a few other Soviet citizens not all of whom were native Belorussians.® West Belorussians were not, however, permitted to communicate with their brothers behind the curtain, from whence came masses of propaganda — trainloads of literature, posters, exhibits, and companies of entertainers. T h e y were supported by "the thousands of Red A r m y men" who also were engaged in "intensive political activity among the populace." ® Propaganda was seasoned with salt, kerosene, tobacco, matches, and other badly needed commodities, imported from the Soviet Union to encourage the people to vote for incorporation into the happy and bountiful Belorussian Soviet Socialist Republic. T h e people were completely isolated from the outside world and sold on the illusion that, after the incorporation, the united Belorussian people would at last be able freely to conduct their own affairs. On the day of elections, a tremendous effort was made by local authorities to drive the entire electorate to the polls. Where persuasion and allurement proved ineffective, coercion was used. According to the official data, 2,672,280 persons, that is, 9 6 . 7 1 per cent of the West Belorussian electorate, cast their vote. Of that number, 2,409,522 voted for the "national ticket," and 2 4 7 , 2 4 5 against it, while 1 4 , 9 3 2 ballots were disallowed for technical errors. In all, 927 representatives to the National Assembly were elected, 804 of them men and 1 2 3 of them women — one delegate for every 5,000 inhabitants of West Belorussia." On October 28, after only five weeks of Soviet occupation, the National Assembly convened in Bialystok and decided unanimously to demand the incorporation of Western Belorussia into the B S S R . T h e delegates were at once dispatched to Moscow to present the popular demand to the Supreme Soviet of the U S S R . There, everything had already been prepared for their reception. On November 2, "the Extraordinary F i f t h Session of the Supreme Soviet of the U S S R acceded to the request of the masses of the people of West Belorussia, and accepted them into the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics." ^^ T h e A c t of Incorporation, published on November 4, made E a s t and West Belorussia into a single state and the Belorussian Constitution was amended to guarantee its territorial integrity, national status, and sovereignty within the Soviet Union.^^

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The Adjustment Period The marriage was celebrated, but not immediately consummated. Grave problems indeed had to be solved before the parties could be allowed to begin a common life, that is, before the bride could be taken into the Soviet family to abide by its laws and customs. In the first place, it was learned somewhat belatedly that the USSR had handed over to Lithuania the city of Vilna and adjacent lands — 2,750 square miles with a population of 457,500. The Act, alienating a territory which the West Belorussians considered their own, granted the Soviet Union the right to establish army, navy, and air bases in Lithuania. If not denounced at the end of fifteen years, the pact was to run for twenty-five years. Signed on October 10, it was to become effective October 27, and its publication was withheld until after the elections to the National Assembly of West Belorussia.^® It was too late, and to no avail, to protest. At the Extraordinary Fifth Session of the Supreme Soviet accepting West Belorussia into the BSSR Molotov coated the pill with the following words: "The Vilna territory belongs to Lithuania not by reason of population. No, we know that the majority of population in that region is not Lithuanian." But the historical past and the aspirations of the Lithuanian nation have been intimately connected with the city of Vilna, and the Government of the USSR considered it necessary to honor these moral factors." Belorussia was reminded that by the treaty with Lithuania, signed on July 12, 1920, Moscow had renounced the territory of Vilna in favor of Lithuania. "The word of the Soviets is inviolate; once a promise has been made, it is faithfully fulfilled," declared the Soviet press. Besides, it was pointed out, "the present Soviet-Lithuanian agreement guaranteeing the safety of the northwestern boundary of the Soviet Union has strengthened greatly our position in eastern Europe." " As compensation, the Belorussians received the Ostrow-LomzaGrajewo area west of Bialystok where the majority of the population was unquestionably Polish. They could not foresee, of course, that the region they were granted, with the city of Bialystok in addition, would be returned to Poland in 1945. At any rate, from the East Belorussian point of view, the situation was handled satisfactorily. The republic obtained 34,000 square miles of former Polish territory with approximately 4,700,000 inhabitants and, thus, was nearly doubled in size. Even the loss of Vilna, the old rival of Minsk, seemed to make the domestic situation easier. The annexed territory included large groups of non-Belorussians. Of the fifty-eight candidates in the elections to the Supreme Soviet in March 1940, only thirty were Belorussian, sixteen were Polish, six were Russian, and two were Jewish. Presuming that their distribution

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by nationality was representative of the country as a whole, the proportion of non-Belorussian residents would be 40 per cent of the total population. Since there was no proportional ballot, the estimate may not be correct. In fact, the real figure must be even higher, since it is hard to see why the non-Belorussians, particularly the Polish residents, should represent the Belorussians in a situation where the opposite would be more logical to expect.^'' N o exact information exists, but it is certain that the problem of minorities assumed new, and not the most convenient, proportions in the B S S R . In accordance with the Soviet Constitution, the minority groups were granted equal status with the Belorussians and a certain "cultural autonomy" in conducting their own affairs. Thus, 932 Polish schools, a Polish theater, and a score of Polish clubs were sanctioned. A daily, Standart Wolnosct (The Banner of Freedom), and even a magazine for children in Minsk, were published in Polish. There also were schools for other nationalities, and several state-supported newspapers and periodicals appeared in Russian, Ukrainian, and Yiddish.^® A t the same time, the last vestiges of Polish administration were drastically removed. T o the native, this seemed natural enough and no one apparently cared to know what happened to former civil servants, judges, and magistrates. It was not immediately realized that these were not only removed as persons, but eliminated as a social group including families, close relatives, and friends. The Polish colonists, osadnicy, also were liquidated as a group, although many had become Belorussian themselves, and their children could speak Polish no longer. " Y e t they all were treated as qualified enemies, very much as the Gestapo was to treat the Jews: in the severe winter, we saw Polish women, locked in freight cars without heat or food, throw the frozen bodies of their children through the windows at the feet of the Soviet guards," says a a witness.^® Somewhat new was the Soviet attitude toward the Jewish population whose number had nearly doubled since the incorporation of West Belorussia. The official use of Yiddish was now limited to the lower sections of the administration. Cultural and communal clubs were either disbanded or their activities restricted. For all Soviet Belorussia, only 25,000 Jewish children attended schools with Yiddish as the language of instruction, as compared with 36,500 in 1 9 3 3 , and out of four Yiddish newspapers published in 1935, only one appeared in 1939 and that in Minsk.''» Germans in the B S S R and Belorussians in the German zone of occupation were granted the right of option between Soviet and German citizenship. B y an agreement signed on November 3, a mixed German-Soviet commission was to be created to supervise the transfer of populations, and Belorussians who wished to move from the Govern-

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ment General (Poland) to Soviet Belorussia were to register before March 25, 1941, at which time the transfer was to be completed. A similar agreement with Lithuania was concluded on November 7, and a special Soviet commission arrived in Kaunas to supervise the transfer of 170,000 Lithuanians from .the Svenciany region to Lithuania, and 100,000 Belorussians from Lithuania to Soviet Belorussia. No information, however, exists in regard to either the option procedure or the number of persons who actually availed themselves of the option right under either plan.^^ Actually, in the German-annexed provinces the number of Belorussians was negligible and there is evidence that not many even wished to return to their native land under the Soviets.^^ On August 3, 1940, Lithuania, in turn, was incorporated into the Soviet Union and the agreement, insofar as it had not been fulfilled before that time, became void. Nationalism

Revived

After the National Assembly elections, the nationalist leaders of West Belorussia were invited to Minsk and the few who accepted soon disappeared from the Belorussian scene. The more prudent, however, chose to remain in Lithuanian-occupied Vilna. Talking with Minsk from a distance, the Vilna group wished to protect as many of their "cultural attainments" of the past as, under the circumstances, they could. It was true that General Vitauskas, entering the region of Vilna with the Lithuanian troops, addressed the population in Lithuanian and in Polish, not in Belorussian. But freedom was assured to all the natives here irrespective of race and the Soviets did not at the time seem likely to interfere with Lithuanian sovereignty. Indeed, there were not a few who were hoping for an "autonomous Belorussian community" within the Lithuanian state. Their stand was encouraged by friends who had fled to Germany, established a "Belorussian Committee" in Berlin, and were preparing to publish a periodical maintaining the banner of Belorussian freedom.^® Since their activities bore an obvious mark of German endorsement, the Lithuanians felt that the Belorussian issue was not entirely in Soviet hands. State subsidies were granted to free Belorussian schools, cooperatives, and publications; and to satisfy the demands of the Belorussian peasantry, a plan of land reform was carried out without delay.^^ Cultural institutions closed down by the Poles reopened, and some refugees returned from Germany and from Kaunas to take part in their work. The Vilna community, however, was already split between the anti-Russian and pro-Russian trends. With a few personal exceptions, the Belorussian hierarchy of the Orthodox Church submitted to the canonical jurisdiction of the Patriarch of Moscow. The Moscow

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exarch, Metropolitan Eleupherius, removed bishops Theodosius and Sabbatius, dismissed the rector of the Vilna cathedral, censored the father superior of the monastery of the Holy Ghost, and divested the archpriests Dzikoüski, Koüs, and Rahalski as Polish partisans. His action raised a cry among the faithful for an autonomous Belorussian church. A part of the clergy, headed by priest Philip Marosaü, defied the canonical authority of Eleupherius, and independent services began in several churches. The Lithuanian press came out in support of the movement.^® The conflict extended over Belorussian education, cultural policies, and methods of developing the literary language. The passionate debate continued through the summer of 1940 when the incorporation of Lithuania into the U S S R made the question academic. Meanwhile in West Belorussia nationalist activities were under observation, but not greatly impeded. Municipalities received subsidies for better school equipment, housing, and public services. Cultural work was encouraged and assisted. Schools opened where they had been closed for years or never existed before.^® But the Soviet Belorussian standard was made mandatory in schools and in public print, and three-week, one-month, and three-month courses in the Russian language were established for adults. Since there was a shortage of teachers, "wives of former landowners, wives and daughters of the clergy, even occasionally a young priest who had shaved his beard, became teachers — until the first purge." Not until April 1940 were West Belorussian writers invited to Minsk, where they were for the first time introduced to the form of Stalinized nationalism. Those who unwarily manifested their disgust were arrested upon their return and deported.^® But others were given a time of grace to mold themselves more completely to the Soviet pattern. For several months, the economic policy also was loose. The peasantry divided the land and livestock of the large estates, and in many places individual farms thus doubled in size. Farmers turned a deaf ear to the advantages of collectivization, and the authorities temporarily curbed the zeal of their agents. In fact, "only forty collective farms" had been formed by the spring of 1940.^® For the time being, the Soviet power limited itself to nationalizing banks, industry, aiid wholesale trade. The confiscated property was Polish, and this did not bother the Belorussians. Retail trade and handicraft, with which they were more directly concerned, remained in private hands. Commodities imported from Russia were distributed among the free cooperatives and private traders on the condition that they sell at fixed prices. The boundary between West and East Belorussia remained closed.®" Full accounts of the situation are lacking, but one finds a glimpse of it in the letters that Belorussians abroad were receiving from their relatives in the old country at that time:

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Our life is happy and gay. Everyone has a chance to study in the Soviet school and I am also studying at a school named Ten Year Plan. We have six one-hour lessons a day, and the instruction is good. We have a different teacher for each subject, and we study Russian, German, and Belorussian. It is very pleasant in the Soviet school, and it is a good place to work. I have been there only two months. We take baths in the bath house, and we are examined by a doctor once a month. Even civiUans are given free medical care [Village Bolsie Tynevicy, Belsk County, Bialystok].®^ The Russian soldiers have been completely transformed. They no longer swear. They get along well not only with each other, but with us civilians. . . They show us movies free of charge and the movies are very good. . . I read in the newspapers that abroad they say our voting was conducted at the point of Russian bayonets, but this is not true. There were no soldiers in our village. The land of the gentry and the church has come into the hands of the peasants. We have not divided it yet. They have begun to teach the children Russian in the schools and it is also taught in the high schools [Village Stradec, Brest County, Polesie]. We have a soap factory and a printing press in Luninec. They publish a wall-bulletin there, and we can read who has done badly and who has done well. Every village has a small library. We can take out any book we like and read it for a whole week. . . In Lachva, they have opened a school and a hospital. People pay no charges. . . Formerly, about two hundred people worked in the match factory, and now there are eight hundred. Other mills and factories are now five times larger than they used to be [Village Borsuka, Luninec County, Polesie] We are now living under the Soviets. It is good for the soul. . . They have given the poor people land, horses, and cows. They gave even the priest in Peretoki 16 acres of land, a horse, and a cow. Our Lord in Heaven, Himself, would be jealous [Novo 2askovicy, Parycy County, Polesie].®® The emigrant press readily printed testimonies of that sort. Their authenticity raised few doubts, although their truthworthiness may be and, in fact, has been questioned. But it was significant that the writers were all peasants, and their wonder and enthusiasm sounded sincere indeed. Not without significance also was the fact that, by the summer of 1940, their letters ceased to arrive. Throughout the winter, the process of sovietization had been accelerated. The economic attitudes and principles based on trade, and not production and services, had to be adjusted; this demanded significant structural changes within the urban society. "More men were coming from Russia to be billeted in our homes and soon we all knew what the Soviet term 'condensation of the living space {ирШпепгеУ meant," recalls a refugee from Pinsk. "Like thunder out of a clear sky came the news of the first arrests: the mayor, a bakery owner, a restaurant manager. . . What had they done? No one could understand why all

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the city firemen were arrested. . . In January, Polish money was outlawed, but no one as yet had Soviet currency. Fortunately, the Soviet officers were eager to buy anything they could lay their eyes on, and we were able to sell some of the family jewelry, silverware, a watch." The people were allowed to convert no more than 300 zlotys into rubles, and savings above that limit were expropriated. Everybody was thus forced to look for work and accept such work and wages as were offered by the only employer, the state. An immediate and universal proletarianization of the city resulted, and wages became the only source of income.®® "In February, the business section of the city resembled a cemetery: stores closed, street lights unht, people afraid to walk at night. . . At the public market one could sell and buy old watches, dresses, decks of cards, frying pans, pillows, all kinds of junk which had suddenly assumed a new value. . . Breadlines appeared." People were ordered to take out passports and everybody thus became registered with the Soviet police. Consequently, the person who owned a larger house, or a store, or a better equipped farm, was deprived of the right to dwell in the city, and had to move at least six miles outside the city line. Thus, "more dwelling space became available" and the billeted officials moved to vacant apartments. "The arrests continued. . . In March, two thousand people were deported, all relatives of the previously arrested." ®® The rural life, however, went on unchanged for some time. There was a shortage of manufactured goods, but these had never been plentiful anyway. The West Belorussian peasant was used to depending on his own farm for everything, and the Soviet hand was not to reach him before the harvest had been stored. By the spring of 1940, the city had been thoroughly cleaned of the "politically incompatible," "ideologically unfit," and otherwise "socially dangerous" elements; some were simply liquidated, others were deported to the USSR, and large numbers were removed to the countryside where, economically uprooted, they were forced to depend entirely on the local administration for making a living. Outwardly Belorussian, the city now was in the hands of strangers: "Their grey faces and the colorless, somewhat empty looks were striking. . . In general, the natives looked much stronger and healthier and were better dressed than the newcomers who had invaded West Belorussia." Wherever they appeared they grimly swept the place like a plague of locusts.

The Purges In the summer, new elections were held in Lithuania, and the Communist-dominated Diet, on July 21, proclaimed Lithuania a Soviet Socialist Republic. On August 3, the country was incorporated into the

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USSR, and Soviet Lithuania handed Belorussian affairs over to the Minsk authorities. A purge was ordered and executed without delay. Ülasaü, founder of Nasa Niva; Luckevic, former head of the B N R ; Pazniak, managing editor of Krynica; writers Koscevic, Trepka, Busel, Samojla, and other nationalist leaders were taken to Minsk or Moscow where some, including Luckevic, were shot; others, including Ülasaü, died in prison; and still others were sent to labor camps or to jail. No one has heard of them since.®® Within a few weeks, the last stronghold of Belorussian nationalism was liquidated. The few leaders who did manage to escape were offered hospitality by the Germans, and facilities to continue their work outside the USSR. The Belorussian Committee {Predstaünictva) under the chairmanship of engineer Skutka, and a Committee of Mutual Assistance (Samapomac) were organized, and their agencies established in the principal German and Polish cities. Leadership was assumed by Hadleüski, §kialënak, Yanka, Stankevic, Astroüski, HrySkevic, Scors, and a few others who, though representing different political trends, were now united by the force of events. Besides Ranica, the mouthpiece of the Christian Democrats (Catholics) in exile, another periodical, Belaruski Rabotnik (Belorussian Worker) appeared, with a noticeable leaning toward Nazi ideology.®® The extent of German support these groups were enjoying is not exactly known. In the BSSR, the purges spread from the city to the village. Practically everyone who had been politically active in the past was removed, and replaced by new recruits to the Communist party. "The more popular you were, the worse it was for you," says a witness, and he cites the case of a lawyer sent to a labor camp for eight years: "He might have received a lighter sentence had not a petition in his favor been signed by three hundred local workers: 'Now we can see that you really are a dangerous man,' he was told by his judges." Farmers owning more than one horse and more than one cow were classified as kulaks, and deported "to the distant regions of the Soviet Union." Others left the village rather than be enrolled in the collective farms and went to work in new factories and plants. According to available evidence, in many localities less than one half of the population remained to work in the fields.^^ The individual owner-manager and the unskilled laborer were liquidated, and only a quaking fringe of artisans outside the planned massproduction of goods and services was left. By March 1940, among the fifty-eight candidates for election to the Supreme Soviets of the USSR and the BSSR, only thirty peasants, twelve industrial workers, and sixteen former farm hands were represented.^^ With the emphasis on urban industrialization, the revolution gave no quarter to those who were unable to make the necessary adjust-

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ments. The Jewish population, being engaged in "nonproductive activities," mainly trading and peddling, suffered most. From cities, they were expelled to towns and villages where they knew no one and were treated as "displaced persons" by local authorities. . . Of course, this was better than the ghetto under Hitler, but the comparison was still unknown there, and the exile meant catastrophe and broken lives for many. People were forced to leave their homes without notice, to abandon all things they possessed, and to go nobody knew where. The humiliation and social discrimination that they were subjected to were horrifying. . . During nights loud with cries of horror and despair, the peaceful inhabitants were filled with fear of, and disgust for, the authority which waited for darkness to break into private homes, and which treated its victims like cattle.^® T h e authority wanted to have the place cleared for more rapid and complete sovietization, and human dignity was denied to "the socially unattuned" {social'no nesozvucnye). The Soviet

Claims

Along with the repressions, however, went the constructive effort.^^ In the first place, credits up to l o o million rubles were extended to West Belorussian social, cultural, and educational works, and for road construction and repairs. Within a year, the Dnieper-Bug canal was dug, and "hundreds of thousands of acres of swamps were drained and transformed into fertile fields and meadows." In 1940, the peasantry received 1,062,530 acres of land expropriated from landlords, Polish colonists, and kulaks; also appropriated were "over 15,000 horses and 33,000 cows," admittedly from the same sources. Agriculture became mechanized: " l o i machine and tractor service stations were organized, with 1,500 tractors, 2,000 trucks, and several thousand farm machines." T h e policy of caution, first urged in collectivization efforts, was abandoned. In the spring of 1941, there were already 9,619 collective farms in Belorussia, covering 20,000,000 acres of useful land. Tiny individual plots of land vanished, giving place to vast fields "cultivated by more than 10,000 tractors, 1,600 combine harvesters, and tens of thousands of other agricultural machines." The Soviet press stated that "rational agriculture and new technical equipment have increased the yield of wheat five times, potatoes two times, technical cultures two and one-half times, and fodder three times." Besides, "the cattle and poultry breeding and beekeeping have also considerably increased." T o a Moscow correspondent, Belorussia now presented "an unforgettable picture of the transformation of nature by man. . . Old Belorussia was a poverty-stricken, marshy, unhappy land. During the years of the Soviet power, it has developed into a rich, flourishing country. . . T h e marshes have vanished [sic].

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Today in their place may be seen the immense fields of collective and state farms." " Not less spectacular was the industrial development. Only a few months after incorporation, the industrial output of West Belorussia was reported to have increased by 70 per cent. Unemployment was eliminated. By 1941, 1,700 new enterprises were organized, producing "machine tools, agricultural machinery, aircraft engines, precision instruments, pipes, etc." The general output of Belorussian industries increased 35 times, that of the peat industry 180 times, and electric power 109 times as compared with 1913. Important success also was achieved in the food, leather, textile, shoe, and other branches of production. From a consumer the country was turned into a producer "whose export of agricultural produce exceeded its import." The economic gulf which separated the eastern and the western parts of the country had thus been closed, and Belorussia transformed "into a country with modern industry and agriculture." The cultural gulf was also closed. The literary Belorussian standard had become unified, libraries were purged, and schools supplied with new textbooks. Literature, the theater, the arts, and the press were taken under direction and control, and "nationalist ideology" was entirely subordinated to Soviet Communist loyalty. Significantly, this had not been achieved by suppressing old cultural institutions, but simply by infusing them with new blood and by increasing their numbers under the new leadership. It was claimed that, in 1941, the BSSR had "more than 13,000 schools attended by 2,500,000 students; a national Academy of Sciences ramified into a large number of laboratories and research centers; twenty-six institutions of higher learning, twenty-two scientific research institutes, twenty-three state theaters, thousands of libraries and reading rooms, scores of museums, a philharmonic society, a conservatory and twenty-three schools of music." A Belorussian movie industry was developed and produced "outstanding pictures such as 'Searchers for Happiness,' 'The Baltic Sailors,' Ά Daughter of the Country,' and others"; 197 newspapers and periodicals were published; "the fine arts flourished." The Union of Belorussian Writers numbered "hundreds of novelists, publicists, critics, poets, and plajrwrights," and the artists, painters, composers, and musicians were likewise organized. But the Soviet authority had taken care not only of people's souls but of their bodies as well. It established 618 polyclinics, 700 lying-in hospitals, 129 clinics for children, 326 medical centers, "and a lot of other medical institutions," providing "six hospital beds for every one thousand of the population." To make it short, Soviet Belorussia boasted of "moving with sevenleague strides along the road of progress followed by the most advanced democratic peoples of the world."

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The Ideal and the Reality Soviet reality, however, is something else than statistics. When we turn to the people for whom the benefits were intended, we find neither appreciation nor acknowledgment. Their testimonies are limited to personal experience, of course. Yet they are sufficiently identical to warrant certain generalizations. In fact, patched together and crosschecked, they produce an impressive body of evidence.^® Information for West Belorussia is abundant. After the incorporation the conditions of life began rapidly to deteriorate, first in the city, then in the village. The normal flow of the economy was stopped. Soviet management, with whatever money and manpower were invested in it, had been unable to facilitate either the production or the distribution of goods and services. In Pinsk, for example, "during one year and ten months of Soviet administration, only one ton of sugar was delivered, one thousand persons receiving one pound of sugar a piece, and the city had thirty thousand inhabitants." Shortages of the most common commodities developed. The enthusiasm of the people for being reunited gave way to comparisons with the policies of the old Polish regime, unfavorable to the Soviets. Unemployment disappeared, but business was poorly organized and the waste of effort, time, and money was amazing. "A match factory in Pinsk," recalls a witness, "increased the number of workers from 300 to 800, the former director was deported, and fourteen engineers were hired instead. Under the Poles, the director had been paid 4,000 zlotys a month; the fourteen engineers cost the Soviets certainly more and, to the general surprise, the factory soon stopped production for want of adequate supplies: no timber in all the woods of Polesie!" People had not been used to working overtime, at night, and on holidays, to attending "educational" meetings and conferences after work, to faking enthusiasm for official speeches — and to not getting their pay on time. The Soviet press emphatically reminded the worker of the time when he had been "horribly exploited by the Poles who made him work for 60 zlotys a month." But the Soviets paid him 180 rubles which was hardly more than 30 prewar zlotys. The testimonies agree on the fictitious character of most Soviet achievements, and this was to be confirmed later by the German observers. If, as the Soviet statistics pretend, the industrial and agricultural output increased, "the product must have been going out of the country at once, since the people saw none of it." Red tape, disorder, and mismanagement seemed to be part of the system: "No one cared for the work to which he was assigned." Many new enterprises were only nominal. Hospitals and schools were short of trained personnel, and sometimes lacked the most elementary equipment. "At

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first, people laughed, exchanged jokes. . . N o one could believe that the Soviets would stay long. Great Britain, we trusted, was powerful and strong, she would restore Poland within its former boundaries. . . But, by the spring of 1 9 4 1 , terror had frozen the smiles and laughter." The dream of a Belorussian Home was now fulfilled. But the face of the host was "ugly, cruel, repulsive." The only safety lay in joining the Communist Party, or in l3ang low. The peasants who brought milk and eggs to the city — the only sector of private economy still tolera t e d — spoke to their old customers freely: " F o r twenty years," they said, "the Poles tried to make us Polish, and couldn't do it; but the Soviets have made us feel Polish in two months!" Yet, in 1 9 4 1 , "there still were districts where not a single collective farm existed." But the peasants could see that the new master was more ruthless and dangerous than the old, and had a longer hand. "When I ask myself," wrote an observer, "why it is that in a very short time there remained no advocates of the Soviet system and — except for an entirely isolated group of men who were like a small island in the sea — no one who would not like to see a return to the prewar order, my answer is clear. Not because the prewar order was so good that we desired no change. Not because we could not live through a cold and hungry winter. And not because we failed to see our own good. The true reason is that no one was any longer master in his own home. Somebody had put a gag in our mouth, and spoken in our name. Somebody had intruded upon our life, and begun to boss us, and to push us around at his own will. . . We no longer quarreled and argued since we shared one misfortune: strangers were in our home, whom no one had invited." The fact that the "strangers" were Belorussians brought little comfort. The form of nationalism they imposed upon the country could not make converts except among a few privileged groups who benefited from the changes and identified themselves with the new power. Among the most prominent protagonists of Soviet Belorussian nationalism were Janka Kupala, Jakub Kolas, K . Krapiva, and even Maxim Tank and his friends of the Vilna group. There were no leaders abroad who could rival these men in moral authority, prestige, and talent. The opposition was broken, the discontent neutralized, and the situation seemed well under control. Presently, it was to meet the test of a German invasion.

12 THE GERMAN

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At dawn on June 22, 1941, the German armies attacked the Soviet Union. In about three weeks the entire Belorussian SSR was overrun. The country was not of course the first victim of the Blitzkrieg, yet it seems that the Germans hardly ever made an easier conquest. What exactly happened? Did the Belorussian population resist the invader? Was the Red Army defeated by superior forces or did it lay down its arms and surrender? What did the Germans find in the conquered land? Two sets of facts conflict with each other. It is well known that several million Red Army men were captured by the Germans in the first months of the campaign and that the Soviet casualties for that period have never been made public by the Kremlin, perhaps precisely because of their being dramatically out of proportion to the captured mass.^ On the other hand, from June 22 to December i, the German armies lost 743,000 men, or 23 per cent of the invading force estimated at 3,500,000, which could scarcely have occurred if the Red Army had not been fighting at all.^ One might perhaps accept the theory that there were battles fought and lost by the Soviets, as well as mass surrenders without a battle, although it is not exactly known what factors actually accounted for the Red Army behavior in each case. One may wonder whether the truth will ever be known.® Significant was the fact that the Germans did not treat the Soviet prisoners of war uniformly, and that not all the Red Army men who laid down arms considered themselves prisoners of war. The commanders set the captured free when their home was behind the German front line. Since there was no screening, many non-Belorussians also availed themselves of the chance of freedom, giving some Belorussian town as their birthplace. Furthermore, thousands of Red Army men surrounded in the forests and swamps abandoned at once their arms and equipment, changed their uniforms for civilian clothes, and, settling down in the neighboring villages, returned to peaceful occupations. Their total number cannot be even approximately estimated,

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but there was hardly a Belorussian hamlet where there were not two or three, sometimes several score, of those "adopted sons." T h e y did not actually surrender. T h e y called themselves okruzency,* and the war was over for them. As soon as the first German bomb hit the city of Minsk, the Soviet government crumpled and left the inhabitants to their own devices. " A l l higher officials, militia, secret police, even the head of civil defense and his staff, left the city three days before the Germans occupied it. N o one even tried to put down fires started by the German bombs or set by the N K V D agents." T h e confusion was so great that "large stocks of provisions and ammunition were abandoned; bags full of Soviet currency were moved from the State Bank as far as the stadium and dropped there; what transportation still was available was grabbed by frenzied Party men trying to save their personal property, luggage, even furniture, and move it east. . ." ^ Another witness reported that "about 60 km. from the city a Soviet convoy in panic shot all the political prisoners evacuated from Minsk and scurried to catch up with the N K V D leaders." ® Even cities and towns farther removed from the front became the scene of senseless destruction and massacre " b y the Bolshevik rats leaving the ship." In Vitebsk, the city jail was burned, together with two hundred inmates.® In other places, all the criminals who had served more than a two-year term and all the political prisoners, even those who had not yet been tried, were shot in haste.·^ East of Borisov, public buildings and private dwellings were burned down by the N K V D and the Communist Y o u t h agents, "while the defense works and barracks stood and were taken over by the Germans as soon as they arrived." ® In larger rural communities, along the highways, agricultural machinery and livestock were moved away or destroyed, and the population was left "without means of production, even of subsistence. . ." This, if anything, was Stalin's "scorched earth" policy. Testimonies agree that there was no plan and no system in the frenzied destruction. In many places thousands left, or were forced to leave, their homes: "with some of their property in shabby bundles, often entirely emptyhanded, they walked along the roads, through the forest and fields, having no ultimate aim, and knowing not where they were going." T h e damage to the civilian population proved infinitely greater than that suffered by the Germans, whose advance little was done to stop. T h e upheaval subsided gradually and the migrants began to settle down, some back in their ruined homes, others wherever they could find new shelter, work and food.® * The word would approximate "the surroundees" in English ; in other places, they pretended to have been Soviet slave laborers at the nearby airdromes, hence their nickname, aerodromcy.

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Most Belorussian cities and towns were abandoned before the Germans entered them. Minsk and Borisov remained for three days, Bobruisk for four days, and some other places for over a week, without a government. Whatever the real reasons for it may have been, the defeat was obvious. In fact, people were not so much impressed by the superiority of the German war machine as they were by the abysmal ineptitude and cowardice of the Communist authority. To the natives, the Soviet rout looked entirely final.^" The Germans found that the population "awaited us with joy, hoping for protection and order; especially the older generation which had retained a pleasant memory of our armies since the occupation of that country in World War I." " General Guderian recalls "the typical picture of women in the villages who met me with bread, butter, and eggs on wooden plates, and who wouldn't go until I had tasted some." ^^ The German reports are corroborated by other sources. Almost ever5rwhere there were groups of people to receive the occupants with flowers and symbolic offerings of bread and salt, and to greet them as liberators. These may not have been mass demonstrations, but no trace of hostility or animosity could be seen in the population. Apparently, too many people had lived under such conditions that they would have welcomed any kind of change. The young, still under the spell of Communist propaganda, stood first in silent bewilderment, and then were the first to seek work with the occupants. Even the Jewish populations "who were remarkably badly informed about our treatment of the Jews in Germany, or even in Warsaw which after all was not far away," said a Nazi reporter, "had a sympathetic attitude, believing that we would leave them alone if they worked diligently." It was evident that the people had no regret for the fall of the Soviet power. The occupants were received as "harbingers of a better future, even if the spirits were considerably lowered by wartime conditions such as unemployment, destroyed homes, and lack of the most essential commodities." The "sincere friendliness and eagerness to cooperate" surprised the Germans, who had expected at best an attitude of passive resistance. "I believe I can now explain their attitude in the following terms," reported a Nazi agent from Borisov: First, many people feel a current of 'fresh air,' particularly the peasants who expect dissolution of the collectives. Second, the friendliness may be a natural trait of the Russian [í¿c] character and people meet us without fear and prejudice, since the an ti-German propaganda stopped two years ago [after the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact]. Third, people are tired of Communism; they keep telling us with disgust how the Commissars emptied the banks, collected all the valuables they could, and fled in panic to Moscow leaving practically nothing for those who stayed. Fourth, the reason also may lie in

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the type of man formed by Communism; people do not care under whom they slave as long as they have enough to live on. "You are people just as we are, you have to work just as we have to work, so why should we hate you?" they say. "We do not consider you our enemies ; what the war is all about, we don't know" — this is the answer they give when we ask them the reason for their friendliness.^^ There is no disagreement among observers as to the trend of public opinion in occupied Belorussia. For the people who for a quarter of a century had suffered from the confusion and distraction of alternate moments of illusion and despair, the German-Soviet war was nothing but a continuation of the Civil War. The new occupants were received just as so many others had been in the past, not as Germans but as human beings bringing a promise of change. People were not able to realize that Belorussian history was merely repeating itself. Military and Civilian

Policies

With liberation from the Communist power, the country's economic and social structure collapsed. Having been deprived of responsibility for so long, the people were helpless and unable to take over the administration even on a local level. As soon as the German troops appeared, the civilians began looting the supply depots, warehouses, stores, and the homes of the vanished Soviet officials. "Except for some upper intelligentsia, everybody took part in the pillage," including the German soldiers. It was mostly food products that were grabbed up. There was neither fighting nor bloodshed, and private property suffered little. People were looting the state, not one another; they "robbed the robber," they said, and there was a certain order in, and a common understanding about, distribution of the booty. Often a share was given to the widows, the old, and the sick. T h e Military Command had no difficulties in establishing order, however. Orders posted on the walls or announced through loudspeakers were obeyed without resistance or protest. Ortskommandanten and Feldkommandanten were appointed and, in the name of "Hitler the Liberator," an appeal was made to Soviet employees to stay in office until the population had set up its own administration and police. Unprepared as the people were, often the Ortskommandant himself had to pick out a man — sometimes simply a better dressed man in the street — and invest him with authority to set up a "municipal council," uprava. In the rural areas, where no German authority appeared, a medieval pattern of government, the mir, was spontaneously revived, maintaining public order and justice until the occupation power could take over. T h e German Army was busy with fighting, and all it needed was calm in the occupied areas. For that reason, the military command

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did not try to stifle but rather encouraged the natives' natural desire for freedom. All kinds of communal "liberation committees" were welcomed and used as a substitute for local civil authorities. Civic order was maintained by groups of volunteers, to whom military rations were distributed. They recommended directors and managers for a few industrial enterprises not taken over by the German Army, and it was up to the workers' meetings to accept or to reject recommendations; "in such cases, the questions of wages, food allocation, and the like were decided in town meetings or in conferences of local delegates." Most important of all, spiritual freedom was if only in appearance restored, and private initiative was permitted to develop. Enterprising individuals began to open cobbler's or tailor's shops, home diners, and little stores where second-hand goods were sold on commission. Most industries remained closed, however, and people looked in vain for employment. But new currents were in the air, and the feeling was growing that there might be better opportunities if only men could get a fair start. A migration developed from cities to the villages where, the rumor spread, the collectives had begun to break up. People freely discussed their affairs and under the indifferent eye of the Ortskommandant some new pattern of communal order began to shape up, timidly and uncertainly but with a growing hope. Two curious things have been noted by observers: ( i ) Brought up in a totalitarian system, and dominated by the army of another totalitarian state, the people set out quietly to build a democratic order, however elementary in form and scope. ( 2 ) People showed no haste, except in a few isolated cases, to denounce the hidden Communists; rather than seek vengeance upon their former masters, they gave them, as it were, a fair chance to adjust themselves to the new order and redeem their sins; there were even cases where people petitioned the Germans to release the arrested Communists, particularly the Komsomol members, when they happened to be decent persons.^® The German Army appeared neither worse nor better than any other army, and the burden of requisitions imposed upon the population was somewhat lighter than under the Soviets. There were complaints, of course, about soldiers robbing the native of his last provisions or clothes, slaughtering young pigs, stealing chickens, and so on. "Although people admitted that the retreating Red Army behaved just as badly and understood that any fighting army has to eat, they expected better treatment from the civilized Germans, and one cannot deny that a certain disappointment exists," said one report.^' On the other hands, the military commanders often would lend army horses to help with the harvesting, and had no hesitation in letting prisoners of war go when their relatives claimed them. They also released prisoners of war to satisfy the demands of various communities for farm hands.

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skilled labor, specialists, and so on. Since every native organization tried to free as many men as possible, "one could find former P.O.W.'s working freely in factories and plants, in offices and in fields, practically everywhere; engineers, medical doctors, teachers." The Germans did not expect to find Belorussia a land of plenty under the Soviets, but they were unprepared for the general misery they discovered. On the other hand, they were impressed by "the extraordinary number of little children" and found with astonishment that, in general, "morality seemed quite high, for Russian conditions." That sentiment may have accounted for the humane attitude of some of the individual commanders, but in general these hardly acted out of sympathy for the people who, after all, were Untermenschen. Obviously, it was German self-interest to restore order and economy in the land off which they expected to live. The natives understood this very well and, at first, did not find life any worse than before — in fact, it had become better in some respects. But they were somewhat alarmed at seeing that there was no unity of policy among the military, every Feldkommandant apparently following his own judgment and whim. The first proclamations were issued in the German and Belorussian languages, which seemed to indicate a willingness to treat the Belorussians as a nation. In western Belorussia, however, the Poles who could speak some German rather than the Belorussians were employed in local administration, and in the eastern provinces Russian was used as the language of communication. Permits were being issued to print newspapers in Russian, but not in Belorussian. In fact, the military pretended never to have heard of the "Belorussian problem," and treated the population indiscriminately as Russen}^ There is no evidence that the people resented that treatment, but it must have contributed to their feeling of insecurity. There were many other problems which, obviously, the military command was not prepared to solve. The people clung to their hopes, and waited. "Unfortunately," says Guderian, "the favorable attitude toward the Germans continued only as long as there was military government; the so-called Reichskommissaren quickly destroyed the good will of the people." With this, most observers agree. The front line moved rapidly eastward and by September Belorussia found itself far to the German rear. The "brown shirt" administration was taking over, and life began to change. The natives realized that the "liberators" wanted their country for keeps. Alfred Rosenberg, on July 17, was appointed Reichsminister for the entire eastern area, from the Baltic to the Black Sea. Within his province, Belorussia — perhaps not entirely without relation to the theory of "baltism" of the Belorussian race ^^— was to merge with the Baltic states (Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia) into an Ostland, under the

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authority of Reichskommissar Heinrich Lohse whose headquarters were in Riga. T h e four ethnic parts of the Ostland formed four Generalbezirke, each under its own Generalkommissar, and Belorussia thus became known as the Weissruthenische Generalbezirk. Consequently, Belorussian administrative boundaries were revised in the following manner: Vilna county was left to the Lithuanian Generalbezirk; the Bialystok region was annexed to East Prussia; Brest, Pinsk, and Gomel provinces went to the Reichskommissar of the Ukraine; on the other hand, Smolensk province and perhaps parts of Briansk province, still under military occupation, were to be incorporated into the Belorussian Generalbezirk. Curtailed in the west and in the south, and enlarged in the east, the Belorussian territory was then divided into five Hauptbezirke, or provinces, with Minsk, Baranovici, Mogilev, Vitebsk, and Smolensk as their respective centers. T h e borderline between the military and the civilian zones was traced along the Berezina river, and Minsk was selected as the seat of the Generalkommissar T h e Germans wanted "living space" in the east, and they made no secret of it.^® More immediately, they needed local manpower and economic resources to feed the voracious war machine both at the front and at home. T h e task required the cooperation of the natives and, to this effect, a system was set up which assumed the form of local "selfgovernment" from the community to the province level under the supervision of Gebietskommissaren, Kreislandwirtschajtsjührer, Nackwuchsführer, Sonderführer, and other Reichsangestellte. T h e former Soviet administrative posts of the territory were preserved, but offices were renamed according to pre-Revolution usage. Thus, starosta (elder) reappeared in the rural community; starsina (foreman) in the rural district; uprava (board or council) in the city, county, and province. Officers selected from the prominent citizens would maintain civic order, administer elementary justice, and direct the economic and cultural life of the country, on the one hand; they were to collect taxes, supply services, and execute the orders of the occupation power on the other. T h e question remained open whether this scheme would culminate in a sort of central "Belorussian government" in cooperation with the Generalkommissar or stay under the direct authority of a German official at each administrative level. Collaborationists Alfred Rosenberg's staff had long been protecting various groups of nationalists-in-exile who sought separation of their countries from the Soviet Union. Although the Belorussian groups had been treated rather as step-children, they gained more attention and favors after the partition of Poland in 1939; the exiles from West Belorussia were given refuge in Germany and various, often substantial, facilities to

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foster their work.^^ In case of a German invasion of Belorussia, their collaboration was, of course, assured. Yet, these groups lacked the qualified personnel to form a Belorussian government and to rally all the anti-Soviet Belorussians around it. Then V. Zacharka, who represented in Prague the symbol of the Belorussian National Republic was remembered and approached.^® The old man, it seems, was offered the opportunity "to head the Belorussian liberation movement once the German Soviet war has broken out," and the negotiations continued until September 1941, when, finally, Zacharka refused.^® In the meantime, the idea of setting up a puppet Belorussian government had been assuming more concrete form, and it is said that "a few days before the outbreak of the war, two large barracks near Berlin were prepared for the Belorussian natives in Germany and Poland to be drafted into a Belorussian 'army of liberation.' Even a special uniform was designed for them." ^^ N o one ever heard of them again. Apparently, the plan of exploiting Belorussian nationalism had been abandoned. In fact, it was never considered as seriously as some Belorussian sources wish it to be represented. Belorussia, to the Germans, was " a land without historical tradition of its own, in no way prepared for any form of statehood." The country was to be treated as a colony, not as a satellite. The views of the military command, Rosenberg's officials, the SS, and the Gestapo, however, conflicted as to how and where the most effective "collaborationists" could be found, and where they should be sought.^® Consequently, both the Belorussian and Russian emigrants of Hitlerite or semi-Hitlerite persuasion were rushed to the country as counselors, advisers, interpreters, and assistants to the German administration. Wherever possible, offices were filled with natives of German descent. Volunteers were then called from among the local residents to fill the ranks of the police force and other subordinate agencies, and preference was given to those who had been repressed by the Soviets.®" In many places, however, former Soviet employees, even Party members, were retained in office.®^ In some villages, the starosty were elected in town meetings and confirmed in office by the German authorities; in others, these were appointed without consulting the people. Where they were needed, competent members of the community were ordered to take office, and it was not wise to refuse. Whether offices were filled with the right people was a different question. For one thing, there was a shortage of specialists, partly because Soviet technicians had been trained only in narrow fields, partly because "most of the intelligentsia had been moved out of the area so as eventually to deprive the Germans of administrative personnel." Consequently, officials were not qualified for their jobs,

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and, while there were "some decent people," most of the native administrative personnel was "of low moral quality." Some observers noted that "95 per cent of the people who worked for the Germans would have worked for anyone who paid them, and perhaps five per cent believed that they could work with the Germans for their own country." This may be an unfair generalization,®® but all testimonies agree that abuses became much too frequent, and overt bribery took the place of Soviet blat (influence traffic). In a short time the civil administration was so thoroughly discredited that no pro-German activity could wield any wide influence among the people.^® Local Administration The administrative setup resulted in a colonial pattern with no clear distinction between military and civil authority, and the SS often displaced them both. Local agencies were headed by emigrants returning from exile. R. Astrouski, a former high-school principal and B N R minister of education in 1918, headed the Mogilev and then the Smolensk regional uprava] a former landowner, J . Ermacenko, was chief adviser to Generalkommissar Wilhelm Kube; V. Tumas was appointed Mayor of Minsk; Basilevic took over the Mogilev oblast; and so on. But the Bobruisk regional administration, for instance, was entrusted to the Russian Odincov, a former Soviet non-Party official, and so also were some other minor upravy. Sometimes even those who admitted having been Party members became mayors, district chiefs, and so on.®'' They all had their own Sonderführer to supervise and direct their work, and were responsible, through him, to the higher German authority. Otherwise the upravy were free to manage their own affairs. Members of the uprava were drafted from among the most highly educated residents, often against their will. The communal sources of income were taxes from business, apartment rents, payments for the temporary use of property abandoned by the Soviets, and so on. The uprava managed a few reopened industrial enterprises, although most of them were taken over by the Germans; it issued special rations to the needy and assigned refugees to the various villages, where the peasants willingly accepted them. When the Germans seized most Jewish property, the remainder was taken over by the uprava which then issued furniture, clothing, and other effects to former P.O.W.'s and refugees. It drafted people for compulsory and unpaid work for the occupants, such as clearing the roads of snow and repairing bridges and railway tracks. This about exhausted the activities of the uprava. Material conditions in the cities were pitiable. In the eastern part of the country, little if any industry operated. The mark and the ruble were interchangeable ( 1 : 1 0 ) , but hard to earn. Workers were paid the same wages as

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under the Soviets, although prices had skyrocketed. Some people managed to make money by opening luncheonettes and shops, or by manufacturing soap, cosmetics, or "moonshine" in their cellars. N o regular stores existed, except second-hand stores for clothing and junk which suddenly had assumed new value. Black market and barter developed since the Germans furnished only a minimum of supplies and only for people who worked for them. T h e worst famine came in the fall and winter of 1941, when in Mogilev and Borisov, for instance, " a pood [36.113 lbs.] of grain cost one thousand rubles." In some towns, the uprava distributed 100 gm. of bread a day, "and bread was of very poor quality." There were no medical supplies. Epidemics spread in several places. M a n y people fled to the villages, and some cities lost more than two thirds of their population. T h e Germans tried political cases and major criminal offenses, while local courts tried civil cases. T h e county {raion) court, as a rule, had a judge, a secretary, and a typist, as well as a guard, a driver, and two investigators; members of the jury were picked from the population. In general, however, the mayor or the county chief had the arbitrary power of trying and convicting people, and, more often than not, the police — particularly the Geheime Feldpolizei — would take law and justice into their own hands. T h e police were first established in the cities and towns, then in the villages. An appeal was made to all men of military age to enroll, and it was risky to refuse. The first units were used to guard German establishments. The cities were split into sections, with a police chief for each 20,000-30,000 inhabitants. The country police also were divided into sections and consisted of two branches: the standing guard of villages and machine tractor stations, and the mobile guard to fight bandits and, later, the guerrillas. But very soon, under the supervision of the security police ( S D ) , the native police were given a more elaborate organization. The Germans divided the force into four main sections: ( i ) the municipal police; (2) the Sturm-Kompanien, or military units serving as garrisons, guards, anti-guerrilla squads, and so on; (3) the secret, or political poHce; and (4) the economic, or criminal, police. Each section was headed by a native chief responsible to the Feldkommandant or to the German SD. The police were dressed in a variety of uniforms and many wore civilian clothes with a badge on the arm. Some were given old German uniforms with special insignia; others got a black outfit and a brassard. Most carried Soviet rifles, although some units were given German arms. Their rations were small, but approximated those of the military. A policeman received 30 or 40 marks a month. Who joined the police? Some wanted a chance to work private re-

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venge on the Communists; others were keen on getting the privileges of better food and housing, and still others were sent in as Soviet agents. The Germans welcomed Soviet army officers to the police force, and many P.O.W.'s came to serve. At first, they were accepted indiscriminately, later they were screened. But it was natural that "many criminals and adventurers, NKVD men, and all kinds of scum" slipped in. These, it would seem, were particularly numerous in SD sections (political and criminal), and by their misbehavior they contributed generously to creating anti-German sentiment among the people.®® They were not all necessarily Soviet agents. Some émigrés who returned with the Germans did just as well, or even better.^" Wherever the chief of police happened to be a good man, things were bearable. The town police force, in general, was not the subject of much complaint. It was primarily composed of local men, mostly the unemployed, and people realized that after all some sort of militia was needed to maintain order. Yet the people felt that the police served the Germans, not the community; they refused to apply the native term to them, calling them policaj}^ Liberated from the Soviet authority, the rural community was left to itself for weeks, sometimes for months, before being integrated into the new system. There even were villages that did not see a German during the whole period of occupation.^^ Contrary to what might have been expected, no anarchy ensued. The old mir, or town meeting tradition, revived, as if the twenty years of soviets had left no traces on people's habits and thought. The sudden and spontaneous comeback was surprising and significant in its scope and depth.·*® Many Komsomol and Party members and some NKVD men either had no time to escape from the countryside or stayed voluntarily. Unless there were personal accounts to be settled with them, they were accepted by the people on the theory that no man is responsible for the master who orders him about. They took part in the general meetings (schod) as regular residents. In accordance with custom, the men alone decided communal affairs, but if there were no men in a household the women could take their place. An elder would be elected, and rarely were there any disputes over the election. Usually, an older man would be picked, often a former chairman of the collective, sometimes even a Party member if he had been known as "a good fellow." The raion would be informed of the appointment and the man confirmed by the Germans as a Dorjbürgermeister. The general meetings dealt with economic and practical problems only. The Soviet type of activist speaker no longer existed, and the discussions were hot, frank, noisy, and long. Counting votes was discarded, and unanimity of decision was required as of old. During the discussion of communal affairs the

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elder could only make suggestions, but when he acted as the agent of the higher authority the mir obeyed him.··^ The first decision the rural mir made — and there is no evidence that a single exception existed in Belorussia — was to break up the collectives. In most places, the stored collective property was immediately grabbed and divided up according to the number of "souls" or "eaters" in the household; in others, it was decided to ask the Germans for permission or to wait for orders. The German policy, however, seemed inconsistent. Some Feldkommandanten said, "Do as you like"; others said, "Continue to work as before, the only difference being that the crops will belong to you; call your kolkhoz an obscina (commune), but don't divide it up." This was a contradiction in terms, since the pre-Revolution obscina referred to the land divided into individual holdings with no collective work. The peasantry decided not to wait for further instructions and, by fall, all the collectives were dissolved. There had been no communication among the villages on any large scale, but the procedure was astonishingly uniform. As of old, fields were grouped into three categories: good, medium, and poor, and each class was cut up into a number of strips which were distributed according to the size of the households so that each family had a balanced number of plots in every category of soil. The actual measuring was done by two elders, specially elected by the mir, and wherever a priest was available a brief religious ceremony preceded it. The elders, eagerly watched by the whole community, walked down the field with a double rod, about the width of the strip, in their hands. The meadows resulting from swamp reclamation projects under the Soviets were also partitioned. The beehives were divided up likewise. It was agreed, however, to leave the forests in state hands Plots were assigned by drawing lots. People returning to the village from the city, and the formerly dispossessed, or "dekulakized," were reinstated. Their houses were returned to them, or the community would grant them building material for a new house and buy them carts and farm implements with the village money. In fact, there was more land than the people could handle in the depopulated rural areas. The Soviet P.O.W.'s set free by the Germans, and the okruzency, were gladly accepted. There was no evidence of national antagonism and, in fact, Belorussian and Russian, sometimes Polish, were spoken at town meetings and in the peasants' homes. But there was no way of bringing in the harvest of 1941 other than collectively. And this was done swiftly by free common effort. In some places, the grain was divided up in terms of trudodni (labor-day units), while those families which had men mobilized or killed in the war were given a share from the community fund; in others, the

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trudodni were entirely abolished and the harvest was divided up by sheaves/^ while extra food was issued to the households with sick and old, or many children. In most collectives, the productive cattle and the fowl were divided immediately and, after the harvest was brought in, the labor cattle and the buildings were divided, too. The farm equipment not evacuated or destroyed by the Soviets (seeders, threshers, tractors) were used jointly; even the minor farm implements such as plows and carts, were sometimes given to several familes jointly because of the general shortage. There were ferocious fights in some places over the few animals that remained after the Soviet and German armies had taken their toll. Finally, this matter also was settled, with one horse allotted to two, four, or sometimes ten households.^® The mir system was running the community in the spirit of common, not doctrinal, equity. Apparently there was no discrimination against any particular group of residents, native or alien. Even wives and children of the hated Soviet officials who had fled were taken care of like any other forsaken family. "Along with the Soviet system also disappeared the 'totalitarian' vices such as toadying, fawning, cringing, lying, spying, and the hke," said one observer. "The rural community has resumed its ancient way of life, and returned to the primitive democracy of old." Even "the local Communists" seemed happy about the partition of property.®® Productivity promptly increased. People began to build, helping one another; barter trade with the city developed, and many peasants were better clothed and shod. In 1942, despite the lack of equipment and horsepower, all land was tilled and sown. In some areas, the Germans provided seeds on credit, to be repaid after the harvest. The harvest was certainly not worse than before, and in some instances was better. The peasantry was getting richer and it is not surprising that there should have been, as some reports say, people who expected even a brighter future under the Germans.®^ But the German agrarian policy had remained ambiguous.®^ The military let the peasantry go its own way, provided that order and supplies to the army were assured. The civil authorities, however, were trying to preserve, in fact to reinstate and exploit, collective farming for German benefit. Finally, on February 15, 1942, Reichsminister Rosenberg issued a decree offering the Belorussian peasantry a sort of compromise: {a) transformation of the kolkhozes or collective farms into agricultural communes or obscina; (6) when conditions permitted, gradual apportionment of the communal land to the individual households — to be decided by the German authority on the merits of the individual peasants; and (c) promise of private land ownership, in the future, to peasants who showed good will and outstanding ability in fulfilling their obligations to the German power. During the "transi-

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tion period," it was stated, the land would be tilled in common; all the members obligated to work; German instructions obeyed in increasing the productivity of the communal land and of individual homesteads; the economy closely supervised, with German authority to reward the zealous and punish the remiss. The communal property that had been split up was to be restored, and the culprits repressed. Coated in terms of "emancipation of the Belorussian peasant from the Soviet slavery," the new system was, in fact, placing a brown yoke on top of the red one.®® Rosenberg's "agrarian reform" could not be uniformly or effectively implemented in a country where collective agriculture had spontaneously disintegrated. Consequently, local problems were settled at the discretion of the individual Kommandanten and Sonderführer whose main interests were in collecting grain, hay, milk, potatoes, eggs, and other dues. The decree remained on paper, but its moral effect was detrimental. Relations between the village and the occupation began rapidly to deteriorate. Realizing their illegal status, the peasants had little feeling of security and stability. More officials in charge of the regional economy appeared in every county, registering cattle, fowl, and pigs; directing and giving orders and "making it clear to the people that everything they possessed was now Germany's." They were assisted by a native starsina, that is, head of the rural district {yolosf, formerly sel'sovet), who assigned orders for the German taxes and made sure they were collected; the starsina supervised the administration of the villages and had a German clerk; no official decisions allowed of any appeal. As under the Soviets, the sentiment was growing that no one was any longer master in his own home. Although no public-opinion polls were taken and the situation varied from area to area and town to town, the fact can hardly be contested that an overwhelming majority of the Belorussian population — including the misinformed Jews — continued to feel indifferent, if not outright friendly, toward the Germans for some length of time.®® Hardship and privation, and even mistreatment by the occupation authorities, were being taken as the legitimate price of having been liberated.®® Some people apprehended, of course, what the Germans might have in store for them, but it is difficult, almost impossible, to define in conventional terms the mental attitude of even the best-informed at that time. They all seemed to want to liberate their country from Stalinism and let the people freely decide their own fate. They did not want to be obligated to Germany alone, but Germany was right there, and, besides, "there was a feeling of frustration and revulsion at the

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fact that the western democracies had gone over to the defense of Soviet totalitarianism." Furthermore, observers were surprised at the complete absence of ideological thinking and motivation among the populace. "Everybody hated the Soviets, but their hatred was always motivated by some personal offense and hardly ever by any realization of the evils and moral and physical devastations Communism always engenders wherever it takes root," remarked a traveler.®® Nowhere was there overt refusal of collaboration with the Germans on patriotic or other ideological grounds; the reasons given were always "hard working conditions," "mistreatment," "fear of the Soviet agents," or the like. Perhaps the attitude of the people for that period was best summed up by an observer who divided the population into four groups: ( i ) a minority from all social strata who were outright pro-German on the theory that the people were not capable of running their own affairs: "Since all the former rulers failed, let the Germans try"; (2) a large number of adventurers and criminals who would have worked with anyone for money and privilege; (3) the inert mass trying neither to help themselves nor to resist; (4) a few who argued that "one must use the Germans against Communism, and then chase them to hell." ® ® The popular attitude underwent a complete change within less than a year. The following reasons predominate: ( i ) mass execution of the Jews; (2) mistreatment of the P.O.W.'s; (3) inconsistencies of policy toward the collectives; (4) the high-handed attitude of the Nazis; (5) contempt for the Slavic race in general, and for the Belorussian nation in particular; (6) labor draft for Germany; (7) inabihty to deal with subversive activities of the Soviet agents; later, (8) the growing conviction that the Germans were losing the war; and (9) fear of Soviet vengeance on those who had been pro-German to any degree. That was more than enough to switch the large majority of the Belorussian population from friendliness to hostility.®® Active fighting broke out against the occupants in 1943 and 1944· The Racial Theory It was inevitable that the dogmatic tenets of Hitlerism should dominate the pragmatic thought of the Nazis in a conquered land. The racial concept required that certain segments of the native population such as the Jews and the Gypsies be earmarked for wholesale extermination, and economic and cultural policies in regard to the Slavs be adjusted to their status of "inferior race." The trend became conspicuous with the appearance of the first SS detachments in the occupied area. "While the regular army men mixed freely with the natives, visited in their homes, courted the girls, and often helped the peasants in the fields, the behavior of the SS troops was entirely different. They were stationed on the outskirts of the cities and when they visited

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the homes of the natives it was only to arrest someone." Their overbearing attitude was insulting. The uniformed Nazis "walked around with their sticks hitting people in the face," showing no respect for either age or sex.®^ For a whole year schools were closed, and later on education beyond the elementary level was refused to the natives. The Germans "broke all the laboratory equipment," complained a Smolensk professor. "Some books were destroyed, others dispatched to Germany; the museums were pillaged; scientific work was forbidden us." ® ® In the winter of 1942-43, permission was given to reopen grammar schools where German was now taught along with Belorussian. For most subjects the old Soviet texts were used, but with the pictures blotted out. In 1943, a teachers' seminar was permitted in Smolensk, but the whole school network was to be supported by the local upravy from their meager budgets.®^ A few trade schools were also opened. Newspapers carried German language lessons and that, with some literacy in their own idiom, apparently was all the education the human mass in Belorussia was thought to need in order to labor for the German Reich more intelligently and productively. Otherwise the Germans did not interfere directly with the people's cultural activities, which — except for the broadcasts in Russian, and sometimes in Belorussian, some music, drama, and movies, and the religious services in the churches that had been reopened — virtually ceased. Historical monuments were neglected or destroyed, and no plans were made for restoring the urban centers to their prewar importance. From the German point of view, the economic center of gravity lay in the Belorussian rural areas, not in the cities. And every day it would be made clearer to the people that their right to life and work depended on what use the German authorities might make of it. The Jews T h e mass extermination of the Jews came as a terrible blow. Not that the Belorussians had not been used to mass dispossessions, deportations, and executions in the past, but the hope they had placed in the occupants was lost, and this was even more important than their sorrow for mankind. Nor had they ever witnessed an execution of that magnitude. With surprise a Nazi official reported that, in the eyes of the population, the Germans appeared as "barbarians and hangmen, the Jew being held to be as much of a human being as the Belorussian." ® ® For centuries, indeed, the Jews had been an integral part of the Belorussian community. T h e y were concentrated in the urban areas, sometimes making up half of the population. Before the invasion, nearly one in every ten citizens was Jewish. As soon as the German civil administration arrived, they were ordered to wear a yellow star on their

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clothes and to register periodically with the local SS office. Then, by the end of 1941, their property was plundered or confiscated, and they were all moved to the ghettos established for them in the principal cities. There, within a year or two, the large majority was methodically liquidated. Indeed, only 5 or 6 per cent of the total Jewish population in Gomel, i per cent in Vitebsk, 25 to 30 per cent in Bobruisk, perhaps 30 to 35 per cent in Mogilev, survived in 1944. In the rural areas, all Jewish collectives suffered wholesale extermination. In Borisov, 6,500 Jews were slaughtered on the night of October 21, 1941; in Bialystok, 40,000 Jews on August 23, 1943; ® ® and, in general, of all Belorussian Jewry "hardly 20 per cent escaped extermination." How did these escape? " T h e natives protected the Jews as best they could, hiding them in attics and cellars and secretly slipping them out to the woods and swamps where the SS men did not dare to venture." ® ® The evidence is corroborated from other sources and, indeed, it is hard to conceive how a hunted Jew could have found his way to safety had not the non-Jewish people assisted him at the risk of their own life and freedom.®® In different parts of the country, Jewish "family camps" and "dug-out towns" appeared in the thick of the forests, guarded by Jewish armed youths. Later, they were the first to join the guerrilla warfare.'" Disheartened and appalled, the common people assumed the position, outwardly at least, that the Jewish problem was a German one, and not their concern. With all their compassion for the victims, how indeed could they help? On the other hand, a few nationalists collaborating with the occupants had overtly taken the German stand. T h e y joined hands with the Nazis in the persecution — sometimes in the execution, as at Borisov — of the Jew as if hastily to cement with his blood their position of henchmen.''^ T h e cement did not prove strong enough, and the edifice of collaboration soon began to crack. The Russian

Nationalists

Along with the exiled Belorussian nationalists, the Nazis brought in a host of Russian political émigrés, mostly members of the group of "solidarists" otherwise known as N T S {nacional'no-trudovoj sojuz), who had been residing in various parts of Europe. Though in agreement on the general tenets of Hitlerism, they differed considerably on Belorussia. The N T S were unionists, the Belorussians were separatists, while émigrés of other origins treated the peasantry "as swine." The Germans distributed offices among them, favoring now one, and now another set of interpreters and advisors. Russian was the main language of the urban populations and, except for a few die-hard nationalists, nobody bothered about distinctions between Belorussian and Russian. T h e N T S took advantage of

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this for fostering, under the German cover, their own aims. A Russian radio was established, Russian schools were opened in some parts of the country, and Belorussian was practically banished from office and from print throughout the military zone, east of Borisov.'® The general line of N T S propaganda represented Adolf Hitler as the liberator of "all the peoples of Russia," and his purpose as promotion of eternal friendship and alliance between "free and united Russia" and "the great German nation." The military favored the NTS, to the extent even of curbing Belorussian nationalism in its overtly "anti-Russian" trends.''^ Russian rather than Belorussian was used in German occupation correspondence and the very terms "Belorussian" and "Russian" were in fact confused. In spite of the considerable leeway granted them by the Germans, the N T S were not satisfied. Considering themselves "Russian patriots" above all, they felt hurt at being treated as employees rather than allies; they resented favors being loosely distributed between themselves and Belorussian separatists; and they were particularly shocked and dismayed by the inhuman treatment of the Soviet soldiers in the P.O.W. camps.^® Their pro-Russian position began surreptitiously to assume an anti-German hue. There are even reports that before a year had passed, the N T S center in Smolensk risked distribution of literature "with anti-Soviet and anti-German content." In effect, the Nazi administration began to lose the support of its most active and articulate allies.''® Belorussian

Nationalism

In the meantime, Belorussian nationalists ran into difficulties of their own. In the foreground stood the émigré Fabian Akincyc, a convert to Hitlerism since the 1930's when he originated a Belorussian National Socialist movement in Vilna. Returning to the homeland on the heels of the German troops, he set out to organize Belorussian youth in the image of Hitlerjugend. The group sided with the Nazis in every respect, and supplied the Germans with the personnel most devoted to the "common cause." But the movement conspicuously lacked popular support, and its membership never grew beyond a few hundred.'''^ Other nationalist groups were formed of Belorussian émigrés who had found refuge in Germany in 1939.^® They were, in fact, remnants of various political parties in West Belorussia, from Socialists to Christian Democrats, and there was little unity in their midst other than for expediency. There were even those who secretly owed allegiance to Zacharka, president of the B N R in exile, who had declined collaboration with the Germans. They differed, of course, in their ambitions. Those who aspired to political power soon found that there could be

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no Belorussian government under the occupation, and that they couldn't get any further than heading a regional administration under orders of a Sonderjührer. Others felt that, under the Germans, they might be able to promote national cultural work "in order to create a body of active fighters [for some future date], to enlighten the masses, and to strengthen their feeling of nationality." And many were satisfied with an opportunity simply to contribute to the welfare of their people in whatever capacity they could. T h e y were all disillusioned at finding little response to their aims among the Germans, as well as among the people. T h e Belorussian intelligentsia who had separate national consciousness in any degree had been decimated under the Soviets. Throughout the whole period of occupation, nationalist leadership was to remain in the hands of the former émigrés from West Belorussia, politically more advanced and educated.®® A t first it seemed that Belorussian nationalism had been getting the upper hand in the administration, at least in the western part of the country. Various local committees that had sprung up under military occupation were unquestionably native in composition. Their identity was easily asserted under the imported nationalist leadership, and some of them had even adopted national emblems. Belorussian newspapers were authorized. T h e Mutual Aid Society (Samapomac) handled welfare and cultural matters. An effort was made even to introduce Latin instead of Russian characters in Belorussian writings; but this went against people's habits in the eastern area, and the project was quietly dropped. When, in 1942, grammar schools reopened under the general supervision of priest Hadleúski, an old émigré from Vilna, nationalism became even more aggressive. Schools admitted only Belorussian natives and refused education to others. In the town of Nesviz, it is reported, a group of Belorussian Youth arrested the foreign (apparently Polish) administrators, lynched them in the public square, then let the Ortskommandant know that "they wished to take the administration into their own hands"; the German official reported to Generalkommissar Wilhelm K u b e and, "to the astonishment of everyone, the latter ordered him to comply." Then, "similar revolts broke out in a few other towns, and the Germans let the insurgents alone." T h e more concessions that were obtained, the more demanding certain groups became. Protests were formulated, though not too loudly, against the Germans' severance of western and southern territories from Belorussia, and an underground " P a r t y of Belorussian Independence {Nezaleznickaja)" was founded in Minsk.®^ T h e Christian Democrats formed a "Belorussian People's Front" under the leadership of priest Hadleúski. Both organizations led underground attacks

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against the collaborationists. The covert slogan "neither the Russians nor the Germans" began to attract more people as discontent with the occupation power grew. Small though their numbers were, that segment of Belorussian nationalism was becoming a thorn in the side to the occupation and it was not unnatural that the moment soon came when the Germans cracked down on them. In the summer of 1942, the Belorussian committees that had assumed too strong a nationalist hue were dissolved and their leaders arrested, some deported to Germany and some shot. Belorussian emblems and flags were removed from public buildings. The priest Hadleüski, admittedly head of the opposition, was executed.^® The local police received the order to accept the SS command or to disarm. A few police units refused and took to the woods, and in some cases "they were followed by the whole population of a village." Repression was swift and ruthless. By 1943, only those nationalists whose German loyalty was above suspicion were left in office or at liberty. And these, in turn, could not have been given a stronger reminder that they had but one master to serve. Here and there, in the woods and swamps, small guerrilla groups appeared. One such group organized in Vitebsk province is reported to have taken over the underground publication of the "Bulletin" of the Nezaleznickaja (Independence) Party. In Sluck, several nationalists were arrested by the SS and "hanged on a Sunday in the public square"; in retaliation the local Gestapo building was blown up two months later.®® The most active "collaborationist," Fabian Akincyc, was assassinated by a Belorussian youth (Matusevic) in 1943.®® But the patriotic movement had no chance to develop. Because of the lack of organization, ideological maladjustment, material difficulties, indifference of the masses, and the concealed Communists in their midst, Belorussian nationalism proved unable to become a leading force. "Conditions became so confused that for a time," confessed a Belorussian writer, "the Belorussian political leaders did not see any way out of the situation." Yet on the German side the loss was total. Both the Belorussian and Russian activists had been antagonized, as well as large numbers of those who had greeted the occupants as liberators only a year before. Many who still were working for the Germans were now looking for the first opportunity to turn against them.

13 THE GUERRILLA WARFARE In failing to make good use of the active elements in the population which were eager to collaborate, and in antagonizing the passive masses, the Nazis spelled their own doom. Two moves proved particularly unfortunate: the recall of the freed prisoners of war to P.O.W. camps, and the draft of native labor for Germany. Most Belorussian P.O.W.'s, as we have seen, returned home. Many others were freed, settled down, got married, and became part of the Belorussian community. Their numbers were greatly increased by the okruzency and it is reported that there were counties "where there were 30,000 such men" returned to peaceful occupations.^ Perhaps, in many regions, the peasantry would not have been able to bring in the harvest of 1941 without their help. But, early in 1942, the Nazis began to comb them out. Thousands fled to the woods. Soon their numbers were doubled by refugees from cities and towns where the labor draft for Germany began. The recruitment had started as a voluntary matter. In the winter of 1941, a magazine was distributed with pictures and stories describing the happy life of the foreign workers in the German Reich. People who enrolled then were mostly refugees from other parts of the country who could not get settled; the young whom the war had deprived of the opportunity to continue education; and the curious who wanted to see Europe, particularly since the food situation and unemployment in their home towns had become very severe. Soon enough news filtered back about the bad treatment the workers were receiving in Germany. The flow of volunteers stopped, and the Arbeitsamt began recruitment by force. With German efficiency, direct methods were used, as, for example, when a church was roped off and everybody, except the old and the infirm, who happened to be in it, was exported to Germany; a public market was surrounded and all the younger people, including women, arrested; a train was stopped and the passengers fit for manual labor segregated; finally, villages were raided and the inhabitants forced to go. African natives a century ago had been handled in a like

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manner. How greatly this helped the German economy is hard to say; but it most effectively filled the Belorussian forests and marshes with people struggling for survival, seeking vengeance, and preying on the neighborhoods with whatever arms they could obtain. The swamp and forest population, returned to Stone Age civilization, was divided into several tribes: Jewish refugees, Belorussian nationalists, Soviet P.O.W.'s, labor draft deserters, and the otherwise persecuted or offended. Their total number is not known, but some observers believe that it was already approaching the mark of several tens of thousands by the end of 1942. Having no unity of purpose except survival and vengeance, they lacked only leadership and supplies to make them a formidable threat at the German rear. The story of the guerrilla warfare that developed against this background and formed a kind of "second front" even before the AngloAmerican landing in Normandy has been obscured and indeed distorted by the publicity given it in the Soviet press. Insofar as it is possible to judge on the basis of insufficient data, the movement only gradually and reluctantly fitted into the Soviet pattern which, to a large extent, it finally assumed. The claim that the Soviet agents had created it is unwarranted, and, in fact, the credit should be given to the Germans themselves. Soviet protestations to the contrary, it is doubtful that the Communist leaders had succeeded in, or even thought of, leaving any kind of organized anti-German underground in Belorussia before their frantic flight. But it is true that this was one of their first thoughts as soon as they reached personal safety. In July 1941, P. Ponomarenko, first secretary of the Communist Party of Belorussia, was made chief of the general staff of the guerrilla movement, with headquarters in Moscow, and General Moculski became his chief assistant. Several schools were hastily organized to prepare squads of saboteurs and spies. The Communist Youth (Komsomol) of Belorussian and Ukrainian nationality of both sexes were drafted from colleges and military units, and subjected to two months' intensive training before being sent in groups of three, five, or seven to the German occupied areas. From former students of one such school, we know that organization of the guerrillas was not in their curriculum at that stage. The third secretary of the Communist Party of Belorussia conducted political indoctrination, while technical instruction was in the hands of Army and N K V D experts; these taught courses in "demolition and explosives, liaison, report, and handing over of intelligence." Women were instructed to infiltrate German offices as typists, interpreters, cleaning women, cooks, even mistresses. Spying was not their only job. Along with the men, they were to commit "all kinds of sabotage," including "acts of terrorism," and to see to it that "the rear of the enemy was

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paralyzed at any cost." But the agents thus instructed were forbidden to engage in any propaganda work or to expose themselves by maintaining contact with the guerrillas or other subversive groups; on the contrary, they were to pose as the most ardent German collaborationists and to provoke "the most drastic repressions upon the peaceful populations in order to stir their animosity and hatred for the Germans." "We would choose the quietest settlement, with a population loyal to the occupants," relates a former student; "then we would kill a German soldier, or we would mine the railroad in the vicinity; the Germans would retaliate upon the whole village, and the peasantry learned a cruel lesson." ^ According to some reports, 4,650 saboteurs and spies from such schools were sent to German-occupied Belorussia in the fall of 1941.® The following groups were also secretly dispatched to the German rear, each having its own assignment: military intelligence, N K V D agents, and Party instructors, with the task of reviving whatever had been left of the local Komsomol clubs.^ Available German reports, however, mention hardly any acts of sabotage or terrorism in the winter of 1941. Until Christmas, for instance, a large German ammunition dump in the city of Smolensk — where, according to some later Soviet reports, the underground had been particularly active — was guarded by only two men.® For some time, Soviet spies and saboteurs were lone wolves lacking popular support, and many were denounced, arrested, and shot before they could do any harm to the occupants. In 1942 the tide began to turn. The Soviet agents had infiltrated some offices, particularly the political police, in considerable numbers. Denouncing their opponents as "Communists," they gained the confidence of the Germans. They played a game in which they couldn't lose; the more cruelly they dealt with the population, the more evident their German loyalty would be. The people recognized the Soviet hand at once, yet complaints were of no avail. Then, fear closed their mouths. The agents became still more daring and planned their activities on a larger scale. Acts of sabotage multiplied while the blame was laid upon the local population. Soon the "terrorist squads" ventured into the larger cities, blowing up German offices and attacking German officials. In 1943, they dynamited the Gestapo dining hall in Minsk. In retaliation Generalkommissar Wilhelm Kube ordered wholesale execution of "the inhabitants of two Minsk streets." Two weeks later, on September 22, Kube himself was killed by an explosion in his bedroom.® He was replaced by SS General von Gottberg, "far more sadistic and cruel than Kube ever was" — and a reign of terror descended upon Belorussia. Even German officials protested that "strongly antiBolshevik people, or at least people sympathetic to the Germans, or neutral," were being shot and hanged, and warned Berlin that "the

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psychological effect of the reprisals was detrimental." A Propaganda Ministry agent reported that "the most loyal elements in the population now reasoned thus: if we stay with the Germans, the Soviets will probably shoot us when they return; and if they don't come back, the Germans will shoot us a n y w a y . " This was exactly what the Soviet secret agents had been working for. M o r e people were fleeing to the woods. Soviet contacts had been established and, in a few forest regions, guerrilla activities already raged. Overwhelming evidence supports the view that the first guerrillas in Belorussia were nonpolitical groups, each merely fighting for its own physical survival.® T h e y preyed upon the local peasantry long before they turned their arms against the Germans. A few typical stories may be quoted: Until March 1942, everything was quiet in the village of Hlybokae, Mogilev province. . . Many Red Army men, surrounded by the Germans in the summer of 1941, had settled down as if they were natives. In Hlybokae there were seven such men. When the collective was divided up, each was granted a plot. Some of them married into the local families. . . But in March the Germans ordered all former soldiers to appear at the mustering points. Soon the news spread that those who had heeded the order were sent into special camps where they were brutally treated, tortured by hunger, with mortality soon reaching horrifying proportions. No one went any more to the assembly points. Then the Germans began searching the villages, and wherever they discovered a soldier, they burned down the farmhouse and took away the cattle. There was only one thing for the hunted men to do — take to the woods lest the whole village be made responsible for them. In the woods they found arms abandoned by the Red Army. Thus they became the first guerrilla groups in Mogilev province.® In December 1941, a German soldier killed a native on his way back from a sawmill which was used by the Germans; his comrades attacked the Germans but were mowed down by machine guns; all but one of the group were killed. The next day the Germans took seven men — all the males between twelve and sixty in our small village — and shot them. The news spread like lightning, and this was the push needed to start the guerrilla movement in our region [Smolensk] Other stories from the Polock, Vitebsk, M i n s k , Slonim, and Lida regions confirm the point that the sole objective of the fugitives was to stay out of German hands. " T h e r e had not been any cells left behind b y the Reds to form the guerrilla groups ; men in the woods simply struggled for survival, trying to stay alive and not doing much else." A t first, they did not even have to resort to plundering, since the peasants of the very villages where they had been residents provided them with clothes and f o o d . " W h e n they grew too numerous, they began to

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raid the villages in search of food. The dismayed peasantry nicknamed them lesaviki (wood demons) and turned to the Germans for protection. But, as long as the "wood demons" preyed only upon the natives, the Germans "paid no attention to their complaints." ^^ The fugitives began to attack the isolated Germans only after they had gathered substantial strength. To better evaluate the situation after the first year of occupation, one must distinguish between ( i ) the areas under full German control, (2) the areas contested by the guerrillas and the Germans, and (3) the areas which eventually fell under full control of the guerrillas. Testimonies agree that in the regions firmly held by the Germans, material conditions had somewhat improved as compared with the prewar period. In some areas, "the peasants actually became wealthy, so far as they could within the space of a couple of years." " And in the remote forest areas a certain modus vivendi had been worked out between the guerrilla leaders and the local peasantry. The situation was infinitely worse in the contested regions. As the guerrilla warfare developed, more Belorussian territory fell into this category every month. One must distinguish, for the sake of the record, between the various guerrilla groups. Roughly, they fell into four classes: Jewish, Nationalist, independent or "Green," and Soviet. The Jewish camps in the forests have been mentioned before.^^ There, the first guerrilla groups originated and their independent formation had been "largely due to the difficulties Jewish fighters encountered when they sought to join non-Jewish groups." Whether or not their difficulties were due to the impact of German anti-Semitic propaganda is disputable. There were instances where the Jewish bands were attacked by non-Jewish guerrillas, and also many cases where Jewish "family camps" were protected by non-Jewish guerrillas who "even assigned food for them from their own stocks." Evidence exists that the Jewish armed bands wanted to preserve their separate identity; attacks against them were often made by those who coveted their arms. Later, some of the Jewish bands were enrolled in the Soviet units but tried to preserve their autonomous organizations. Their total strength has been estimated at 10,000-11,000. About 3,000 were killed in battle, and the large majority of those who survived left Belorussia for Western Europe after the war.^® Little evidence exists of the Belorussian "nationalist" guerrillas. In fact, available German documents do not mention them at all. Their "nationalism" must have been so mild that the Jewish historians invariably refer to them as Russian rather than Belorussian.^'' The Soviet sources distinguish between the Russian and Belorussian groups, but treat the latter as entirely integrated into the Soviet pattern.^®

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Finally, the Belorussian nationalists collaborating with the Germans treated all the guerrillas as "anti-Belorussian — robbing, murdering, and burning the tortured Belorussian land." On the other hand, Belorussian literature in exile frequently refers to various, indeed very sizable groups which were allegedly fighting both the Germans and the Soviets "for a free and independent Belorussia." Attempts are even made to describe the entire guerrilla warfare as "the fight for a Belorussian ideal." For this, material evidence is lacking. The most frequently repeated story is that of a large group (about 18,000 men [ ? ] ) under the command of a man nicknamed the Black Cat, said to be a Belorussian native, formerly an officer in the Polish army. "We always said spadar, never tovarisc,''^ says a man who pretends to have served with the group. "We accepted only Belorussian ex-Soviet soldiers, and told the Russians to form their own units and to operate in Russia rather than in Belorussia." Yet the story contains no reference to "Belorussian ideology" and mentions no Belorussian national emblems or insignia used by the guerrillas; the aim of the group was defined as merely "to be neither German, Soviet, nor Polish." ^^ This, apparently, had been the position of the large majority of guerrillas until 1943-44. Nor could all of them be called "guerrillas" in the proper sense of the word. Lokot county, Briansk province, for instance, with a population of 35,000, declared itself a self-governing unit, paying tribute to the Germans on condition that they leave it alone. Since the "republic" paid taxes regularly and fully, the Germans complied, and when the Soviet guerrillas invaded the county, they were turned back by the natives' own "self-defense" army. A similar situation developed near Polock in the region designated by the Germans as "Bezirk Ζ " where a peasant, Zuev, had become the self-styled leader of several "independent" villages.^^ Often "the whole or parts of villages" would move to the woods. These groups — the Greens — "were most prevalent in the Belorussian forests at the end of 1943." They could neither articulate nor promote any political program and apparently all they wanted was to be left alone. The Soviet guerrillas avoided fighting them so as not to push them into the German camp. The Greens called themselves "guerrillas" but — cave men of modern times — they used arms only when attacked in their dugouts. After the war, "most of them returned to their villages, while some remained in the woods." There were also "wild" units fighting the Soviets, the Germans, and one another at the same time. These, however, squeezed as they were between the two camps, did not last long. According to one native observer: People of military age, deprived of the chance to live and work in peace, felt lost and betrayed. They were anti-Stalin, and wanted to join hands with

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those who were fighting him. They enrolled in the anti-guerrilla units but, realizing that they had to fight for the Germans and against their own people, deserted and joined the anti-German guerrillas. Since most guerrillas did not fight for the people either, our men would desert again. . . Thus many young people changed sides several times.®^ T h e Soviets, by offering military and medical supplies, trained leadership, and pardon for political sins, set out to lure the larger guerrilla groups into the Soviet camp. For the bands whose supplies had run short there was no choice. From then on, the task of the Soviet instructors was threefold: to draft the largest possible number of people into the guerrilla units, to coordinate and direct their anti-German operations, and to convince the population that, in spite of German occupation, it had again come under the Soviet grip. Tons of leaflets were flown into the country and broadcasts in Belorussian from Moscow were heard daily. Promises were made that there would be no collective farming after the Soviet victory. Indeed, the Voroshilov guerrilla brigade let the peasants in its area of control work without any collective system. Rumors spread that freedom of religion had been granted by Stalin; that the United States and Great Britain were helping the Soviets; and that, apparently, the German rout had begun on all fronts. T h e rumor-mongering was effective. M a n y who had formerly feared the Soviets now joined the guerrillas to be on the safe side. And the hope also grew that things might indeed change after the war.^® In the meantime, villages were raided and people forced to go with the guerrillas. Those who refused were shot as "German agents." T h e most effective technique of recruitment was the provocation of German reprisals. "One would spy out one or two German soldiers, bestially mutilate and kill them, then freeze the corpses, often in the posture of the Nazi salute, and stand them at road intersections. T h e enraged SS would seek revenge on the nearby villages: shoot innocent people, burn them alive in their huts, confiscate cattle, and devastate the entire land." Usually, for one German killed the SS retaliated on one hundred natives: " T h e y would throw the hostages into a barn and burn them alive — men, women, and children," related the escapees.^® " L i k e lightning, the news spread all over the region. . . Seized with panic, people fled to the woods. There the Soviet agents would find them, curse the Germans with them, and tell them that Comrade Stalin knew their misfortunes and would not leave them without food, medical help, and arms to defend themselves. . . Then, at night, a Soviet plane would drop a few medical kits and a lot of leaflets full of hints that life under the Soviets would be different after the war." And the guerrilla units swelled with new recruits.^''

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The plan was simple. All the Soviets needed was German cooperation, and the Germans obliged. "In the Briansk forests, between Kursk and Gomel, all the villages were burnt down," notes an observer. "All we found were ashes and corpses. The remaining population lived in 'dug-holes.' This was the result of a major antiguerrilla action in 1943." Large areas were likewise devastated in many other parts of the country. The number of fugitives so increased that entire guerrilla "brigades," "divisions," and even "armies" were formed, and new leaders emerged, such as Deduska (Grandpa), Dziabo, Maskalina, and so on. Near Polock, it is said, "six counties were in their hands, and they bragged that they had an army of 20,000 men; besides, they had an airfield and direct contact with Moscow." In 1943-44, the total number of Belorussian guerrillas was estimated to be in the vicinity of 200,000 to 300,000.®° As to their moral strength, an observation has been made that "about 10 per cent were motivated by a political ideal (idejnye); 25 per cent became patriotic under the influence of the war, especially the young; adventurers and opportunists made up 15 per cent; people who were recruited by violence and terror, 45 per cent; and the common criminal element accounted for 5 per cent." These figures, of course, have no statistical value, but it is significant that they were supplied by a former antiguerrilla agent in the German service.®^ Soviet control tightened in the winter of 1943. The guerrilla brigades which had been named "Suvorov," "Kutuzov," "Revengers," "Victory," and so on were now ordered to change their names to "Stalin," "Voroshilov," and so forth. Curiously, no name bearing reference to Belorussian history or culture was ever used or suggested. A reconstructed brigade might have from six hundred to several thousand people and, as a rule, was headed by a commander and a political commissar (politruk) in Soviet military uniform. The members had to take an oath of loyalty.®^ Criticism of the Soviet Union was punished. Printing presses were set up in the woods and in city cellars, and special squads were formed for distributing literature. Many leaflets appealed to Belorussian "patriotism"; the blood kinship of the Belorussian, Ukrainian, and Russian peoples was emphasized; and nationalists collaborating with the Nazis were denounced as "traitors to the Belorussian people." But it is somewhat difficult to explain why the appeals were invariably printed in the Russian, not in the Belorussian language.®® B y the end of the year, more instructors had come from the Soviet Union. Discipline improved. In the winter, larger operations began, often on direct orders from Moscow. N K V D control groups were attached to the guerrillas' command to check on the loyalties of the leadership and on the accuracy of their operations reports. The guer-

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rillas attacked German lines of communication and supplies, yet open battles were avoided as before. Individual terrorism now concentrated on collaborationists rather than on the Germans themselves. "The indifferent, complacent rural leadership" was scheduled for liquidation on the theory that the spectacular removal of their kin right from their own midst would horrify the people more than the murder of former nationalist émigrés, whose personal ties with the country had been severed for many years. Indeed, this brand of terror did prove more successful in maintaining the population under the spell of Soviet might.'" Between Soviet Terrorism and German

Repression

In the forest areas, the peasant was caught between the German anvil and the Soviet hammer. When he failed to deliver his quota to the Germans, his farm was set afire and he was killed for being a guerrilla. On the other hand, the guerrillas exacted their own toll, and if he tried to conceal anything from them, his house was burned down and he was shot as a German agent. People secretly threshed the harvest in small amounts at a time: "They would put a sheaf in a sack, and beat it with sticks in the home." Grinding the grain was another problem: the mills were under German control, though often raided by the guerrillas. "Sometimes the grain taken to the mill would be entirely lost, to the Germans or to their enemies." Beginning with the fall of 1943, says a peasant from Mogilev province, there seldom was a day when the guerrillas did not show up in the village, make the round of the houses, grab eggs, chickens, pork; sometimes they would take away pigs and sheep, even our horses with carts; they would take our last coat and shoes, force us to make "moonshine" and, finally, they began to slaughter our cows. They were not always the same groups of guerrilla robbers. The local groups, from the forest, robbed the homes if there were no guerrillas in the families. And the groups from other places, passing through, robbed everybody. . . The anti-guerrilla units, in turn, plundered and burned the houses of those who had left with the guerrillas. Anyone who was spared by the Germans would be liquidated by the other side as suspected of intelligence with the enemy. . . Sometimes two groups, the guerrillas and the anti-guerrillas, would invade the community at the same time. Ignoring each other they would camp at opposite ends of the village, slaughter the peasants' cattle, cook and eat it, drink "moonshine," play music, sing and dance. Only by listening to the words of their songs could one guess that these were groups of different political persuasion.®®

"Our village," says another informant, "was for a while in German hands in the daytime and in guerrilla hands at night. From then on nobody wanted to be a starosta. So it was decided to alternate the

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position, and somebody new was to be starosta every week. Later, the job was in almost daily rotation." In other places, each resident was to be starosta for one or two weeks at a time, so as to minimize personal risk. The position became largely symbolic, Tvith no responsibility involved: "the Germans knew it, but there was nothing they could do about it." Neither could the guerrillas, nor did they want to; the village was deprived of authority and that was precisely their aim.®^ Thunderous Soviet statistics notwithstanding,®® the damage the guerrilla warfare inflicted upon the German occupation power was hardly worth its cost to the country in men and property. "In 1944, there were 6,000 cows in our district; and only 500 by 1 9 4 5 , " says a report. Many villages were left "with just one cow for every four or five farms and one horse for every two or three farms." In some guerrilla areas, the peasants lost all their pigs and sheep, and "not a single hen, or cow, or horse was left." Often the peasants themselves slaughtered their cattle, "just to save it from the robbers." Over vast regions, entire settlements were leveled and the people went underground literally: "Some found peace in graves, and others lived in dug-holes like tracked and hungry animals." Men did not shave for two years: "Beards helped them to appear older and conceal their age from both the guerrillas and the Germans." ®® In most areas a man had no choice but to join either a guerrilla or an anti-guerrilla group. The decision was fathered by necessity. With the growing feeling that the Germans were losing the war, supporting the Germans or the guerrillas was largely a matter of expediency, since it was not possible to protect one's self from both at the same time. Besides the German SS troops, the anti-guerrilla forces consisted of "Russian units" made up of former prisoners of war, police, and rural "self-defense" groups sponsored by the local German authorities. At first, the decision to form anti-Soviet volunteer units was apparently up to the local German commander; he would pick a few Soviet officers in a P.O.W. camp and give them some freedom in selecting the men.^" Later, General Bernhardt was made inspector of such units for the Heeresgruppe Mitte and it seems that, all together, sixteen battalions were formed. Apparently there was little uniformity in their organization: in the Orsha camp, for instance, they wore Soviet insignia of rank; in Bobruisk, German stars; some units had no flags, others had both the Russian tricolor and the German flag; still others reintroduced the epaulettes of the Russian Imperial Army, replacing stars with rhombs. The command was in Russian hands, but German liaison noncoms were attached to each unit {Zahlmeister, supplies, interpreter, and communications). The volunteers called their units Russkaja

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Narodnaja Armi ja ( R N N A ) , but the Germans ignored that name and simply assigned numbers to the individual battalions. Separate battalions, sometimes even smaller units, were attached to German formations. Originally, the R N N A units seemed to be intended for intelligence purposes and diversionary activities in the Soviet rear. In fact, parts were transferred to the guerrilla areas where, known as Jagdkommandos (Hunting Squads), they were mixed with German units. In 1942-43, a German military school was set up in Briansk for former Soviet officers who, after graduation, were sent into units fighting the guerrillas, and often found themselves subordinated to German noncoms {Feldwebel). From the summer of 1943 on, single battalions began to be shifted to the West, where they were given full German uniforms, and German officers took over the command. T h e Jagdkommandos were formed mostly of strangers to the country, and they often treated the population worse than the Germans did; although there also were some Belorussian natives, their treatment of their own kin was hardly any better.^^ Some Ortskommandanten had special watch battalions of volunteers wearing good German uniforms with distinctive red patches {petlicy) on the collar, and Sturm-Kompanien formed with local men. There also were units under German command for the special task of convoying transports, guarding railway tracks, bridges, and so on, and these wore green German uniforms. In the fall of 1943, an attempt was made to organize the rural self-defense (Wehrdoerfer) ; men were supplied with some rifles and ammunition and left virtually uncontrolled, but they proved of low fighting ability and, several months later, their organization was discontinued. Everything considered, the antiguerrilla forces looked well organized, adequately equipped, and numerically strong. Y e t it seemed that the stronger they grew, the wider and bolder the guerrillas became. Presently, the guerrilla warfare turned into a full-scale civil war, with the same kind of people fighting on each side. For many, fighting was practically the only way of making a living and of protecting their families in the ravaged, charred, and divided land. There was no special animosity between the opposite camps, and thousands changed sides time and again. Testimonies abound that entire antiguerrilla units were formed of former guerrillas and that entire antiguerrilla units, in turn, went over to the guerrillas. "When we operated in guerrilla territory," says a former Jagdkommando, "there was an unwritten law that we and the guerrillas left each other in peace." Actually, both sides were living off the country, ransacking what was left of the rural economy.^^ T h e Germans were confused, dismayed, and finally alarmed. In

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the east, their armies were retreating. Belorussia was again close to the front, and maintaining order had become more imperative than ever. The high-handed methods had proved ineffective. The situation called for a drastic change of policies if there were still to be a chance of regaining the people's confidence and cooperation.^® On June 3, 1943, Rosenberg issued a decree permitting private ownership of land by the peasants. The concession was qualified by conditions which nullified its effect. In July, Generalkommissar Kube set up an informal consultative body composed of the "most active and loyal Belorussians" of his own choice. Known later as Muzy daverra (Men of Confidence), or Vertrauenrat, this group had little influence and, in fact, nothing is known of its activities during that period. It was only after the assassination of Kube on September 22 that the new boss of Belorussia, General von Gottberg, after long hesitation and apparently without orders from Berlin, decided to play the card of Belorussian patriotism in the antiguerrilla warfare. He called the Vertrauenrat in the first formal session on December 2, and asked for advice. On December 21, he issued an amnesty to all the guerrilla fighters who would put down their arms. The population was urged to fight for "order and peace" — not that of the Germans but their own. Orders were given to help the peasants with the spring sowing. Taxes were lowered and other grants made, with the result that within a few weeks "thousand of guerrillas went over to the German side, including the commissar of a brigade." ^^ Finally, von Gottberg called on Astroüski to form a sort of "central Belorussian authority," eventually to take over the civil administration of the country. On January 22, 1944, a Belaruskaja Central'naja Rada ( B C R ) was formed of fourteen members, picked by Astroüski and confirmed by the Generalkommissar. Their status remained undetermined. The Rada was supposed to be a consultative body which the Generalkommissar could call or dissolve at will. On the other hand, it was granted some powers in handling civic affairs, and was supposed to replace the Samapomac in the cultural and educational fields. The Rada accredited "consultants" to various Gebietskommissaren, and soon began to issue decrees in its own name. It looked as though the country was going to have a national government.^® At the BCR's suggestion, a corps of Kraëvaja Abaraña (Country's Defense) was set up, wearing the Belorussian white-red-white insignia on their caps. To nationalists, this was the embryo of the Belorussian Army, but the Germans hesitated to recognize it as such. In March, however, a Belorussian National Defense Committee was created. The Rada called fourteen military classes, and ordered all former officers of the Polish and Soviet armies into service. Draft evasion was punished by death. According to some information, "100,000 men were

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drafted, and 80 battalions formed." But the Germans delayed handing over arms to them, and large numbers fled over to the guerrillas. Eventually, a few units were dispatched to the menaced areas, but it is hard to say how many actually took part in military operations.^^ Observers disagree about the extent to which the appeals to Belorussian nationalism had been heeded. In general, the situation was becoming even more involved and confused. It was not unusual for a man to work on three or four different sides at once. A case is cited of a man who was an SD agent; also a member of the Belorussian nationalist underground, hostile to Astroüski; also a member of the Rada presided over by Astroüski; also secretly affiliated with the Russian émigrés' nationalist group ( N T S ) ; also an agent of a "special group" of the N K V D ; and also the chairman of a church committee in Minsk.·^® A nationalist writer admits that the Belorussian youth, educated in Soviet schools, remained "a doubtful asset"; they now were anti-Communist, of course, but "the normal categories of good and evil, tenacity and stability in striving for a lofty ideal, the sense of social responsibility, the moral integrity and certain other characteristics of civilized men, were to a large degree, if not entirely, lacking in them. . . Unable to adjust themselves, they were strangers in the new world ; they were, therefore, particularly sensitive to the tenets of Bolshevik propaganda and many, in fact, went over to the Soviet side." " The Second Belorussian

Convention

In a desperate move to win popular recognition and support, the B C R called general elections. T h e Second Belorussian Convention,®" representing "all peoples of Belorussia irrespective of race and creed," was to reaffirm the principles of Belorussian independence and of democracy announced twenty-five years before, and to appoint a government responsible to the Rada. Since there was no time for either an electoral campaign or an organized ballot, a pattern of "corporative elections" was adopted. The ambiguity of the term was obvious since no bodies corporate existed in the country, and there were no rules for groups to qualify for elections. T h e Germans were not interested, since they felt that the country was lost anyway. On June 27, 1944, when the booming of guns at the front could already be heard, 1,039 delegates, 904 men and 135 women, gathered in Minsk. Forty-eight of them represented the regions cut off from Belorussia by the Germans; forty-two were emigrants from abroad; and three were refugees from the U S S R . Several small towns sent more delegates each than some larger cities all together.®^ One might wonder how the delegates were elected and b y whom, were it not known that, in Belorussian, the term vybrac' means both "elect" and "select."

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Indeed, the Credential Committee stated that " 1 , 1 5 1 persons were invited {byla zaprosana), of whom only 1,039 were able to come." They called themselves "delegates," a word which had also lost its meaning since the Soviet Revolution. Whether the assembly adequately represented the nation is questionable. It did, however, represent the most active Belorussian nationalism. B y acclamation, Kipel was elected president; Kasiak and Rahulia, vice-presidents; and Haliak and Branavicki, secretaries. Greetings were presented by Astrouski, in the name of the В C R ; by Archbishop Philotheus, Priest Tatarynovic, and Dzekuc' Malej in the name of the Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Evangelical churches; and by a Mrs. Savënak "in the name of the Belorussian peasantry, working class, and intelligentsia." In his opening speech. President Kipel pointed out that the Belorussian assemblies that had been called at different times under the Soviets "were always 40 per cent Jewish" and, consequently, "only two assemblies, the First Convention [December 1 9 1 7 ] and this Second [June 1944], could be considered as really representing the Belorussian nation." With this the delegates agreed, and the assembly settled down to work. Reporting on the work of the B C R , Astrouski admitted that its organization followed the principle of "Führership," since "the system of universal, direct, equal, and secret ballot had deceived the hopes of humanity." Consequently, "the most active and capable persons" were selected and, for that reason, could not be branded either "self-appointed leaders" or "German lackeys (chalui)"·, indeed, he said, the Convention was expected to destroy "this vile lie." Astroúski thanked "the German soldier who tore off the shackles of our slavery," and sadly acknowledged that practically the whole territory of Belorussia was ravaged by guerrillas of various denominations, "plundering and slaughtering our people." The situation had "somewhat improved" since the organization of the Kraëvaja Abarona which, he said, for all practical purposes, "now is the Belorussian Army." Thanks to the Germans, he said, the Belorussian battalions were well equipped and armed at the present moment and, together with the German troops, "they were now fighting the Stalin bandits." Finally, he said, "a Belorussian military school" had been opened on June 15 in Minsk. He added that the labor draft for Germany continued satisfactorily; indeed, the last group of "labor volunteers" had left in May; according to his information, the Germans "feed and clothe" the Belorussian workers very well and, in general, "treat them like their own youth." From Astroüski's report it appeared that little, if anything, had been done — or could have been done — to bolster Belorussian cultural and economic life during the German occupation until the B C R was created. In 1944, schools were handed over by the Generalkommissar

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to the Rada. Four high schools were opened (Nesviz, Novrogrodek, Slonim, Minsk) and there were bigger plans for the following year; "30 of the best teachers had already been sent to Germany for six weeks to study the German school system," he said. Moreover, in February, a Belorussian Cultural Association had been founded "to take over the direction of cultural institutions, theaters, museums, libraries^ expositions, community halls, etc." In April the B C R initiated a social security plan to supplement the voluntary work of Samapomac (Mutual Aid).®® Under the German occupation, "Belorussian composers produced 60 new works"; publication of the literary magazine Uzvyssa, suspended under the Soviets, was resumed; and "four collections of verse were printed." A Belorussian "scientific society" prepared twenty-one new textbooks for elementary and professional schools, and compiled a Belorussian-German dictionary. This, if Astroüski's report was complete, exhausted the cultural and economic achievements of the country during the years of collaboration with the G e r m a n s . T h e r e was little debate. The Convention unanimously recognized itself to be "the plenipotentiary and supreme representative body of the Belorussian nation," and decided ( i ) to confirm the declaration of Belorussian independence of March 25, 1918; (2) to repudiate the Belorussian SSR; (3) to denounce all the treaties and agreements which the USSR and the Polish government-in-exile might conclude with third powers or between themselves in regard to Belorussia; and (4) to declare the B C R "the only legitimate representative of the Belorussian nation at the present time." ® ® Contrary to expectations, no question of representative government was discussed. The Convention adopted the above resolution, and closed that evening. The minutes of the Convention leave a strange impression. No German officials were present, and yet not a word of criticism, however mild, was uttered against them. There were no claims or recommendations made to the occupation power. Not even a wish to see all the Belorussian territories reunited at some future time was expressed.®® Instead, the Convention simply decided "to wire greetings to friendly governments." The phrase was a euphemism, since everybody knew who the addressee was. It would seem that the militant spirit of Belorussian nationalism had suddenly gone. Members of the Convention could not of course be blamed if they sincerely felt that Communism was an even more deadly enemy of freedom and justice than Nazi colonialism. But they could have had no doubt that these were the last months, indeed weeks, of German occupation. No magic of words could stop the debacle. Yet they may have felt that a national debate at the eleventh hour was a healthy thing. It could clear the air, release tensions, focus attention on great issues of

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Belorussianism, and melt divisionist controversy into a mold of common conviction. Whatever Belorussian nationalism might say from the last platform before the curtain fell could have a declarative value, and this seemed, indeed, the only practical reason for calling the faithful to the battered city of Minsk. Y e t one is puzzled at seeing how little the assembly did have to declare. In a phrase or two, as a matter of ritual, the principles of the Act of Independence (1918) were restated, with no attempt to instill new life into the worn-out terms. History was reviewed with accusatory fingers pointed at Poland and the Soviet Union, while the present situation was passed over in silence. And so were the burning issues of the future. The omissions proved more eloquent than the spoken words. Indeed, there was no vision of a Belorussian nation. The only new idea with which the assembly wished to enrich the nationalist doctrine was the cursing of the Jews. This unworthy means was the cheapest way of paying off the temporary masters of Belorussia,®·^ but, in the public opinion, it cost the Belorussian cause something more. The Convention was not followed by any noticeable change in the attitude of the people. Later, attempts were made to unfold a national myth and to make believe that the Convention had begun "to build Belorussian statehood, entrusting the Central Rada with the administration of the Belorussian state." ® ® The B C R was, however, no longer able to look after even its own affairs. Already the Soviet armies had crossed the border, pressing the Germans all along the eastern front. On June 29, three hundred cadets of the Belorussian military school, founded only two weeks before, "marched along March 25 Avenue and left the city of Minsk in the direction of Vilna." ® ® They were followed by the B C R fleeing into exile.

14 THE SOVIETS AGAIN The Soviet-German pact partitioning Poland had been invalidated by the agreement between the Kremlin and the Polish government-inexile on June 23, 1941. The Soviets made it clear, however, that they expected the postwar Polish eastern frontier to be revised in accordance with the "popular will" expressed in November 1939. Formal Soviet negotiations with the Allies to this effect dragged on since January 1944.^ The London Poles resisted, but Moscow had severed relations with them April 26, 1943, and there were the Moscow, eventually the Lublin, Poles who proved more accommodating. With the latter, an agreement was signed on August 16, 1945, recognizing the Curzon line — "with deviations from three to nineteen miles in favor of Poland" — as the permanent boundary between Poland and the USSR.^ The Bialystok-Sokolka-Augustowo-Hainawka area was cut off from Belorussia and handed over to the Poles. The Poles and the Belorussians abroad protested, albeit from entirely opposite points of view, but the agreement, after a few minor adjustments, was confirmed in July 1948.® Although both Moscow and Warsaw had declared it final, the boundary was somewhat modified again on May 22, 1951, this time in favor of the Soviets.^ Finally, the Belorussian Soviet Socialist Republic gained 31,132 square miles of western territories, coming out of the war 62 per cent larger than before. The Belorussian state now consisted of twelve provinces — Baranovici, Bobruisk, Brest, Gomel, Grodno, Minsk, Mogilev, Molodecno, Pinsk, Polesie, Polock, and Vitebsk — comprising sixty-six cities, 114 towns, and 17s rural districts. Altogether it covered a territory of 80,154 square miles with political boundaries "confirmed and guaranteed" by the constitutions of both the Belorussian SSR (Article 14) and the Soviet Union (Article 29).® Agreements between the Polish and the Soviet governments provided for "voluntary migration" of their respective nationals, with the understanding that "property, both movable and immovable, would be paid for in accordance with the laws of Poland and of the Belo-

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russian and the Ukrainian SSR's." It was expected that the actual transfer would be carried out between December 1944 and April 1945, though the time limit was later extended to November i , 1945.® How voluntary the repatriation actually was is an open questioni Obviously, the governments were trying to remove the cause of border conflicts by creating a neat ethnic demarcation line between the Poles and the Belorussians. The idea was not entirely new, but the inhuman character it had of necessity assumed wherever it had been tried perhaps explains the cloak of secrecy that had enveloped the Soviet-Polish plan.® According to different sources, there were about one million Poles in Belorussia,® and perhaps half a million Belorussians in Poland.^® From the fragmentary information that can be gleaned from the Soviet and Polish presses it appears that by the spring of 1946 only 5,000 Poles had been repatriated,^^ while about 9,000 Belorussians "were moved" from Poland to the Soviet Union.^^ No more information has been published since. In the summer of 1947, the rumor spread abroad that the peasantry in the Bialystok area had revolted; General Paszkiewicz, it was said, quelled the revolt with the assistance of the M V D who surrounded and liquidated the insurgents seeking refuge on Soviet territory. Altogether, it would seem, 30,000 Belorussians had been transferred up to that date and "about 500,000 still were living under the Polish rule." The causes and extent of the failure are a matter for speculation. Indications exist, however, that the plan was not discarded; it only assumed new directions, the whole impact of which is not yet known outside the USSR. The Belorussian demography has become a riddle. Apparently, the Jewish and Polish minorities, which made up nearly 15 per cent of the total population before the war, were almost entirely eliminated; " the number of civilian war casualties has been estimated at over two m i l l i o n ; t h e birth rate dropped greatly between 1943 and 1946, and the mortality rate must have continued high for some time; mass deportations of the natives whose Soviet loyalties were suspect have been reported at different times,^^ and thousands of loyal Belorussian families were transferred as colonists to East Prussia.^® Moreover, tens of thousands of Ostarbeiter who had been forced to go to Germany during the war and other thousands who willingly left the country with the German troops remained in exile; " instead, large numbers of immigrants from other parts of the Soviet Union appeared in the country, primarily in the urban areas.^" Although no statistical data are available, one may.safely assume that ( i ) the total population of the BSSR is below its prewar level, and the rural areas remain considerably depopulated; ^^ and (2) the ethnic composition of the nation has changed, and the proportion of Belorussian-speaking natives must

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have fallen far below the optimistic estimates of nationalist writers abroad.^^ War Devastation The war devastation was appalling. "During six months . . . I traveled from one end of this republic to the other, and I can only think of it as the most devastated territory in the world," writes an American observer who visited Belorussia two years after the liberation, "The ruins extend over the length and breadth of thousands of square miles . . . Minsk itself is 80 per cent destroyed . . . The estimate is that it will take fifteen years to rebuild Minsk. All the lesser cities were at least as badly wrecked. Thus, according to official figures, Vitebsk is 95 per cent destroyed. I have been there and would judge that estimate to be correct." Other testimonies agree. Acres of buildings were ñattened out in the cities and towns, where four families out of every five lived in shacks built of debris or had fled to the woods.^^ Rural areas were turned into wasteland. "The Nazis completely devastated 9,200 villages; they carried off two million heads of cattle, three million pigs, and three million sheep." Two years after the war, the collective farm people still "lived largely in 'homes' that were little more than holes dug in the earth covered by a thatched roof {zemlianki)Altogether, "1,215,000 houses and farm buildings" were destroyed ^^ and "more than 3,000,000 people rendered homeless." In such districts as Lelcicy, Asvej, Suraz, Rosony, October, and others, "practically everything was leveled to the ground; in the Lelcicy district, for instance, only 32 houses still stood by some miracle out of 7,500 that existed before." The roads were unusable, communications disrupted, industrial and farm equipment destroyed, and the economy had returned to the Stone Age. Whether the German and the Soviet armies or the native guerrillas had been responsible for most destruction was an academic question: to the people, the housing, clothing, and food problems stood as terrible realities. "Eighty-five out of every 100 industrial establishments," and "all machine and tractor service stations," were destroyed.®" The country lost "70 per cent of all horses, 77 per cent of the cattle, 92 per cent of the pigs, 83 per cent of its sheep"; "poultry and beehives were entirely annihilated"; "the sown area decreased 40 per cent, the production of potatoes fell off 50 per cent, and that of flax, 85 per cent." According to the So\iet press, "the Germans had ruined and plundered 1,136 hospitals, clinics, and dispensaries, or over 75 per cent of the prewar total of the republic." "With particular vandalism, the fascists destroyed monuments of the material and spiritual culture of Belorussia, its scientific, educational, and other cultural institutions";

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they "robbed the Belorussian Academy of Sciences of its most valuable historic documents and books; burned the Lenin State Library; utterly devastated the palace of Prince Paskevic-Erivansky in Gomel, which had been designed by Quarenghi and had been one of the loveliest buildings in the republic; they looted or destroyed the finest exhibits of the state art galleries . . . burned theaters, museums, research institutes . . . completely laid waste 5,200 and damaged more than 10,000 schools . . . The Soviet intelligentsia was systematically persecuted and liquidated . . . many outstanding scholars, teachers, medical doctors, artists, were killed." Soviet sources estimated that "direct losses inflicted by the invaders amounted to seventy-five billion rubles" ; in other words, they "equalled the national income of the Belorussian SSR for forty years" [sic'\?^ Evidently, the rehabilitation of the country required an effort far beyond the national capacity and could not be carried out without assistance. For more than a year, mine fields kept considerable acreage out of production, in the eastern provinces as much as 20 to 30 per cent. By the fall of 1945, however, 20,000 volunteers had cleared 3,000 mine fields and removed about ten million mines and unexploded shells"; three more regions remained to be demined before the end of the year.®® The USSR poured money, technical equipment, and machinery into Belorussia, and the manpower problem was solved by establishing slave labor camps, either moved westward from other parts of the Union or filled on the spot with the repatriated Ostarbeiter from Germany.®® Later, it was emphasized that "had it not been for the Soviet system and the fraternal help of other peoples of the USSR, Belorussia would have been held back many decades in its development." One may wonder what the "development" would have been without the whole trainloads of food, clothing, medical supplies, and other necessities of life received from Russian War Relief and UNRRA.®® After 1948, a cloak of Soviet boasting descended upon the scene, and it became impossible to follow the situation realistically.®® Statistics and Realities In flagrant contradiction to the accounts of the wholesale devastation during the war, official statements were made that "no one in cities and villages would be compelled to live in dugouts by the autumn of 1944 [ и с ] " ; that " 1 1 , 5 0 0 elementary and secondary schools had already been opened" in 1944-45; ^^ that, "although the medical and sanitary services had not reached the high level of prewar days they were adequate to assure the population of essential medical care" in December 1944; ^^ and so forth. The statements were made primarily for foreign consumption. On the domestic scene, it was found necessary to devise a Five Year Plan (1946-1950) for the republic, providing for

IO. Janka

12. К.

Kupala

Krapiva

II.

Jakub

13. E. K. Cikocki

Kolas

(composer)

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a federal investment of 6,950,000,000 rubles in construction and repairs. T h e plan also called for an industrial output of 1 6 per cent above the 1 9 4 0 level, the cultivation of 13,086,300 acres of land, a cattle herd of 2,800,000 head, some 770,000 horses, and the completion of 29,062,800 square feet of dwelling space, as well as for more schools than before the war. Five years had not passed when the plan was said to have been "most successfully completed." A s if by a miracle, "thousands of wrecked enterprises were operating again; the devastated towns were raised from the ruins; two million rural dwellers had moved from mud huts and dugouts into newly built homes, and the entire prewar network of cultural and educational institutions had been reestablished; the grain crop in 1 9 4 8 was greater than in the prewar year of 1 9 4 0 " and, a year or two later, " a number of collective farms had an annual income of a million rubles or more." ^^ The Soviet publications boasted that in Minsk "today you will find hardly a trace of the frightful damage wrought during the recent w a r . " Photographs, diagrams, and every kind of graphs were widely displayed to demonstrate the significant fact that "the vitality and strength of the Soviet system proved strikingly manifest in Belorussia's rapid recovery." When we turn to other sources, however, or even read the Soviet press more carefully, the bright colors darken considerably. W e find that "the complete reconstruction of towns and villages devastated by the German occupants" actually meant that " 3 2 0 , 0 0 0 cottages and about 10,000 public buildings (schools, clubs, nurseries, e t c . ) " had been built in all Belorussia since the war, which would make a rather modest average of 60,000 peasant homes and 2,000 other buildings a year.^^ A n American observer noted that these were mostly "log houses which, except for their rye-thatched roofs, are like the cabins of our own pioneers." T h e situation in the rural districts was particularly bad. Collective farming had been reintroduced immediately after the liberation. More centralization and mechanization had to take place, since farm labor could not be replenished at once. Particular pressure was applied in Western Belorussia where not all farming had yet been collectivized before the war (Brest, Grodno, Molodecno, Baranovici, Pinsk, and Polesie provinces),*® and a super-collectivization of farming in the eastern provinces was decided upon (Vitebsk, Gomel, Mogilev, Minsk, Polock, and Bobruisk). There, within a year, 9 , 7 7 1 collective farms were amalgamated into 3 , 2 7 9 larger units, so that the average size of a kolkhoz grew from 78 households, i i i adults, and 983 acres to 2 3 9 households, 3 4 2 adults, and 2,693 acres. It was expected that "the productivity of agriculture would increase, as well as the individual income of farm workers." Then a plan of further "rational centralization" involving transfer of farm workers into the

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agrogorods ("farm cities," yet to be built) was suggested — and dropped after a year of trial and discussion.®^ At the February 1950 session of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party, dissatisfaction with Belorussian agriculture was expressed, and the Party dispatched 7,500 "agitators" to fight the sluggishness of the peasant.®^ The sessions of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Belorussia held February 1 2 - 1 4 , i9Si> and January 24-28, 1952, were dedicated to the failings of the "agricultural administration." In June 1952, the Central Committee reprimanded the Party leadership in Mogilev, Molodecno, Grodno, Baranovici, and Polock provinces for laxity, and accused Minister of Agriculture Kostiuk of ineptitude and mismanagement.®® Since not much truth filtered through the curtain, the real situation is difficult to evaluate. Sources of information that had been unanimous in describing the war devastation are highly contradictory as to the postwar reconstruction. Frequent are the complaints about industrial mismanagement and waste, shortages of various consumer goods, failures in the cultural field. Boastful statements of the press are directly challenged and refuted.®^ Occasionally, an eyewitness who has escaped to the West will tell a story of his town where "war invalids missing an arm or a leg or both get about as best they can on hand-made wheelplates or aided by any odd piece of wood that can pass for a crutch; ragged, barefoot children swarm about . . . jumping at our feet to clean our shoes, or simply begging for something to eat." Or of his native village, where "the only brick building, former house of the merchant X , fallen to pieces, is converted into a public school; women plow the fields, tend the cattle, harvest the grain"; women "load the wagons and drive them by hand to deliver the grain to the government." ®® The story is retold by a German prisoner of war who, repatriated in 1950, also saw "in the markets and around the churches, crippled beggars displaying war medals and mutilated limbs; veterans of whom there are far too many for the number of hospitals." ®® Sometimes a letter will slip out: "Liuba was married last summer; her husband . . . was an orphan and they still live in a dugout." Perhaps evidence is insufficient to warrant generalizations. But the impression is that, except for the privileged group, the Belorussian people still live in the squalid poverty of old, accentuated by the drastic regimentation of labor. The wholesale purge of collaborators, nationalists, even neutrals {kosmopolity) suspected of divided loyalties, was ordered after the liberation. How many thousands (some writers say "millions") have been jailed or deported will perhaps never be known, since even men who had done a carpenter's job for the Germans received a three-year

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term.®® T h e aim was twofold: to remove subversive elements, actual and potential; and to replenish much needed manpower in the slave labor camps. Within a few months, the guerrilla leaders were either absorbed into the Party ranks or liquidated. The administrative personnel was replaced, down to the smallest collective farm; party loyalty, not competence, being the first qualification.®® T h e government's efforts were next concentrated on "cleaning u p " the Belorussian Communist Party itself. T h e jobs of First Secretary of the Central Committee and of Chairman of the Council of Ministers, fused during the war, were again divided.®" Within the Central Committee, shadow secretariats for industry, agriculture, and propaganda were established, and in 1947 the secretaries were made members of the Belorussian Politburo. Next, the entire register of the Party was reexamined to weed out those who might be untrustworthy. Even the top leadership was not spared. N . Natalevic, long president of the B S S R Supreme Soviet and vice-president of the U S S R Soviet of Nationalities, was discharged and stripped of the Order of Lenin and the title Hero of the Soviet Union, and he vanished from the scene in 1948. First Secretary Gusarov was replaced by N . Patolicev in 1950, and the Council of Ministers was shuffled several times. Furthermore, from the Party organ Zvtazda a number of senior editors were ousted "for a dulled sense of party responsibility" (1950). Leadership in the provincial branches was strengthened, and an educational drive was started to teach members "how to be good Communists." Persons beyond reform were expelled and new men were "boldly promoted" to fill the vacancies. T h e Party membership considerably increased. Concurrently, the Komsomol was brought from 264,620 members in 1941 to 511,090 in January 1952, "organized in 18,002 local clubs." Even the number of Red Pioneers had grown to 800,000, nearly one-half of the school-age population of Belorussia. "About 3,000 political schools were opened and over 3,500 clubs for the study of Party history . . . and about 2,000 clubs for the study of Lenin's and Stalin's biographies . . . Besides, over 200 regional Party schools were established." Although many schools and clubs were not able to complete their programs,®^ and other shortcomings were publicly acknowledged, there was evidence that the Party did succeed in tightening up the Communist Belorussian moral fabric loosened by the war. Presently the Party machine {apparat) assumed proportions and strength formerly unknown in Belorussia. National

Symbolism

More than merely repressive and organizational methods, however, was required to curb the spirit of particularism revived under the Ger-

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man occupation. T h e r e is evidence that even the much-purged P a r t y leadership remained "Belorussian" in a sense which, it was feared, might ultimately be steered to weaken the Communist dictatorship. T h i s may explain the special emphasis laid, after the war, b y the Kremlin upon the political symbols of separate Belorussian identity within the Union, while the last real foundations of Belorussian nationhood were being assimilated or downright removed. Flattering local patriotism went along with exposing "bourgeois nationalism" as a danger to the Belorussian community rather than to World Communism. In that manner, it was expected, false pride would be satisfied without detriment to the ultimate Soviet aims, and latent nationalism disarmed? T h e Belorussians were reminded that their land "received independence as a result of the victory of the Socialist Revolution," and their rights were reasserted in terms putting the nationalist opposition (abroad) to shame: Having entered the Soviet Union voluntarily, together with other sovereign Soviet republics, Belorussia delegated to the Soviet Government certain of its powers defined in Article 14 of the Constitution of the USSR (defense, foreign trade, financial policy). In all other fields Belorussia exercises state power independently, fully preserving its sovereign rights. The Republic, as represented by its highest bodies of state authority, adopts its own Constitution, defines the boundaries of its regions and districts, issues it own laws, safeguards order and the rights of its citizens, approves the economic plan and budget of the Republic, directs the banks and industrial and agricultural enterprises that are under the Republic's jurisdiction, directs public health work, social welfare work, public education, and so on. It has the right to enter into diplomatic relations with any foreign state. . . Belorussian is the state language: instruction in the schools and institutes, as well as court proceedings, are conducted in Belorussian.®® In the spring of 1945, Belorussia and the Ukraine were made members of the United Nations, to the exclusion of all other republics of the Soviet Union, even the R S F S R itself. In 1949, when the thirtieth anniversary of Belorussian independence was celebrated, M i n s k and Moscow exchanged greetings as powers equal in dignity, honor, and rights. Finally, the B S S R was granted a new national flag on December 25, 1951 : the cloth is divided horizontally; the upper two-thirds are red with the sickle and hammer and the five-pointed star in gold as before; the lower part is green, and a national ornament, white-redwhite, runs along the staff.®® Of all other Soviet republics, only the Ukraine had then been granted a similar privilege. W h a t more could be added to national symbolism? Under the Belorussian flag, however, Belorussian identity was being erased. T h e history of the country was rewritten to stress more

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emphatically the unity of the East Slavic world, within which the leading role of the Russians is glorified. Stalin was described as "the sole creator" of the Belorussian Republic.®® Literature has followed the stereotype established for the entire Soviet Union and is no longer distinguishable from modern Russian, Estonian, or Armenian writings, except in the linguistic medium, which is itself being brought closer to the Russian standard. Scholars and writers were directed to borrow words only from Russian to express concepts for which no adequate terms exist in the native idiom. In January 1952 a conference of the Linguistic Institute of the Belorussian Academy of Sciences was called to discuss further reform of spelling and grammar.®^ In the meantime, "38 per cent of all textbooks for Belorussian schools were being supplied by the Russian S F S R . " «« Economic and cultural opportunities were now offered to the Belorussians all over the vast Soviet empire, but technically Belorussia still was part of an economic region with a capital at Smolensk, in the R S F S R . The Soviet defense required unification of the army and logistics, and more branches of industry and transport were taken over every year by the federal management; in their agencies embracing nearly all the technical ministries of the B S S R , correspondence was conducted in Russian. The B S S R government decrees now are published in both languages, though often in Russian alone. T h e Communist Party of Belorussia has two separate organs, Sovetskaja Belorussia, in Russian, and Zviazda, in Belorussian, while the Kolchoznaja Pravda, dedicated to agriculture, is printed in both languages.®® Russian alone is used in the institutions of higher learning, and quite commonly in the civil service. There have been reports from the refugees that the city people avoid using Belorussian in the streets lest they be suspected of "bourgeois nationalism." In conformity with Soviet practice throughout the Union, a small percentage of the administration are nationals. P. Ponomarenko, the undisputed boss of Belorussia until 1950, was Ukrainian; the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Belorussia, N . Patolicev, as well as his predecessor, N . Gusarov, and the assistant secretaries, Zakudraev and Brenc, are Russians; Moserov, General Secretary of the Belorussian Komsomol, and his predecessor Livencov, are Russians; President Natalevic of the B S S R Supreme Soviet was replaced by Kozlov, a Russian. In 1951, the government of the B S S R was composed "of 22 Russians, one Georgian, one Jew, and nine Belorussians." In March 1952, the Supreme Soviet confirmed the appointments of M . Baskakov, Minister of State Security ( M G B ) : A. Makarov, Minister of Melioration; V. Isidorov, Minister of the Building Materials Industry; and unanimously elected another Russian, J. Boldyrev, President of the Supreme Soviet of the BSSR.^"

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The man in the office may be a Belorussian native, but his directives will reach him from above through the double hierarchy of state and Party bureaucracy which is in all matters subordinate to, not coordinate with, the government of the USSR Literature and Science Belorussian writers and scholars cling to the national coloring of their otherwise colorless work as the only way left to express their feeling for their land and people. This was encouraged, since they could thus write "inspiring stories about soldiers returning home . . . about people laboring to restore the ruined cities and villages, the factories and collective farms." Indeed, Belorussian scholarship and literature were praised for having done well by the Soviet Motherland during the war.''^ But the Kremlin has since voiced a strong warning against the "nationalist virus" creeping again into Belorussian "sciences, literature, language, and the educational system." The arraignment is worth citing at length: a. Textbooks on history "continue to support the myth of a Golden Age of Belorussian culture fabricated by reactionary nationalists . . . An age which, as it happens, coincided with Belorussia's subjection to the Polish and Lithuanian overlords is depicted as a time of unprecedented political, economic, and cultural flowering." b. In some recent works published in the BSSR (1945-1948), "such second rate writers as Czeczot, Barszczewski, К5ф1п5к1, Elski, Harun, and others, whose activities aimed at the estrangement of Belorussia from the Russian revolutionary movement [under the Tsars], are unduly magnified." c. M. Klimkovic, a Party member and President of the Union of Belorussian Writers, "carefully glosses over the reactionary views" of the nineteenth-century landlord and writer Dunin-Marcinkevic, describing him as "a sort of mouthpiece of the downtrodden Belorussian peasantry" {Polymia, nos. 2 , 3 , 1 9 4 5 ) . d. The Central Committee of the Communist Party of Belorussia censored the new textbooks of history of Belorussian literature (denounced by the Moscow press in 1947). But "new errors of a bourgeois nationalist character" have since appeared in the works of writers "who want at all costs to establish a direct line of succession from Barszczewski and R5φinski to J. Kupala and J. Kolas." e. The Nasa Niva is erroneously described as expressing "the thoughts and feelings of the Belorussian people, its dreams, and aspirations," while it is obvious that "the liberal trends of that period are irrelevant to the present time." /. The "Belorussian patriotism" of M. Bahdanoviò is glorified

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(Polymta, no. 8 , 1 9 4 7 ) , despite the fact that this poet was " a decadent," who wanted Belorussia "to be included in the western sphere of influence, and who saw nothing good in Russia." g. Belorussian scholarship tends to include "obscurantists and reactionaries," "Polish squires," and the "westerners and liberals of old" among the sponsors of Belorussian enlightenment, placing them on the same footing as "the revolutionary leaders of the Stalin epoch" — which is another proof of "nationalist deviationism." h. On the other hand, the historic bonds of Belorussian literature with Russian "democratic literature" of the nineteenth century "are hardly touched upon"; "the literary debt to Belinsky, Cernysevsky, Turgenev, Nekrasov, Leo Tolstoy, Maxim Gorky, and other Russian classics" is not duly acknowledged; the works of Kupala, Kolas, and other modern Belorussian writers "are not examined and explained in their relation to the revolutionary and literary history of Russia." Belorussian scholarship and literature were invited "more boldly to step out of provincial narrowness and to discern in Belorussian national tradition a closer and more organic relation both to the classic Russian literature and to the multinational literature of the Soviet Union." This was a directive, not merely a reminder. The aim clearly was ( i ) to destroy the historic and literary foundation of Belorussian patriotism and ( 2 ) to subordinate what might remain of it to Russian history and tradition.''® The Belorussian writers complied; six of them were awarded the Stalin prizes for literature (Kupala, Kolas, Krapiva, Kulesaü, Broüka, and Tank). It is interesting that all six had once been champions of the political crime of "liberal nationalism." '''' Indeed, their more recent works are praised for having "actively contributed to the campaign against bourgeois nationalism." Modern Belorussian scholarship also has been commended for "articles about the Belorussian language . . . written in the spirit of Comrade Stalin's works of genius on linguistics"; for studies of "the Russian cultural impact on Belorussian literature"; and so on.'^^ Statements even were made that "Belorussian literature has become one of the most effective tools of Communist education." Yet, in 1 9 5 1 , the writers again were accused of living on "obsolete ideas about the Belorussian village"; of ignoring "the political and cultural development of the peasantry, the extroardinary advance in mechanization of agriculture"; of producing "no works about the working class, the heroes of industrialization . . . the gigantic achievements of Communism." It was pointed out that Belorussian writers never took their heroes outside the state boundaries: "they tell the reader nothing important about our sister republics, nor about Moscow, the capital of our Motherland." In fact, it is said, "their ethnographic isolationism is responsible for narrowing down the subject-matter, for

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archaisms, and for certain ideological deviations . . . often for borrowing ideas and sjonbols from obsolete Belorussian literature. As a result, their works are nonpolitical, undated, indeed they might have been written at any time, even before the Revolution." Again, the Belorussian Academy of Sciences was reprimanded,®^ and the Party organ Zviazda called to account for "lax discipline on the ideological front." Writers are reminded of their obligations toward the Soviet Motherland. However, criticism no longer assumes the proportions of a campaign against deviationism. The Party apparently is sure of its hold. The country is flooded with printed matter which sets the pitch and purpose of national life.®® The subject matter is restricted to things of immediate interest to the power, and the matter-of-fact style is flat and uniform. One may wonder whether such literature is or can be "an effective tool of Communist education." It can be argued, however, that it is better to have inferior rather than inimical literature.®^ Admittedly, from the police point of view, the flatter the landscape of intellectual, artistic, and professional life, the safer. The Intelligentsia and the Masses Belorussian intellectuals had been systematically destroyed, and the social void thus created has been filled by the new intelligentsia of Stalin vintage. Its likeness to the old intelligentsia is deceptive and limited, and its Belorussian-speaking segment is relatively small.®® There are some Belorussians who surrendered their patriotism to the Kremlin in the hope that the amalgam might produce "communist" Belorussianism rather than Belorussian Communism. By the time they realized their error they found themselves swallowed up by a system violently opposed to both the "nihilistic nationalism of Tito" and the traditional nationalism of the past (nacdemovscyna) .* The scope allowed to their present energies may not satisfy their ambitions, but the problem of personal survival stands at the fore. Loyalty to the employer is their only security, and symbols of Belorussian sovereignty carefully displayed by the Kremlin appease the conscience. Activities have been given nonideological directions and the new intelligentsia think in today's and tomorrow's practical terms, not in the patterns and platitudes of a quarter century ago. Technology is confused with science and a leather briefcase with culture; the members are overconfident, arrogant, predatory, and obsequious before power. Today, the intelligentsia are an integral part of the managerial elite in the so-called classless society which, in fact, is divided into two distinct classes: the labor class, or the mass of the people (trudia» With the derogatory suffix Séyna, the term refers, in fact, to the Belorussian National Democratic Party which is said to have existed underground in the 1920's.

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sciesia), and the leadership, or ruling caste {rukovodstvo), which is more and more isolated from the masses in both its way of life and its group consciousness.®® Since Belorussianism has been for years identified with the Soviet authority, it would seem that it has become to the natives just another aspect of Communism. We have seen that the Germans were somewhat surprised that "nationalism" was "hardly extant" in the occupied area.®^ People's attitudes were motivated more by loyalty to traditional ways of life than by political concepts. Actually, the nationalist doctrine had never commanded the loyalty of, or a response from, the Belorussian masses to any significant extent. Folklore, the only medium through which the popular mind can freely express itself never became (as it often did with other peoples) a propaganda weapon for rallying national sentiment. Belorussian folk tales describe only specific events in a specific locality. Songs display no spirit of defiance and national resistance, no feeling of ethnic and social cohesions; but rather a melancholy spirit of defeat. Full of social lament and vague aspirations toward a better future, Belorussian folklore is concerned with the lot of man, and has no concept of nation.®® But it is also evident that the present use of the native idiom in schools, theaters, radio, the lower administration, and the press, has become a habit. The systematic studies of national geography, natural resources, history, and literature, albeit in Marxist-Leninist-Stalinist terms, and the existence of formal attributes of statehood, have strengthened the feeling of separate Belorussian identity. The evidence is seen in the ever-growing number of poets and writers from the people who, strait-jacketed though they are, manage to express their love for and pride in the native Belorussian land. Apparently, this sentiment does not alienate a man from other peoples of the Union. The period of German occupation demonstrated that the natives, whatever their true feelings toward the Soviet system of government may be, tend to think and act in terms of the whole USSR, and that, in their minds, the national sentiment is not necessarily identified with the poUtical doctrine of nationalism.®® Belorussian Nationalism in Exile The nationalist ideology has found refuge abroad, and there it faces the problems common to political emigration of all times: to maintain effective communication with the people at home, and to safeguard its own doctrinal and organizational vigor. The new emigration is by far the largest in the history of Belorussia. Representing a cross-section of the country, these emigrants first settled in West Germany and eventually scattered over the free part of the

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globe. The exact numbers are not known, since the occupation authorities in Germany did not recognize Belorussian nationality at once. The displaced persons were treated in accordance with their state allegiance before 1939, and in order to avoid forcible repatriation, many Soviet Belorussians registered as Polish. In 1947 the separate Belorussian identity was finally officially acknowledged, and in 1948 approximately 30,000 persons of Belorussian origin were organized in fourteen separate DP camps under the supervision of IRO. Certainly, this figure was below the real number of Belorussian natives, though it probably represented correctly the number of those Belorussians who were nationality conscious to any degree.®" Leadership in the DP camps was taken over by small groups of intellectuals, predominantly natives of West Belorussia, who were quick to promote nationalist policy all over the area of Belorussian concentration. First, socio-cultural activities were organized: churches, schools, theaters, choirs, and various professional groups; by the end of 1947, licenses were obtained for publication of Baékaüscyna (weekly) and Sakavik (monthly). A Belorussian National Center had been created, allegedly an interparty organization with a platform embracing all antiSoviet trends and groups (November 15, 1946). In the camps the nonconformists were subjected to pressures sometimes "bordering on terror." But the leadership soon split, and activities focused in two rival, indeed openly hostile, groups: the Belorussian National Republic and the Belorussian Central Rada, the former claiming apostolic succession from the First Belorussian Convention in 1918, and the latter from the Second Belorussian Convention in 1944. The Belorussian Central Rada was evacuated by the Germans from Minsk in July 1944. On September 23, 1944, it disbanded until called back to life by Astroüski on March 25, 1948. Referring to the decisions of the Second Belorussian Convention in Minsk (June 27, 1944) as a national ballot, Astroüski reinstituted the BCR as a government-inexile, appointed ministers and diplomatic agents, and appealed to the Belorussian emigration throughout the world to recognize the BCR as "the only legitimate representative of the Belorussian nation." Beyond the restatement of the general principles of the Act of Independence (March 25, 1918) and wholesale rejection of Communism, however, the BCR and its organ Belaruskae Slova seemed to offer no instruction or guidance.®^ This was, in fact, an act of self-assertion rather than of leadership, and it was intended to counter the claim of the BNR, existing until 1947 solely in the person of M. Abramcyk,* to be "the only legitimate representative of the Belorussian nation" abroad.®® The Constitution of the Belorussian National Republic adopted at * B y a dubious procedure of succession from President P . Kreceüski (died in Prague, 1 9 2 7 ) through V . Zacharka (died in Prague, 1 9 4 3 ) ; see p. 263 (note 2 6 ) .

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the Paris Conference on November 28, 1947, stated that the President was "the only legal supreme representative of the Belorussian people" (Article 7 ) ; he is to "appoint and dismiss" the Prime Minister and "approve the composition of the Council of Ministers" responsible to himself alone (Article 8 g,d) ; he will himself "appoint his successor in a political testament," which meant that his was a lifetime office (Article 9) ; he will be chairman ex officio of the B N R Rada, the members of which he will appoint " f r o m among persons known as politically staunch, morally and nationally [ ? ] irreproachable" (Article 10), and he also can expel them from the Rada "for ineptitude, insubordination, and disloyalty" or for "moral and national [?] misdemeanor" (Article 12), though not without a trial by their peers (Articles 1 3 - 1 4 ) . The Rada thus constituted will be a legislative and judiciary body (Articles 13, 17, 20-22g, 3 2 - 3 7 ) convening on the President's order "when there is need," or every six months in any case (Article 23). T h e statute is to remain in force until "free elections" have become possible in the Old Country (Article 39).®^ The Paris decisions were protested as unconstitutional and undemocratic, and Abramcyk's position as dictatorship, sectarianism, and political trickery.®® Other groups, however, accepted his authority and, through a series of negotiations, the B N R came to include a somewhat larger representation.®® A full government was appointed under Prime Minister Kacanouski, with some ministers residing in Paris and some in the United States.®^ The position of the Minister of Finance was left vacant, and the budgetary problem was solved without him. T h e sources of money have never been revealed, but they permitted, among other things, the maintenance of the B N R organ, Backauscyna, the best trimmed Belorussian publication abroad, and to equip A b r a m c y k for extensive tours in North America and Western Europe where he organized " B N R Rada Sections." In 1951, to give momentum to the movement, two orders of merit and a medal were established for citizens who might "deserve well of the country," ® ® and the B N R began to print postage stamps (not yet recognized by the World Postal Union). N o currency, as far as this writer knows, has been attempted. But the government made claims to the territories ceded by the U S S R to Lithuania and Poland, and submitted to the United Nations in November 1950 a memorandum denying the right of the Soviet delegates to represent the Belorussian nation.®® Finally, it organized the emigrants of the Christian Orthodox faith into a Belorussian Autonomous Church, while still leaving the Catholics to the care of the Vatican.^"® Both the B N R and the B C R claim to have maintained continuous and effective contacts with the underground groups in the old country. Astroúski's men speak of "thousands of Belorussian heroes scat-

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tered in the forests and depths of our country and, almost unarmed, attacking tanks and armored patrols of the Communist police and troops." Abramcyk's spokesmen, in turn, claim as many as "50,000 partisans . . . harrying the Russians" under the command of "a guerrilla veteran. General Vituska"; and they furnish proof by awarding the B N R orders and medals to "two generals, two majors, and three guerrilla commanders" still fighting the Soviets, as it were, in February 1952.^°® The assertions seem boastful, unrealistic, a substitution of desires for facts. But the truth is difficult to assess, and both Belorussian governments-in-exile take full advantage of this. The B N R seems thus far to have produced the more vocal and spectacular leadership. According to its claims, it has "united and consolidated the whole political emigration" around President Abramcyk, except for "two very small groups." On the other hand, the B C R asserts that the strength of the Abramcyk forces is fictitious, and his organization racked by "continuous inner strife and splits." Since the sources of the money with which both governments-in-exile operate are not known, indeed are entirely concealed from the public, suspicions have arisen of "secret agreements" with the London Poles and the Vatican (BNR),"® and of intelligence with the "pro-Russian" American groups ( B C R ) . Consequently, President Abramcyk is described as a "Polish stooge," "impostor," and "ignoramus" by the members of one group, and President Astroúski as a "fake professor," "embezzler of public funds," and "political nonentity" by members of the other.^"^ The things they have in common do not outweigh, under the present circumstances, the things which separate them, and would undoubtedly throw them against each other in their bids for power should the Soviet system collapse. Without reference to the merits of the question, the issue has become a case of shadow-boxing over a stake the ideological foundations of which are no longer clear. Ideology and Politics The B N R and the B C R are the most articulate advocates of Belorussian nationalism, but their position can better be described in negative than in positive terms: they are against Communism; against the Russian, Polish, Lithuanian, and Ukrainian territorial claims; against political ties with either Russia or Poland after liberation. B y conjecture, one may say, they are for unqualified independence of Belorussia, •within its ethnographic boundaries as of iQiy}'^^ Belorussian communities abroad celebrate the Twenty-fifth of March very much in the spirit of the Fourth of July in the United States.^®' But it is questionable whether the symbol carries a clear conception of what Belorussian independence should be in terms of government, economics, and civil rights. Political labels are not affixed

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with care, and betray a considerable confusion. The leaders, of course, attest their faith in democracy. Yet the В CR had no quarrel with the Nazi ideology in 1944, and the B N R has adopted since 1947 the very pattern of authority it claims to resist. No attempt to clarify the issue has been made in nationalist literature. Perhaps the Belorussians in exile realize that freedom is not easily restored once it has been suppressed. Their gravitation toward "statism" seems irresistible. They tend to invest the concept of Belorussian nationality and sovereignty with an absolute value in the belief that, in the Soviet land, they will find a sufficiently large number of disappointed totalitarian-minded people who see a convenient rallying point in the most intransigent and narrow nationalism. The questions of government are not discussed. Deliberately, they are left open until the nationalist doctrine will be the sole determinant of loyalties, social groupings, political associations, and attitudes. The position of the leaders can be historically and pragmatically explained. But it makes them a doubtful ally of democracy — at least, in the sense in which that term is generally understood.^^® Not unnaturally, therefore, nationalist symbolism is concentrated on Greater Belorussia, playing up the quantitative rather than qualitative aspects of the idea. The present boundaries of the BSSR are not accepted, and territorial claims are directed against all five Belorussian neighbors — Russia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, and the Ukraine. Even East Prussia is included in the claims.^^^ Hopes sometimes are expressed that peaceful arrangements can be made with Latvia, Lithuania, and the Ukraine,"^ perhaps with Poland (BNR),"® but not with Russia. Except for a rather obscure group of Belorussian federalists,^^^ unqualified hatred of the Russian people, not merely of the Soviet state, is preached — most violently by the western and Catholic segments of the nationalist leadership.^^® How do they expect the good-neighbor problem to be settled? The expression of Belorussian nationalism abroad leaves an impression that it has few bold, novel, or constructive intentions. Suspicion, fear, and hatred are its armor. The leaders seem to display a diluted sense of reality and an amazing capacity to believe in anything they wish to believe. They mistake intentions for good performance and live, as so many political émigrés of all times, in "apocalyptic expectancy of the final settlement" — which, they trust, will award them the gift of fulfillment of their political hopes and ambitions. The Problems of Unity and Leadership Belorussian nationalism, however, is not only a political movement. Most sincere and courageous efforts have been made to raise the cultural level of the emigration and develop its sense of citizenship. Edu-

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cational, literary, scientific, recreational, professional, and social welfare associations, unions, and clubs, mushroomed first in Western Europe (primarily Germany), then in the new settlements overseas. In comparison with the cultural activities of Belorussian emigration between the two world wars, enormous strides have been made. Undoubtedly, this would point to the people's vitality, moral strength, and the growth of national consciousness. But the small educated minority has not yet been able to produce more than an exiguous literature; writings are provincial and utilitarian, and, though of poetical value, can be read as geography and ethnography; they have no world outlook, abstract ideas are seldom discussed. The quaintness and obsolescence of themes may be explained by the fact that "the émigrés' literature is young and hence immature," perhaps also by too slow contacts with world culture and absence of literary tradition."® The dominant note is intensified love for the country in the hearts of exiles. History is recast to explain away the puzzling aspects of certain events prior to and since the Declaration of Belorussian Independence, and more often than not history and journalism are confused. Authors are urged to " p u r i f y " their speech, to keep it clean of "any sort of Russianisms," and to ignore completely the reforms of spelling and grammar in the B S S R . Differences in the literary standards at home and abroad grow wider. And fears are expressed that this policy may result in an ethnic split, instead of contributing to cultural unity.^^'' It is generally estimated that 300,000 to 400,000 American citizens or residents are of Belorussian birth and origin, yet probably only 150,000 to 200,000 knew Belorussian as "the principal language spoker in the home in earhest childhood" (which is the United States definition of the mother tongue)."® As compared with other minorities, there was little evidence of a Belorussian "national consciousness" before the last war.^^® Since that time, "the cream of Belorussian intelligentsia, political and social leaders, chairmen of clubs and other organizations, poets and writers, have emigrated [from Germany] to the United States." Their arrival stirred the Belorussian American group into a separate and independent cultural and political life. New clubs and societies have been formed with separate Orthodox and Catholic churches, even a Belorussian Tatar mosque in Brooklyn. They publish newspapers and magazines in the Belorussian language, with a total circulation probably not exceeding s,ooo.^^^ The leadership, however, is still split between the two groups. The B C R men called a Belorussian American Congress in South River, New Jersey (February 1 1 , 1 9 5 1 ) , and the B N R men countered it with a National Convention of Belorussian Americans in Brooklyn, New York (February 1 7 - 1 8 , 1 9 5 1 ) , yet neither has succeeded in winning the Belorussian Americans entirely to its side. Negotiations to produce

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a single nationalist leadership have been reported, but have failed. The World Union of Belorussian Emigrés {Susvetnae Abjednari'ne Belaruskae Emihracii) promoted in Paris in 1948 "has so far existed only on paper." ^^^ Apparently, this also is the mode of existence of many other dubs and organizations. The Belorussian press has confessed that "often their activities consist merely of calling conferences and making paper decisions which no one ever follows." Complaints are frequent that the "national cause" finds httle support from the Belorussian emigrants "once they have left Europe and happily settled in the New World." ^^^ And the leadership is urged "not only to reorganize entirely the national activities in emigration," but also "to devise a long-term plan" requiring "pedantic and systematic execution from day to day, week to week, month to month, by every Belorussian abroad." The appeals display increasing totalitarian characteristics and sound a shrill note of alarm. Response is unlikely unless the leadership has sufficient wisdom to recognize, face, and correct their own inner contradictions. The postwar period is too close to be history. The purpose here has been merely to register a few landmarks which we may expect will eventually enter the historical record. They indicate that Belorussian nationalism has been moving, as it were, in opposite directions since the war: at home, toward complete dissolution in the Soviet sea; abroad, toward further crystallization of the nationalist doctrine. The crystals produced in political laboratories of the exiles will perhaps become précipitants of the national sentiment some time in the future. There are historical precedents which warrant the hope, and there are others which make it slim. The waters are not clear, and Belorussia is still in the making.

22б T A B L E OF T R A N S L I T E R A T I O N Slightly simplified when it seemed practical, the Belorussian Latin alphabet {lacinka) is adopted for transliterations from the Belorussian standard (hrazdanka) as well as from the Russian and the Ukrainian. Belorussian Russian a b с с eh d e ё f g h i ï after ria consonants Liu after vowels or beginning the word

Ukrainian

Pronunciation а (father) b ts (nuts) eh (church) h (hut) d ye (yes) or e (ten) yo (yolk) f

a 6

а б

а б

Ц Ч

Ц ч

Ц ч

X

X

X

Д е(э) ë

Д е(э) ё

Д (е)е ьо

Φ f г i

Φ г и Гя

i

1ю й

fja Iju

1ю

LIO

й

Φ г г i Ϊ 'я .10 й

g (go) h (hard) ее (meet) у i (yield) ya (yard) you у (boy) ya (yard) you

'я .ю

í^ 1ю

к л ы н о π

к л

к л

M

M

H

H

η

о π

0 π

0 (horse)

ρ с ш

ρ с ш

ρ с ш

Щ τ

Щ τ

щ τ

у

у

V

У У в

y

Ы

в ы

в и

к 1 m η

0 Ρ г

s s sè t u й

ζ

3

3

3

ζ

ж

)

Чь)

ж ь

ж ь

к 1 m

ρ г

s (self) sh (shore) shch t u (pull) w (widow) V

i (ink) s (rose) s (pleasure) consonant palatalized

T h e Belorussian lacinka uses transliterations ia, iu, ja, ju, in order to indicate the different phonetic value of the signs я, ю, after consonants and

227

vowels or when initiating a word. The usage can be appropriately extended over transliterations from the Russian and Ukrainian. Consequently, the partitive signs ь, ъ, and ' preceding a vowel are transliterated ;:семя, semia; сям'я, семья, siamja, semja. According to the West European usage, the -ий, -ой, -iñ, endings of the Russian and Ukrainian proper names are transliterated у or i ; cf. Gorky, Tolstoy, Pisemski, Kotliarevski.

dNOTES

ABBREVIATIONS USED IN T H E NOTES ASEER

American Slavic and East European Review (New York)

ВАС

Backaüscyna (Oberhofer, later Munich, West Germany), a Belorussian periodical

BGB

A Bibliographical Guide to Belorussia by N. P. Vakar (Harvard University Press, 1956)

BSE

Bol'saja Sovetskaja Enciklopedija

HP

Harvard University Refugee Interview Project

NRS

Novoe Russkoe Slovo (New Y o r k ) , a Russian daily

RP

Research Program on the USSR, Columbia University

SF

Socialisticeskij

(Great Soviet Encyclopaedia)

Vestnik (New Y o r k ) , a Russian periodical

Note: Italic numbers in parentheses after authors' names indicate an entry in BGB.

NOTES Chapter i.

The Land and the

People

1 . E . Engelhardt (340), p. 219. 2. A. Rittich (180) and A. Rittich and R . Erkert ( i S i ) . A. Petermann reprinted {181) in his Mitteilungen (Gotha, 1878), Bd. 24. For criticism of the census data in the Northwestern Provinces, see Vilenskij Kalendar' na 1888 god (Vilna Almanach for 1888 ; Vilna, 1887), p. 1 4 s ; and P . Batiuskov ( 5 2 / ) , p. 373· Complete data of the first general census of the Russian Empire in N. A. Trojnicki, Pervaja vseobsiaja perepis' naselenija Rossijskoj imperii i8ç7 g. (89 vols.; St. Petersburg: Imperial Central Statistical Committee, 18981905) ; an analytical study (2 vols.; St. Petersburg, 1 9 0 5 ) . For a criticism, see K . Verbelis (227),pp. si-SS· 3. See Rittich and Erkert ( i S i ) . Most of them became assimilated in the local population. 4. I n Vilna province, 891,771 Belorussians ; Vitebsk, 788,599; Grodno, 705,045; K o v n o ( K a u n a s ) , 37·798; Minsk, 1,633,091; Mogilev, 1,389,782. T h e remaining 140,000 were scattered over the territory of the empire. See Trojnicki, First General Census. 5. E . Karski {Χ8;8) gives 9,300,000; V. Stankevic ( 1 4 2 5 ) , 8,272,156. See also M . Dovnar-Zapolski (1382), J . Stankevic ( J 2 5 ) , and Paris Peace Conference (1370). 6. While it was believed in the U S S R that over 3,200,000 Belorussians were left in Poland, the Polish general census of September 30, 1 9 2 1 , gave the following figures: Poles, 18,783,326, or 69 per cent; Ruthenians (Ukrainians), 3,897,000, or 14.3 per cent; J e w s , 2,102,000, or 7.7 per cent; Germans, 1,100,000 or 4 per cent; Belorussians, 1,035,000, or 3.9 per cent; Lithuanians, 70,000, or 0.3 per cent; and Russians, Czechs, etc., 180,000, or 0.8 per cent. Cf. L . Wasilewski {1640), pp. 3-4. Figures computed on that basis for 1926, K . S. Smogorzewski ( i / o p ) , p. 1 5 8 ; they are contested by St. Mornik (1620), pp. 1 8 - 1 9 , and Engelhardt (340), pp. 2 2 3 - 2 2 7 ; see also K . Srokowski (295). For the Soviets, see B S S R (.244) and L . Jakaûleû (.1S42). B u t figures v a r y in other Soviet studies; cf. Vserossijskaja perepis' naselenija 17 dek. 1926. Predvaritelnye itogi. I. Gorodskoe i seVskoe naselente po uezdam i okrugam (2nd ed.), and Recensement de la population du 17 décembre IÇ26, Résumés abrégés, Population de l'V.RSS. (Moscow: Central Bureau of Statistics of the U S S R , 1 9 2 7 ) . René Martel {1455) ignored Polish sources. 7. According to the 1926 general census, 888,400 Belorussians resided outside the boundaries of the B S S R . — 5 5 £ (1948), pp. 60, 1823. The German estimated the number of Belorussians at 30,000 in Lithuania and at about 70,000 in L a t v i a in 1938 (cf. Engelhardt pp. 2 3 2 - 2 3 3 ) , while A. Smolic (290) counted 200,000 Belorussians there in 1924. The Polish general census of 1 9 3 1 gives the following figures: Poles, 21,993,400 (68.9 per cent) ; Belorussians, 989,900 (3.1 per cent) ; Ukrainians, 3,222,000 ( 1 0 . i per cent) ; Ruthenians ( ? ) , 1,219,600 (3.8 per c e n t ) ; Russians, 338,700 ( i . o per c e n t ) ; Germans, 741,000 (2.3 per cent) ; J e w s , 2,732,000 (8.5 per cent) ; and others, including the "undetermined," 878,600 (2.8 per cent). The Polish total was 32,132,936. In the eastern provinces, nationalities were distributed as follows: Belorussians, 928,000 ( 1 6 per cent) ; Polesians, 711,000 ( 1 2 per cent) ; J e w s , 558,000 (9 per cent) ; Russians, 101,000 (2 per cent) ; Lithuanians, 76,000 ( i per cent) ; Germans, 50,000 ( i per cent) ; Poles, 2,039,000 (34 per cent) ; Ukrainians, 1,494,000 (25 per cent) ; Czechs, 31,000; others, 9,000. Total population, 5,997,000. — L . Kirkien {1658), p. 53. For details, see The Polish and Non-Polish Populations of Poland: Results oj the Population Census of 1Ç31 (Warsaw: Institute for the Study of Minority Problems, 1 9 3 2 ) , pp. 4-9. T h e Polish estimates, although official, were not generally accepted b y students. N o t all the Poles themselves believed that their statistics expressed the situation correctly. C f . Srokowski ( 2 p j ) , St. Paprocki (1622, 1623), Mornik (.1620), J . Czekanowski ( 2 5 7 ) , St.

232

NOTES

TO CHAPTER

1

Kutrzeba (264, 154Ç, 1550). The real number of Belorussians in Poland was estimated somewhere between 1,700,000 and 1,900,000 in 1921. The Preussische Statistische Landesamt accepted 1,700,000 as the lowest estimate for that period. The total number would have been 2,137,000 in 1928 (Mornik [1620], pp. 18-19), and 2,750,000 in 1938 (Engelhardt I340'], p. 231). The events of 1939-40 revealed that the situation had been misrepresented; see Poland (jiç). Figures for the earlier period are from Smogorzewski (170Ç), p. 158; Mornik Ì1620), pp. 18-19; Engelhardt (340), pp. 223-227. For criticism of the Polish statistics, see W. Winkler (1484) and Congress (^1599), pp. 131-141. 8. Slightly modified, these figures were repeated at the conclusion of World War II, but no explanation was given of the basis or the method of computation; see Soviet Russia Today (July 1944), pp. 26-27, and The Sixteen Soviet Republics, published by the Information Bulletin, Embassy of the U S S R (Washington: December 194s). Bol'Saja Sovetskaja Enciklopedija (1948), P- 1823, uses data of the 1939 census. From that source, however, we learn that, in 1939, the total population of West and East Belorussia including non-Belorussian minorities was over 9 millions. Apparently no exact information was available at that time (1948), and has not been since. 9. Engelhardt ( j 4 o ) , p. 234. 10. For the provinces of Minsk, Vitebsk, and Mogilev, for example, the excess of birth over deaths — that is, the natural increase in population — was: 1900-1901, 19.5; 1905-1907, 18.1 ; 1911-1913, 19.4. On the other hand, Dovnar-Zapolski (lojo), pp. 24-30, pointed to the constant decrease in birth rate for the whole territory of Belorussia before World War I. The natural increase for European Russia was: 1910, 1.41; 1911, 1.70; 1913, 1.59; and for Belorussia: 1910, 1.15; 1911, 1.55; 1913, 1.50. For 1939 figures, see BSE (1941), p. 60. As compared with the 1926 census, they show an increase of 16 per cent for the whole population of the USSR, while the Belorussian population increased only II per cent during that time; cf. W. Wielhorski {1688a), p. 25. 11. E. Kuehnelt-Leddihn (332), p. 352η. 12. See A.S. (107S) ; P. Jakobij (.13З') ; P· Buzuk (251, 532) ; I. Gnedovski {167) ; V. Honcov, " D y a l e k t y i n y mezy na Cernihiväcyni," in Cernihiv i pivniène Uvoberezzia, ed. M . HruSevski (Kiev, 1928) ; R. Jakobson, Remarques sur l'évolution phonologique du russe (Prague: Travaux du cercle linguistique de Prague, no. 2,1929), p. 82. 13. See N. Durnovo, N. Sokolov and D. Uäakov (197), with corrections subsequently made by Durnovo {1857), pp. 98-100. As Karski {208) was responsible for both maps, the differences can only reflect the fluidity of linguistic frontiers. See also V. Stankevic {1425)· 14. According to Rittich, Belorussian settlements in the Rajgorod-Avgustovo district extended into East Prussia near L y k (Etnografiieskaja Karta Avgustovskoj gubernii). The ethnographic boundary was moved east as a result of Polonization of the entire region. Cf. Engelhardt (340). 15. See Chvedir V o v k (1347) ; he claims, however, the northwestern triangle of Pruzany-Belsk-Brest for the Ukraine; cf. Engelhardt (340), 223. See also Wasilewski (230, IS31), D. Bulgakovski (1273), J. Falkowski (.1283), A. Kirkor (128s), A. Moszyñski (1289), К . Moszyñski (,129o), Cz. Pietkiewicz (1297). 16. Although most ethnographers leave the town of Briansk to the Russians, L. Niederle (.1044) included Briansk in the area of Belorussian speech. 17. A map prepared by the Extraordinary Mission of the White Ruthenian National Republic in Berlin, W. Jäger (1392). Slightly modified, in Belorussia (1370). Cf. Buzuk (2J1), reviewed by L . Tesniere in Slaviscke Rundschau (1929), I, 284-285. Other Belorussian studies are summed up by J. Stankevii {32;). 18. Erkert {165). See also M . Kojalovic {171, 172, 173)·, V. F. Ratch {386)·, K. Spruner ii88) ; J. Stodolski {1125). 19. E. Czynski ( l ö o ) . Both Erkert and Czynski list the Roman Catholics who do not speak Lithuanian as Poles. Cf. Durnovo {197). 20. See J. Gruenberg (202), W. Wakar {228), and S. Thugutt {1529)', see also Wasilewski {1531, 230 to 232, 1636 to 1640). A. Krzyzanowski and K . Kumaniecki (21t) and J. Rozwadowski {223) are more moderate in their claims. Cf. E. Romer (2S6 to 288, and 1627). 21. E. Romer {288), Table V i l i . 22. The Polish side of the story is told by Wasilewski ( r j j i ) , 7off; Thugutt (1529),

THE LAND

AND THE PEOPLE

233

and others. Wasilewski insists that the Belorussians represented 1.4 per cent of the population of the city of Vilna after World War I (1640), p. 20, also (704). Smogorzewski {337), pp. 2-3-25, sees no Belorussians at all. 23. For details of the German census, see The Eastern Borders of Poland (Paris: Polish Committee on Preparation for the Peace Conference, 1919). 24. Smogorzewski (337), pp. 17-18. 25- This has become internationally accepted. See P. de Azcarate, League of Nations and National Minorities (194s), p. 35. No mention of the Belorussian minority in Poland is found in The League of Nations and the Protection of Minorities of Race, Language and Religion (Geneva: League of Nations Secretariat, 1937). 26. Smogorzewski's thesis {337), PP- 23-25, is supported by other Polish writers who turn statistics to still greater advantage for the Poles. See Wielhorski (Ö2p), pp. 56-59. Czynski {160) confirmed the 1897 distribution as late as 1909. On January 22, 1919, the Belorussian Administration of Grodno province, contesting the Polish claims, published the following percentages for Grodno district and city, taken from zemstvo statistics of 1914, and from Völker-Verteilung in West Russland (1917) : Poles, 5.6; Belorussians, 65.8; Lithuanians, 1.4; Jews, 19.8; Russians, 6.3; others, i . i . For full details of the statistical fight over Grodno in 1917-1920, see K. Ezavitaü {13S3), ΡΡ· 3 5 - 3 б , 57· According to British sources, the percentage of ethnic groups in the Grodno region under the Russian rule was as follows: Belorussians, 54; Jews, 17.4; Poles, 1 0 ; and the remainder Lithuanians, Germans, and others. In 1931 the city population was 49,818, of which nearly two-thirds were Jews. — Encyclopedia Britannica, X, 902. The controversy flared up after each Polish census until, in 1939, we have a Polish statement that, when the Vilna district was handed over to Lithuania, the percentage of its total population (489,000) was as follows: Poles, 69; Jews, 13.5; Lithuanians, 11.3; Belorussians, 2.4; and others 3.8.— Poland ( l ó ^ j ) , p. 12. In the city of Vilna: Poles, 66; Jews, 28; Ukrainians, 4; Lithuanians, i ; Belorussians, i . — Kirkien (1655), p. 56. On the other hand, the Lithuanians affirm that they made up 37 per cent and the Poles 23 per cent of the total population of the city, while 40 per cent were "Russians and others." — Lithuanian Bulletin, no. 1-3 (New York, 1949), p. 12. 27. According to the 1897 census, the social groups of Vilna province were distributed among different nationalities as follows (per cent) :

Russians Belorussians Lithuanians Jews Poles

Nobility and gentry 13.2 2.6 1.0 — 29.5

Townsmen 27.6 4.8 2.3 96.5 28.0

Villagers S2.6 92.3 96.6 2.2 41.6

Per cent of total population S.oo 56.05 17.59 12.72 8.17

In Kovno province, the Poles represented 9.04 per cent of the total population, and of that number, 42.59 per cent were gentry, 27.85 per cent townsmen and 28.85 per cent peasants. The proportion was typical for the whole Northwest Region.—Verbelis (227), pp. 64-84,144-146. For important studies concerning the Polish-Lithuanian dispute, see BGB, 1313-1320, 1510-1717. For the League of Nations view, see pamphlet edited by the Information Section, League of Nations Secretariat, Political Activities, I (Geneva, 1925), 24-45. 28. Wasilewski {1577). The population of Polesie (1,132,000) appeared as follows: "Polesians, 711,000 (63 per cent) ; Poles, 163,400 (14 per cent) ; Jews, 112,000 (10 per cent) ; Belorussians, 74,000 (7 per cent) ; Ukrainians, 53,100 (5 per cent) ; Russians, 16,200 ( i per cent) ; others, 2,300." —Kirkien (1658), p. 55. 29. Wasilewski (15J1). 30. Karski (1858). In 1897 Czynski denied the very existence of Roman Catholic Belorussians (1S58) I, 129. On the confusion which reigned among the Russian authorities in this regard, see Bobrovski (15p); see also S. Smolka {822), pp. 264-284; V. PoroMn {178) ; and the memorandum presented in 1862 to Pope Pius IX, {851).

234

NOTES

TO CHAPTER

1

31. See above, p. 231. Cf. Smogorzewski (.170g), p. 158; Rocznik (31(1); and Mornik {1620), pp. 18-19. There were 4,852,602 Orthodox; 3,195.759 Catholics; 117,656 Protestants; 1,606,737 Jewish; 15,099 Mohammedans; and 172,898 "others" in the Mogilev, Polock, Minsk, and Lithuanian (Kaunas, Grodno, and Vilna) bishoprics in 1897 — G . Kiprijanovic ( S j j ) , pp. 282-284. In i93i> the Polish census listed in the territories incorporated into Poland since 1921: 6,110,000 Catholics (of the western and eastern rites); 3,408,000 Orthodox, 1,065,000 Hebrews, 185,000 others. Cf. Poland (rÖ7j), p. 18. 32. ВАС, I I : ( F e b r u a r y 15, 1948), no. 4 (7), p. 3. Instances reported refer to both the American and British zones. 33. Italics added. Paprocki {1622), quoted by Engelhardt (.340), pp. 229-230. 34. Engelhardt (340), p. 229. 35. Rocznik (31Ç). 36. Smollò {2Ç2). 37. Sovetskaja Enciklopedija (1927). 38. 4 t í a í 5 5 5 i Í (Moscow, 1928). 39. Engelhardt gives a detailed description by regions {340), pp. 235-238. 40. Ibid., p. 278. 41. The Sixteen Soviet Republics (Washington: Information Bulletin, Embassy of the USSR, December 1945), p. 7; cf. Chap. 10, note 9. 42. There were only 120,000 Poles in the USSR in 1926, and 925,000 in 1945. For information about the transfers of minorities, see Joseph P . Schechtman {336) and E . M . Kulisher (,1662) ; see also Chap. 1 1 , note 21. 43. According to Pravda, August 11, 1946, "300,000 returned from German slavery to their country" ; cf. above, pp. 207-208. 44. New York Times, December 28, 1946. According to Lithuanian sources in exile. East Prussia is settled "predominantly by Belorussians." — Lithuanian Bulletin, VII (New York, J a n u a r y - M a r c h 1949), 12. Belorussian sources in exile agree; see Rydlevsky {1497), pp. 38-39. See above, p. 208. 45. Theodore Shabad, Geography of the USSR (New York: Columbia University Press, 1 9 5 1 ) , p. 499· 46. The London Poles estimate it at 6,000,000. — Wielhorski (бгд), p. 13. 47. A pamphlet, published by the Association of Belorussians in Great Britain (London, 1949), estimates that "some 2,000,000" Belorussians now are in "various Soviet camps and prisons," and "more than 3,000,000 have been shot or died there during thirty years of communist rule," while "about 2,000,000 are exiles," i.e., DP's in Germany and Austria, and other countries. — Belorussia (14SÇ), p. 2; cf. M . Abramíyk (i486), p. 1 1 . These figures may be grossly inflated, but even ten times reduced they reflect a situation without precedent in the history of the country; see above, p. 208. 48. "Nineteen million," affirms Belorussia {148g), p. 2. This is supported, as it were, by a statement that "there are 2,000,000 Belorussian exiles abroad" — ibid. On the other hand, Abramíyk, president of a Belorussian government-in-exile (Paris), believes that there are altogether about "10,000 Belorussian exiles in the world," which probably is more nearly correct. See New York Times, August 10,1950. Chapter г. The

Traditions

1. The term "Kryvian" has been suggested by some nationalist groups to replace "Belorussian." Cf. J . Stankevic, Veda, I I (February-March, 1 9 5 1 ) , 50. 2. Before the Revolution, the only centers of ethnographic studies in Belorussia were ( i ) the Church Archeology Committee and a Society of History and Archeology, both in Minsk; and (2) the northeastern section of the Russian Geographical Society, active only from 1867 to 1876 and from 1910 to 1914, and the Ethnographical Museum, originally a private collection, both in Vilna. The collecting of Belorussian folklore began in the 1820's, but comprehensive reports on Belorussian habits and customs did not appear before the i86o's. More important studies date in the 1890's and 1900's. Officers of the Imperial General Staff, studying the future theatre of war, left valuable descriptions of the count r y ; see Bobrovski (J250), D. Zelenski {1263), M . Cebrikov (130s), V. Koreva (1316), V. Domontoviò (1328). Ethnographers were particularly interested in the regions of

THE TRADITIONS

235

Vitebsk (N. Nikiforovski), Smolensk (I. Nosovii, Sejn, Romanov), Mogilev and Minsk (Dovnar-Zapolski), and Polesie (Pietkiewicz, K. Moszyñski) ; see BGB, 1061-1347. After the Revolution, studies concentrated in Vilna and Minsk. An historico-ethnographic society was formed in Polock, and ethnographic museums were founded in Minsk, Vitebsk, Mogilev, Sluck, Bobrujsk, Grodno, Slonim, and Pinsk. Since 1925, the Institute of Belorussian Culture in Minsk has been publishing a monthly bulletin, first called NaS Kraj (Our Country), in 1931 renamed Soveckaja Kraina (Soviet Land). The Soviet Belorussian Academy of Sciences sent several ethnographic expeditions into the country between 1931 and 1954. A tremendous amount of folklore has been recorded, though little has been published so far; cf. M . Grinblat {1063, 1064), N. Nikolski ( r o / o ) , A. Supinski (1073). See below, note 32. 3. That is, 75.3 per cent of the total population in the eastern part and 88.3 per cent in the western part of Belorussia. See "Sojuz Sovetskich SocialistiCeskich Respublik," BS£ (1948), p. 1823. 4. That is, 165 cm., or 5.4 ft. See D. Anu6in ( r i j p ) , pp. 128-152. 5. See A.S. {1078), A. Serzputovski {1121, 1270), K. Moszyñski (.i2ço), L. Wasilewski (1S31), and others; also poems and novels by Janka Kupala, Jakub Kolas, Harun, Biadulia. 6. N. Vitov in "Socialism and State Capitalism," NRS, April 13, 1949. Cf. the impressions of a South American delegate to the Comintern in 1929 and 1934, E . Ravines, The Yenan Way (New York: Scribner, 1951), pp. SS, 114. Files of the Novoe Slavo (Berlin) and the Parizskij Vestnik (Paris) contain reports by Russian and Belorussian emigrants who, following the German armies as interpreters, civil servants, or enlisted men, revisited their native land. The impression of poverty and desolation has since been abundantly corroborated by the DP periodicals such as Backaüscyna (Fatherland), Belaruskae Slova (Belorussian Word), Posev (The Sowing), as well as by reports published in NRS, 5 Γ , Novy ¿urnal, Narodnaja Volta (New Y o r k ) , and Vozrozdenie (Paris), etc. Particularly revealing are the photographs released by the Soviet Photographic Agency, New York, and printed, somewhat unwittingly, in Soviet Russia Today (New Y o r k ) , and The USSR Information Bulletin (Washington, D.C.), in 194S-1949. For impressions of the American visitors, see R . B . Scandrett ( r / p a ) , p. 496; Leslie A. Falk (1759). pp. 309-313· 7. Dovnar-Zapolski ( / 2 5 4 ) , pp. 83-85. See also Vladimirski-Budanov in Ctenija Istor. Ob. Letop. Nestora, I I I (Kiev) ; A. Brandt (126s) ; Dovnar-Zapolski (155, 678, 1278) ; V. Piceta (6ps) ; Philip E . Mosely, "Adaptation for Survival," The Slavonic and East European Review, X X I ; American Series, I I (March 1943), s 6 : i 4 7 - i 7 3 · For detailed studies, see F. Leontovic (30, бдг). 8. Dovnar-Zapolski (.12^4), p. 130. 9. Dovnar-Zapolski (iiss), N. Teslenko (1179, ziSo). Cf. A. Efimenko Izsledovanija narodnoj zizni, I, Krestjanskoe zemlevladenie na krajnem severe (Moscow, 1884), for the Russian north; G. Greben5cikov, Curaevy, a series of volumes dealing with the life of peasants in West Siberia, a selected part of which has been translated into English under the title of The Turbulent Giant (1940) ; S. Kravcinski-Stepniak, The Russian Peasantry: The Agrarian Conditions, Social Life, and Religion (2 vols.; London, 1888), for central Russia primarily. For other Slavic peoples, K . Moszyñski (343). 10. Cf. Dovnar-Zapolski (254), p. 94. 11. Ibid., p. 137. 12. See S. Pachman (1311) and, for comparative data, his Obyinoe Pravo (The Customary L a w ; St. Petersburg, 1910). 13. Dovnar-Zapolski {1254),^. 98; Brandt {1265), pp. 101-102. 14. Pachman {1311), P· 66; Dovnar-Zapolski (125.^), pp. 100-106. 15. Dovnar-Zapolski ( J 2 5 4 ) , p. 113. 16. Ibid. 17. Vodka was the biggest item in the expenditure: one half of the groom's budget, and one third of the bride's — ibid., p. 117. 18. Pachman {1311), pp. S4-6S; Brandt (,1265)·, Dovnar-Zapolski (1155, 1158). 19. Brandt (i281

OF

NAMES

Liacki, E., 84 LiaS£inski, n. 1., 149 Liasovi6, w., 246 Libau, c., 113 Lida, c., 194, 268, 271 Linde, Samuel В., 53, 77 Listopad, J., 139 Lithuania, see Gen. Index Litvin, Michalon, 240 Liubecki, prince, 74 Liubiâ-Maevski, Prof., 151 Livencov, com. 1., 215 Livland, 48 Livonia, 46 Löbach, J., 134, 280 Lodz, 271 Loev, c., 61 Lohse, Heinrich, 176, 270 Lojka, sch., 257 Lokot, see Gen. Index Lomonosov, M . V., 52 Lomtev, T., 276 Lomäa, 14, 156, 260 London, 8, 83, 85, 107, 207, 222, 260, 267, 278 Lubart, prince, 51 Lublin, pr., 207, 272. See also Gen. Index Lucevii, Ivan, see Kupala, Janka Luckevii, Anton, 84, 86, 9394, 102, 105, 107, I I I , 11316, 121, 126-27, 157. 165, 249, 257 Luckevii, Ivan, 84, 86, 93-94. 253 LuCyna, Jan, see Nesluchouski, Jan Lukomski, princes, 242 Luther, Martin, 54 Luäinski, bishop, 69 Lvov, c., 52 MackeviCi, v., 249 Maidanek, c., 268 Makaren, п., 139 Makarov, Α., 2i6 Maksimovii, M., 78 Mamoñka, n.l., 144, 249 Mamonii, brothers, 53, 131 Mane Katz, 34 Mañkoüski, P., 278 Mankovski, T., 244 Marchlewski, J., 114 Markeev, Red Army officer, 158 Marozaû, Ph., priest, 162 Masalski, princes, 242 MaSara, w., 129 Maskalina, g.l., 198 Matuseviò, п., 190 Mazanik, Haiina, 267 Miacelski, п., 139 Miatla, P., 123, 145-46, 257 Michail, bishop, 278 Mickeviò, Kastuá, see Kolas, Jakub Mickeviî-Kapsukas, К . , 109 Mickiewicz, Adam, 76, n o , 129, 244 Mickiewicz, Wladislaw, 71 Mindangas, see Mindovg Mindovg, prince, 43. 5 ΐ , 52 Mindovg I I , 96 Minsk: principality, 42-43, 239; province, 14, 19, 28,

28s 31-3», 35, 38, 73, 80, 83, 87-89, 113, 120, 138, 176, 194, 207, 211, 231-32, 234, 240, 243, 245, 274; city, 34, 36, 39. 41. 53-55, 63, 70, 71, 83-88, 113, 120, 143-4S, 151-52, 157. 159-62, 165, 176, 178, 193, 203-06, 209, 211. 235-36, 247, 249, 259, 261, 264, 266-68, 270-71, 273; political clubs, 96-100, 104, 108, 111-12, 115, 126, 147. 155. 189. 202-03, 246; occupied b y the Germans ( I ) . 101-05;—by the Red Army, 107-09, 114-16; — b y the Poles, 109-14; evacuated b y the Soviets, 171-72; occupied b y the Germans ( I I ) , 176-206; re-entered by the Soviets, 207 fi, 271; devastated, 152; rebuilt, 209, 211 Mitau, c., 113 Melanchthon, 54 MeleSko, Ivan, 58. 60 Moòulski, general, 192 Mogilev, pr., 28, 31-32, 35. 38, 43. 55. 73. 87. 109. 116. 138, 178-79. 194, 199. 207. 211-12, 231-32, 234, 247, 250, 266, 269. 271, 274; c., 53. 59. 60, 61, 67, 70, 86, 88, 235. 273 Mohila, Petr, 62 Moniuszko, S., 80 Molodefno, pr., 207, 211-12 Molotov, V. M., 159. 172 Moscow, 52-55. 62-64, 75, 77, 84, 89, 93, 96, 97, Ι Ο Ι , 103, io8, 114, 118, 126, 129, 13s. 138. 143, 145-46. 150. 158-59. 165-66, 172. 192. 197-98, 207, 214, 218, 250, 256-58, 280. See also Kremlin MoSerov, P., 215, 275 Mozyr, pr. and c., 61, 114, 148 Mstislav, prince, 41 Mstislavl, c., 55. 61, 67 Munich, 134 Muraviev, M., count, 73 Nadeidin, N . , 7 8 Nalivajko, g. 1., 60 Napoleon I, 66, 244 Napoleon I I I , 71 Narbutt, T., 75, 77 NaUlevií, Ν., 151-52. 158. 213. 215. 275 Navina, Α., 89 Nekralevií, S., 147 Nekrasov, Ν . Α., 2ΐ7 Nemanceviò, Α., priest, 278 Nesluchoüski, Jan, 83-84, 90 Nesvií, е., 53-54. 55. 189. 205 Nevel, е., 63 New York City, 279, 280 Nicholas I , 69, 77 Niederie, Lubor, 38, 39 Niedziecki, Α., 78 Nieman, г., 119, 143 Normandy, 192 Norway, 2 Nosovií, I., 26, 27

286 Novgorod, 39, 40, 41, 4 2 , 44. 52, 54 Novgorodok, see N o v o g r o d e k N o v o g r o d e k , l o , 1 3 , 44, 55, 109, I l i , 1 2 3 , 1 2 7 , 205, 248, 268, 2 7 1 Novosilcov, N . N . . 68 N u r e m b e r g , 272 Odessa, 96, 97, 103 Odincov, colabr., 1 7 8 Oganovski, 32 Oginski, f a m . , 54 O k t a n , M i c h a i l , 270 O l e l k o v i t , p r i n c e , 60 Olgerd, p r i n c e , 43, 44, 45, 51 O l y k a , c., 54 Orel, c., 7, 43, 2 7 1 O r ä a , е., 55, 67, 260, 266, 271 O s t l a n d , see G e n . I n d e x O s t r o î s k i , prince, 60, 242 Р а с , f a m . , 54 P a c e y , I p a t , 56 Paderewski, I., i t 1 - 1 2 P a d u a , S3. 54 P a i n l e v é , P a u l , 252 Pantelejmon, archbishop, 122, 278 P a n u c e v i i , V.. 277 P a r i s , 54, 70, 76, 86, 103, 107, t i t , 129, 1 3 4 , 2 2 1 , 22s, 250, 278. See also G e n . I n d e x PaäkeviS, Aloiza, see C ë t k a Paskevii-Erivansky, prince, 2 t o Paszkiewicz, general, 208 P a t o l i 6 e v , N . , 2 1 3 , 2 1 5 , 274, 275 P a u l I , 1 2 , 47, 67, 68 P a u l I V , p o p e , 54 P a u l - B o n c o u r , J . , 252 P a ü l o v i í , Α., 90 P a ü l o ü s k i , K a r p , 260 P a z n i a k , η . 1., 165 P e l c z y ñ s k a , W a n d a , 255 Pervolf, I., I P e t e r I , 63 P e t r o g r a d , 93, 9 6 - 9 7 , 1 0 0 - 0 1 . 108, 250. See also St. P e t e r s burg P e t r o v , Colonel, 260 P e t r u S e v i í , К . , 261 P i t a u c h o v i ï , M . , 257 P i ò e t a , v . , 64, 1 4 7 , 258 Pilsudski, Joseph, 109-12, i i s , 120, 1 2 5 , 137, 248, 249, 255 P i n s k , p r . a n d c., 8, 55, 60. 6 1 , 65, 120, 130, 1 6 3 , 168, 1 7 6 , 207, 2 1 1 , 2 3 s , 2 6 1 , 2 7 1 , 272 P i u s I X , p o p e , 233 P l a ü n i k , S., see B i a d u l i a , Z . P l u h , w., 80 Podhorski-Okolów, L . , 253 Podlaszie, p r . , 1 2 0 Podolie, p r . , 43, 48 P o l a n d , see Gen. I n d e x Polesie, p r . . 8, 1 2 - 1 4 , 38, 3 9 . 48, 88, 1 1 6 , 1 2 3 , 1 2 7 . 1 6 3 , 168, 207, 2 J I , 2 3 3 , 262, 272 Polock, p r . a n d city, 28, 69, 148, 194, 196. 198. 207, 2 1 1 - 1 2 , 234, 2 4 0 - 4 1 , 272, 2 7 4 ; c., 39, 43, 5 3 - 5 5 , 57. 59. 60. 63, 67, 70, 2 3 s P o n i a t o w s k i , J o s e p h , 63

INDEX

OF

NAMES

P o n o m a r e n k o , P . , 192, 215, 274, 2 7 5 Porzezinski, V., 29 P o t e b n i a , A. Α., 2 1 - 2 3 P o t o c k i , J . , 38 P o z n a n , 82 Philotheus, archibishop, 204, 278 P r a d s l a v a , 42 P r a k u l e v i i , n.l., 144 P r a g u e , 53, 54, " 3 . 129, I 3 4 . 144. 177. 2 2 1 , 263 P r a ü l e v i í , n.l., i t s P r e s n i a k o v , Α., 46 P r i p e t , г., 8, 3 0 , 1 1 4 , и » P r o n s k i , princes, 242 P r o t a s e v i i , b i s h o p , 55 P r u ä i n s k i , Α., 9 б , 99 P r u s s i a , б5, 66, 120, 238. See also E a s t Prussia P r y ä i e p a ü , Ζ., 149 P t o l e m y , 39 P u s h k i n , A. S., 129, 1 5 2 P u ä i a , J . , 129, 257 P u s t e l n i k , Simon, 246 P u z y n , princes, 242 P y r k a , deleg., 260

Saevi6, P . , 2 7 3 , 274, 276 Salvandi, A . de, 47 S a m o j l a , w., 165 SanguSko, princes, 242 S a m u j l ë n a k , E . , 151 Sapieha, E u s t a c e , p r i n c e , 96 Sapieha, I v a n , p r i n c e , 54 Sapieha, L e v , prince, 55, 59 S a v e n a k . A p a l ë n i j a , 204 S a v i n k o v . Boris, 115 Savula, g.l., 60 Savva, a r c h b i s h o p , 278 S c h u b e r t . Colonel, 270 S e b e î , е., 63

Q u a r e n g h i , Giacomo, 2 1 0

47, 49. 54, S6 S i p o v i i , ö „ D r . , priest, 278 Skarga, P e t e r , 56 Skirgajlo, prince, 45 S k i r m u n t , R . , 104, 246 S k o r y n a , F r . , 5 2 - 5 3 , · 3 ΐ . 148 S k o r y n k a , w., 108 S k u r k o , Α., see T a n k , M a k s i m S l a ü k o v i t , n.l., 149 Slonim, c., 10, 55, 1 3 1 , 194. 205. 23s, 266, 270, 2 7 1 Slovakia, 279 Sluck, c., 10, 55, 60, 6 1 , 63, 6s, 79. 1 1 3 , 1 1 5 - 1 6 , 190, 2 3 5 , 2 7 1 . See also G e n . I n d e x Slucki, sch., 84 Smogorzewski, K . , 10, i t Smolensk, p r . a n d c., 1 3 , 1 4 , 28, 32, 35, 43, 52, 55, 58. 63, 79, 88, 109, 176. 1 7 8 , 186. 188, 194, 2 1 5 , 2 3 7 , 239, 240, 244, 266, 271 ; c., 1 7 6 , 193 Smoli6, Α., 246, 257 S m o t r i c k i , M e l e t i j , 52, 242 Sobolevski, A. I . , 28, 64 Socinus, 54 Sokolinski, princes, 242 Sokolka, c., 108, 207 Solomerecki, princes, 242 Solovki islands, 146, 257 Soltyk, bishop, 62 S o u t h A m e r i c a , 280. See also L a t i n America South River, N . J . , 225, 278 Spasov, R e d A r m y officer, 1 5 8 Sreznevski, I . I . , 53 S t a l i n , I . v . , 27, 9 9 - 1 0 0 , 108, 137-38, 146-47. 150-51. 1 9 7 - 9 8 , 204, 2 1 3 , 2 1 5 , 2 1 7 18 S t a n k e v i ò , A d a m , 106, 1 3 1 S t a n k e v i ò , D r . J a n , 4, 28, 1 6 5 , 259, 280 S t a r y Ulas, 90 Stavropol, c., 103 S t e p h a n , bishop, 278

R a d k e v i í , Colonel, l o i Radzivill, J a n , 61 Radzivill, Nikolai, 54, 55 Radzivill, princes, 74 R a h a l s k i , a r c h p r i e s t , 162 R a h u l i a , V., 204 R a k - M i c h a j l o ü s k i , S., 1 2 3 , 1 4 s 46, 249, 257 R a s t o r g u e v , P . , 2, 29 R a v i n e s , Eudocio, 1 5 2 R e b o u l , Colonel, 108 R e i i c a , c., 60, 6 1 , 1 3 8 R e û k a , S y m o n , see Bohu£evi¿, Fr. R i b b e n t r o p , J . , 172 R i g a , 109, 1 1 3 , 129. 1 3 4 , 2 7 1 . See also G e n . I n d e x R i t t i c h , Α . . 5, 7, 9 Rodionov, " C o l o n e l , " 270 Rodziewiczówna, M a r i a , 253 R o g n e d a , 41 Rogvolod, prince, 4 1 , 42 R o m a i n Rolland, 252 R o m e , 54. S6, 1 3 1 , I 3 4 Rosenberg, A l f r e d , 1 7 S , I77. 1 8 3 - 8 4 . 202, 270. See also R e f o r m , Agrarian R o s o n y , c., 209 Ross, m a j o r , 108 R o s t o v , c., 103 R o v i n s k i . v . , 244 R o i i n s k i , princes. 242 R u m a n i a , 279 R u r i k , p r i n c e , 4 1 , 62 R u s a k , Α . . 2 76 R u s s i a , see G e n , I n d e x R u t h e n i a , 4. 40, 44, 56, 76 Rutski, Fr., s8 R y d l e ü s k i , L . , 278 R y d i - S m i g l y , general, 248 R y p l n s k i . Α . . 76, 2 i 6 Sabaleöski, J . , 1 2 3 , 251 S a b b a t i u s . b i s h o p , 162 S a c h a r a ü , S., 1 3 4

S e m a J k o , J . , b i s h o p , 69, 70, 1 1 5 , 243 S e m i a n i u k , C a p t a i n , 249 Serada, J . , 99, l o s , 247, 249 Sergei ( S e r g i u s ) , b i s h o p , 1 2 2 , 278 S e r l p u t o v s k i , Α., 148 S h a b a d , T . , 15 Shavli, c., 109 Shevchenko, T a r a s , 76 S h o l e m Asch, 34 Siberia, 257, 258, 272 Sigismund I, 46, 57 Sigismund I I ( I I I ) A u g u s t , 4 6 -

INDEX Stockholm, 95 St. Petersburg, 69, 70, ?s, 76. 77, 84, 8s, 88, 89, 24s. See also Petrograd Strzewski, J., 120 Studnicki, W., 121 Summa, g. 1., 60 Suporosl, е., 53 Surai, е., 209 Suvorov, A. v., general, 198 Suwalki, c., 8, 43, 94, 260 Svenciany, c., 161 Svidrigajlo, prince, 46 Svirski, princes, 54 Svisloi, c., 104 Sweden, 2, 50 Syrokomlia, W., 79 Szepticki, Andrej, mitrpolt., 246 Szepticki, general, i n Sachmatov, A. Α., 29, 39 Safafik, P., 38, 78 Santyr, F., 90, 109, 246 Sarangov!6, V., 149 SaiiHs, deleg., 108 Siors, Dr. M., i6s Sejn, P., 26 SevCuk, п., 99 Skialënak, M., 91, 165, 266, 271 Skutka, engineer, 165 Spilevski, P., 78 Symanec, P., 278 Tacitus, 38 Ta'oika, Wl., 131 TamaSòyk, Vasil, 278 Tank, Maksim, 129, 169, 217, 276 Taras, Ν., 277 Tarasevlch, Very Rev. John, viii, 134, 280 TaraSkeviê, Br., 78, 104, 123, 126, 145-46, 246, 257 Tatarynovii, P., priest, 204 TatiSiev, v . , i Tatur, 0 . , 39 Teraüski, V., 257 TereSÌenka, η. 1., 249 Terlecki, Kiril, 56 Theodosius, bishop, 162 Tiesenhausen, Count Antonius, 34 Tolstoy, L, N.. i s i , 217 Topieuski, w., 80 Trepka, w., 165 Troki, c., 8, 54 Trotsky, L. D., 1 1 4 Tnibeckoy, N. S., 29 Tula, c., 43 Turgenev, I. S., 217 Turgenev, N. I., 31 Turkestan, 148-49, 258 Turlejski, deleg., 260 TumaS, Dr. V., 178 Turov, c., 8, 61, 70 Tunik, F., 96

OF

287

NAMES

Tymczasowy, w., 246 Ukraine, see Gen. Index United Nations, see Gen. Index United States, 108, 116, 124, 133. »34, 197, 221, 223-25, 272, 278, 280-81 Urah, Prince Wilhelm von, 95-

96

Urban VIII, pope, 61 U.S.S.R., see Gen. Index Ustrialov, N. G., 244 Ulasaü, Α., 88, 9o, 108, 165, 249 Vajdelota, w., 246 Valkadaev, P., 276 Valkovii, com.p.s., 149 Valoäyn, P., 123, 145, 146 Valynec, w., 14s, 146 Varonka, J., 107-08, n o , 134, 247, 280 Vasi ek, w., 129 Vasilièki, v., 249 Vasily Π, 62, 66 Vasmer, Max, 2 Vatican, 56, 130, 222 Vazillo, n. 1., 99 Velikie Luki, c., 8 Velii, c., 63 Verabejcy, v., 249 Veraé, Zoéka, 90, 259 Vemadsky, G. V., i , 2 Versailles, m , 115. See also Gen. Index Vienna, 271 Vilejb, е., 2 71 Vilna: pr., 8 - i i , 14, 28, 32, 38, 73, 82, 94, 104, " 3 , 115, II9-2I, 261; city, lO-II, 14, 33-34, 39, 44, 70, 72, 82, 84, 95, 103, 109, I I I , 1 1 3 , 122, 206; capital of the Grand Duchy, 43-45, 47-48, 50, 52-55, 57-59, 1 1 4 , 161-62: population, i o l i , 13, 32, 33, 13»; language, 8-10, í8, 52, 53, 57, 70, 87-91, 121, 129, 1 3 1 , 162; university of, 69, 75; cultural activities in, 36, 8788, 95, 104, 1 1 3 . 121, 125, 128-31, 259, 266; political clubs, 70-71, 86, 93-95, 101-02, 104-0S, 107-08, 122, 1 3 1 . 155. 161-62, 169, 18889, 261, 271; occupied by the Germans, 93-96, 101-02, 176 ; — by the Lithuanians, 95-96, 102, 104, 108, 279; — by the Poles, 109, 1 1 5 , 1 1 9 - 3 3 ; capital of Middle Lithuania, 115; occupied by the Red Army, 157; ceded to Lithuania, 159 VIrta, N., 277 Vilnevecki, princes, 54

Vitauskas, general, 161 Vitebsk, pr. and c., 12, 14, 28, 3