Belarus—A Perpetual Borderland

Russian History and Culture

VOLUME 2
Belarus—A Perpetual
Borderland

By

Andrew Savchenko

LEIDEN • BOSTON
2009
This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Savchenko, Andrew.
Belarus : a perpetual borderland / by Andrew Savchenko.
p. cm. — (Russian history and culture ; v. 2)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-90-04-17448-1 (hardback : alk. paper)
1. Belarus—History. 2. Belarus—Politics and government. 3. Belarus—Economic
conditions. I. Title. II. Series.

DK507.54.S3 2009
947.8'084—dc22

2009014372

ISSN 1877-7791
ISBN 978 90 04 17448 1

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To Tatiana and Alexei, with love
 CONTENTS

Foreword and Acknowledgments ................................................... ix

Introduction. Images, Concepts and History of a Borderland 1

Chapter One. The Making of a Borderland ................................. 15

1. European neighborhoods and Eurasian borderlands
Belarus and the Baltic States .................................................. 15
2. An unfinished prelude to a modern nation: Belarus
and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania ...................................... 25
3. On the threshold of modernity: Belarus, as defined by
Poles and Russians ................................................................... 34

Chapter Two. Ex Oriente Lux: the Belarusian National State

and the Soviet Union .................................................................... 69
1. A discordant overture to nationhood (1914–1921) ........... 69
2. Soviet Belarus between the wars: birth of a
nation ......................................................................................... 77
3. Belarusians in inter-war Poland: hostages to history ........ 96
4. The war of 1941–1945 and the consecration of the
national myth ............................................................................ 116
5. The enduring charm of real socialism: Belarus
1945–1991 .................................................................................. 135

Chapter Three. Borderland Forever: Modern Belarus ................ 145

1. See no evil: Belarus in the twilight of the Soviet era ......... 145
2. Paradise lost: Belarus and the disintegration of
Soviet economy ......................................................................... 159
3. Back to the future: populist Belarus under Alyaksandar
Lukashenka ................................................................................ 171
4. Political economy of institutional symbiosis: Belarus
and Russia building the future together ............................... 189

Conclusion. Whither Belarus? ......................................................... 225

Bibliography ........................................................................................ 231

Index .................................................................................................... 237
 FOREWORD AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book’s disciplinary affiliation is rather eclectic. It borrows freely

from conceptual frameworks of sociology and political science, but
does so in a fashion sufficiently piecemeal and inconsistent to avoid
being labeled as a treatise in one of those disciplines. Several clusters
of economic analysis scattered throughout the text fail to build a vec-
tor that would point the investigation in the direction of economics or
political economy. While the narrative is structured in a more or less
chronological fashion and includes quite a few historical comparisons,
this is not a history book.
For all the methodological and theoretical jumble, the book is fairly
focused. Its main goal is to investigate Belarus’s propensity to retain the
Soviet-era social structures and institutions. I try to explain the current
peculiarities of Belarus’s social and political landscape by investigating
the country’s long history as a borderland between Russia and Europe.
Theories and conceptual frameworks are selected solely on the basis of
their usefulness to this investigation.
I would not have started to write this book, much less see it to
completion, without a firm and friendly encouragement from Patricia
Herlihy and Abbott (Tom) Gleason, both professors of history at Brown.
It was Patricia who suggested that I should concentrate my effort on
the borderland aspect of Belarus. Tom was instrumental in keeping me
focused on the project by asking hard questions to which I tried as best
I could to find satisfactory answers. Both helped me immensely with
editing of the manuscript and smoothing out the edges of my writing
style. The roughness, awkwardness, and excessive use of academic jargon
that still more than occasionally dot the pages of this book, despite the
best efforts of Patricia and Tom, are entirely due to my less than stellar
command of the English language.
Jim Flynn, professor of history at Holy Cross, has been great help in
my research of earlier stages of the Belarusian history, especially the
role of the Uniate Church in the development of the Belarusian national
consciousness.
Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute (HURI) was instrumental in
my work on this project. The first stages of my research, in 2002 and
2003, were conducted while I was a Eugene and Daymel Shklar Fellow
x foreword and acknowledgments

at HURI. The Shklar fellowship allowed me access to the Widener

Library at the crucial time of my research program. I am indebted to
Professor Roman Szporluk, then director of the institute, for his gen-
erous help and valuable advice. Incessant, tireless organizational work
by Ljubomir Hayda, HURI executive director, made it possible for me
to present my ideas at the seminars thus availing myself of stimulat-
ing criticism and discussion by the faculty and fellows of the institute.
Warmth and hospitality, always awaiting a visitor in the old HURI
building at 1583 Massachusetts Avenue, will remain a source of fond
and enduring memories.
Jens Kaalhauge Nielsen, of Aarhus Business School, provided lively
discussion, advice and encouragement throughout the project. The
expression “hostages to history”, which appears in the heading of one
of the sections, was suggested by Jens.
In Belarus, Vladimir Usoski, department chair at the Belarusian
Economic University, explained to me the finer points of Belarus’s
convoluted and obscure financial system. He also suggested some very
useful readings on the history of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.
My parents, Klara and Edouard Savchenko, regularly supplied me
with copious amounts of Belarusian newspapers, electoral pamphlets,
leaflets, and other indispensable ephemera. Their ongoing help added
much depth to my vision of modern Belarus.
Last but definitely not least, my thanks are due to my wife Tatiana
and son Alexei. Both supported me throughout the project and bore
my crankiness, absent-mindedness, and occasional irritability with grace
and patience. I dedicate this book to them, although I know very well
that they deserve something better.
Although many people made this book possible, the author alone
bears responsibility for all its faults, mistakes, and inconsistencies.
 INTRODUCTION

IMAGES, CONCEPTS AND HISTORY OF A BORDERLAND

This book focuses on one peculiar aspect of post-Soviet Belarusian soci-

ety: its stubborn adherence to the patterns and institutions that hearken
back to the Soviet era. This phenomenon transcends political structures
and encompasses economic system as well as broad patterns of social
interaction. It cannot be dismissed as merely a temporary glitch on the
road to democracy or explained solely by the efficient ruthlessness of
the current political regime. In this book I try to explain the current
peculiarities of Belarus’s social and political landscape by investigating
the country’s long history as a borderland between Russia and Poland.
Specific attention is paid to the impact of the borderland position on
Belarus’s development toward modernity. While Europe might think
of itself largely in post-modern and post-national terms, for Belarus
modernity and nationality still provide the main frame of reference.
The book is about the Belarusian national idea that found its realization
in modern national institutions only from 1920s onwards, as a part of
the Soviet project. When the latter unraveled in 1991, Belarus retained
the only type of nationhood it was familiar with: a set of national
institutions inherited from the Soviet era that could only survive in a
symbiosis with Russia.
In Belarus, borderland is not an abstract category. At a roadside mar-
ketplace, an old peasant selling apples would tell you that his orchard
was planted “in Polish times” and lament, albeit not too vociferously,
the dispossession of his family “when the Soviets came”. In a large
city or a small town, a Russian Orthodox church may stand close to a
Roman Catholic church; both would attract equally steady streams of
worshipers on Sundays. A conversation with an educated Belarusian
will reveal that his attitudes toward government officials vary in part
according to their regional roots. Those who come from the west of
the country are thought to be more subtle, urbane, sophisticated than
their uncouth counterparts born and bred in the east. He would, how-
ever, stop short of saying that the former were “of Belarusian descent,
of Polish nation” or, in Latin, “Gente Lithuani, natione Poloni”. That’s
how local gentry in the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth tended to
style themselves, emphasizing both local roots and affinity with Polish
2 introduction

culture. Belarusian politicians, from the conspicuously authoritarian

President Lukashenka to the liberal democratic opposition leaders,
would talk about Belarus as a part of Europe and then extol its ability
to serve as a bridge between Europe and Russia, defining the latter
as a fraternal nation with strong ties to Belarus. Patterns of everyday
life, collective and individual memory, personal attitudes and political
aspirations are shaped by the borderland position of the country. The
bewildering array of names used to identify the same nation (ancestors
of today’s Belarusians were referred to as Kryvichans, Russians, Lithu-
anians, Poles) illustrates that historical roots of Belarus’s borderland
status are not only tangled but also very deep. Yet perhaps nothing
reflects this status with greater detail and clarity than the enduring
features of Belarus’s urban landscape.
Few cities in Belarus give visual clues that unequivocally identify
them as Belarusian. In the west, Grodno’s skyline is dominated by
magnificent baroque cathedrals where Roman Catholic Mass has been
celebrated for centuries. The 16th century palace on the top of the hill
overlooking the Nieman river was the residence of Stephan Bathory, a
Transylvanian prince elected Polish king who shortly before his death
in 1586 chose to live in the city which straddled both parts of his realm,
the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Narrow
streets lined by eighteenth century buildings have not been completely
replaced by the functional ugliness of late Soviet era apartment com-
plexes. The view has all the hallmarks of the cities west of the border,
in Poland. Two hundred miles to the south on the low flat bank of the
Pina river, Pinsk displays baroque cathedrals and monasteries of similar
style and history. In eastern Belarus, the provincial center of Mogilev
has few visible signs of being Belarusian. Rationed grandeur of post-
war Stalinist provincial architecture shapes the central part, while a
bland monstrosity of gray concrete blocks spreads out to the city limits.
Mogilev, together with other two provincial centers, Vitebsk to the north
and Gomel to the south, would not be out of place hundreds of miles
east, in Russia. Perhaps Belarus’s capital city, Minsk, is the archetypal
Belarusian city, the one where the country’s peculiar history found its
enduring visual representation.
Severely damaged in the second World War, Minsk had not been
restored. Instead, it was built anew, an example of Soviet urban renewal
of the 1950s. Most buildings that survived the war were torn down, so
as to completely obliterate the existing street grid and create a space
for a totally new city. The result is still there: wide avenues, green
 introduction 3

boulevards, large open spaces of parks and squares set among the
buildings displaying the pretentiously ornate eclecticism of late Stalinist
architecture. The city is identifiably Soviet, but it does have more than
a hint of its national affiliation. There is a bit of Belarusian national
ornament carved in stone on one building, a large Belarusian motif
wrought in stucco on another, an obelisk adorned with traditional pat-
terns of Belarusian hand-woven linen fabrics, rendered with lapidary
incongruity in gray granite. These ornamental visual clues are the only
aspect of post-war Minsk architectural image that tell a passer-by that
the city is indeed Belarusian. Are there any reminders of the city’s pre-
Soviet history? There are some, but they are very few. A cluster of old
buildings, survivors of wars, revolutions, and Soviet urban renewal,
clings to the side of a shallow hill in the city’s center. Although recently
restored, they still look out of place in the new city built around them.
Prominent among the buildings are two baroque cathedrals. Currently
one serves as a Russian Orthodox church, the other one for many year
used to house the offices of a military tribunal. Of course, it would
be implausible to see this remnant of the 18th century city center as
a straightforward connection to Belarusian past. The cathedrals were
built as Roman Catholic places of worship in a time when Roman
Catholicism in Belarus was almost exclusively associated with Polish
cultural and linguistic environment. The surrounding buildings housed
two monasteries, both Roman Catholic and hence Polish, several city
residences of provincial landed aristocracy (Polish in language and
culture), shops and warehouses owned most likely by members of the
city’s large Jewish community.
Minsk’s architectural image reflects not only the history of the city
but of the country as well. Changing at a relatively slow pace throughout
the first nine hundred years of its existence, Minsk started to develop
rapidly in the era of railroad construction in the Russian Empire of the
late 19th century. Few surviving buildings of that period look very much
like their contemporaries in any urban center of similar size anywhere
in the Russian Empire. The next period of rapid growth came after the
second World War, as Soviet economic planners chose the city as the
location for several large industrial enterprises. These newborn giants,
whose combined workforce was greater than the adult population of
pre-war Minsk, served as magnets that drew people from rural areas into
the city. Minsk’s population increased fivefold in the period from 1945
to 1985. From a backwater provincial center the city grew into a major
industrial conurbation, an example of the modernizing abilities of the
4 introduction

Soviet regime. As for the enterprises themselves, they represented the

apex of Soviet high technology: large-scale tool-making and machine-
building based on the equipment made in Germany in the 1930s and
brought to the Soviet Union after the war in lieu of reparation pay-
ments. Rapid Soviet-style industrialization was so overwhelming that
visual representations of local culture, custom, and history survived
only temporarily, until funds for further reconstruction were allocated
by central planning authorities in Moscow. The cluster of old build-
ings, which still clings to the side of a hill in the central part of the city,
survived only because the money to demolish it was not disbursed on
time. While these remnants of the past were temporarily spared the
wrecking ball, their irrelevance was made visible by the grandiose decor
and sheer size of the new city blocks just a stone’s throw away.
Soviet modernity, based on ideas and technology borrowed from the
West (and in some cases already discarded in their birthplace), came
to Belarus in its Russian incarnation. Minsk, where the visual presence
of Belarusian identity endures owing to deliberate decisions, made in
Moscow half a century ago, as to which symbols, ornaments, architec-
tural details to display, serves as a focal point of a space where cultural
symbols of two very different systems intermingle. Further out toward
the borders, cultural influences of Poland and Russia respectively are
more visible. This gradual change and intermingling of visual cultural
clues indicates even to a casual observer Belarus’s peculiar position.
It does not entirely belong either to the Russian (Soviet, pre-Soviet or
post-Soviet period) or the Polish cultural domain, while apparently
having some of the elements of its own culture. This superimposition
of the three cultures contributes to Belarus’s status as a borderland.
A prominent theme of almost every book on modern Belarus is its
position between the East and the West. Adam Zholtowski, an eminent
Polish historian, saw the border of Europe running through the eastern
provinces of the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth (which at times
included the territory of today’s Belarus). Nicholas Vakar’s magisterial
study Belorussia: the Making of a Nation has a whole chapter devoted
to the discussion of Belarus’s borderland condition. The intermediacy
of Belarus’s position is discussed at length elsewhere in Vakar’s book,
as well as in more recent publications on Belarus. Jan Zaprudnik in
Belarus at Crossroads in History devotes more than one third of the
book to this discussion. David Marples’s Belarus: a Denationalized
Nation, while concentrating on Belarus’s position vis-à-vis Russia,
does not fail to discuss the past and present of the country’s relations
 introduction 5

with its Western neighbor, Poland. This attention paid to Belarus’s

borderland position is not a reflection on a mere geographical trivial-
ity. That a relatively small nation can retain its identity while located
between Russia and Poland, each of the two countries more powerful
and populous than Belarus and neither committed to the preservation of
its smaller neighbor’s independence, is a remarkable aspect of Belarus’s
history, a testament to the resilience of its national spirit. At the same
time, the very prominence almost all authors attach to the position of
Belarus between the two powerful and culturally different neighbors
indicates that their influence, both individual and combined, is a major
determinant of Belarus’s identity, comparable in its significance to its
indigenous tendencies.
The importance of this cross-national influence is to a large extent
due to the long-standing and profound differences, often amounting to
antagonisms, between Russia and Poland. Belarus’s intermediate posi-
tion would not be of such consequence had it been wedged between two
countries belonging to the same civilization. No one would plausibly
categorize Luxemburg as a borderland by virtue of its location between
Germany and France. In the case of Belarus, its neighbors to the east and
west, Russia and Poland, have vastly different cultural systems as defined
by religious affiliation, economic aspirations, political philosophies and
visions of the place of each country in a larger community of nations.
The differences are so pronounced that it would not be implausible to
think of these two countries as belonging to quite distinct civilizations.
Over many years, both protagonists deliberately styled themselves as
distinct and inherently antithetical civilizational entities. Belarus’s
history bears indelible scars left by the struggles between Russia and
Poland, pushing and pulling the border between Europe and Eurasia
in opposite directions.
Most scholars define civilizations in terms of shared values and cul-
tures. To Vaclav Belohradsky a civilization was “. . . a cultural system of
social behavior, involving two or more societies. The system includes
common language, or a widespread multilingualism; the use of the
same basic technology, the same laws, and the same rules of deci-
sion-making; the existence of a common dynamic of public opinion,
a common everyday routine, a certain measure of religious unity. By
the term ‘culture’ we mean, on the other hand, the system of behavior
specific to a given society. Civilization comes into being when the
elements of a culture overflow the frontiers of the society in which
they arose. In this sense we speak of Christian civilization, Catholic,
6 introduction

democratic, or, for example, rational civilization.” (Belohradsky, 1982,

p. 33). Samuel Huntington (1996, p. 43) thought of a civilization as “the
highest cultural grouping of people and the broadest level of cultural
identity people have short of that which distinguishes humans from
other species.” He proceeds to say that “civilizations are the biggest
‘we’ within which we feel culturally at home as distinguished from all
other ‘thems’ out there.”
A civilizational vision of world history and politics, grounded in tra-
ditions going back to Toynbee and Spengler, has recently been revived,
most famously by Samuel Huntington in his Clash of Civilizations. This
is a vision of the world divided into identifiable domains, each with its
own consistent set of social, political, economic and cultural institutions
that emerged as a result of shared historical experience, each with its
own logic of internal development, relations to other civilizations and
determinants of the future. The term “civilization” does not necessar-
ily imply a discourse of a high level of abstraction. Indeed, even in
casual conversation we frequently invoke such abstract categories as
Europe, the West, the Arab World and others, all firmly rooted in the
civilizational frame of reference. Crude and overly general though they
might seem, these categories cannot be plausibly dismissed as irrelevant.
Implicitly more detailed than Weberian ideal types, the civilizational
schemata are directed at a relatively informed audience. When we
read about the division between Western democracies over the war
in Iraq, or reflect upon the controversy over the “Old” and the “New”
Europe, we must have an idea of the West or Europe to understand
the context of the discourse. This idea should include a set of features,
however vaguely conceived, that we associate with Europe or the West.
However, while it might be useful, the civilization frame of reference
is incomplete. To preserve its explanatory capacity, we have to answer
the question posed by those societies that refuse to fit into any of the
clear-cut domains. As the history of ethnic cleansing throughout the
20th century indicates, borders of civilizational domains are anything
but clear cut and frequently do not coincide with state borders. More
often than not the adjacent civilizations have compact enclaves of vari-
ous size on each other’s territory. This places the territory (on both sides
of a clearly defined state border) where these enclaves are prevalent in
a category of borderlands.
But the physical presence of other-civilizational communities is not
the only way that civilizations intermingle. Human societies are com-
plex multilevel systems, some elements of which are more likely to be
 introduction 7

influenced by or imported from other civilizations. In most societies,

elites are more likely to exhibit a propensity to borrow behavioral pat-
terns, values, modes of thoughts, ideas prevalent from other civilizations.
Sometimes this process, while changing the appearance and behavior
of the elites does not immediately affect their relations with the rest of
society. Sometimes, however, elites create a cultural environment of their
own, which, while based on a more or less consistent model imported
from another society, is totally alien to the lower classes. This was the
case in Belarus, where the indigenous ruling stratum had been thor-
oughly Polonized, so that by the end of the 18th century the Belarusian
peasant population was ruled by the landed nobility who considered
themselves Polish. Social structures where national identity remains
split along the class lines for a considerable period (several generations)
may plausibly be categorized as elements of borderlands.
While cultural intermingling along the lines of social class might be
an important focus of the study of borderlands, it does not exhaust all
the dimensions of intercivilizational or intercultural interpenetration.
All social systems include functional divisions. According to Habermas
(1973), modern societies are divided into three subsystems: the eco-
nomic, the political, and the cultural. Prevalence of other-civilizational
elements tends to vary across these subsystems. The same person’s
actions may be shaped by a largely other-civilizational normative and
value pattern in one subsystem, while within the context of other
subsystems he may not be influenced by other-civilizational elements
at all. The same multiplicity of normative and value patterns may be
observed in cultural interchange within one civilization. For example,
an Englishman may use metric system at work (economic subsystem)
and avoirdupois system when ordering a pint of beer in a local pub
(cultural subsystem), while at the same time actively lobbying his local
MP (political subsystem) for the retention of the latter alongside the
former. Of course, one should not look at the above subsystems as
being separate and independent from one another. While Habermas’s
schema does not provide a specific mechanism of their interdependence,
Talcott Parsons’ functional paradigm does emphasize interaction among
its four components. In Parsons’ four-function model society is con-
ceptualized as a set of functional requisites: adaptation (generation and
distribution of resources, performed by the economy), goal attainment
(establishing priorities among system goals and mobilizing resources for
their attainment, performed by the political system), integration (per-
formed by civil society) and latent pattern maintenance (maintaining
8 introduction

patterns of social interaction, performed by culture). As Parsons delin-

eates interrelationships among these four action systems, we can use
his approach to see how other-civilizational elements embedded in
one system may over time influence and eventually transform other
systems (Parsons, 2006).
Now we are able to compare three approaches to the phenomenon
of borderland. One is based on geography of other-civilizational settle-
ments. The second one is based on the propensity of different social
groups to accept other-civilizational cultural traits. The third one
assumes a multidimensional view of interaction between indigenous
normative structures and those borrowed from other cultures or civi-
lizations. These structures are embodied in institutions of a borderland
society. In this study, the institutions include the state, the ruling elite,
the political system and the economy. Belarus did not cease to be a
borderland when its ruling class, whose culture was overwhelmingly
Polish and then equally overwhelmingly Russian, was replaced by
indigenous rulers as a result of the Soviet policies in the 1920s. It did
not cease to be a borderland when compact enclaves of ethnic Poles in
the west of the country were uprooted and deported to Poland in an
ethnic cleansing episode in the aftermath of the Second World War. A
decade of political independence, with clear-cut state borders separating
it from its neighbors, did not make Belarus fully committed to remain-
ing an independent state, as its policy towards Russia on more than
one occasion stopped just short of voluntary reincorporation into the
latter-day Russian empire. There are many elements in Belarus’s politi-
cal, economic and cultural landscapes that make the country Russia’s
borderland, without becoming just an outlying Russian province. The
resilience of Soviet-era institutions fifteen years after the Soviet col-
lapse and the nature of Belarus’s ongoing relations with Russia will be
analyzed within the borderland frame of reference.
In this book I investigate the emergence of the borderland character
of Belarus and analyze the key social and economic institutions that
emerged throughout the 20th century and are associated with the pro-
cess of modernization. While Belarusian national culture existed prior
to the emergence of Soviet Belarus, it was only under Soviet power
that national culture began to inform nationally-shaped civil society.
The latter, of course, was severely distorted by totalitarian nature of
the Soviet regime, but the scope and density of national discourse in
Belarus were undoubtedly greater than at any previous time. The same
observation applies to the emergence of Belarusian national state, a
 introduction 9

crucial institution associated with modernity. While Soviet Belarus was

just a constituent Soviet republic, and thus could not be considered a
nation-state in its own right, it possessed main characteristics of modern
state and was national in its character. While not quite a nation-state,
Belarus acquired viable national state structures for the first time in its
history under the auspices of the Soviet regime.
National institutions, introduced in Belarus in the Soviet period
tended to have an identifiable affinity with Russia. Therefore, it is not
surprising that institutional memory in today’s Belarus serves to keep
Belarus in Russia’s orbit. While it precludes the spread of indigenous
Belarusian normative patterns to those spheres of activity where they
might influence policy formation and the decision making process, it
does not make Belarus more like Russia. Instead, we witness a kind
of institutional symbiosis, whereby Belarus preserves its institutional
structure by coordinating its policies with Russia. The latter seems just
as uninterested in transforming Belarus’s economy and society along
Russian lines as the former is in accepting this transformation.
In Chapter One, The Making of a Borderland, Belarus is placed within
the context of modernization and national development, a two-pronged
process that started in Europe in the 16th century and reached its apex
by the start of the First World War. I begin the discussion with the
events of the 16th and 17th century, when hopes of a European-style
national development in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania were destroyed
by invading Russian armies, which burned most of the cities and
reduced others to insignificance. Instead of the city, the magnate’s court
became the locus of Westernization on Belarusian territory. This spread
of Western ideas from above limited their recipients to the landed gen-
try and left the peasants with a diminishing sense of national identity
and outside the modernization process. The discussion then switches
to the ethnic Belarusian portion of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania after
the Partitions and throughout Hobsbawm’s “long nineteenth century”
(roughly from the French Revolution to the first World War). The
nineteenth century, which in many European countries produced suc-
cessful political movements of national liberation and self-determina-
tion, destroyed the old institutions of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania,
significantly reduced the role played by local Poles as the dominant
group of educated and politically active people in the region, but did
very little to create national Belarusian institutions. Belarus finished the
“long nineteenth century” with a romantic nationalist intelligentsia and
weak nationally-inspired political movements. Most nations of Central
10 introduction

and Eastern Europe had stronger and more diverse national institu-
tions at the beginning of this period. As it is, Belarus was unprepared
to avail itself of a chance for independence that emerged in the chaos
of the war and German occupation.
Chapter Two, Ex Oriente Lux, describes Belarusian national develop-
ment from the end of the first World War to the collapse of the Soviet
Union. In the interwar period the policy of promoting the local cadre
(“korenizatsiya”) conducted by the Soviet authorities in the eastern
part of Belarus created, for the first time in modern history, a pattern
of social mobility which allowed a Belarusian to occupy the highest
positions in politics, management, the professions or academe without
sacrificing his Belarusian national identity. Rapid social mobility, indus-
trialization and urbanization in Soviet Belarus contrasted sharply with
economic stagnation in the western part of ethnic Belarusian territories
which from 1920 to 1939 had been the eastern provinces of Poland. In
the Polish part of Belarusian territories, nationalist Belarusian political
parties managed to survive, however, despite the considerable efforts of
the Polish authorities to suppress them. The seemingly bright prospects
for national Belarusian development in the Soviet Union, contrasting
with the political oppression in Poland, persuaded many nationalist
Belarusian politicians to return to Soviet Belarus and declare it the true
national home for Belarusians, a sentiment which proved disastrously
wrong when virtually all nationally-minded Belarusian intellectuals
were rounded up by Soviet secret police and executed. The enthusi-
asm caused by the implantation of Soviet institutions into Belarusian
society carried over to the western portion of Belarus, so that not only
was there no resistance to the Soviet invasion of September 1939, but
the Soviets were widely regarded as liberators. The fifty years from the
German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 to the dissolution of the
Soviet Union in 1991 represent perhaps the most important period
for Belarusian national development in modern history. The tragedy
of German occupation, the heroism of guerrilla fighters, the glory of
liberation gave Belarus an identifiable place in the official Soviet mythol-
ogy. After the war, industrialization and urbanization contributed to a
rapid long-term improvement of living conditions and made Belarus
one of the best developed economic regions in the Soviet Union. While
the war-time heroism and post-war prosperity contributed to a new
system of national Belarusian symbols, the post-war years saw a rapid
retreat of the Belarusian language and culture from prominent posi-
tions in society. Belarusians increasingly identified themselves within
the context of the Soviet culture and history.
 introduction 11

Chapter Three, Borderland Forever, reflects on the essentially Soviet

nature of political and economic institutions in today’s Belarus. Of
all the states that emerged as a result of the dissolution of the Soviet
Union, Belarus maintains the closest approximation of the political sys-
tem which existed in the late Soviet period. The Soviet political model
included a powerless legislature, two-tier executive branch (ministries
subordinated to corresponding departments of the Communist Party),
and a judiciary beholden to the government. All these elements are pres-
ent in today’s Belarus. Legislative bodies can do little but rubberstamp
decisions made by the President. Government ministers have very
little power compared to their opposite numbers in the Presidential
Administration, a government body which makes important decisions
but, unlike the ministries, is not subject to public scrutiny. This sys-
tem, by concentrating power in non-transparent executive structures,
makes public competition for elected office irrelevant. Competition does
exist, but it is a struggle for power between different patronage chains
removed from the publicly visible political arena and unimpeded by
fixed legal norms. This system can only be changed by members of the
ruling elite, as outsiders can only participate in electoral contest for
seats in the legislature (and even this is exceedingly difficult for those
who openly challenge the regime).
Belarus’s contending elites, both aspiring rulers and the public intel-
lectuals are trying to establish political institutions that might facilitate
their rise to power. So far, these attempts have not met with visible
success. Large and influential political parties, of the kind existing in
all neighboring states, are conspicuously absent from Belarus’s political
landscape. Those that exist are rather amateurish affairs, led by seem-
ingly well-meaning members of the Belarusian chattering class and
funded mostly by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in
Europe (OSCE) and other multilateral organizations, as membership
dues cannot be a sufficient source of funds owing to the small number
of registered party members and their chronically impecunious state. As
the idea of national revival did not find an adequate response among
the electorate, the Belarusian People’s Front (BPF), the largest nation-
alist party (and the one with a clear, though hardly realistic, political
vision) fares no better than parties of unspecified democratic orienta-
tion. The largest of the latter, the United Civic Party (UCP), actually
looks at the corrupt polity and pseudo-market economy that emerged
in Russia throughout the 1990s as a desirable template for Belarus’s
development. This vision, however, is not shared by an effective plural-
ity of the electorate.
12 introduction

The major reason for this parlous state is the parties’ inability to
convey their message to the electorate due to government control over
mass media. Attempting to attract supporters, opposition parties come
up with implausibly optimistic projections of increases in public welfare
should they come to power. These attempts are futile. Because of the
concentration of power in hands of non-elected officials, opposition
attempts to gain seats in the legislature (at the moment they have none)
even if they met with success, would not enable them to make policy
decisions. As for the presidential elections, the opposition has time and
again proven unable to field a candidate who would not be tainted by
close association with the regime and at the same time possess name
recognition sufficient to catch attention of voters. This predicament
was confirmed by electoral failures of both opposition candidates at
the 2006 presidential polls. The existing, essentially Soviet-type, polity
remains immune to dissident challenges.
Chapter Three continues with the analysis of the economic policy of
the Belarusian leadership and the reasons for their stubborn adherence
to the outdated Soviet-type economic model. Belarus’s leaders think
that they can use the economy as a tool of populist policies, maintain
an essentially Soviet-style industry and agriculture at the expense of
the monetary and credit system, and cordon off undesirable influences
of the global market by firmly directing foreign trade towards Rus-
sia. In the long run, this cannot be more than wishful thinking, but
meanwhile it is the foundation of the government’s economic policies.
These policies are based on the economic system inherited from Soviet
times and are made possible by supplies of Russian oil and natural gas
at discount prices, more recently supplemented by large stabilization
loans provided by the Russian government. Belarus’s economy is not
entirely in a time warp: market activities of various shades of gray are
much more widespread than they used to be in the Soviet era and
some private enterprises (mostly in retail) do enjoy a modicum of legal
recognition. However, private business activities, legal or otherwise, are
barely tolerated, while the government controls most of the economy
and shows no signs of relinquishing its stranglehold.
While other countries of the region are entering the global market,
Belarus has chosen to rely on Russia as the main destination of exports
and, more importantly, source of vital imports of oil and natural gas.
What could have been merely a temporary concession to the realities of
post-Soviet economy has become a deliberate policy influenced by the
goal of preserving the obsolete large enterprises producing goods that
 introduction 13

generate demand among cash-strapped Russian customers but, owing

to their low quality, are uncompetitive elsewhere. Efforts to keep the
current account deficit within manageable limits include restrictions on
import from outside the CIS, government-imposed imports-substitution
programs, and restrictions on currency transactions. Belarus’s Central
Bank (deprived of even a modicum of independence and made into a
conduit of government economic policy) has propped up the national
currency (rather unimaginatively called the rubel) by pegging it to the
Russian rouble, thus essentially confirming Belarus’s status as a satel-
lite of Russian economy. Foreign direct investment is kept low by a
combination of government ineptitude, corruption, and excessively
intrusive economic policy. Tellingly, the only major deal that involved
large influx of foreign funds was the 2007 sale of the controlling stake in
the natural gas pipeline network to the Russian natural gas monopoly.
Interestingly enough, Belarusian leaders are not inspired by Russia’s
crony capitalism, perhaps because the exportable natural resources that
feed the institutionalized criminality central to the Russian economy
are absent in Belarus.
The book concludes with reflections on Belarus’s future. Many trends
that define Belarus, culturally, politically, and economically, as Russia’s
borderland, rather than a viable entity in its own right, seem to be self-
perpetuating. However, there are countervailing trends which at least
prevent Belarus from becoming part of Russia. One of these trends is
an unwillingness of Belarusian ruling elites to lose their significance,
which would happen should Belarus become a mere administrative unit
of the Russian Federation. There is also a not insignificant opposition
to the current regime, which is unsuccessful, largely due to Russia’s
supporting role in the earlier mentioned institutional symbiosis. Should
Russia choose to abandon its imperial aspirations, or become too weak
to pursue them, these countervailing trends might suffice finally to
shape an institutional structure of a nation-state out of what hitherto
has been a borderland.
This book concentrates on Russia’s influence upon the Belarusian
economy, polity and society throughout the twentieth century. Much
of this influence was due to the perception of Russian (Soviet) policies
in Belarus as constituting a pathway to modernity. However, in today’s
Belarus few people would associate the legacy of the Soviet-type econ-
omy, and related societal structures, with modernity and progress. This
change of attitude may yet turn Belarusians’ attention toward Poland, a
country with which Belarus has had long and multifaceted contacts. As
14 introduction

Poland, a new member of the European Union, continues to develop

a modern market economy and strengthens its democratic polity, it
may provide a viable model of social change to Belarus, definitely more
attractive than the criminal state capitalism of modern Russia or pseudo-
egalitarian Soviet past. Poland may yet regain its cultural influence in
Belarus, but this time without political domination.
 CHAPTER ONE

THE MAKING OF A BORDERLAND

1. European neighborhoods and Eurasian borderlands

Belarus and the Baltic States

Belarus occupies a somewhat ambiguous position vis-a-vis Europe.

While geographically a European country, it failed to develop political
and cultural institutions associated with modern Europe. In order to
understand Belarus’s peculiar borderland position between Europe and
Eurasia, we must look at it those of its neighbors which found their
place in the unfolding European project whose political borders have
recently been expanded to the east. Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, which
shared Belarus’s experience as constituent Soviet republics, and have
recently been admitted to the European Union, provide an informative
background to Belarus’s geopolitical situation.
The borders of Europe, fixed in geographical taxonomy circa 430 B.C.,
when Herodotus drew them along the Ural and Caucasus mountains,
never coincided with territorial limits of political structures and social
institutions that came to be thought of as European. It was always
implied that when one spoke of Europe as an identifiable entity, it
was defined by political and cultural, rather than strictly geographi-
cal, borders. Of course, political and cultural borders usually did not
coincide, so that cultural “neighborhoods” transcended political
boundaries. Most nations and ethnic groups on the eastern periphery
of Europe, those that in the last two or three hundred years were under
the political domination of Russia (first, as the Russian Empire, then
as the Soviet Union), tended to think of themselves as members of a
particular European “neighborhood”.1 Estonia emphasized its linguistic
affinity with Finland and association with Sweden and Denmark going
back seven centuries. Latvia remembered its German connections via
the Teutonic Order and Hanseatic League. Lithuania, despite cen-
turies-long association with Poland, chose to think of the Baltic, i.e.

1
I am indebted to Professor Roman Szporluk, of Harvard Ukrainian Research Insti-
tute, for the concept of “cultural neighborhoods” used in a geopolitical context.
16 chapter one

Germano-Scandinavian, “neighborhood” as its entryway to Europe.

Many educated Ukrainians see the portion of their country that has
been a province of the multi-ethnic Austrian empire for more than a
century as the link that ties Ukraine to the destinies, history, and intel-
lectual environment of Mitteleuropa.
In this long chain of states, large and small, stretching from the
Baltic to the Black Sea, Belarus stands apart. It never had a strong cur-
rent of public opinion or an influential group of intellectuals, which
would envision the Belarusian nation-state within a particular Euro-
pean “neighborhood”. Even those Belarusians who hope to see their
country accepted in the European community of nations belonging to
Europe does not mean a close affiliation with one or more European
countries, but rather an acceptance to supra-national structures, such
as the EU or NATO. This attitude seems to be in line with the recent
trend in the internal development of the European Union: away from
the nation-state and toward supra-national bodies as the mainstay
of today’s European political order. We shall soon see, however, it is
the ability to preserve institutions of nation-state that make a country
acceptable as a candidate for the membership in the united Europe.
For the countries currently aspiring to membership in the European
community, national statehood and its attendant national sentiment
are regarded as necessary prerequisites for acceptance into the new,
increasingly post-national and post-modern, Europe. To surrender,
partly or wholly, national statehood to the EU, one must first possess
it. Only nation-states, not regions or non-territorial entities, however
defined, are considered for future membership, and by implication
recognized as European by the collective conscience of Europe. There
is yet another aspect of the old-fashioned nationalism, which helps it to
remain relevant in today’s post-national Europe. It is sometimes easy to
forget the crucial role nationalism played in the dissolution of the Soviet
empire, an event that created geopolitical conditions, which ultimately
allowed the European Union to expand its borders to the east.
Anti-Communist political movements ascending to power in Eastern
Europe in the late 1980s and early 1990s, while charting their respective
paths to independence, were not inspired by visions of post-modernity
devoid of the national idea.2 In fact, emerging from the supra-national

2
A compelling first-hand account of intellectual roots of Central and East European
national movements in the late stages of Communist rule can be found in the series
 the making of a borderland 17

domination of the Soviet power, constituent republics and client states

searched for symbols and institutions that might justify their existence
as independent nations states. Looking for a suitable categorization of
post-Soviet changes, Juergen Habermas introduced the term “rectifying
revolution”. He suggested that these developments present themselves
“as a revolution that is to some degree flowing backwards, one that clears
the ground in order to catch up with developments previously missed
out.” (Habermas, 1990, p. 5). As to the nature of this revolution, as well
as the developments it is catching up with, Habermas described them as
“a return to old, national symbols” and “the continuation of the political
traditions and party organizations of the interwar years” (Habermas,
1990, p. 5). Now, almost two decades on, we can appreciate Habermas’s
foresight. Nation-states had to be recreated in Eastern Europe before
the post-Soviet nations were recognized as European and allowed entry
into another supranational entity where their national identity is likely
to matter no more than identities of groups chosen according to post-
modern criteria. Although national sovereignty of the East European
entrants is likely to be of little consequence once they have been accepted
into the European Union, their entrance is predicated on an existing
nationhood. Only those countries that succeeded in their “rectifying
revolutions” are now entering the increasingly united European pol-
ity, while those who had no old national symbols to return to are still
confined to the outer darkness of the Eurasian plain. In other words,
it increasingly looks as though political and economic institutions that
make it possible to define a country as European can only develop
within a nation-state, even if the latter traces its origins to the utterly
undemocratic, authoritarian or Fascist political entities that dominated
the political spectrum of Eastern Europe between the wars. Indeed, all
new EU entrants, except Slovenia, did exist as formally independent
nation-states prior to 1945.
Of all the former Soviet republics located west of Russia, the three
that were accepted as members of the European Union—Estonia,
Latvia and Lithuania—did exist as nation-states for approximately
twenty years between the wars. Those that were designated to remain
outside the European Union—Belarus, Ukraine, and Moldova—became
nation-states after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. What is it

of articles edited by Roger Scruton and published in The Salisbury Review under the
common heading “In Search of Central Europe” in the early 1980s.
18 chapter one

that makes national statehood gained in 1919 and maintained for two
decades different from national statehood gained in 1991 and main-
tained for a decade and a half? Surely, the difference cannot be a mere
five years. A diachronic comparison of the first fifteen years of indepen-
dence in the Baltic states and an equally long period of independence in
post-Soviet Belarus reveals certain similarities. Within this period, each
of the three Baltic states did develop its own national institutions and
symbols, just as Belarus did some seventy years later. In Belarus, just
as in each Baltic state between the wars, political development started
with ineffectual democracy and then, after economic hardships, turned
to a relatively benign dictatorship. The differences lie in the nature of
national institutions and meaning of symbols associated with them.
Karl Popper once said that “institutions are like fortresses: they must
be well-constructed and adequately manned” (Popper, 1957, p. 66).
Both structural and personal aspect are equally important for the per-
petuation of institutions. First, let us look at the structural aspect. What
are the institutions associated with the nation-state? Tentatively we may
count among them a stable autonomous polity, a predictable economy
not dependent on a single commodity or a single market for survival,
and a nationally shaped civil society that can accommodate social change
while maintaining its integrative function.
Parliamentary politics is perhaps the best single indicator of differ-
ences between socio-political institutions of inter-war Baltic states and
post-Soviet Belarus. Shortly after they gained independence, Estonia,
Latvia and Lithuania adopted Constitutions, which were drafted after a
careful study of Western constitutional practices. These Constitutions
were characterized by contemporary observers as “ultra-democratic”
(The Baltic States, 1938, p. 41). Before constitutional democracies were
replaced by personal dictatorships (in 1934 in Estonia and Latvia, in
1927 in Lithuania) Estonia and Latvia each held four parliamentary
elections, while Lithuania had three (not counting elections in the Con-
stituent Assembly). Each election produced a parliament representing
from eight to twenty political parties and reflecting a broad spectrum
of political ideologies, from Christian Democracy to Communism.
While no party had an absolute majority, in all three countries agrar-
ian parties and Social Democrats represented the largest parliamentary
blocs, thus reflecting the composition of electoral forces in the inter-war
Baltic states. These parliamentary regimes, while prone to anarchic inef-
ficiency, which ultimately led to their demise, indicated the existence
of a relatively unimpeded political discourse.
 the making of a borderland 19

Belarus inherited its parliamentary system from the Soviet Union.

In fact, after it became independent in 1991, the country retained the
Soviet-era legislature elected in 1990. The legislative body, still known
as the Supreme Soviet, had only ten percent of deputies formally affili-
ated with an opposition political party, while the remainder consisted
mostly of high-ranking officials of the Soviet regime. The legislature
remained unchanged until the end of its term in 1995, when the next
elections produced a parliament with a slightly larger percentage of
deputies more or less vaguely associated with the opposition parties.
Thus, before the advent of a strongly authoritarian political order in
1996, post-Soviet Belarus had only one parliamentary election, which
resulted in the overwhelming representation of Soviet-era elite with
no discernible party affiliation. Outwardly, both inter-war Baltic states
and post-Soviet Belarus had institutions of parliamentary democracy.
The difference is that the former conducted a sustained experiment in
democratic politics, while the latter preserved intact a Soviet political
structure until it was replaced by a regime of personal dictatorship.
Economic self-sufficiency is impossible for a modern industrial nation.
However, a diverse composition of foreign trade, both in terms of traded
commodities and directions of export and import flows, indicates that a
country is not unduly dependent on one export product or one foreign
trade partner for its economic survival. In the inter-war Baltic states
the bulk of their export revenues was derived from agricultural prod-
ucts, processed timber and, in Estonia and Latvia, textiles. These com-
modities, by virtue of their fungibility, were not specific to a particular
export market and thus did not make the exporters unduly dependent
on one source of export revenue. As for destinations of exports, while
the United Kingdom and Germany topped the list for all three Baltic
states, in most years neither country accounted for more than one
third of total export revenues, while the rest was distributed fairly
evenly, mostly among West European countries. Import expenditures
presented a similar picture, no country receiving more than one third
of the total. Thus, by the start of the second inter-war decade, Estonia,
Latvia and Lithuania established a pattern of foreign trade which did
not make them dangerously dependent on a single export commodity
or a single foreign market. Their economies, although less developed
than in most contemporary countries of North-Western Europe, were
not Third World monocultural systems. None of the three countries had
strong economic ties with the Soviet Union, the successor of the Rus-
sian Empire to which all three only recently belonged. The orientation
20 chapter one

of foreign trade introduced Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania into the

European system of international economic exchange, which at the time
presented a somewhat contradictory combination of protectionism and
competitive advantages.3
Post-Soviet Belarus, while having a considerably more developed
industrial economy than the three inter-war Baltic states, owed its
development exclusively to the internal division of labor within the
Soviet Union. This created a situation whereby, despite a substantial
range and complexity of Belarus’s manufactured exports, they could
only be sold at one market: Russia and other post-Soviet countries. For
many years after independence Russia has consistently accounted for
about two- thirds of Belarus’s export revenues. Its recent reduction owed
much to a combination of rising oil prices and a peculiar arrangement in
import of Russian crude and export of oil refinery products to the West
(to be discussed in the last section of Chapter Three). Perhaps more
importantly, Belarus receives two-thirds of its imports from Russia,
including virtually all supplies of oil and natural gas. As no provision
has been made by Belarusian leadership to diversify energy imports,
the country remains utterly dependent on Russia for imports that are
vital to its economy. Thus, allowing Russia to retain a combined posi-
tion of a monopsonist buyer of manufactured exports and monopolist
supplier of energy imports Belarus remained an economic appendage
of Russia with no prospects of creating a more viable economy. Need-
less to say, the slightest disruption of economic ties with Russia would
result in Belarus’s economic collapse. More than once Russia has used
its neighbor’s dependence as leverage in political negotiations.4
The difference between the inter-war Baltic states and post-Soviet
Belarus is profound. In the 1920s and 1930s, Estonia, Latvia and Lithu-
ania attempted to create a Western-style democratic polity. Although
their attempts ultimately came to a dead end, the three countries
established a tradition of constitutional democracy and exhibited a
willingness to adopt Western political arrangements. Post-Soviet Belarus
preserved a Soviet-style political system. The constitutional changes,

3
The information used in the discussion of economic conditions and foreign trade
orientation of the Baltic states in the inter-war period is taken from The Baltic States,
1938.
4
Detailed information regarding the current economic situation in Belarus can be
found in the Statistical Appendix to the IMF Country Report No. 04/139, Republic Of
Belarus: Selected Issues, IMF, Washington, DC, 2004.
 the making of a borderland 21

ushered in by the referenda of 1996 and 2004, were designed to legiti-

mize and strengthen a dictatorial political regime. Economically, the
three Baltic states between the wars did not attempt to repair the severed
trade links with the former imperial power. Instead, they restructured
their economies and reoriented their foreign trade so as to incorporate
themselves into the Western system of international economic exchange.
Belarus, more than a decade after the collapse of the Soviet Union,
failed to appreciate the benefits of a truly independent economic system.
Instead, its policies are directed toward the preservation of economic
ties with the former imperial power. The Baltic states created a tradition
of openness to Europe, both politically and economically. Belarus, in
its post-Soviet period, ensured that its polity and economy will remain
open to Russia and sheltered from European influences.
It is not statehood per se that separates European countries from
Eurasian borderlands. In the former, institutions that are associated
with the modern nation-state emerged as a result of an indigenous
process of national development that never had been interrupted for
more than one generation. In the latter, at least some of these institu-
tions have been implanted, shaped and promoted by an outside power,
while the indigenous institutional development exhibited large gaps in
historical continuity.
I do not want to look at Belarus’s position squarely through the
prism of institutional functionalism and economic determinism.
One might plausibly object to this treatment by pointing out that the
chronically anemic institutions and persistent economic dependence are
mere temporary problems inherited from the seventy years of Soviet
rule. It takes time to improve them to something remotely resembling
European standards and therefore capable of interaction with the EU
institutions.
True, structural changes do take time. However, the symbolic envi-
ronment can be changed virtually overnight. It does not take much
time and effort to replace visible symbols, such as street names and
national holidays. Had Belarus replaced the symbols inherited from the
country’s Soviet past with new ones, it might have been an indication
of changes in public opinion, values and aspirations If the symbolic
environment remains unchanged for more than a decade, perhaps the
absence of change reflects a relative stability of the system of norms
and values that correspond to the old symbols.
The role of symbols in the political process has been highlighted by
cultural anthropologists for quite some time. Stephen Lukes (1975) and
22 chapter one

David Kertzer (1988) were among the first contributors to a paradigm

that presents political reality as symbolically constructed. Even if one
finds this assertion too sweeping, it is still hard to deny that symbols
are important in forming and maintaining public opinion. However,
relations between the symbolic environment and public opinion are
not unidirectional. While symbols convey certain information to the
public, the public can express its attitude to the phenomena designated
by the symbols. For example, if street signs refer to political figures of
a now defunct state, there is nothing that prevents people from chang-
ing them into something more appropriate for their current situation.
If the symbols remain unchanged, it might indicate that people have
either positive or neutral attitude to the phenomena represented by the
symbols. Following Chris Shore’s (2002) application of cultural anthro-
pology to symbolic aspects of modern political culture, let us examine
an important aspect of political symbolism in today’s Belarus.
The most enduring elements of symbolic environment are those
reflected in visible features of urban landscape: names of streets, restora-
tion of nationally important buildings, preservation of old or construction
of new monuments, etc. Perhaps they serve better than opinion polls as
a reflection of public sentiment. Polls are often questionable, pollsters
politically or ideologically committed, the polled are fickle, the results
are fleeting, forgotten once the TV channel is changed or the next issue
of the newspaper arrives in the mailbox. On the other hand, visible
features of an urban landscape indicate commitment, the existence of
a plurality of people who share the values, ideas, memories signified
by a visible symbol. Buildings, monuments, memorial plaques, street
signs are present before people’s eyes for long time, they are here to
stay and by their longevity, by virtue of being major reference points
in urban topography, they influence public consciousness, keep ideas
alive. They serve as enduring reflections of the nature of nation’s civil
society. A full and detailed discussion of Belarus’s urban landscapes
and their symbolic aspects would merit a separate book but discussing
names of streets and localities, however briefly, will provide a reveal-
ing, if not too detailed, illustration of the symbolic environment where
contemporary Belarusians reside, work, and generally go about their
daily business.
There are several groups of street names whose Soviet connotations
can be easily identified by virtually everyone. The first group consists of
the three names, central to Soviet hagiography: Marx, Engels, and Lenin.
The second group includes ideas, institutions and organizations central
 the making of a borderland 23

to Communist ideology: Communism, Socialism, Soviet, Komsomol

(Young Communist League, the youth branch of the Communist Party),
proletariat, and revolution. Names belonging to the first two groups are
generally reserved for the nicest, cleanest, most prestigious streets. The
third group contains the names of the first generation of the Bolshevik
leaders (Dzerzhinski, Kalinin, Kirov, Kuybyshev, Ordzhonikidze, etc.)
and Soviet war heroes (Chapayev, Budenny, Matrosov, Kozhedub, etc.).
Finally, there is the fourth group: street names derived from important
dates and anniversaries of important events. There could be a street
named after the 7th of November (the day of the Bolshevik revolution
of 1917), the 30th anniversary of the USSR, or any other date or anni-
versary that was deemed important by Soviet ideologues.
Minsk, the largest city in Belarus, displays the whole range of Soviet-
era symbols in the names of numerous streets, avenues, and parks.
Street signs in the central part of the city commemorate names of Marx,
Engels and Lenin, proclaim ideas of Communism, internationalism
and revolutionary change, remind the passer-by of exploits of Kirov
and Kuybyshev, Dzerzhinski and Volodarski. So ubiquitous are these
reminders of the Soviet past that a resident of Minsk, no matter in
what part of the city she lives or works, cannot escape encountering
them more than once a day.
The situation is very similar in the five provincial centers: Gomel,
Vitebsk, Mogilev, Grodno, and Brest. Each city has street names from
the first two groups clustered in the center, while names from the third
and fourth group are more or less haphazardly scattered around the
city. The names of Marx, Engels and Lenin invariably mark the best
real estate in town. As for lesser personalities, provincial centers do
not have enough streets to accommodate as many of them as the much
larger Minsk. Still, names of the people, events and institutions that
were officially recognized as important during the Soviet time are well
represented. Sometimes anniversaries used in street names line up
in short sequences. In Vitebsk, one city park is named after the 30th
Anniversary of the Young Communist League, while the other bears the
name of the 40th anniversary of the same organization. In Gomel, five
streets commemorate anniversaries of the founding of the Belarusian
Soviet Socialist Republic (BSSR): the 30th, the 40th, the 50th, the 60th
and the 70th. The BSSR lost the Soviet and Socialist components of its
name before the 73rd anniversary of its founding.
Belarus’s urban landscape is not entirely devoid of local character.
Still, all Belarusian names are either derived from the Soviet era or else
24 chapter one

are part of official Soviet mythology. Names of former Communist

leaders of Belarus are well represented, so are the names of Belarusian
literary and artistic figures officially recognized by Soviet authorities.
Political or literary figures considered controversial in Soviet times are
absent from the system of visible symbols of urban topography.
In almost every city and town in western Belarus, amid the standard
collection of Soviet-era toponyms, one will find a street named after the
17th of September. On this date in 1939 the Soviet Union, honoring the
secret protocol to the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact signed earlier that year,
joined Nazi Germany in its aggression against Poland, thus ushering in
the second World War. Actually, the street name commemorates not
the act of aggression itself, but rather its immediate outcome. Soviet
occupation of the ethnically Belarusian territories in what then was the
eastern part of Poland unified most of ethnically Belarusian lands in
one political entity: a constituent Soviet republic.
Street names in Belarusian cities and towns contribute to the overall
symbolic environment, which powerfully conveys a message about the
country’s history, traditions, shared ideas and values. They remind the
passer-by that all the events, personalities and ideas relevant for modern
Belarus emerged in the context of the Soviet rule.
The Soviet Union was dissolved almost two decades ago. Its successor,
Russia, displays no interest in the symbolic environment of its neigh-
bors. It is the Belarusians themselves who continue to commemorate
statesmen of a defunct state, ideas that have been proven disastrously
wrong, organizations that ceased to exist, dates that are confined to
infamy by the civilized world. From the thousand or so years of its
written history Belarus chose the seventy years of the Soviet era as the
source of traditions, ideas and symbols that shape the everyday life of
its citizens.
One might point out that in Belarus, ruled by a strongly authoritar-
ian regime, it is the government that decides to keep old symbols or
introduce new ones. While this is true, Belarusians do not seem to mind
the conspicuous saturation of their life with old Soviet symbols. After
the Lukashenka government decided to restore the Soviet era symbols
in 1995, Mr Lukashenka’s popularity did not suffer and opinion polls
(then conducted by independent organizations) consistently put his
approval rating much higher than the opposition.
Belarus keeps going back to its Soviet past, economically, politically
and symbolically and in so doing orients itself away from Europe.
Why? In the rest of this chapter we shall look at the development of
 the making of a borderland 25

the institutions associated with modernity: the state, the ruling elites,
the public intellectuals (famously called the “chattering classes” by
Schumpeter), the economy. While Benedict Anderson (1983) described
nation-states as “imagined communities”, imagination does not emerge
in an historical vacuum. When political leaders try to legitimize their
view of the current and future institutional structure by a selective
reading of history, they still have to refer to events that really hap-
pened. One may refer to nation-states as “imagined communities”
only if one keeps in mind that the history of a particular nation must
provide building blocks for competing images. The Soviet period of
Belarus’s history clearly holds a privileged position in the legitimation
system of modern Belarus. Was there a period in Belarus’s history when
comparable processes of institutional change and national formation
produced institutions relevant for the modern nation-state and at the
same time possessing Belarusian national character?

2. An unfinished prelude to a modern nation:

Belarus and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania

When precursors of European nation-states started to emerge in about

the 16th century, the territory of today’s Belarus was a part of the Grand
Duchy of Lithuania (GDL). Apart from Belarus, the latter included the
lands now belonging to Lithuania, Latvia, Russia, and Ukraine. At the
height of its power, the GDL claimed control over a huge expanse of
territory, stretching from the Baltic to the Black Sea, reaching into the
steppes east of the Dnieper, establishing its eastern border within a
hundred miles of Moscow. However, in feudal times claiming control
was different from actually exercising it. The more or less stable core of
the GDL included territories of today’s Lithuania and Belarus plus the
province of Volhynia, west of the Dnieper. All other territories were per-
manently contested by Muscovite Russians, the Crimean Tartars, who by
the end of the 15th century enjoyed considerable support by Ottoman
Turkey, and, from the 16th century onwards, the steadily growing force
of the Cossacks. Militarily, the Grand Duchy was oriented to the east
and south to confront the continuing encroachments. Political arrange-
ments corresponded to the military task. Aristocratic families, holders
of large tracts of land, possessed considerable political clout, owing to
their ability to raise and maintain private armies for border defense, as
well as to advancement of territorial claims against neighbors. While in
26 chapter one

Poland all members of the noble estate were legally equal (Davies, 1982,
vol. 1, pp. 201–215), regardless of size of land holdings, in the Grand
Duchy of Lithuania the magnates, usually descendants of princely dynas-
ties going back to Kievan Rus and ancient Lithuania, had considerable
privileges which elevated them above the rest of the landed nobility.
The Lithuanian Statute of 1588 distinguished between three strata of
nobility: princes, lords of the [Ducal] Council ( pany rada), and gentry
(szlachta). It is the first two categories that enjoyed considerable legal
privileges, including the right to hold court in criminal cases against
the gentry in their service (Stone, 2001, p. 78). More importantly, the
sheer size of the Polish-Lithuanian Res Publica, combined with the
concentration of military power in the hands of magnates meant that
the Ducal or Royal authority could not effectively monitor, much less
enforce, the magnates’ compliance with the law. While nominally the
vassals of the Grand Dukes of Lithuania, the princes and lords of the
Council in fact were free to behave as independent potentates. Their
status was comparable to that of marcher lords in medieval England,
only substantially enhanced by the size of the territory they controlled,
the distance that separated them from the monarch, as well as the
strategic importance of their military position.
Unlike their European counterparts, Lithuanian magnates did not
have to compete for power with the politically and economically growing
cities. Chartered cities did exist in the Grand Duchy. However, those
best positioned to benefit from long-distance trade, such as Bykhov and
Mogilev on the Dnieper; Polotsk and Vitebsk on the Dvina, were more
exposed to regular devastations by invading armies of Muscovite Russia
and depended on the magnates for military protection.5 Much of the
territory that constitutes modern-day Belarus has been protected from
hostile incursions by the belt of impassable Pripet marshes, as well as by
vast expanses of roadless forest. However, the same lack of accessibility
made many cities badly located for long-distance trade and limited their
opportunities for growth. Thus, the magnates’ estates were true centers

5
According to a detailed account of the consequences of Russo-Polish wars of the
17th century provided by Saganovich (1995), in 1648–67 the city of Vitebsk lost 94% of
population, Polotsk lost 93.2% of population, Mahileu, 76%, Byhau, 65%. While cities
in the central and western part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in the same period
experienced population losses up to 50%, the devastation was not nearly as complete
as in the eastern cities, located on the Dvina and the Dnieper and formerly important
centers of long-distance trade.
 the making of a borderland 27

of political power, concentrations of economic wealth, and focal points

of military defense. In the 16th century Europe, development of future
nations took place in the cities, where the spread of literacy and the
emergence of the printed book facilitated discourse, while cities’ abil-
ity to generate wealth made them politically important. In the Grand
Duchy, with economically weak or strategically exposed cities, distant
ducal and royal courts, both with limited abilities to project power to
provinces, and communications hampered by difficult terrain, it was
magnates’ courts that were left to develop proto-national institutions.
What kind of nation would they produce?
The ethnic origins of landed nobility in the Grand Duchy of Lithu-
ania (including those lands that were ceded to Poland after the Union
of Lublin in 1569) have been subject to dispute for quite some time.
Throughout the 19th century, Russian government bureaucrats and
Russophile researchers not infrequently referred to them as Russians
whose ancestors abandoned their ethnic affiliation and adopted Polish
culture, customs and political allegiance (e.g. Koyalovich, quoted in
Tsvikievich, 1993, p. 162, Lappo, 1924). Belarusian nationalist leaders
adopted the same stance, although in their interpretation the origins
of the Polonized nobility were Belarusian. Ezovitov forcefully writes
about the titled “traitors to their nation” who forgot that their ancestors’
tombstones bear inscriptions in Belarusian (Ezovitov, 1919, pp. 11, 13).
Tsvikievich referred to the class of landed gentry in the 19th century
Belarus as being “denationalized, semi-Polish” (Tsvikievich, 1993,
p. 188). Today, nationally-minded Belarusian historians (e.g., Lych,
2001) describe the nobility of the late medieval Grand Duchy of Lithu-
ania as Belarusian. The motives of Russian officialdom to present the
landed nobility of the Russian Empire’s western provinces as descen-
dants of Polonized Russian princes are easy to discern. As landed
nobles in Muscovite Russia eventually became vassals of the Moscow
Grand Dukes and then Russian Tsars, the implication was that those
landed nobles in the Grand Principality of Lithuania were destined
to do the same, even after centuries of Polish domination. Thus, the
allegedly Russian origins of the landed nobility with ancestral estates
in what is now Belarus and then the North-Western Territory of the
Russian Empire confirmed the Russian Tsar’s claim on the territory as
his ancient domain. Belarusian nationalist historians project the term
“Belarusian” back to the 16th century in an attempt to lay claim to the
Grand Duchy of Lithuania as a political entity at one time dominated
by Belarusians.
28 chapter one

In reality, the medieval landed nobility in the Great Duchy of Lithu-

ania was neither Belarusian nor Russian, certainly not in the latter day
meaning of the term. The gentry, whether ethnically Lithuanian or Slavic
(the latter was considerably more numerous than the former), owed
its allegiance to the Grand Duke of Lithuania and conducted business
of the state in the language they called Russian. Their religious affilia-
tion tended to be pagan, then Roman Catholic for ethnic Lithuanians,
Eastern Orthodox (later Roman Catholic) for the Slavs. The magnates
owned estates in the lands that today constitute Belarus, Lithuania, and
Ukraine. When today’s Belarusian nationalists commemorate Prince
Constantine Ostrozhski, commander of the army of the Grand Duchy
of Lithuania, which defeated Russian forces at Orsha in 1512, they omit
to mention that the bulk of Ostrozhski’s possessions was located in
Volhynia, today a part of Ukraine. The purportedly Belarusian nobles
would not recognize the name Belarus (Belaya Rus’, White Russia) as
applied to the territory occupied by today’s Belarus. They would not
define themselves or their peasants as Belarusians. The language they
used to conduct affairs of the state was known as “yezyk ruski” (as
mentioned in the Statute of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania), which
modern commentators tend to translate as Russian, but which perhaps
would be more correctly translated as Ruthenian. The translation as
“Russian” is misleading, as this language had little in common with the
Russian language as spoken in contemporary Muscovite Russia and is
even further removed from the modern Russian language. The whole
discussion of the ethnic origins of the Slavic section of the Lithuanian
nobility is largely a projection of political views of modern observers
on an entirely different cultural and political structure.
Magnates, as well as all the gentry in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania
identified themselves in terms of feudal allegiance and religious affilia-
tion. Before 1569 the former was to the Grand Duke of Lithuania, who
may or may not have been the same person as King of Poland, as the
two countries elected their respective monarchs at separate Diets (Sejm
in Poland, Soim in the Grand Duchy). The Union of Lublin, concluded
in 1569, created a federated state consisting of two parts: Poland (Polish
Kingdom, Polish Crown) and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (GDL),
each with autonomy of their internal affairs, but with the same mon-
arch, who was elected at the joint Diet by gentry from both Poland and
Lithuania and would become the Grand Duke of Lithuania by virtue
of being the King of Poland. The Union reduced the size of the Grand
Duchy, as lands south of the Pripet marshes were ceded to the Polish
Crown (Stone, 2001, pp. 62–63).
 the making of a borderland 29

Thus, the territory of the Grand Duchy from 1569 and until the
Partitions of Poland in the 18th century roughly coincided with today’s
Belarus, Lithuania and the western provinces of Russia. When their
territory was absorbed by the Polish Crown, local Ruthenian nobles in
Volhynia were included into the Polish legal and political institutions.
Their counterparts in the Grand Duchy were exposed to the Polish
political culture in a less direct way. The process of acculturation of the
local elites took several decades, both in the Crown and Ducal lands.
The Union of Lublin did not immediately transform Lithuanian and
Slavic nobles of the GDL into Poles. However, some of the changes
ushered in by the Union over time contributed to their Polonization.
Perhaps chief among such changes was the introduction of equal legal
rights for all landed nobility, irrespective of status or wealth.
At first, the Ducal magnates were reluctant to enter a union which
would increase the political rights of the small and medium gentry.
Unlike their Lithuanian counterparts, Polish gentry enjoyed a host of
legal privileges which elevated them above the rest of society and made
no distinction between noblemen based on their wealth or the antiquity
of their titles. Davies (1982, vol. 1, pp. 206, 211, 212) and Dembkowski
(1982, pp. 49, 50) describe the noble estate as a formidable force in the
politics of the Kingdom of Poland on the eve of the Union of Lublin.
Dembkowski (1982, p. 39) stresses the anti-magnate political orientation
of a large and active segment of Polish gentry. Magnates of the Grand
Duchy of Lithuania feared that a closer union with Poland would result
in erosion of their legal privileges vis-a-vis the rest of the gentry and
reduce their power over the noble estate. Their opposition to such a
union had been successful for decades, despite the sustained pressure
from the Polish magnates and royal court. The main supporters of
the Union were those Lithuanian nobles who wanted the privileges of the
noble estate in the Kingdom of Poland extended to the gentry of the
Grand Duchy of Lithuania (Snyder, 2003, p. 22).
The unification process took several years. Stone (2001, p. 60) men-
tions that the idea of a union with Poland emerged among the Lithuanian
gentry as early as 1562. The Poles managed to persuade their Lithu-
anian counterparts to sign the Act of the Union in 1569 only because
the Grand Duchy suffered a string of defeats at the hands of Muscovite
armies in the course of the Livonian war. The Ducal nobility did not
relish the prospect of absorption into Muscovite Russia, a state with a
culture and politics vastly different from both Poland and the Grand
Duchy. The fact that the Ducal magnates chose the union with Poland
rather than an alliance with Russia indicates that identifying them as
30 chapter one

Russian would be implausible. More importantly, this was the first time
when a leading cultural and political group in a proto-Belarusian state
was faced with a choice between the two neighbors, each associated with
a particular civilizational framework. For Ducal signatories, the union
with Poland was a difficult compromise which they openly resented.
After the signing of the Union, the more powerful magnates frequently
flaunted their de facto independence and toyed with separatism (Stone,
2001, p. 61). Still, the separatist posturing generally did not lead to
effective political steps. Severing or weakening ties with Poland would
have led to a danger of being overrun by Russia, in which event both
the magnates and the rest of the gentry would lose the privileges and
the rights they enjoyed in the Polish Lithuanian Res Publica.6 Besides, the
political empowerment of the small and medium gentry, which so
irritated the magnates, soon proved to be of little or no consequence
for actual distribution of political power in the Grand Duchy. Com-
munications did not improve with the signing of the Union and the
Polish King in Cracow was more distant from manorial estates in
eastern provinces than the Grand Duke in Wilno. More importantly,
he was just as dependent on the military and organizational skills of
the magnates for defense against Russian encroachments. Thus, the
magnates continued to enjoy their status of marcher lords, while the
small and medium gentry, nominally with rights equal to those of large
landowners, was just as dependent on their benevolence as before. Less
than twenty years after the Union of Lublin, the Lithuanian Statute of
1588 gave the magnates the right of criminal trial over the nobles in
their service.
However, the Union of Lublin opened completely new opportunities
for the magnates and, to a lesser extent, the rest of the gentry. The
nobles, who had hitherto pledged allegiance to a succession of Grand

6
Jerome Horsey (1856, pp. 251–52) provides a detailed, if somewhat baroque,
description of his visit to Wilno, the capital city of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, on
the way to Moscow as the ambassador of the Queen of England to the Tsar of Russia
in 1589. Horsey describes his meeting with Nicholas Radziwill the “Red”, one of the
most powerful magnates of the realm and a known separatist and opponent of the
Union of Lublin. The reader sees a prince who flaunts his Calvinist faith to emphasize
his independence from the Roman Catholic monarch, receives a foreign ambassador
with the pomp and circumstance usually associated with official royal ceremonies,
generally carries on as a potentate in his own right. At the same time, it is obvious
that this is a description of a European prince who, for all his separatist tendencies,
would be unimaginable as a close ally of the Russian Tsar.
 the making of a borderland 31

Dukes belonging to an indigenous Lithuanian dynasty, now participated

in the election of Polish kings, choosing between candidates from
many European nations, from Transylvania to Sweden. Of course,
to participate fully in political discussions concerning the fates of the
new Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth, the Ducal magnates, whether
of Lithuanian or Slavic origins, had to adopt the language and cultural
attitude of contemporary Poland. Thus, Polish and Latin, the two
languages used for official business of the state, were becoming pro-
gressively more important. On the other hand, the proto-Belarusian
language, then known as “Russian” and more recently called Ruthenian
or Old Belarusian (e.g., Zholtowski, 1950, p. 17; Davies, 1982, p. 115),
was losing ground. Although several important literary works, legal
treatises, and official documents were published in the Old Belarusian
in the sixteenth century, they failed to stem the tide of Polonization of
the upper classes in the Duchy (Stone, 2001, p. 225). The noble used
the vernacular to communicate with peasants and city merchants while
back on his estate in the Duchy. He used Polish and Latin to elect kings
and conduct negotiations with foreign embassies.
The religious dimension of the aristocratic culture was changing
as well. For the Ducal nobles, affiliation with the Eastern Orthodoxy,
until the late 15th century associated with dynastic roots going back
to Kievan Rus, ceased to be an asset in the new power structure. In
fact, it might be seen by the Polish elite as an indication of unpalatable
ties with Russia and thus create suspicions of separatism. If Lithuanian
magnates wanted to explore a religious dimension of separatism, they
were more likely to become Protestant, not remain Russian Orthodox
(e.g. the Radziwills, as described in Stone, 2001, p. 61). The denomina-
tion of choice, however, the one that facilitated contacts with Polish
lords in Warsaw and Cracow, was Roman Catholicism.
As the 16th century drew to a close and the 17th century ushered in
repeated wars with Russia, magnates of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania
were faced with an increasingly stark choice: to strengthen their ties
with Poland or to suffer disastrous military defeat and subjugation by
the Russian autocracy. The circumstances of almost permanent warfare
further reinforced political, economic and cultural influence of the
magnates. The cities, their resources drained by defense expenditure or
destroyed outright by the invading Russian armies, could not emerge
as alternative foci of cultural development. Their role in the protection
of local culture and language as well as incorporation of European
ideas and customs through countless individual interactions in the
course of long distance trade was replaced by a very different process.
32 chapter one

Western fashions, customs and political ideas were selected by mag-

nates according to their tastes and political needs and then cultivated
on their estates. As the magnates’ leading role in early Westernization
emerged against the background of their already existing political,
military and economic preeminence, there could be little opposition
to their selection of Western practices, customs and ideas. Essentially,
several aristocratic clans could virtually determine what elements of
European political, economic and cultural system would be introduced
into the Grand Duchy.
For the smaller gentry, service to the magnates was the only avenue
to upward social mobility. According to the Lithuanian Statute of 1588,
a nobleman who engaged in trade or manufacture while residing in a
city or town was liable to lose his privileges and status. Therefore, the
only way to attain extra income and promotion was employment at
the court of the local magnate. Even if the latter did not explicitly
demand adoption of the Polish language and customs by the gentlemen
in his service, they had a strong incentive to adopt them voluntarily,
as symbols of a new political order which transcended the parochial
affairs of their locality and, at least nominally, made them equal to the
highest noble of the realm. Thus, the nobility, large and small, adopted
the language and customs that served to improve their political and
social standing. The “Russian” (Ruthenian) language, while protected by
law as the means of legal communication, in everyday use was rapidly
becoming the language of the townsfolk and peasantry. As the former
were steadily losing political clout, bleeding wealth and decreasing in
numbers throughout the 17th century, while the latter never had politi-
cal power, the proto-Belarusian language was increasingly spoken by
the people who could not muster resources to develop it or persuade
political elites of its importance.
Belarusian nationalists assign special importance to the 16th century
as a golden age of Belarusian culture, political thought, and social
development. One might agree that the 16th century was a particularly
important period in Belarusian history, although its characterization
as a “golden age” should be qualified. The pre-modern state of the
16th century that included the territory of today’s Belarus, Lithuania
and portions of Russia was very different from modern states of the
19th century. Snyder (2003, p. 24) highlights an essentially multina-
tional pattern in political and cultural affinities in the Grand Duchy
of Lithuania. The Lithuanian and Polish elements in the GDL’s polity
 the making of a borderland 33

and society were too pronounced to declare the GDL a Belarusian (or
proto-Belarusian, Ruthenian) state. When Stone (2001, p. 225) writes
about the development of Ruthenian national consciousness, he concen-
trates almost exclusively on the Ukrainian lands of the Commonwealth,
while pointing to the overwhelming trend towards Polonization in the
Ducal lands.
The Grand Duchy of Lithuania was a state in its own right, with its
own unique institutions and an equally unique relations with Poland.
The latter do not fit a simplified pattern of Polonization of the indig-
enous Slavic and Baltic cultures. The process of acculturation was
mutual. The Grand Duchy of Lithuania supplied its share of myths and
important personalities to Polish history, culture and politics. Polish
influence on the local culture did not amount to a complete Poloniza-
tion, as more often than not local gentry emphasized local identity by
calling themselves Lithuanians (the identity derived from the political
entity, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, not from an ethnic group, the
Lithuanians). We do not know what would become of the Grand Duchy
of Lithuania had it been allowed to follow a pattern of development
that transformed early modern nations of Europe into modern nation-
states. However, its borderland position contributed to the emergence
of a peculiar social structure. Continuous military pressure, growing
throughout the 16th century and culminating in the devastating and
repeated Russian invasions of the 17th century, did more than simply
bring the Grand Duchy of Lithuania closer to Poland. It also made the
military estate, the landed nobility, more numerous, more important
and more conscious of its importance than in most contemporary
European countries. The gentry, regardless of their wealth, remained the
elite in the Ducal lands even after the partitions, until the suppression
of the 1863 uprising. Only then, after the remnants of the old Grand
Duchy of Lithuania were removed from the political scene, could the
Belarusian national elite emerge in their place.
The events of the 16th century inaugurated two interrelated pat-
terns of national development. First, pressure from the two competing
neighbors forced the local elites to choose an alliance with one of them
in order to preserve the existing political institutions. Second, proto-
Belarusian national consciousness was pushed steadily downwards
until it came to rest at the level of village community. A propensity
for institutional symbiosis among the elites and the stubbornly demotic
nature of the Belarusian national idea have remained salient features of
34 chapter one

Belarusian society ever since. The latter became even more entrenched
in the years when local peasants saw that their landlords belong not
only to another class, but to another nation.

3. On the threshold of modernity:

Belarus, as defined by Poles and Russians

The Grand Duchy of Lithuania survived as an identifiable political entity

throughout most of the 18th century. It had its territory reduced by
the first Partition of Poland in 1772. On May 3, 1791, the Polish Diet
decreed the abolition of the Ducal political structures and the creation
of a unified Polish state which would include both the Crown and the
Ducal lands. The decision, however, could not be implemented. The
war with Russia which broke out in 1792 resulted in the second Parti-
tion of 1793 and contributed to the further weakening of the already
weak Polish state. In 1794, Polish patriotic forces staged an armed
rebellion against the occupying Russians. The latter duly won, owing
to overwhelming numerical superiority, and together with Prussia and
Austria executed the third Partition of Poland. The Polish-Lithuanian
commonwealth ceased to exist politically. Still, through the turmoil of
the last century of the Polish-Lithuanian monarchy, as well as for some
decades after its disappearance, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania could
be distinguished from the surrounding territories. It was the land of
declining cities, stagnant commerce, non-existent industry and noto-
riously impecunious and abundant gentry. The latter, now of dimin-
ished military importance, increasingly justified its privileged status by
conspicuous affiliation with Polish culture, albeit in a peculiarly local
interpretation. Only as these features gradually disappeared, did the
Grand Duchy of Lithuania give way to a new national entity: Belarus.
The territory of the former Polish-Lithuanian state that came under
Russian control by the end of Napoleonic wars was divided into two
parts. The ethnically Polish lands stretching roughly from Kalisz in
the west to Brest in the east became known as the Congress Kingdom,
owing its name to the Congress of Vienna, which in 1815 inaugurated
this political entity. The Kingdom, although part of the Russian Empire,
enjoyed a modicum of independence. The territory of the former
Grand Duchy of Lithuania, which included both ethnic Lithuanian
and Belarusian lands, was incorporated into the Russian Empire as a
purely administrative entity which had no special rights or privileges
 the making of a borderland 35

beyond those of Russia’s provinces. The peasantry in ethnically Lithu-

anian parts of the North-Western Territory, as the newly acquired lands
became officially known, was Lithuanian and in ethnically Slavic parts,
predominantly Belarusian (although the peasants tended to identify
themselves simply as “locals”).
The landed nobility merits a special discussion. First, its share in
the population was very large. According to the estimates provided by
Davies (p. 215) and Wandycz (1974, p. 5), by the end of the 18th cen-
tury in the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth landed nobility accounted
for approximately ten percent of the population. In the Ducal lands
this share was probably somewhat higher owing to a smaller urban
population.7 This social group was not a class in the modern sense of
the word, as the wealth and income of its members diverged widely.
At the top, families of the Radziwills, the Sapiehas and the Czartoryskis
had for centuries been in possession of immense tracts of land, with
villages and towns. They accumulated equally immense amounts of
wealth in form of art collections, gold and silver bullion and money.
Several steps below them, middle-level gentry had enough land to
provide for a comfortable and secure life, education and the ability to
travel abroad. At the bottom stood impoverished small gentry without
serfs, often without land, eking out existence by working on a rented
plot of land or sometimes even as landless sharecroppers.8 The unity
of the noble estate, in medieval times based on military service of its
members, by the 19th century was purely symbolic. For more than a
century, the nobility in the Great Duchy of Lithuania were associated
with Polish language and culture. These symbols were of special impor-
tance to those members of the noble estate who had very little else to
reaffirm its status as a social group somehow elevated above the mass
of common peasantry.
The noble estate traditionally provided educated people needed for

7
Smirnov mentions that in mid-nineteenth century the number of gentry in the
lands of the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania was about 200 thousand. To this should
be added 30 thousand clergy, much of it Roman Catholic, which was recruited mostly
from the gentry. While this amounts to only about 5% of the population, one should
add to these figures approximately 270 thousand former gentry, who could not prove
their noble estate to the Russian authorities and were transferred to the status of free
peasants. This addition would put the share of gentry in the total population of the
North-Western Territory to about 10%, consistent with the data provided by Davies.
8
While a few magnates owned enormous estates, approximately more than half of the
gentry were landless and most of them did not possess serfs (Davies, pp. 228–29).
36 chapter one

a small number of administrative positions in the late feudal Grand

Duchy of Lithuania. This did not change after the Partitions, when the
spread of imperial administrative apparatus into the region increased
demand for cadres of all levels of education, from parochial school to the
university graduate. Local gentry controlled the network of elementary
and secondary schools. Kosman (1981, p. 50) mentions that in 1809
the Wilno school district (roughly the territory of the former Grand
Duchy of Lithuania) included six gymnasiums with 1,305 students and
fifty four rural elementary schools with 7,442 students. The curriculum,
language of instruction and hiring of teachers were controlled by local
nobles, who often financed schools at their expense (Liaskovski, 1939,
pp. 14–21). The Wilno University, until its closure in 1831, was one of
the largest in Europe, with more than one thousand students in 1828
(Kosman, 1981, pp. 50, 51). Although closed after the unsuccessful
uprising of 1831 (which, although having sympathy of the students,
did not lead to armed rebellion in Wilno), it produced a generation of
Polish-Lithuanian intellectuals whose ideas of Poland, Lithuania and
Belarus influenced national development in the former Ducal lands
for many decades.
The more educated gentry was a link that connected the former
Grand Duchy of Lithuania with the outside world. From Hotel Lam-
bert in Paris, the headquarters of Polish emigre political activity, to the
salons of Saint Petersburg, where high-ranking bureaucrats reflected
on possible ways to improve an inefficient and unresponsive govern-
ment, Polish-Lithuanian nobles participated in contemporary discourse
and acquired the latest ideas about progress, democracy, and political
change. They were the ones who attempted to implement those ideas
back home, not unlike their ancestors in the 16th and 17th centuries,
who would pick and choose the latest Western fashions that could be
found in Warsaw or Cracow and then introduce them on their estates
near Minsk or Grodno. Of course, in the nineteenth century the new
ideas would come directly from the source, not distorted by the prism
of the Polish political system, as was the case in centuries past.
To the outside world, any visitor from the former Polish-Lithuanian
commonwealth, indeed any native noble in the former Ducal lands
was thought of as a Pole. While some Russians made a distinction
between Polish and Polonized gentry in Russia’s western provinces,9

9
Koyalovich (1884, p. 455) approvingly quotes a monumental geographical study
of the Russian Empire in which one of the contributing authors, Semionov, contrasts
 the making of a borderland 37

for European observers all gentry from the former Polish-Lithuanian

commonwealth were simply Poles, no matter whether from Warsaw,
Kobryn or Novogrudok (the latter two Belarusian towns are birthplaces
of the military leader Tadeusz Kosciuszko and poet Adam Mickiewicz,
both romantic personifications of the Polish national spirit). National
self-perception among the Polish-Lithuanian gentry was not nearly as
straightforward. Timothy Snyder (2003, pp. 26–30; 40–45) shows that
landed nobility in the lands of the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania
did not identify themselves as Poles in terms of modern nationalism.
They combined a Polish linguistic and cultural identity with a strong
affiliation with local traditions. As Wandycz (1974, p. 5) notes, the
gentry, while accepting the Polish language and culture as symbols of
affinity with the Polish state, did not become denationalized. Not infre-
quently they spoke of themselves as Lithuanians. The latter term had
little to do with the ethnic or national identity of modern Lithuanians.
Rather, it signified an affiliation with the political and cultural legacy
of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Adam Mickiewicz, whose ancestral
estate was located in the center of ethnic Belarusian lands, called his
fatherland “Litwa” (Lithuania) and himself Litwyn (Lithuanian). The
“Lithuanian” social fabric, while strongly influenced by the Polish lan-
guage and culture adopted by the educated class, was not identical to
Polish. Mickiewicz and other prominent Lithuanian Poles thought of it
as simple, rural, communal, with visible memories of past martial glory.
This culture was not just an antiquated appendage of the great Polish
culture. Cultural exchange between Poland proper and Poland-Lithu-
ania for centuries has been a two-way process which gave substantial
benefits to both sides. From Traugutt to Pilsudski, from Mickiewicz to
Milosz, descendants of Polish-Lithuanian noble families that achieved
world-wide prominence as Polish politicians or intellectuals brought
their Lithuanian experience to those endeavors that were central to
their rise to fame.
Educated land-owning gentry saw in Polish linguistic and cultural
identity a link to a broad cosmopolitan intellectual network, a conduit
for modern ideas that could be introduced in their home provinces. For
the small and landless gentry, including those whose noble status was
revoked by the Russian government in 1836 (Wandycz, 1974, p. 126),

“Belarusian” peasants in the North-Western Territory with Polish or Polonized upper

classes. These Polish or Polonized landlords are presented as an alien force standing
between the Belarusian peasant and the Russian Imperial government, the latter being
of the same faith and nationality as its Western Slavic peasant subjects.
38 chapter one

the Polish language and culture provided the only source of symbols
that kept their status above that of common peasantry. A semi-literate
squire who had to do regular peasant work for a living, either as a small
land-holder or as a sharecropper, clung to the Polish language and a
peculiar lifestyle that, while not exactly Polish, included conspicuous
display of traditions rooted in the history of the Polish-Lithuanian
Commonwealth. A contemporary observer gives a glimpse of the life of
petty Polish-Lithuanian nobility: “In homesteads of the poorest nobles,
in homes screened by the mantle of misery from attention of the police,
there were preserved symbols of old Poland, language of the fatherland,
traditions inherited from ancestors and patriotic feelings. A noble born
and bred under the thatched roof might not know how many there are
continents on Earth. Works of classics of Polish literature might have
been alien to him. He could, though, sing Krasicki’s Święta miłości
kochanej Ojczyzny or Karpinski’s Pieśń poranna i wieczorna or, accom-
panied by his father with the guitar and mother at the keyboard, per-
form Jeszcze Polska nie zginęła” (Mikolaj Akilewicz, quoted in Fajnhaus,
p. 176). The first two songs mentioned in the quote above were popular
ballads which, while evoking nostalgia about the Polish fatherland, did
not call for political action. The third song, then unofficial (and today
the official) Polish anthem, painted a vivid picture of the overthrow of
the Russian occupation by the Polish army. Martial glories of the Pol-
ish-Lithuanian past served as justification of poor gentry’s privileges,
even though the latter were only symbolic. However, when real sacrifices
were needed to justify these symbolic privileges, the Polish-Lithuanian
gentry overwhelmingly responded to the call to arms issued by the
revolutionary Polish government in January 1863.
As the nobility in the lands of the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania
tended to speak Polish and identify themselves as Poles, they will be
referred to as Poles in the discussion that follows. According to Smirnov
(1963, p. 301) Poles constituted 95 percent of the gentry in Minsk
province, 94 percent in Vilno province, 85 percent in Grodno province,
72 percent in Mogilev province and 38 percent in Vitebsk province.
Thus, the stage was set for a century of a conflict between the Imperial
Russian government and Polish-Lithuanian elites, educated, politically
minded, well familiar with contemporary European social movements
and quite frequently possessing leadership experience acquired while in
Russian service, civil or military. In a sense, the territory of the former
Polish republic, including the lands of the former Grand Duchy of
Lithuania, had two parallel structures of state institutions: one, Imperial
Russian, imposed from above on a conquered people, rigid, centralized
 the making of a borderland 39

and capable of wielding immense power; the other, Polish-Lithuanian,

its ability to wield power substantially curtailed, but still possessing a
responsive network of grass-roots institutions and capable of mobiliz-
ing public opinion not only in their native lands (now known as the
North-Western Territory of the Russian Empire) but also among the
educated classes of Saint Petersburg and Moscow. The former tried to
legitimize its presence in the “ancient Russian domains”, but was not
quite successful and always had to buttress its authority by the presence
of military force. The latter, its legitimacy assured by the overwhelm-
ingly Polish character of the educated strata, repeatedly contested the
legitimate monopoly of violence, the ultimate attribute of the state,
according to Max Weber. It is against the background of this contest
for legitimacy and power between Russian authorities and contending
Polish-Lithuanian elites, that Belarusian national identity has been
shaped and developed throughout the 19th century.
Russia’s national policy in the provinces of the North-Western Territory
did not focus on ethnic Poles. It was the Belarusian peasant population
who received the full attention of the imperial government. There is a
reason why the Poles, despite their apparent hostility to Russia, were left
alone, while the mass of unassuming peasants was subjected to active
Russification. All the nations and tribes of the vast multi-ethnic empire
were allowed to retain their respective identities. There were only two
exceptions. Ukrainians and Belarusians were officially recognized as
two segments of the great Russian nation, returned to its bosom after
centuries of foreign oppression and therefore in need of brotherly help
and support to make them proper Russians. As the White Russians
(Belarusians) and Little Russians (Ukrainians) were distinguishable from
their Russian brothers mostly by religion and language, both confes-
sional and linguistic differences required explanation and correction.
Both were explained as contaminants brought by centuries of foreign
domination and in need of correction by means of government inter-
vention (Weeks, 1996, pp. 71–72). The religious aspect was especially
pressing, as Orthodoxy was one of the three elements of the Russian
national identity as defined by Emperor Nicholas I (the other two were
Autocracy and Nationality). Although unsupported by evidence avail-
able at the time (Weeks, 1996, p. 72), these attitudes constituted the
foundation of the official Russian policies in the region.
A majority of Belarusians and a substantial number of Ukrainians
belonged to the Uniate Church, the denomination created by the Union
of Brest in 1596, itself an outcome of almost a century of political
and ecclesiastical developments. Ecclesiastically, the decline of the
40 chapter one

Constantinople Patriarchate, which after the fall of Constantinople in

1453 was under the political control of Ottoman Turkey, and its inability
to effectively lead the Orthodox dioceses in Ruthenian lands of Poland
and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania was a major factor in a gradual
realization of the necessity of a Church reform among the Ruthenian
bishops (Gudziak, 1998). Politically, the establishment of the Patriarchal
See in Moscow in 1589 presented the Orthodox elites in the Ruthenian
lands of the Polish kingdom and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, both
ecclesiastical and secular, with an unpalatable prospect of being subor-
dinated to Muscovite Russia in spiritual matters at the time when this
could have easily invited attempts at political subjugation by Russian
Tsars. Mass conversion to Roman Catholicism was unthinkable, as it
would destabilize the existing diocesan structure, thus jeopardizing
positions of many Orthodox bishops, and lead to tensions and pos-
sibly riots among the Orthodox faithful. The Union of Brest provided
a much needed compromise. It founded a new Church, specifically for
the formerly Orthodox Ruthenians. The new Church was doctrinally
Catholic, but it retained the existing hierarchy of Orthodox clergy,
while acknowledging the religious authority of the Pope of Rome and
accepting some doctrinal aspects of Roman Catholicism, including the
filioque clause. The new Church retained the religious practices of the
Eastern Orthodoxy, the liturgy in Church Slavonic, traditional icons
in Byzantine style, and permission to the parish clergy to marry. As
Flynn (1993) notices, the compromise provided the ecclesiastical elite
with access to Western cultural and intellectual achievements, while not
alienating the peasant faithful, as the latter retained what mattered most
to them, their religious traditions and liturgical practices. However, the
Uniate Church rapidly became limited to the lowest strata of society, as
the process of Polonization of the gentry, which was underway even at
the time of the Union of Brest, included conversion to Roman Catholi-
cism. Thus, in the course of several decades, the Uniate Church became
known as the “peasant faith”.
By the time of the third Partition of Poland, when the whole of ethnic
Belarusian territory was incorporated into the Russian Empire, more
than 80 percent of the rural population belonged to the Uniate Church
(Sosna, 1999, p. 90). It is hardly an exaggeration to think of the Uniate
Church as the only truly Belarusian institution that spanned the more
than two hundred years from the Reformation almost to modernity.
In recent years Belarusian historians have come to agree that the
Uniate Church played an important positive role in the emergence
and development of the Belarusian nation. Since 1636 the Ruthenian
 the making of a borderland 41

language was included in ecclesiastic practices, while liturgical Church

Slavonic was gradually modified to accommodate some elements of the
vernacular (Marozava, 1999). These steps made the Uniate Church an
active participant in the development of what by the end of the 19th
century has become commonly referred to as the Belarusian language.
In fact, for generations of Belarusian peasants the only man who could
not only speak but also read and write in their native tongue was the
Uniate parish priest. From the point of view of the Russian imperial
authorities, the Russification of the peasantry in the Slavic portions of
the newly acquired western provinces had to include the abolition of
the Uniate Church.
The Russian authorities made attempts to abolish the Uniate Church
in the lands ceded to them after the first Partition of Poland in 1772.
Then it stopped short, however, of the direct and forcible elimina-
tion of the religious institutions. While gradual transition to Russian
Orthodoxy was facilitated by decrees that served to weaken ties of the
Uniate Church in the Russian Empire with the Vatican and allowed
appointment of Russian Orthodox priests to vacant positions in Uniate
parishes, officially every religion, including the Uniate, was tolerated
(for a detailed discussion of the Uniate Church in Belarus in the wake
of the Polish Partitions see Sosna, 1999).
In the reign of Nicholas I, pressure on the Uniate Church in the
Russian Empire increased considerably. Dylangowa (1996) thinks that
the decision to liquidate the Uniate Church in the Russian Empire was
taken well before 1839, the actual date of its liquidation. It well may be
the case, as abolition went rather smoothly and did not cause immediate
complications for the authorities. Apparently, the latter made thorough
preparations beforehand. Four Uniate bishops were persuaded that
conversion of their flock to the Orthodoxy would be beneficial for the
spiritual well-being of the faithful and would not jeopardize the posi-
tion of the Uniate clergy as they transferred to the Russian Orthodox
hierarchy without loss of status. On February 12, 1839, bishops Vasili
Luzhinski and Iosiph Semashko signed a petition to the Synod of the
Russian Orthodox Church. They asked to be allowed together with their
dioceses to convert to the Eastern Orthodox rite and be admitted to
the Russian Orthodox Church. The petition was granted by the Synod
and approved by the Tsar, thus ending more than two hundred years
of the Uniate Church in the ethnic Belarusian lands.
More than 1300 Uniate priests and monks converted to Russian
Orthodoxy and retained their positions, while about 600 declined and
were deported to the eastern provinces of Russia. As for the faithful,
42 chapter one

almost exclusively peasants, they did not care much about doctrinal
details. Samusik (1999) catalogues a number of situations when the
newly converted peasants did not know what was their new faith and
frequently would define it simply as “Russian” or “official” (kazionnaya).
Now, with the Uniate Church being replaced by the official Russian
Orthodoxy, imperial authorities made a major step towards the final
Russification of the majority of the “locals”. However, their monopoly
of violence was as yet far from uncontested.
For Polish national mythology, the importance of the January Upris-
ing of 1863 is undeniable. The armed insurrection, which in the ethnic
Polish lands of the Russian Empire gained considerable strength and
continued for more than a year, demonstrated that Poland had never
been reduced to a mere national idea but retained an important aspect
of the state, the ability to legitimately dispense violence within a certain
territory. This attribute, crucial to the idea of the modern state, never
faded away for more than one generation. From Kosciuszko’s armed
struggle against the Russians to the Grand Duchy of Warsaw to Con-
gress Poland, there was an almost uninterrupted presence of national
Polish state structures within the territory of the erstwhile Polish-Lithu-
anian Res Publica. The 1863 uprising ensured the generational continu-
ity between the end of the Congress Kingdom, whose disappearance
after 1831 was an outcome of an unsuccessful armed struggle, and the
Polish Legions of the first World War. Many of those who fought in
the 1831 insurrection later planned and in some cases participated in
the armed struggle during the January uprising of 1863.
Less than sixty years after the uprising, the surviving rebels witnessed
the rebirth of the independent Polish state. In 1914, speaking at the
funeral of the last surviving member of the People’s Government
(Rząd Narodowy) of 1863, Jozef Pilsudski, the soon to be architect of
independent Poland, used the symbolism of the January uprising to
emphasize forcefully the continuity of the Polish state (Jarzebowski,
1963, pp. 296–97). The symbolism was all the more potent for the inclu-
sion of the lands of former Grand Duchy of Lithuania in the uprising.10

10
R. Wapinski (1994) provides a detailed discussion of the increased importance
of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in Polish national mythology of the 19th century, as
somewhat inflated memories of past greatness served to mitigate the humiliation of a
stateless existence in post-partition ethnically Polish territories.
 the making of a borderland 43

Whether it had the same significance for the Belarusian national myth
is quite another matter.
Far from being a purely symbolic act, the inclusion of eastern ter-
ritories of the former Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth in the Janu-
ary uprising was based on sound strategic considerations. During the
insurrection of 1831 military actions took place almost exclusively on
the territory of Congress Poland where Polish regular forces fought
against regular Russian armies. Defeat of the insurrection highlighted
the futility of fighting against the Russian armed forces which always
would be numerically superior to whatever the Poles could put in the
field. If the Polish state was to be resurrected by means of military
force, innovations in military strategy and tactics represented the only
hope. The veterans of the 1831 insurrection who went to exile in France
started to analyze their defeat and plan for the next confrontation with
Russia shortly after they left Poland. In his study of Polish military
thought of the 19th century, Halicz (1975) describes the emergence
and development of the concept of guerilla warfare by emigre military
thinkers. His account of ideas developed by Ludwik Mieroslawski,
Maurycy Mochnacki, and Ludwik Bystrzonowski (Halicz, 1975, pp.
120–155) is particularly relevant to the events of the 1863 uprising on
the territory of today’s Belarus. In their writings, published in 1830s and
1840s, all three applied the general idea of guerilla warfare to specific
conditions of Poland, including the territories of the former Grand
Duchy of Lithuania. Mochnacki and Mieroslawski argued that in the
future conflict the eastern territories should become a major theater
of military operations, as their strategic position would be crucial for
the disruption of communications between the central Russian regions
and Polish territories. Mochnacki emphasized that the terrain of the
eastern provinces made them especially suitable for guerilla warfare.
Bystrzonowski developed a new concept of military communication for
small irregular detachments of future insurgents. He noticed that vast
tracts of land covered with forest and swamp, traditionally regarded
as obstacles for the movement of regular armies, could serve as areas
of communication for guerilla detachments whose familiarity with the
terrain would allow them to traverse the expanses of wood and marsh,
safe from confrontation with superior Russian forces. The guerillas,
moving along the continuous lines of difficult terrain, would be able
to strike at strategically important targets located on the margins of
the wooded areas. Bystrzonowski detailed all the major aspects of the
future guerilla campaign, from the preferred armament (carbines with
44 chapter one

bayonets) to the uniforms (not too elaborate, but clearly distinguishable

from civilian clothing). To put this innovative plan into motion, leaders
of Poland’s struggle for independence needed to recruit a guerilla force
of substantial size and ensure its support by the local population. In
the territories Polish population was not predominant these two tasks
could be accomplished only if the Lithuanian and Belarusian peasants
could be persuaded of the legitimacy of the Polish cause.
The January Manifesto, issued by the Central People’s Committee,
called to arms the “nation of Poland, Lithuania and Ruthenia”. It was
clear, however, that in the run up to the uprising the mobilization of
rebel forces was much more advanced in the Kingdom of Poland than
in the North-Western Territory. Moreover, in the latter the efforts of
the local revolutionary leaders were directed disproportionately towards
ethnic Poles. In the two years that preceded the insurrection mobiliz-
ing public support often took the form of large-scale public gatherings,
street demonstrations and celebrations of important dates in the his-
tory of the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth. All those events took
place in cities and towns, participation was limited to Polish urban
intelligentsia, craftsmen and merchants, Polish officers serving in Rus-
sian regiments billeted in the vicinity, and Polish landed nobility and
gentry. Throughout the countryside, a conspiratorial network of three
thousand members (almost all of them Polish landlords) prepared for
the armed conflict by clandestinely procuring weapons and hoarding
supplies. However, the conspirators paid much less attention to the
recruitment of the local peasantry to their cause. Perhaps the only
sustained effort to this effect was the publication of an anti-Russian
bulletin in the Belarusian vernacular. Issues of the bulletin, entitled
Peasant Truth (Muzhitskaya Pravda), have been distributed in the vil-
lages throughout Grodno and Vilno provinces from June 1862 to the
late spring of 1863.
Peasant Truth was a brainchild of one man, Konstanty Kalinowski,
son of a petty landlord from Grodno province. He belonged to the
radical faction within the clandestine organization that prepared the
uprising in the territories of the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania.
Kalinowski is not infrequently described as the founding father of
modern Belarusian nationalism. Interestingly, both Belarusian nation-
ally-minded and official Soviet historians tend to share this view. While
Peasant Truth can be regarded as the first political document of the
modern era published in the Belarusian language, the wider impact of
 the making of a borderland 45

Kalinowski’s work on Belarusian national development is not as easy

to categorize.
The Polish revolutionary leadership of the 1863 uprising was divided
into two main factions: the moderates (“whites”) and radicals (“reds”).
This division was present in all three major centers of the movement:
among the emigre revolutionaries in Paris, within the Central People’s
Committee (Komitet Centralny Narodowy, the KCN) in Warsaw and
in the Lithuanian Provincial Committee in Vilno. The radical faction
became more prominent as the uprising progressed and the KCN
became the National Government (Rząd Narodowy) and the Lithuanian
Committee, the Lithuanian Section (Oddzial). Both the “whites” and
the “reds” shared the goal of the restoration of the Polish state in the
borders of 1772, that is, including the territories of the former Grand
Duchy of Lithuania. The difference between the factions was in the
methods employed to achieve this goal, as well as the political reforms
to be enacted once the country regained independence. The “whites”
expected that an insurrection led by the landed nobility and supported
by international pressure on the Russian government would lead to the
eventual restoration of independent Poland and would be followed by
moderate reforms. The “reds” insisted that success of the uprising could
only be ensured by the mass participation of peasants who would be
rewarded by a radical redistribution of property once the victory was
achieved. However, for both moderate and radical factions the resur-
rection of the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth was central to their
respective programs. The “reds” of the Lithuanian Provincial Committee
did not differ in this respect from their like-minded co-conspirators in
Warsaw or Paris. The differences became even less pronounced in the
autumn of 1863, when Romuald Traugutt, a member of the “red” fac-
tion who fought with relative success in the Belarusian forests, became
dictator of the National Government in Warsaw. While almost all histo-
rians point out separatist tendencies among the “red” leadership of the
Lithuanian Provincial Committee, they do not indicate that the incipi-
ent separatism had a Belarusian nationalist foundation. The “whites”
and the “reds” were engaged in a constant power struggle in which the
“whites” enjoyed support of the National Government until the second
half of 1863. It well may be that separatism of the “reds” was based on
purely tactical considerations. One point is clear, however: neither “reds”
nor “whites” in the Lithuanian Committee came up with a coherent
program of national independence of Belarus or even its substantial
46 chapter one

autonomy within a restored Rzeczpospolita. Even Kalinowski, whom

many historians (Liaskovski, Vakar, Smirnov, Zaprudnik) regard as the
most separatist among the “red” conspirators, promised the peasants
land and freedom as a grant from the Polish government and never
articulated a system of political participation for the Belarusians above
the village level.11 While the Manifesto of the Lithuanian Provincial
Committee, issued a week after the KCN Manifesto of January 23, was
somewhat more accommodating towards the peasants, it might have
been due to the simple fact that the Lithuanian conspirators understood
that the non-Polish peasantry of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania would
not be drawn into the armed struggle by the prospects of a restored
Polish state. The Lithuanian Manifesto was more emphatic then the
KCN Proclamation in promising land to those peasants who joined the
rebel forces. Still, even the additional incentives proved insufficient to
ensure peasants’ support of the uprising.
In the North-Western Territory the armed struggle began with incur-
sions of rebel detachments from the Kingdom of Poland. On January
20 the insurgents succeeded in taking four small towns where govern-
ment military garrisons were small or non-existent. However, the rebel
forces occupied the towns only for several days and then left before the
advancing government troops. In one town, where the rebels chose to
stand and fight, they were soundly defeated and had to retreat to the
Kingdom of Poland (Liaskovski, 1939, pp. 66–69; Smirnov, 1963, pp.
129–133). Ominously, the retreat was accompanied by mass desertion of
local peasants, pressed into service by the insurgents (Liaskovski, 1939,
p. 69). Although strategically unimpressive, these raids by Polish rebels
would be considered a success if compared with the military actions
organized by local revolutionaries. As the Lithuanian Committee (which
on March 11 changed its name to the Section Governing the Lithuanian
Provinces) opened hostilities in the beginning of April, a series of tragic
military defeats followed in a quick succession. On April 13, six men
led by Count Plater attacked a military convoy killing three soldiers
and capturing a quantity of military equipment. Shortly thereafter the
insurgents were apprehended by local peasants and handed over to
the authorities. This skirmish had effectively started and ended rebel

11
Kalinowski’s deference to the Polish (National) Government, visible throughout
his writings in the Peasant Truth, was a major predicament for the Soviet historians,
e.g. A. F. Smirnov, who spares no effort in presenting Kalinowski as a democratic
revolutionary who fought for Belarus’s independence (Smirnov, 1963, pp. 111–114).
 the making of a borderland 47

military operations in Vitebsk province. In the neighboring Mogilev

province, a 250-man strong rebel unit on April 23 took the town of
Gory-Gorki, recruited several students of the local agricultural academy,
and left for the nearest forest. Five days later the unit, now reduced to
200 men, was annihilated by government troops. Several smaller groups
of insurgents in Mogilev province met the same end in the last days
of April. The most disturbing aspect of these defeats for the organiz-
ers of the uprising was that upon contact with regular army, the rebel
detachment would rapidly degenerate into a collection of stragglers,
easily picked up by local peasants who either killed their captives or
handed them over to government troops.12 The situation was just as
grim in Minsk province, where in the last week of April three guerilla
detachments were dispersed by government forces with devastating
losses for the rebels. In Vilno and Grodno provinces, where insurgents
managed to form larger and better disciplined detachments, they held
their own against the government forces for some time. Still, the defeat
of a large guerilla force, together with the capture of its commander,
Zygmunt Serakowski, was a major blow to the revolutionaries, as with
Serakowski’s capture they lost one of the most capable military leaders.
In Western Belarus small detachments continued to harass government
forces throughout late spring and summer of 1863. Romuald Traugutt,
whose detachment was skillfully using the tactics advocated earlier
by Bystrzonowski had managed to advance to its objectives through
the densely wooded areas, thus placing itself on the interior lines of
communications and was able to defeat regular units of the Russian
army. This, however, was an exception. Most guerilla forces were too
small, too badly trained and too poorly supplied to win pitched battles
against regular Russian troops. Despite the skilled leadership of their
commanders (mostly professional army officers) and the high courage
of individual fighters, they were forced to limit their actions to skir-
mishes and raids on undefended villages. Even those were becoming
increasingly difficult as the North-Western Territory became saturated
with Russian forces. According to official Russian figures (quoted
in Smirnov, 1963, p. 122), throughout the North-Western Territory
in April there were 11 major military actions against guerillas. This

12
Liaskovski, Smirnov and Fajnhaus provide accounts that, while varying in style
and interpretation, agree on the outcomes of most encounters between rebel forces and
government troops in the provinces of Vitebsk, Mogilev and Minsk in April 1863.
48 chapter one

number rose to 17 in May and then fell precipitously, to 3 in June and

just one in August. Smaller skirmishes were more numerous, but they
also exhibited the downward trend throughout the summer. One may
safely say that guerilla detachments on ethnic Belarusian and Lithu-
anian territories had ceased to be a military threat after May 1863 and
from then on presented an internal security problem. In other words,
the rebels managed to remain active contestants for the monopoly of
violence within the borders of former Grand Duchy of Lithuania for
two, maybe three months.
The revolutionaries did not lack brilliant military planners and dedi-
cated field commanders. The concept of organized guerilla warfare was
innovative and sound. However, in the territories with mostly Belarusian
population, leaders of the uprising simply did not have enough people
to make it work. Before the uprising, Polish military thinkers envisioned
forests and swamps as bases of operation from which rebel forces, invis-
ible and unreachable by government troops, would strike at strategically
important targets, consolidate control over territory, and move to the
next task. In reality, guerilla forces in the territories populated mostly
by Belarusians were too small to challenge the government’s control
over population centers or major communications, including telegraph
and railroad. No rebel detachment gained the critical mass needed suc-
cessfully to confront regular army units above battalion strength. As for
control over territory, insurgents generally failed to install their own
administration in populated areas. All they controlled were swathes of
wilderness. At the same time, government troops had almost complete
freedom of movement and their control over cities and towns was vir-
tually unchallenged. In rural areas, the most the insurgents could do
was to raid defenseless villages, destroy offices of local administration
and disappear into the forest before the arrival of government troops
(often alerted by the local peasants).
There was a clearly observable inverse correlation between the density
of active guerilla units and the density of ethnic Belarusian population.
According to Smirnov (1963, p. 123), there were 1229 military confron-
tations in the course of the uprising. Out of this number, only 247 took
place in the North-Western Territory, while the vast majority, more
than 940, occurred in the Congress Kingdom (the remaining confron-
tations took place in Volhynia and elsewhere in Ukraine). Within the
North-Western Territory, the highest density of military actions was
observed in lands with mostly Lithuanian population. In the province
of Kovno, there were 99 confrontations. The province of Vilno, with
its mixture of Lithuanian, Polish and Belarusian ethnic groups, saw 49
 the making of a borderland 49

confrontations. In Grodno province, where the concentration of ethnic

Poles was considerable and where the cross-border incursions of guerilla
detachments from the Congress Kingdom resulted in some of the more
successful operations of the uprising, the number of confrontations was
65. However, in Minsk province there were only 20 confrontations.
Farther east, there were only three encounters in Mogilev province and
just one in Vitebsk province.
Data on the participation of Belarusian peasants in the uprising are
sketchy. Smirnov, who employed an impressive quantity of archival
sources in his study of the uprising, fails to come up even with a rough
estimate of the number of peasants involved in the armed struggle. Fajn-
hauz provides a series of accounts of peasant enlistment in individual
rebel units and concludes that it was the largest in western provinces
and almost negligible in the east. According to his analysis, there was
a direct link between peasants’ ethnicity, as well as religious affiliation,
and their propensity to take part in rebellion. Poles, as well as Roman
Catholic Belarusians, were more likely to actively support the insur-
gents or to fight alongside them (Fajnhauz, p. 211). At the same time,
in eastern provinces, where peasants were predominantly Orthodox
Belarusians, their participation was very low. Fajnhaus mentions that
in the whole province of Mogilev only 41 peasants took place in the
insurrection (Fajnhauz, p. 218). Those peasants who did participate
tended to defect at the first confrontation with Russian forces. Examples
of such defections are mentioned by Smirnov (pp. 142, 145, 150).
Among those peasants who did not join the rebel forces, support for the
uprising was at best sporadic. In fact, more often then not, Belarusian
peasants chose to collaborate with Russian authorities by supplying
information about rebel movements and rounding up guerilla fighters
belonging to the units dispersed by Russian regular army. Fajnhauz,
while providing examples of peasants’ support for the rebels (mostly
in western provinces), mentions that in many cases the insurgents had
to keep at bay hostile crowds of local peasants (p. 213). He explains
the frequent hostility of the peasants in Minsk, Vitebsk and Mogilev
provinces by successful anti-Polish propaganda, spread by the Russian
government. Propaganda brochures printed in Russian and addressed
to the “Russian people” presented the uprising as an attempt by Polish
landlords to regain not only independence for Poland but also control
over their peasants (Fajnhauz, p. 212).
The vast majority of Belarusian peasants were ambivalent towards the
goals and aspirations of the insurgents. This is reflected in the numbers
of peasants who joined the government-organized village self-defense
50 chapter one

units (sel’skiye karauly). Smirnov puts the number of peasants in these

units at more than 21,000 for the whole North-Western Territory, out
of which 8,507 in Grodno province (Smirnov, 1963, p. 296). At the
same time, he mentions that at the highest point of the uprising, the
total number of rebel forces in Grodno province was 1,700 and calcu-
lates the total strength of the insurgent army for the North-Western
Territory to be between 12,000 and 15,000 armed guerilla fighters.
According to the most optimistic evaluations, ethnically Belarusian
peasants constituted less than 50 percent of rebel forces and generally
were the least reliable and stable component, prone to unpredictable
desertions. Thus, the comparison between participation of Belarusian
peasants in anti-government and pro-government armed units might
indicate that their loyalty lay predominantly with the existing author-
ity and not with the contending elites. The latter were seen as Polish
landlords and townsfolk acting for the benefit of the Polish national
cause and making vague promises of land grants and abolition of army
conscription to the peasants, while confiscating their foodstuffs and
pressing the able-bodied men into service.
The January uprising of 1863 was a brainchild of Polish intellectuals
and emigre politicians. Its leaders acted within the context of national
self-determination movements, widespread among the European
nations in the 19th century. Its main goal, stated more than once by
key figures among the revolutionaries, was the restoration of the Polish
Res Publica within the pre-Partition borders. Of course, politically the
restored Poland was to become a modern democratic state. However,
the revolutionary leaders envisioned it as a Polish national state, not a
confederation of Polish and non-Polish politically autonomous ethnic
territories. The revolutionaries saw their struggle as a Polish national
cause. It was presented this way to potential allies among European
governments, to European public opinion, to educated classes in the
Polish Kingdom and North-Western Territory of the Russian Empire,
and even to the Belarusian peasants whose participation in the uprising
was sought by the revolutionary leadership. When even the most radi-
cal separatists in the Lithuanian Section addressed the local peasants,
they referred to the Polish government as the guarantor of the com-
ing social reforms. Throughout the preparatory stages and the actual
armed struggle, Belarus was regarded as a crucial strategic theater
of operations, as a source of manpower for the revolutionary army,
but never as an actual or potential political entity separate from the
restored Polish state. Whatever the private aspirations of individual
members of the “red” faction of the Lithuanian Section, they did not
 the making of a borderland 51

style themselves as contenders for a Belarusian national state. The

uprising, while contributing to the continuation of Polish national
institutions in the period of Poland’s statelessness, did nothing to cre-
ate institutions of a Belarusian state. Throughout the uprising, Belarus
remained a borderland, a territory where a majority of the indigenous
population was forced to choose between two contestants, both seen
as foreign, neither attractive.
Was the 1863 uprising in the North Western Territory a movement
for Belarusian national independence or a Polish insurrection? As the
Belarusian peasantry did not show much enthusiasm for the armed
struggle, the debate over the uprising’s national character concentrates
on identities and aspirations of its leaders and active participants, almost
all of them members of the landed nobility or urban middle class. To
Polish researchers, e.g., Fajnhauz and Zholtowski, they are Poles, fight-
ing for a Polish national cause. Soviet historians, e.g., Smirnov, regard
the “Red” faction of the Lithuanian Committee as revolutionaries whose
agenda included both radical social reforms and national liberation.
Belarusian historians, e.g., Lych, Zaprudnik, tend to share the latter
view, only with a greater emphasis on the national liberation aspect.
Perhaps a less selective picture might emerge if one looks at the events
of 1863 against the background of European revolutionary movements
of the 19th century.
Europe is the birthplace of nationalist politics. Throughout the conti-
nent, 19th century Europeans were abandoning their old allegiances—to
the tribe, the prince, the locality—and lining up behind newly invented
national symbols. Movement towards liberal democracy frequently
followed the awakening of the national sentiment, thus including the
latter into a great panoply of modernity. Spearheading this process
were the new elites, educated, adventurous, seeking to change society
according to newly learned theories, ideas, and myths. In their quest
for leadership in the projected democratic societies, they appealed to
national sentiment as a source of legitimacy (and sometimes created
new nations in the process). Polish revolutionaries who led the uprising
of 1831, created a short-lived Krakow republic in 1846, and prepared
the armed rebellion of 1863 were inspired by the same combination
of democracy and nationalism as their counterparts in the rest of
continental Europe.
In the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania, local elites who were
inspired by the revolutionary Zeitgeist had choices: to join the emerging
liberal milieu in Saint Petersburg or Moscow (and become Russians
in the process), to become a member of Polish revolutionary circles in
52 chapter one

Warsaw (after 1831, in Paris), or to explore new roads to power. In the

first case, they would have to compete with people from all over the
huge empire for allegiance of the predominantly Russian population.
In the second case, should a Polish liberal revolution have succeeded,
most leadership positions would have been likely to be taken by people
from Warsaw and Krakow, not petty gentry from eastern provinces.
This made the third choice all the more attractive. Those members
of the Polish gentry who had few connections in imperial centers of
Russia and not enough income to provide for the impecunious career
of a professional revolutionary in Warsaw or an emigre politician in
Paris, often would become “political entrepreneurs”. It was a rational
choice. Local elites, many of them with roots in rural areas, were well
familiar with the lay of the land. They knew that an anti-Russian insur-
rection in the region would be supported by many small landowners.
They knew that those members of the petty gentry who were deprived
of their privileges and transformed into free peasants by the decree of
1836 would be a large reservoir of manpower for an uprising.
In addition to that, the new “political entrepreneurs” recognized
the presence of yet another potential participant in the planned armed
struggle: the local peasantry, voiceless, illiterate, nameless, but multi-
tudinous. To utilize the political potential of local peasantry, the con-
tending elites needed two things: first, a recognition of peasants as
free participants in the political process and second, a means to relate
themselves to peasants, to be able to get their message to potential
supporters. Already familiar with European revolutions, they had no
problem with the former. As for the latter, the proto-nationalist elites
needed to study the language spoken by the locals. Then they could write
in the language understood by their potential constituency and call upon
them to build a new and better society. Syrokomla (Kondratowicz), a
Polish-Lithuanian nobleman and poet, wrote in the vernacular about
the ill-fated and short-lived Krakow uprising of 1846:
Tam na Zahodzie praliwajuć kroŭ
Bjusćia dla slawy, swabody i cześci
I robiać wolnych ludzej z mużikoŭ.

(There in the west they spill blood,

Fighting for glory, freedom and honor
and make free men out of peasants.)13

13
Spelling, which is neither Polish nor Belarusian, is preserved as in the original.
 the making of a borderland 53

Of course, the peasants (to whom this poem was presumably addressed)
were not sufficiently well versed in the political geography of con-
temporary Europe to respond to the revolutionary events “there, in
the west”. The Krakow Republic was not really a peasant affair, so
invoking it would not spread a revolutionary mood even among those
few Belarusian peasants who knew where Krakow was located. The
incongruity of the example, however, was perhaps a less important
impediment to communication with the peasant than the simple fact
of their almost complete illiteracy. Seventeen years later, Konstanty
Kalinowski exhibited a great mastery of the Belarusian language in his
appeals to the local Belarusian peasantry to choose the side of the “Polish
government” in the struggle against Russian oppressors.14 Kalinowski
made a deliberate attempt to relate the insurrection of 1863 to the
contemporary democratic movements in Western Europe, as well as
political systems in England and France. Once again, the illiteracy of
potential recipients stymied the spread of his ideas which were likely
to leave the recipients ambivalent, as Belarusian peasants could not
care less about England’s parliamentary democracy or French political
liberalization. This point aside, Kalinowski acted like an astute politi-
cian who recognized that without support of Belarusian peasants, the
uprising in the former Ducal lands was doomed and who understood
that he had to speak their language to be heard.
The aftermath of the uprising actually contributed more to the devel-
opment of the Belarusian national institutions than did the insurrection
itself. Before 1863, the Russian authorities in the region did not object
to lower administrative positions being occupied by ethnic Poles.15
The Polish language and culture were tolerated. So was the Roman
Catholic Church, whose clergy, mostly Polish in their language and
culture, used their position to promote the cause of Poland’s national
liberation. Official attitude changed after the insurrection, which

14
In today’s discussion, Kalinowski the revolutionary overshadows Kalinowski the
ethnographer and linguist. His contribution to the development of the Belarusian
language is put in perspective by Mscislaw Olechnowicz (1986, p. 157), who describes
Kalinowski as a “Polish Belarusian folklorist” and mentions him together with Jan
Czeczot and Dunin-Marcinkiewicz, two authors commonly credited with the develop-
ment of the literary Belarusian language.
15
Liaskovski (1939, pp. 25–30) mentions that prior to the 1863 insurrection three
quarters of all administrative positions in the North-Western Territory were occupied
by Poles. This included administrative and technical positions in railroad network,
telegraph and mail services.
54 chapter one

authorities regarded as a purely Polish affair. Active participants in the

armed struggle received sentences ranging from death to deportation.
The number of persons executed on orders of Mikhail Muraviev, the
governor general of the territory in 1863–64, is estimated at 128 (one
hundred and twenty eight, a figure that looks insignificant against the
background of politically-motivated executions conducted by progres-
sive social movements of the 20th century). Various authors estimate
the number of those deported to the eastern provinces of Russia to be
anywhere between ten and twenty thousand. Polish landowners had
their estates confiscated and transferred to the Crown. Zholtowski
reports that those deported landowners whose property was not con-
fiscated outright were given two years to sell their estates to the buyers
of non-Polish origin (Zholtowski, 1950, p. 127). He estimates the loss
of Polish property in the region at one million acres (Zholtowski, 1950,
p. 127). Poles were removed from almost all administrative positions in
the regions. They were cleansed with particular thoroughness from the
educational system, which hitherto was dominated by local landlords
who actively promoted the Polish language as the medium of instruction
in all educational institutions above the village school level.
After the insurrection, the culturally and linguistically Polish popula-
tion of the North Western Territory has lost its dominant social position.
However, the Russian anti-Polish policies did not include promotion
of the local Belarusian culture or language. Instead, the authorities
implemented policies whose goal was to make the Russian culture and
language dominant in the region. In education, the Polish language
was fully replaced by Russian as the language of instruction in the
several years that followed the insurrection of 1863. Russian educa-
tional authorities did not consider even a limited introduction of the
Belarusian language in schools. Kornilov, Head of the Vilno education
district (which included most of the territory of today’s Belarus and
Lithuania) in the Muraviev administration, envisioned the education
reform in the region as yet another battle between the Poles and the
Russians. While the military confrontation ensured Russian control over
the territory, education was to ensure the Russian influence over the
soul of the local population. The Slavic part of the latter was defined
variably as “Russian” or “Belarusian”, while its language was invari-
ably referred to as “Russian”. In a fashion characteristic of Russian
official attitudes to ethnic minorities, educational administrators in the
region made a distinction between policies towards the Belarusian and
Lithuanian population. The former was treated as Russian, or at least
 the making of a borderland 55

potentially Russian, hence the insistence on the Russian language as

the sole medium of instruction. The latter was recognized as a separate
ethnic group, neither Polish nor Russian. Consequently, the Lithuanian
language at the lower levels of the educational system was allowed as
a vehicle of de-Polonization. Kornilov wrote that “for Lithuanians the
native language, the one spoken at home, is Lithuanian, while for the
Belarusian peasants it is Russian. Neither understand a word in Polish.
Consequently, the Lithuanians should be educated in Lithuanian, while
the Belarusians, in Russian” (Kornilov, pp. 134–135).
Treatment of Belarusians as West Russians, i.e., Russians who hap-
pened to live in the western provinces of the Russian Empire, was
widespread not only among imperial administrators, but also among
the educated Russian classes. Not only the Slavophiles, such as Ivan
Aksakov, referred to Belarus as West Russia, but liberal Westernized
economists, such as Piotr Struve and Sergei Yuzhakov, insisted that
economic progress demands that inhabitants of the western provinces
speak Russian and not the local dialect. Those Russian intellectuals who
studied the history and ethnography of Belarusian ethnic territories
tended to ignore the specific features of Belarusians which set them
apart from both Poles and Russians. Turchinovich (1857) presented the
history of Belarus as simply a continuous struggle between Lithuanians,
Poles, and Russian over a stretch of land populated by people who
passively endured armed conflict and continuous oppression. Several
decades later the same attitude, in a more elaborate form, was presented
in the works of Lappo. Gavorski and Koyalovich in their studies of the
local political scene emphasized the benefits of Russification and perils
of Polonization for the local population, while always maintaining that
the latter was “West-Russian”, with no identifiable national features
of its own. This vision of the population of western provinces of the
Empire had a strong and lasting impact on Russian public opinion.
An ideal-typical Belarusian was thought of as an impoverished peasant
suffering under intolerable oppression of an essentially foreign ruling
class and incapable of improving his lot without the help of the Rus-
sian nation.
Belarusians started the 19th century with no political or economic
institutions of their own. The only Belarusian institution that tran-
scended the boundaries of village community was the Uniate Church.
Decades of steady escalation of Russian influence in the region had
resulted in the planting of Russian administrative, legal, educational,
religious and economic structures onto the Belarusian soil. While
56 chapter one

undoubtedly more in line with an overall European movement towards

modernity, these institutions had not been Belarusian, either in their
design or in the national character of their participants. During the
19th century Belarusians lost their only national institution, the Uniate
Church. They lost the legacy of a proto-Belarusian legal system, as the
Lithuanian Statute of 1588, many provisions of which were still valid
even after the Partitions. The Statute was abolished in 1840, thus putting
an end to the practice of local elections and municipal self-government
(Wandycz, 1974, p. 125). In the course of the 1863 insurrection they
lost a generation of young men who might have been their political
leaders should the uprising have succeeded. They lost a generation of
intellectuals to Moscow and Saint-Petersburg where people born to
Belarusian families were taught to think of their land as nothing more
than an administrative region of the Russian Empire and their people
as a western branch of the great Russian nation.
In the aftermath of the January uprising, Belarusian national con-
sciousness seemed to be doomed to extinction. According to the census
of 1897 (as quoted by Zaprudnik, 1993, p. 63), however, in five provinces
of the North Western Territory 5.4 million people, 64 percent of the
total population, were identified as Belarusians. Weeks (1996, p. 237)
quotes census figures that indicate that share of Belarusian population
varied from 56.05% in Vilno province to 82.4% in Mogilev province. Of
this number, only 2.6 percent of Belarusians lived in urban centers, the
overwhelming majority being rural dwellers. Belarusians were mostly
peasants, but they made inroads into the educated strata of society.
According to Zaprudnik (1993, p. 63), about 40 percent of civil ser-
vants and 60 percent of teachers in the region identified themselves as
Belarusians. The Belarusian presence in other professional groups (they
comprised 29 percent of railroad and telegraph employees, 20 percent
of medical doctors and 10 percent of lawyers), although well below
the share of Belarusians in the general population, was by no means
negligible. Despite a century of a deliberate and efficient campaign
of Russification, supported by the immense resources of the Russian
Empire, Belarusian national identity survived and even spread from
its peasant base into educated social groups. This resilience requires at
least a brief explanation.
In the second half of the 19th century Belarusian territories experi-
enced rapid economic development accompanied by an equally rapid
population growth. Between 1863 and 1897, the population of Belarus
almost doubled, from 3.3 million to 6.5 million. The urban population
 the making of a borderland 57

increased at the same rate and reached 680,000 by 1897. However,

the process of urbanization in Belarusian ethnic territories was not as
pronounced as in other parts of the Russian Empire, since the growth
of the cities went apace with the growth of the general population. It
is unclear if there was substantial rural-urban migration. By the end
of the 19th century less than 10 percent of the population in the five
Belarusian provinces lived in urban centers (all figures quoted from
Zaprudnik, pp. 60–61). Another feature of Belarusian socio-economic
development that set the region apart from the neighboring parts of
the Russian Empire was a strangely disjointed pattern of urbanization,
industrialization and technological progress. According to Tsvikevich
(1993, p. 243), the number of industrial workers in Belarus increased
from 23,000 in 1866 to 560,000 in 1897, while industrial production
grew from 19 million roubles to 60 million roubles in the same period.
Thus, the absolute growth in industrial employment exceeded the
absolute growth of urban population. This discrepancy suggests that in
Belarusian provinces new industrial enterprises tended to emerge in the
countryside and therefore did little to influence urban development. As
a threefold growth in industrial output was accompanied by an almost
twenty fivefold increase in industrial employment, industrial productiv-
ity must have virtually collapsed. Apparently, the new industries did
not involve technological innovations but rather presented increased
demand for unskilled and badly paid labor whose productivity was
negligible. In the last decades of the 19th century the region attracted
primary sector industries involved in extraction and crude processing
of natural resources. The latter, mostly peat and timber, did not require
substantial capital investment, therefore the emergent enterprises were
not hampered by the fact that almost seventy percent of the labor force
could not read or write.
However primitive the industry, its expansion presented a demand
for technicians, supervisors and administrators who, unlike the workers,
had to be literate. Many regions of the Russian Empire in the second
half of the nineteenth century experienced explosive economic growth.
In most of them, the pay and promotion outlook for low and middle
level technicians and managers were considerably better than in the
North Western Territory. Consequently, the newly emerged Belarusian
industries had to recruit managers and technicians locally.
There was one ethnic group which would be a logical choice as a
source of skilled labor. Lands of today’s Belarus lay within the so-called
Pale of Settlement, the only territory within the Russian Empire where
58 chapter one

Jews were allowed to reside and outside of which they could only settle
under exceptional circumstances and with government permission.
According to Weeks (1996, pp. 86, 89), Jewish share of population,
while below 20% overall, was close to fifty percent in many towns and
cities, varying from 40% in Vilno to 55% in Mogilev. Jewish predomi-
nance in crafts and trades, as well as their educational level, which was
considerably higher than that of Belarusians, made this ethnic group a
proto-middle class (Weeks, 1996, p. 77). However, Jews could not be
employed on government jobs (including post office and railroad) due
to the officially sanctioned anti-Semitism (Weeks, 1996, pp. 59–64),
while the newly emerging jobs in private sector tended to be located
in rural areas, away from the cities and towns where Jewish population
of the region concentrated.
Had the industrial expansion occurred before the mass de-Poloniza-
tion of the ethnically Belarusian provinces in the wake of the January
Uprising, the local Polish-Lithuanian gentry and urban lower-middle
class would have provided a suitably large pool of candidates. After the
Uprising, this pool having been drained by mass imprisonments and
deportations, new employers (many of them Russian absentee landlords
who benefitted from the government policy of the sale of confiscated
Polish estates at below the fair market value) turned to the Belarusian
graduates of the local, now thoroughly Russified, school system. The
latter included elementary schools of the Ministry of Public Educa-
tion as well as parish schools run by the Russian Orthodox Church.
Tsvikevich (1993, pp. 244, 245) reports that in 1899 there were about
1,500 government run elementary schools and more than 5,500 parish
schools in four ethnically Belarusian provinces (Grodno, Minsk, Vitebsk
and Mogilev). In addition to that, there were 23 secondary schools, all
run by the Ministry of Public Education. Tsvikievich estimates that in
1899 elementary schools in the provinces of Vilno, Grodno, Minsk and
Mogilev were attended by 300,000 students. According to Kornilov,
teachers and educational administrators from Russia’s heartland were
reluctant to relocate to the western provinces. These positions had to
be filled by local, mostly ethnic Belarusian, educators.
Nationally-minded Belarusian researchers, from Tsvikevich in the
1920s to Lych in 2001, did not fail to notice the policy of Russification
behind the Russian government effort to establish a viable educational
system in ethnic Belarusian provinces. It is not quite clear to what extent
the Russifying intentions of official educators became a reality. True,
the schools, run by the government and the Russian Orthodox Church
 the making of a borderland 59

not only educated, but also indoctrinated their students in the official
ideology of Russian imperialism. However, while the schools did suc-
ceed in reducing illiteracy, they failed as instruments of Russification.
Belarusian graduates of elementary schools were educated in the Russian
language, but they kept using the vernacular at home. Moreover, the
difference between the two languages must have highlighted the fact
that they belong to a distinct, non-Russian ethnicity. Thus, the system
of elementary education established in ethnic Belarusian provinces by
Russian authorities annually produced hundreds of thousands of people
literate in the Russian language who did not forget that their first,
native, tongue was Belarusian. Owing to a peculiar pattern of regional
industrial development, graduates of elementary, as well as secondary
technical, schools were likely to find employment in the countryside,
thus remaining within the familiar rural Belarusian linguistic and
cultural environment. Far from Russifying the western provinces, the
educational system created a sizeable group of people opened to an idea
of Belarus as a nation in its own right. The idea itself had to originate
among a social group with time, money, and education.
The awakening of Polish elites, mostly those who lived in ethnically
Belarusian regions to the fact that Belarusian peasants were different
from both Poles and Russians and constitute a separate nationality
was a gradual process. In what is today Belarus, this discovery took
almost a century to accomplish and was accompanied by all sorts of
confusion as to the identity of the newly discovered native popula-
tion. Polish ethnographers used different names to identify the natives
linguistically, ethnically and territorially. In addition to that, different
researchers used different names.
The language spoken by the local peasants was variously defined
as Kriwiczeski (Kriwiczeskije pesni), Krewicki (idiotyzmy Krewickie),
Rusinski (Rusiny i ich język), Rutenski, Ruski, Białoruski. Sometimes
the definition Ruski or Rusinski is qualified parenthetically as Białoruski
or Białorusinski. At least once there is a clear distinction between
what the author calls Russian dialect (“dialekt ruski”) and Muscovite
dialect (“dialekt moskiewski”). Ethnically local rural population was
defined as “lud litewsko-krewicki”, Rusiny, Białorusiny. Sometimes
a distinction is made between Pinczuki (population of the Polessie
region) and Białorusiny. At least one author refers to the typical local
peasant as Russian peasant (“chłop ruski”). In terms of geography,
the territory occupied by ethnic group (groups) mentioned above
was frequently divided into three parts: Rus Litewska (sometimes Rus
60 chapter one

Czarna Litewska), Polesie pinskie (as opposed to Polesie wolynskie)

and Białoruś. While the boundaries of Polesie were very much agreed
upon, different authors provided different boundaries for the first two
parts. Sometimes, even Minsk region, located in the center of ethnically
Belarusian territories, would be included in Rus Litewska. Obviously,
“Lithuanian” (Litewska) in this definition does not point to a mixture
of Slavic and Lithuanian ethnic groups but refers to the fact that the
identified territory was located within the borders of the former Grand
Duchy of Lithuania.16
The confusing multitude of names used to identify the same ethnic
group indicates that Polish researchers, while understanding that a
majority of the rural population in the region were culturally and
linguistically distinct from Poles and Russians, did not agree on the
ethnic and linguistic classification of this population. Of course, the
differences should not be attributed solely, or perhaps even mostly,
to conscious disagreement. Polish ethnographers who studied local
cultures and customs tended to be educated amateurs, often working
in relative isolation from a broader academic community. Thus, each
researcher was likely to come up with his/her own system of definitions,
classification, categories, etc. Even though the fragmented nature of the
research does not account for all inconsistencies (the latter persisted
until the end of the 19th century, by which time individual researchers
must have become aware of each others’ work), it does explain some
of them.
As for Russian officials in the North-Western Territory, they blithely
identified non-Polish and non-Lithuanian peasants as “Russians” and
their language as “Russian”. It may be argued that the word “Byelorus-
sian” when used by a 19th century Russian had more to do with the
title of the Russian Tsar as the autocratic ruler of all Great, Little and
White Russia (Velikiya, Malyya i Belyya Rusi) than with a deliberate
attempt to define an ethnically distinct entity.17 All these bewildering
disagreements illustrate an important point: there was no significant

16
Detailed information about Polish researchers of Belarusian culture in the 19th
century is provided in Olechnowicz, Mstislaw (1986), Polscy Badacze Folkloru i Języka
Białoruskiego w XIX Wieku.
17
An illuminating quote from the Russian geographer Semionov highlights the
predominant perception by the Russian educated classes of Belarusians as Russians
by another name: “The Belarusian will take his rightful place in his ancestral Russian
land, the place not of a stepson, but of a natural son.” (Quoted in Koyalovich, p. 456,
italics added).
 the making of a borderland 61

plurality within the local population in what is now Belarus that would
call themselves Belarusians. More than one contemporary author
reported that in the 19th century Belarusian peasants tended to avoid
the question of nationality altogether and identified themselves sim-
ply as “locals”. To a considerable extent, the emergence and spread
of Belarusian national consciousness can be attributed to work of the
ethnographers, folklorists, linguists, amateur poets and playwrights.
The cultural habits of isolated village communities, dialects of remote
regions, legends told by anonymous storytellers were painstakingly
collected and recorded by these researchers. When publication of these
findings made them available for discussion and comparison, they,
like pieces of a puzzle, formed a coherent picture of a nation, with its
unique culture, language and customs. The newly literate Belarusians
then could see their language and culture not just as “local”, rural and
backward, but as linguistic and cultural identifiers that made them
equal to other nations.
Writing about the last two decades of the 19th century, when educa-
tion provided by Russian schools and economic development spurred
by Russian investment created the local readership for ethnographic
Belarusian publications, Alyaksandar Tsvikevich wrote: “The educated
Belarusian then was able for the first time to look at the world with his
own eyes, without the spectacles of Polishness.” (Tsvikevich, p. 191).
However, purely ethnographic presentation of Belarusian culture and
language hardly inspired the incipient nationalism. Ethnographers reg-
istered cultural and linguistic elements that were simple and archaic,
apparently of ancient origin but hopelessly outdated, lacking urbanity
and glamor, well suited for survival against all odds but hardly relevant
in the rapidly changing world of the nineteenth century. From unas-
suming rural and demotic origins the Belarusian national idea had to
be developed into a foundation suitable for modern nationalism. By
the end of the 19th century, Belarus possessed national culture, but
had not yet developed a nationally-informed civil society. Tsvikievich
and his colleagues among the ethnic Belarusian intelligentsia set out to
develop the new network of discourse, one in which Belarusians would
exchange ideas about Belarus in the Belarusian language. While the
demotic aspect could remain—after all, the awakening of the masses
was an integral part of modernization—the lack of sophistication and
glamor had to be compensated for.
The national image of the Belarusian people was created in the
late 19th and early 20th century by a number of poets, writers and
62 chapter one

playwrights. While the ethnographers registered the existence of the

Belarusian ethnic group as a separate cultural and linguistic entity, the
literary intelligentsia worked to present this entity to the world in
the best possible light. The first writers to use the Belarusian language
as a literary medium emphasized its complexity and flexibility, sufficient
to express subtle and sophisticated thoughts and images. Dunin-Mar-
cinkiewicz, playwright, poet and folklorist, was one of the first writers
to use the vernacular consistently in his works. Among his great feats
was the translation of a poem by Adam Mickiewicz from Polish into
Belarusian. The poem, Pan Tadeusz is an account of the life of the Pol-
ish gentry in the post-partition Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Mickiewicz
painted a hauntingly romantic picture of a unique civilization, steeped
in ancient glory, rich with emotions, sustained by honor and loyalty
and love, fading away before a relentless onslaught of the new world,
often hostile, always cold and heartless. Mickiewicz, himself a native
of Nowogrodek (now Novogrudok, a small town approximately fifty
miles west of Minsk), set his poem in the vicinity of his ancestral home.
The poem has become one of the most recognizable works in Polish
romantic poetry. Just like the author, it is undoubtedly Polish, and just
as undoubtedly has sprung from the land, customs and traditions of the
Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Dunin-Marcinkiewicz’s translations thus
had a dual ambition: first, to prove that the language spoken by the
local peasantry was rich and flexible enough to express the emotions
of one of the best poetic works ever written in the Polish language and
second, to remind the reader that the Grand Duchy of Lithuania was
not just an extension of Poland but a complex intermingling of vari-
ous languages, cultures and traditions of which the Belarusian side was
perhaps just as important as the Polish one. Dunin-Marcinkiewicz also
translated into Belarusian one of the Polish patriotic hymns, Boże, coś
Polskę. The hymn, which became the anthem of the 1863 uprising and
was regarded as subversive by the Russian authorities, asked for divine
help in the restoration of Poland’s ancient glory and dignity. There is
no mention, however indirect, of Belarus or Belarusians in any of the
several known versions of the text. Translation of a Polish popular
patriotic song into the Belarusian language could only be interpreted
as a call to preserve the fabric of old Grand Duchy of Lithuania whose
destiny had been for centuries tied to Poland.
Dunin-Marcinkiewicz, a member of the Polish gentry from Minsk
province, also wrote several plays where the stage was set in the familiar
environment of the Belarusian village. The first play in the Belarusian
vernacular, Sialianka (A Peasant Woman) was published in 1846 and
 the making of a borderland 63

later staged in Minsk. Interestingly, the peasant characters in the play

spoke Belarusian, while the gentry conversed in Polish. In a sense, the
play did not advance the cause of Belarusian nationalism. Rather, it
was a reminder that both Polish landlords and Belarusian peasants
have human dignity and worth. The author again turned to the best
traditions of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, real or imagined. However,
any advance of Belarusian nationalism demanded more than a simple
reflection about the equality of Belarusians and their language with other
languages and nations of the regions. New Belarusian national activists
needed a national ideology, with its own myths, stories, and ideas, which
could justify political action towards national self-determination.
The next generation of Belarusian literary figures started to build just
such an ideology. Franciszek Bohuszewicz, a lawyer from Vilno and an
amateur poet, chided Marcinkiewicz for the allegedly patronizing and
condescending view of the Belarusian peasant. Bohuszewicz, who in
his writings styled himself as a local peasant and wrote in the pungent
if not too esthetically elaborate vernacular, set out to establish a suit-
able provenance for the Belarusian language. In more than one of his
writings Bohuszewicz asserted that the Belarusian tongue is “as noble
as French, German, or any other”. As the contemporary state of the
Belarusian language as a literary, scholarly or political medium could
hardly support this claim, Bohuszewicz chose to refer to its presumed
antiquity. On more than one occasion he wrote that centuries old docu-
ments of the state, composed by lords and Grand Dukes, were written
in the Belarusian language which linguistically was indistinguishable
from the language spoken by Belarusians in the late 19th century.
Perhaps no more than a literary hyperbole, these statements were later
elevated to an axiomatic status by Belarusian historians, linguists and
nationalist politicians.
The active creation of a Belarusian national identity by intellectuals
and literary figures continued into the first decade of the 20th cen-
tury. Then it centered around the literary periodical Nasha Niva (Our
Field). Published from 1906 to 1915, the newspaper was meant as a
replacement for another periodical, Nasha Dolia (Our Fate). The lat-
ter, a radical political weekly, existed for less than two months before
it was closed by the Russian authorities. Nasha Dolia was founded by
the leadership of the Belarusian Socialist Hramada,18 one of the first

18
Hramada can be translated as a host, a gathering or an assembly, although the
latest translation implies structure and order absent in the original meaning of the word.
The word Hramada entered Belarusian political vocabulary in 1902, when the brothers
64 chapter one

Belarusian political parties. Among the most prominent figures of

the Nasha Niva circle were the brothers Anton and Ivan Lutskevich,
Alaiza Pashkevich (literary sobriquet Tsiotka), Felix Umiastouski, and
Alyaksandar Ulasau. All of them were among the founding members
of the socialist movement in Belarus. Thus, Nasha Niva, ostensibly a
literary publication, from the very start had a dual purpose: to serve
as a vehicle of both national awakening and social liberation. Its sig-
nificance for the development of the Belarusian language and literature
is truly monumental. Virtually all writers who later were enshrined as
founders of the Belarusian literary canon owe their status to the Nasha
Niva circle which actively sought, publicized and promoted those
writers and poets who exhibited extraordinary promise. The plethora
of Belarusian national writers associated with Nasha Niva included
Janka Kupala and Jakub Kolas, whose works are regarded as classics of
Belarusian literature by Belarusians of all political persuasions. Maxim
Harecki, Zmitrok Biadulia, Maxim Bahdanovich and Ales Harun, albeit
of somewhat lesser stature, are officially recognized as members of the
Belarusian literary pantheon.
Interestingly, Nasha Niva, the fountainhead of modern Belarusian
nationality, owed its existence to the change in linguistic policies of
Russian imperial administration in North-Western Territory. Accord-
ing to Weeks (1996, p. 67), alarmed by the renewed Polish influence
in the region, Russian authorities started to promote the use of the
Belarusian language as an anti-Polish measure. Thus Belarus made the
first step toward a nationally-informed civil society with the help of
the Russian government.
Not only did Nasha Niva create the modern Belarusian literary canon,
it also offered space for the publication of literary pieces written in the
Belarusian language by thousands of amateur contributors. According
to Vakar (p. 87), in three years the newspaper printed 960 items of cor-
respondence from 489 villages, 246 poems by 61 poets, and 91 stories
by an unspecified number of authors. It also contributed to creating
a new Belarusian nationalist paradigm. Echoing Bohuszewicz’s claim
about the antiquity and nobility of the Belarusian language, one of the
more influential members of the literary circle, Liavon Hmyrak, wrote in

Ivan and Anton Lutskevich founded the Belarusian Revolutionary Hramada. Since
then, Hramada has been used in names of several political parties of left socialist and
social-democratic orientation.
 the making of a borderland 65

1914 that Belarusian “for centuries has been the official state language,
it was used to write laws, it was predominant in all state institutions;
princes and courtiers spoke Belarusian . . .” (quoted in Lych, p. 37).
Vaclav Lastouski, an amateur historian and future prime minister of
the short-lived Belarusian People’s Republic, also collaborated with the
Nasha Niva circle. In 1910 he published the first account of Belarusian
history written in the Belarusian language. The book, Short History of
Belarus, was a popularization of a romanticized version of Belarusian
history. Its contribution to the advancement of historical knowledge was
not as important as its role in the awakening of the Belarusian reader
to the existence of a reasonably coherent national idea, newly created
by the Nasha Niva group.
Many of the figures central to the literary movement affiliated with
Nasha Niva were ethnic Poles. Tsvikevich (pp. 312–313) identifies the
founders and core participants of the Belarusian Socialist Hramada and
Nasha Niva as “Belarusian populist intelligentsia of Polish culture”.19
These pioneers of the Belarusian national idea came from families of
small gentry and received some high school education. Vakar is more
specific about their educational background: among the Nasha Niva
circle, one person had university education, two received “a more or
less formal education”, most “hardly rise above the rural level of lit-
eracy” (p. 90). Attempting to advance a radical social cause by means
of a nationally-minded literary periodical, these people addressed the
audience that consisted mostly of those not unlike themselves: rural
lower middle classes and literate peasants. Tsvikevich (p. 313) insists that
the main constituency of the populist authors and aspiring politicians
consisted of the poorest peasants. While it is likely an overstatement,
as this social group would be the least likely to read a literary publica-
tion, owing to widespread illiteracy, it is no doubt a correct reflection of
their intentions. Their nation-constructing efforts were directed towards
peasants who had little access to Russian or Polish culture and thus
were more open to the Belarusian nationalist propaganda, especially if
the latter was combined with calls for social change.
The influence of Nasha Niva should be seen in perspective. Never
did its circulation exceed forty five hundred; a more typical figure is

19
Not all of the Nasha Niva figures were of Polish origin. Vakar (p. 90) mentions
Belarusians, Russians, Jews and even one Latvian among the group’s most prominent
members.
66 chapter one

three thousand. This was just a drop in a bucket for a country with a
Belarusian population of six million. Still, its influence in the develop-
ment of the Belarusian national idea transcended the modest circulation
figures and continued long after the last issue left the printing press.
Alumni of Nasha Niva found their way to both nationalist and Bolshevik
state structures that emerged in the wake of the Bolshevik revolution of
1917. Some of them continued to influence the evolution of the Belaru-
sian national ideology throughout the 1920s as officials of the Soviet
Belarusian government, until the change of national policy resulted in
their liquidation. Works of Janka Kupala, Jakub Kolas and Kondrat
Krapiva, all of whom belonged to the Nasha Niva circle, remained in
print throughout the most oppressive periods of the Soviet era. The
founders of Nasha Niva did succeed in creating a coherent national
ideology and spreading it among an important plurality of ethnically
Belarusian population.
To a very large extent, modern Belarusian nationalism had been cre-
ated by a group of literary romantics with pronounced socialist views
and political aspirations. Both socialism and romanticism, the latter
perhaps with more than a hint of melancholy, are quite discernible in
the Belarusian national idea. It extolls simple virtues of a poor peasant:
hard work, communal spirit, healthy simplicity of tastes and aspirations
and, above all, an innate sense of social justice and equality. Belarusian
nationalism is tolerant, non-aggressive, asking for Belarusians to be left
alone, to work without fear of foreign conquest or oppression. Other
nations within ethnic Belarusian territory are quite welcome, if they
are not seeking domination over the native Belarusians. However, tol-
erance does not mean inclusion: Belarusian virtues are set against the
background of other peoples’ vices, thus making it imperative to hold
on to national identity. A vision of national history constructed by the
literary nationalists of Nasha Niva also has an imprint of populist values.
Somehow, truly Belarusian state structures are projected back to the
high middle ages. Only then one can find Belarusian upper classes, great
princes, statesmen and thinkers. Then, mostly owing to Polish intrigue,
the rulers and thinkers defected en masse to Polish culture and the
Roman Catholic religion, leaving the Belarusian idea to peasants who
managed to preserve it for many centuries. The betrayal of Belarus by
its upper classes was a prominent theme in contemporary Belarusian
national discourse. Layers of customs, traditions, conventions, which
were accumulated for centuries in the old Grand Duchy of Lithuania
and survived decades after its final demise, although antiquated, held
 the making of a borderland 67

together a framework of social institutions that regulated relation-

ships between numerous groups, estates and classes. For Belarusians,
as their national sentiment grew more pronounced, these institutions
were gradually losing relevance, but they were not supplanted by an
equally complex modern institutional framework. Instead, national
identity and social class were telescoped into one. A Belarusian could
only be a peasant and a peasant who lived on Belarusian ethnic territory
could only be Belarusian. Of course, a political entrepreneur seeking a
new power base or a poet seeking to agitate the national spirit would
be a Belarusian as well. Memory of the threadbare social fabric of the
Grand Duchy of Lithuania now discarded, the newly created Belarusian
nationalism offered a new social paradigm, which conflated nation
and class and did not include provisions for institutions between the
leaders and the people.
Nasha Niva offered a kernel of Belarusian civil society, a network
where discourse was conducted in Belarusian and dealt with Belarusian
national issues. Even in this embryonic form, the radically demotic
nature of the new civil society was apparent. Belarusian nationality
was associated with social status of peasant (sometimes worker), while
the Poles were invariably presented as feudal landlords or capitalists.
The emerging middle class, where Jews would be strongly represented
owing to their superior education, was conflated with Jewish national-
ity. While most of the Belarusian national myth was presented in the
Belarusian-Polish dichotomy, the role of Jewish communities in Belarus
was either neglected or mentioned briefly and presented in less than
positive light (e.g. Ezovitov, 1919).
The political liberalization that followed in the wake of the first Rus-
sian revolution of 1905 illustrated how unviable were Belarusian national
political parties and movements. When the autocratic oppression was
lifted and at least a segment of the population was allowed to participate
in the political process, few Belarusians chose to use this opportunity to
advance their national cause. In March 1906, the first Duma elections
in the ethnically Belarusian provinces produced a result which could
hardly be interpreted as a sign of Belarusian national entry onto the
political scene. Despite half a century of deliberate suppression of Polish
cultural, political and religious prominence in the western provinces,
there was a surprisingly high percentage of ethnic Poles among the
newly elected Duma deputies. Polls in Vilno province produced seven
deputies, all of them Poles. The province of Grodno sent six delegates
to the Duma, three of them Poles. In the province of Minsk, seven of
68 chapter one

the nine elected deputies were Poles.20 These deputies were unlikely to
pursue the Belarusian national cause, as no political party representing
such a cause had been given a single seat in the Duma. According to
Vakar (pp. 86–87), the political sympathies of Belarusians were distrib-
uted among the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Social-Democrats (both
parties with no identifiable national orientation), the Constitutional
Democrats (of imperial Russian persuasion), the Polish National-Demo-
cratic Party and the Jewish Bund. Not surprisingly, none of the elected
Duma deputies had an affiliation with a party committed to a Belarusian
political revival. The Hramada boycotted the elections, probably fear-
ing that a dismal performance at the polls would demonstrate its lack
of a power base. As a result, the Belarusian national cause received no
representation in the first Duma. More importantly, Belarusian nation-
alist politicians chose not to participate in an electoral campaign, thus
depriving themselves of a valuable political experience.
Belarus entered the “long 19th century” as a part of the Grand Duchy
of Lithuania, a unique multiethnic conglomerate where local roots of
the educated elite were just as important as their cultural ties to Poland
and, through Poland, to Europe. Belarus ended the “long 19th century”
as a separate nation, with an identifiable culture, nationally-informed
civil society, national mythology and aspirations of independent nation-
hood. However, crucial institutions had not yet emerged. On the verge
of the first World War, Belarus had nationally-minded literary figures
and amateur politicians. It did not have a well developed system of
national political discourse, where various political persuasions could
be discussed in an essentially national context. It did not have politi-
cians with an experience of successful competition for office, military
leaders who knew how to command a unit above a regiment strength,
administrators or bureaucrats. One might say, Belarus did not have a
nationally minded cadre who could create and run a modern nation.
In the 20th century, this was about to change.

20
All data regarding the share of ethnic Poles among the Duma deputies elected in
1906 are quoted from Zholtowski, p. 137.
 CHAPTER TWO

EX ORIENTE LUX: THE BELARUSIAN NATIONAL STATE

AND THE SOVIET UNION

1. A discordant overture to nationhood (1914–1921)

In the opening years of the First World War, German armies occu-
pied much of the ethnically Belarusian territory, including the cities of
Minsk and Vilno.1 On the Russian side of the frontline, the territory
within Belarusian ethnic boundaries was under control of the military
administration. The latter was even less inclined to allow independent
national development than its civilian counterpart. Germans, on the
other hand, did have a stake in supporting national aspirations of the
former subject peoples of the Russian Empire. Belarusian national elites
(many of them of the Nasha Niva provenance), since their emergence
devoid of political power, found that a modicum of influence could
be obtained from the occupation authority, which was prepared to be
benevolent to the extent that Belarusian nation-building was deemed
useful to Germany’s national interests.
According to Nicholas Vakar, the Belarusian national intelligentsia in
the territory occupied by the German army did not plan to establish an
independent Belarusian state. Belarusian nationalists in Vilno, headed
by Ivan and Anton Lutskevich, two brothers who were among the
founders of Belarusian national movement in the Russian Empire, had

1
Today Vilnius, the capital city of Lithuania. It was known as Vilno in pre-revo-
lutionary Russia and Wilno in inter-war Poland. It is hard to characterize Vilno as
a Belarusian city. Demographically, it never had a substantial plurality of ethnically
Belarusian population. Before 1939, the intellectual life of the city was dominated by
its Polish and Jewish communities. Economically, the presence of Belarusians was neg-
ligible. Political power was in the hands of Lithuanians, then Poles, then Russians. As
Belarusian nationalism started to emerge in the late 19th century, its founders tended
to congregate in Vilno, then the administrative and cultural center of the region. The
city continued to have the highest concentration of national Belarusian organizations
in non-Soviet Belarusian lands between the wars. It was transferred to Lithuania by
the Soviet authorities in 1939. As Belarusian nationalists considered the Grand Duchy
of Lithuania an ancient Belarusian state, they treated Vilno (Vilnia in Belarusian), the
largest and most important of all Ducal cities, as the focal point of the “Golden Age”
of Belarusian national development.
70 chapter two

realistically limited aspirations. They approached the German occupa-

tion authorities asking for protection of the interests of Belarusians in
the occupied zone. It was the Germans who suggested to the Belarusian
nationalists in Vilno that formation of an independent Belarusian state,
under German tutelage, might be a possibility. Interestingly enough, at
the time Belarusian national leaders were reluctant to proceed alone,
even with the clearly stated German support. Instead, they planned to
resurrect the Grand Duchy of Lithuania as a political structure that, in
addition to Belarusians, would include Lithuanian, Polish and Jewish
ethnic communities. Consultations among Belarusian, Polish, Lithu-
anian and Jewish national activists in Vilno led to a joint declaration
issued on December 19, 1915. The signatories stated their intention
to form a Confederation of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, in which
Lithuania and Belarus would be independent member states. The Ger-
mans, while conferring equal rights upon all languages on the occupied
territory and approving the idea of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, had
developed a somewhat different vision of the prospective new state.
Perhaps impressed by the strength of the Lithuanian national move-
ment, they now suggested a Lithuanian state that would also include
Belarusian lands under German occupation. Belarusians requested that
the Germans include those ethnically Belarusian territories that had not
yet been conquered. The number of Belarusians in the proposed state,
and therefore the political power of Belarusian elites, now depended
on the battlefield success of the German army.
While the Belarusian national intelligentsia negotiated particulars of
the future Belarusian national statehood with Polish, Lithuanian, and
Jewish nationalists, as well as with German occupation authorities, on
the Eastern side of the frontline another center of nation-building was
taking shape. The Bolshevik message of radical and bloody social change
was spreading among the masses of illiterate, confused and demoral-
ized soldiers of the Russian imperial army. At first, this process seemed
to be unrelated to the future of the Belarusian nation. Few Bolshevik
agitators were of Belarusian origin, and those who were worked for the
world revolution, not for Belarusian national independence. Some local
peasant organizations had a vague national aspect, but the Bolsheviks
did not seek cooperation with them (Nedasek, p. 47). On those rare
occasions when the Bolsheviks found it useful to spread their message
among the peasants, they did so in Russian (Nedasek, p. 49), which was
just as well as the majority of peasants was illiterate in any language.
 ex oriente lux 71

Bolsheviks in ethnically Belarusian territories concentrated their

mobilizing efforts on soldiers, most of whom were not Belarusians.
This explains their lack of interest in exploring the potential appeal
of a Communist message to the Belarusian population. In fact, an
attempt to couch Bolshevism in national Belarusian terms was taking
place far from Belarus, in Petrograd. There, in the summer of 1917,
a group of Belarusian refugee intelligentsia, previously associated
with the Hramada political movement and Nasha Niva literary circle,
formed the Belarusian Social-Democratic Party (Bolsheviks). For the
first time, the Belarusian national intelligentsia could avail itself of the
organization, efficiency and ruthlessness of which the Bolsheviks have
become famous.
Absent such a symbiosis, the Belarusian national cause fared rather
badly. Bolsheviks seized control over Minsk on November 1, 1917
(November 15 new style), just a week after the revolution in Petro-
grad. On December 14, Belarusian national activists organized the
First Belarusian Convention. With 1,872 delegates, it was the most
representative gathering of Belarusian political, intellectual and cul-
tural figures to date. The Convention opened with Belarusian folk
dances and songs, theatrical performances and declamation of poems
in Belarusian. The expansive panoply of cultural performances was
perhaps intended to provide a suitably Belarusian backdrop to a gather-
ing where three quarters of the delegates conversed in Russian (Vakar,
p. 247). The Bolshevik authorities did not mind the cultural exercises.
Political discussion was another matter, especially when it was about
the national self-determination. A substantial plurality of the delegates
wanted to establish an independent Belarusian state, something that the
Bolsheviks were not prepared to tolerate. Before the Convention had a
chance to vote on the issue, soldiers dispatched by the commander of
the Minsk military garrison dispersed the gathering and arrested the
most prominent delegates. The Convention worked for only four days
and was not allowed to produce any significant decision. However, it
had secured an important place in the history of Belarusian national
development. For the first time, Belarusian national activists openly
discussed a possibility of formation of an independent state. On the
other hand, while the idea of Belarusian national statehood had been
expressed, its supporters were clearly unable to use force to defend it.
This presaged the relationship between Belarusian nationalism and
political power in the 20th century.
72 chapter two

Bolshevik forces left Minsk shortly after the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk

was concluded between Germany and the Bolshevik government of
Russia. As the German forces entered Minsk on March 8, 1918, they
found the Belarusian activists desperately trying to create working
government structures and establish at least a semblance of control
over the territory recently vacated by the Bolsheviks. The arrival of the
Germans meant that the maintenance of public order had become a
responsibility of the German army, thus leaving the Belarusian national
leaders free to continue their work of nation-building. There was an
unexpected complication: there already existed a national Belarusian
government in Vilno, elected by a Belarusian National Assembly on
February 10, 1918. Chaired by Anton Lutskevich, it was recognized by
the Germans and had its own vision of the future Belarusian state, a
multinational confederation consisting of Belarusian and Lithuanian
lands. The Vilno government referred to it as a Lithuanian Belarusian
State. This vision was clearly in conflict with the idea of a purely Belaru-
sian national state expressed at the First Belarusian Convention and
held by its most active participants who now claimed to speak for the
whole Belarusian nation. The rival factions were promptly reconciled,
with more than a little encouragement by the German occupation
administration. Representatives of Vilno and Minsk nationalist groups
met in Minsk on March 25, 1918 and proclaimed the first Belarusian
state: the Belarusian People’s Republic (BPR). The latter possessed all
the attributes of an independent state but one: an armed force sufficient
to secure the state’s independence. The BPR administration was formed
barely a month after the Germans entered Minsk. It fled the city on
December 16, 1918, a full week before the German retreat.
The proclamation of the first independent Belarusian state has
assumed immense symbolic significance for Belarusian nationalist
intellectuals and politicians. To them, the events of March 25, 1918
proved both the that Belarus could exist as an independent nation-state
and promised its resurrection some time in the future. The anniversary
of the proclamation of BPR is celebrated by nationalist movements
in post-Soviet Belarus. For the vast majority of Belarusians, the date
and events it signify mean very little, as their everyday life has no vis-
ible reminders of what happened in Minsk on March 25, 1918. It is
unlikely that, had they remembered the events in the fullest detail, they
would found them a source of inspiration. The BPR was proclaimed
by a group of politicians who appointed themselves as members of
government. There was no attempt to conduct general elections or any
 ex oriente lux 73

other democratic procedure to establish the opinion of the people in

whose name the new state was created. Of course, in the chaos of the
civil war and foreign occupation it was impossible to organize proce-
durally perfect polls. In this situation, establishing good relationships
with the occupation administration was perhaps more important than
creating a democratic political system. To an unbiased observer, the
legacy of the first Belarusian national state remains ambiguous rather
than inspiring.
However short-lived and imperfect, the BPR produced an important,
albeit unexpected, outcome. The Bolsheviks, who were about to replace
Germans as the ultimate authority in the land, were now convinced
that the Belarusian national idea was strong and widespread enough to
merit its incorporation into Communist political designs. On January
14, 1919, shortly after Bolshevik armies entered Minsk, the Belarusian
Soviet Socialist Republic was proclaimed. Is government included
members of the nationally-minded Socialist intelligentsia (Zhylunovich,
Charviakou, Shantyr) who now belonged to the Communist Party of
Belarus. The latter, in effect a regional branch of the Russian Com-
munist Party (Bolsheviks), was created in Smolensk on December 20,
1918. Soon the new state was united with Lithuania (by then also under
Bolshevik control) into a short-lived conglomerate known as Litbel.
The latter survived barely two months. On May 22, 1919 Minsk was
occupied by the advancing Polish armies. A new chapter in Belarus’s
national independence was about to begin.
Polish forces that occupied a large part of Lithuania and Belarus
in the spring of 1919 were led by Jozef Pilsudski, one of the founders
of the Second Polish Republic. A larger than life figure, a romantic
revolutionary, a brilliant military leader, a prominent statesman, Pil-
sudski, the man who came to personify the restored Polish state, was
a Lithuanian Polish noble, born in a region where Belarusian, Polish
and Lithuanian communities lived as neighbors and interacted daily.
Pilsudski was able to communicate in Belarusian as well as Polish. He
was keenly aware of the history of the Republic of the Two Nations,
as the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was sometimes called. In
the manifesto issued after his army expelled Bolshevik forces from
Belarusian and Lithuanian lands in the spring of 1919, he addressed
the local population as “the people of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania”.
The statement reflected Pilsudski’s conviction that history should be a
cornerstone in the building of a future Poland. To him, the restored
Polish state had to be a confederation of Poland, Lithuania and Belarus.
74 chapter two

While many politicians in Warsaw did not favor this idea, preferring
a unified Poland with no autonomous political structures for national
minorities, Pilsudski used his position as the supreme military com-
mander in the region to promote his vision of Belarus’s future. There
were marked differences between the treatment of Belarusian national
activists in the western districts of Belarus (governed directly from War-
saw) and the rest of the country (under control of the army commanded
by Pilsudski). Konstantin Ezavitau (1919) catalogues numerous abuses
by the local Polish authorities of those Belarusians who expressed their
pro-independence stance. This, however, was confined to the region in
the west of the country.
In the east things were very different. Vakar writes that conditions
for Belarusian cultural and educational development compared not
unfavorably with the policies of German occupation authorities (and
the latter were quite benevolent towards Belarusian national aspira-
tions). The Polish military administration allowed Belarusians to open
schools, publish newspapers, and organize local administration. The
Belarusian Rada (government of the first BPR) was allowed to return
from exile. While Belarus was not recognized as an independent state
and was not permitted to create its own military forces, those were the
only restrictions on Belarusian national development imposed by the
Polish occupation administration. If these restrictions seem unreason-
ably harsh, we should remind ourselves that they were imposed by an
army that was at the time fighting against the Bolsheviks. Belarusian
politicians apparently did not want Belarus to join other territories
ruled by Russian Communists but proved powerless to prevent this
from happening. Instead, they depended on Jozef Pilsudski and his
troops for protection, just as before that they had depended on Ger-
man occupation forces.
Vakar lists the impressive achievements of Belarusian culture in the
short period of the Polish occupation: more than 190 schools, includ-
ing three gymnasia and ten junior high schools, a teachers’ college, all
with instruction in the Belarusian language, libraries, cultural clubs and
cooperative societies, theatrical troupes and folk choirs. He also men-
tions that the newly opened teachers’ college quickly became a center
of Communist underground led by Usevalad Ihnatouski, a national-
ist Belarusian scholar. Pro-Communist political sympathies were not
peripheral to the Belarusian national movement. The core of the Nasha
Niva movement included people of left Socialist ideological persuasion.
Later, Belarusian nationalists found it possible to work with Bolsheviks
 ex oriente lux 75

in the creation of the Belarusian Communist Party and Belarusian Soviet

Socialist Republic. Pro-Bolshevik Belarusians had to be pro-Russian, at
the very least as a matter of political expediency and to the extent the
Bolshevik leadership was committed to the establishment of the state
coterminous with the former Russian imperial borders. Of course, a
Belarusian nationalist did not have to be a Communist to have pro-Rus-
sian attitudes. Not infrequently, the acceptance of Russia as a potential
ally was merely a way of rejecting Poland. Owing to Belarus’s borderland
position, the national intelligentsia had an affinity either with Russian
or Polish culture, as noted by Tsvikevich (1993, p. 312). By the time of
the Russian civil war, cultural affinities translated into political visions.
Ivan Lutskevich, was one of those whom Tsvikevich mentions among
the “Belarusian intelligentsia of Polish culture”. In Vilno during the
first World War he worked towards the restoration of the Grand Duchy
of Lithuania as a multinational state, where Belarusians would share
power with Lithuanians and Poles. Under Polish occupation, and later
in the Second Polish Republic between the wars he continued to insist
that cooperation with Poland was necessary for Belarusian national
development. Few Belarusian national activists were as consistent in
their commitment to cooperation with Poland. Attitudes of mainstream
Belarusian nationalists toward Poland and Russia are better exemplified
in works of Vaclau Lastouski, a historian and publicist who popularized
a strongly nationalist vision of Belarusian history.
Lastouski entered Belarusian nationalist discourse in 1910 with
the publication of his book A Short History of Belarus. In this study
Belarus was presented as an identifiable political entity going back to
the principalities of Kievan Rus and developing into the Grand Duchy
of Lithuania. Poland and Russia are presented as two foreign pow-
ers, equally alien to Belarus. As the author devoted somewhat more
effort to his description of relationships between Poland and Belarus,
the balance of the argument is more anti-Polish than anti-Russian.
The author’s interpretation of Belarus’s history had rapidly become
immensely influential among Belarusian nationalists. If, according
to Lastouski, there once was a Belarusian state, there was a hope of
its revival in the modern age. If over the centuries Polish influence
and Russian aggression proved equally detrimental to the Belarusian
national cause, it followed that Belarusian revival must come as a
result of efforts of Belarusians themselves, without reliance on either
Polish or Russian help. Lastouski himself, in a fashion not atypical for
an early nationalist figure, combined political activities with scholarly
76 chapter two

pursuits. In 1919 he contended with Lutskevich for leadership in the

Belarusian government under Polish occupation. He lost the contest,
mostly owing to the Poles’ rejection of his candidacy. In the long run,
however, it was Lastouski’s political philosophy that became central for
Belarusian national activists, while Lutskevich’s conciliatory position
vis-à-vis Poland quickly became marginalized.
A political pamphlet written by Konstantin Ezavitau, a member of
the first BPR government, illustrates how Lastouski’s vision of Belarus’s
history influenced political discourse in the Belarus of the civil war
period. Ezavitau published the pamphlet, with a self-explanatory title
Belarusians and Poles, in August 1919, just months after a Polish military
offensive that allowed the Belarusian national politicians to return from
exile. One might expect that the author would at least acknowledge the
simple fact that national political life in Belarus was made possible by the
success of Polish arms and benevolence of Polish occupation authorities.
No such acknowledgment can be found in Ezavitau’s pamphlet. Instead,
he published a collection of documents cataloguing various infractions
and abuses of Belarusian population by Polish forces. Most of the docu-
ments tell about the disbandment of Belarusian military units. Others
are eyewitness accounts of petty theft by Polish soldiers, unreasonable
searches and detentions of Belarusian activists, the arrogance of Polish
officials and other infractions which, while impermissible in peacetime,
look positively negligible against the background of the Russian civil
war. The documents are apparently intended as an illustration of the
author’s political views presented in the first part of the pamphlet.
Ezavitau’s vision of Belarus’s history is almost identical to that of Las-
touski, although presented in a simplified format, suitable for political
propaganda. In Ezavitou’s interpretation, several centuries ago, Poland
started the process of colonization of Belarus. Members of the native
ruling class were persuaded to change their religion from Orthodoxy
to Roman Catholicism and their nationality from Belarusian to Polish.
This conversion was accompanied by an influx of Polish landowners
into the Belarusian lands. As a corollary, Ezavitau states that by the
early 20th century the only Poles in Belarus were either descendants of
those Belarusians who were bribed or cajoled into betraying their own
people or Polish colonizers who came to Belarus with the sole purpose
of exploiting the natives. Both categories would have their estates con-
fiscated should Belarus become independent and therefore would do
everything in their power to stop it from happening. The documents
detailing the Polish atrocities against the Belarusian population serve
 ex oriente lux 77

to illustrate the point. The brochure was published in Russian, Belaru-

sian, Lithuanian, Ukrainian, Yiddish, German and French, but not in
Polish. The Soviet offensive which followed Pilsudski’s ill-fated raid on
Kiev in the spring of 1920, brought yet another change of power in
Belarus. On July 11, 1920 Bolshevik armies entered Minsk. Before their
advance, Lutskevich and the Supreme Rada of the BPR fled to Warsaw.
Lastouski and the National Rada (a rival Belarusian government which
opposed collaboration with Poland) ended up in Kaunas, where he tried
to persuade his Lithuanian hosts to form an alliance against Poland.
Ihnatouski stayed and cooperated with the Bolsheviks in establishing
the Belarusian Soviet Socialist Republic. The latter was proclaimed on
August 1, 1920, when Bolshevik armies, now in possession of the whole
territory of Belarus, were rapidly advancing in Poland. Two weeks later,
Pilsudski’s brilliant maneuver at the gates of Warsaw sent the Bolsheviks
flying back to the starting line of their offensive. The outcome of these
tumultuous events was the partition of ethnic Belarusian territories at
the Treaty of Riga signed on March 18, 1921. To the west of the border,
now running roughly from north to south about thirty miles west of
Minsk, Belarusians found themselves in the restored Polish state, with
no political autonomy for any national minority. To the east, the newly
established Belarusian Soviet Socialist Republic (BSSR) consisted of only
a part of Minsk province with population estimated between 1,200,000
and 1,400,000. Although formally an independent state, BSSR did not
conduct its own foreign policy and was represented by Moscow at the
treaty of Riga and then at the international conferences in Geneva
and the Hague in 1922 (Vakar, 138). On December 30, 1922 Belarus
joined Russia, Ukraine and the Transcaucasian federation in creating
the Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics. A new stage of Belarusian
national development had begun.

2. Soviet Belarus between the wars: birth of a nation

The history of the Soviet part of Belarus between the wars is usually
divided into two equal parts. According to most historians, the 1920s
had been a repetition of the original Golden Age of Belarusian culture,
polity and scholarship. The next decade was the opposite: all achieve-
ments of Belarusian arts, culture and scholarship gone, the process of
Sovietization and Russification damage the country’s national fabric
beyond recognition and almost beyond repair. Vakar, Lubachko and
78 chapter two

Zaprudnik all present this periodization of Belarusian national devel-

opment in Soviet Belarus between the two world wars. The distinction
between the glorious twenties and dismal thirties looks plausible and fits
the general trend of development of Soviet polity, economy and society,
from the limited pluralism within the ruling party to strong centralism,
from the New Economic Policy to collectivization and five year plans,
from tolerance towards some forms of dissent to a paradigmatic totali-
tarian society. But, while the influence of these tectonic shifts was felt in
Belarus, they did not originate there. While the closest approximation
of a national state for Belarusians that existed before the collapse of the
Soviet empire in 1991, the Belarusian Soviet Socialist Republic could
not conduct its own national policy. Its ruling elites were appointed by
their superiors, not elected by a Belarusian constituency. Consequently,
all debates within Belarusian Communist leadership were decided by
arbiters in Moscow. Belarusian poets, writers and other members of
the intelligentsia owed their livelihoods less to the genuine popularity
of their works among the Belarusian public and more to the subsidies
provided by the central Soviet authorities. Thus, it could be argued
that the second Golden Age of Belarusian culture and statehood was
not really an indigenous phenomenon, but instead was imposed by an
imperial power, which found it convenient to foster national feelings
among its subjects. Of course, Belarussification was not an automatic
response to signals from the Party’s Politburo. For those who wanted
to find a place for Belarus within the Soviet Union it involved personal
endeavor and sacrifice, triumph and tragedy. This should not, however,
obscure the complete dependence of nation-building in Soviet Belarus
on the politics of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks). On
the other hand, promoters of Belarusian national development laid a
foundation for major Belarusian national institutions, which survived
shifts in Soviet national policies. The education system established in
the 1920s with Belarusian as the language of instruction was not abol-
ished in the 1930s. Belarusian elites, while subject to the same dangers
as elites of all the nationalities in the Soviet Union, did not disappear.
Belarusians knew that they no longer had to make a choice between
social advancement and national identity. One can plausibly suggest
that both the 1920s and 1930s marked important stages of Belarus’s
national development within the overarching framework of Soviet
institutions. Not only was the nationally-informed civil society enlarged
beyond the small circle of Nasha Niva intellectuals, the national state
structures emerged in Belarus for the first time in history under the
Soviet auspices.
 ex oriente lux 79

The struggle for leadership between Belarusian nationalist com-

munists and their internationalist comrades in the republic’s ruling
bureaucracy started shortly after the Polish counteroffensive of August-
September 1920 ran out of steam and the front line had stabilized.
Wilhelm Knorin, Secretary of the Central Bureau of the Communist
Party of Belarus (Bolsheviks), belonged to the generation of Communist
leaders who during the first World War fomented revolution among
the soldiers of the Russian army located on the Belarusian territory. As
neither he nor most of the soldiers were Belarusians, Knorin did not see
much use in supporting local nationalism. He kept this attitude when
he was in charge of the Belarusian Communist organization. According
to Navitski (2002), Knorin saw Belarus as a territorial unit within the
Russian Federation, not a national entity in its own right. He viewed
the Belarusian national movement as an artificial phenomenon, existing
only within a small group of nationalist intelligentsia and ultimately
harmful for the coming world revolution. In 1920, Knorin’s views on
Belarusian nationalism were essentially the same as in 1917 (for the lat-
ter, see Nedasek, 1954, pp. 57–59). These views faced opposition from
within the very Party and government apparatus over which Knorin was
presiding. Among the Belarusian Bolsheviks who supported the idea of
national statehood for Belarus were Anton Balitski (Deputy People’s
Commissar of Education), Zmitser Zhylunovich (editor in chief of the
Savetskaya Belarus, the official mouthpiece of Belarusian Communist
government), Usevalod Ihnatouski (People’s Commissar of Education),
Stsiapan Bulat and Iosif Karaneuski (department chiefs in the Central
Bureau of the Belarusian Communist Party). These men, together
with other like-minded administrators and cultural figures, were not
in opposition to Bolshevik rule in Belarus. Indeed, as their positions
indicated, they accepted the Bolshevik program of violent revolution and
totalitarian social transformation. However, they did not think that this
program was incompatible with Belarusian national development. To
reconcile a national idea with the Communist program, then still map-
ping out a road to the world revolution and international community
of workers and poor peasants, was not an easy task. Belarusian national
communists approached it with great ingenuity: according to them,
virtually all Belarusians were either poor peasants or almost equally
poor industrial workers. Untainted by the decadently sophisticated
culture of propertied classes, Belarusians were cleared for entry into
the newly built Communist society. This theory, apparently stemming
from the vision of the Belarusian people common within the Nasha Niva
circle, was produced by Ihnatouski who maintained that, as “Belarusian
80 chapter two

culture is the culture of the working masses of Belarusians” (quoted

in Lubachko, p. 77), the toiling multitudes could receive Communist
indoctrination in the Belarusian language and within the framework
of the Belarusian culture.
Although the national communists couched their agenda in a suitably
Bolshevik way, Knorin and his like-minded comrades were not con-
vinced. When proponents of Belarusian national communism brought
the issue of territorial enlargement of the republic to a meeting of the
Central Bureau, their proposal to petition Russia to cede Vitebsk and
Gomel provinces to Belarus was promptly voted down. Ihnatouski and
his associates faced an uphill battle against their superiors in a highly
hierarchical organizational structure. An obvious solution would be
to appeal to the leadership in Moscow, over the heads of Knorin and
his entourage in Minsk. On December 14, 1920 thirty two nationalist
Communists sent a letter to the Central Committee of the Russian
Communist Party (Bolsheviks). The letter, signed by thirty two persons,
asked for territorial enlargement of Belarus and complained that the
republic’s Communist leaders of non-Belarusian origins fail to spread
the Party message among the local masses. As the latter were Belaru-
sian, the implication was that the Communist leaders of Belarusian
ethnic origin are better suited to promote Communis policies among
Belarusian workers and peasants. The affair, started with the letter,
quickly acquired all the features of a factional quarrel of the type the
Bolsheviks were famous for. Apparently the Moscow recipients of the
letter informed the Minsk leadership of its contents. The letter, by
now referred to as the “declaration of the thirty two,” by the number
of national communists who signed it, was labeled a separatist attempt
and brought to a discussion at the Central Bureau of the Belarusian
Communist Party. On February 15, 1921, the Bureau condemned the
letter as “immature, unfounded and contrary to the Communist spirit”
(quoted in Navitski, 2002). Although the Belarusian Communist Party
leadership stopped short of declaring the letter counter-revolutionary,
the Bureau proceedings were sufficiently sinister to make the authors
fear the fate that commonly befell the losers in high-stakes policy
debates within the Bolshevik leadership. Indeed, the day after the
Bureau’s meeting, residences of many of the signatories of the letter
were searched and they themselves put under arrest. They were freed
shortly afterwards, because of the intervention of moderate national-
ists in Belarusian leadership. Perhaps the latter (Zhilunovich and the
Central Executive Committee Chairman Alexander Charviakou among
 ex oriente lux 81

them) anticipated a change of course of the Bolshevik national policy,

away from internationalism and towards the recognition the impor-
tance of local national elites for the long-term stability of the country
the Bolsheviks now controlled.
The tenth congress of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks),
which took place in March 1921, laid down the foundations of the rul-
ing party’s national policy for the next eight years. While the details
of the policy were still under discussion, the new prevailing senti-
ment was that Communist ideology had to be made compatible with
nationalisms of all the peoples of the former Russian Empire. Joseph
Stalin, then People’s Commissar for Nationalities and the leading
Party authority on national question, presented to the congress his
theses on the treatment of various national groups. Some were to be
incorporated into the Russian Federation and given limited autonomy,
some were recognized as independent republics bound to Russia by
treaties. Belarus did not belong to either category and was referred to
as being at an “intermediate stage” of federation (quoted in Nahailo
and Swoboda, p. 48). This categorization apparently implied that in
due course Belarus would move from the “intermediate” position to
an autonomous national region of the Russian Federation. The theses
presaged Stalin’s scheme of granting national minorities the status of
limited autonomy within the Russian Federation, the idea later rejected
by Lenin who thought that a union of nominally independent and
nominally equal national republics, of which Russia would be one, is
a better solution to the national question. For the Belarusian national
communists, even Stalin’s vision of national development held consid-
erable promise. When during the discussion of his theses at the tenth
congress one of the delegates alleged that Belarusian nationality was
being artificially promoted, Stalin, in his inimitable style of a pedantic
autodidact, replied: “This is not correct, because Belarusian nationality
does exist; it possesses its own language which is different from Russian.
That’s why one can promote the culture of the Belarusian people only
in its native language.” (quoted in Lindner, p. 155). Thus, Belarusian
national culture was recognized and declared worthy of support by the
person whose opinion on national issues could be safely challenged by
very few people, none of them in Belarus. National communists realized
that they from now on they had a powerful ally. Emboldened by this
thought, they started to put their ideas into practice.
Soon after the tenth congress of the RCP (B), the Minsk chapter of
the Communist Party of Belarus produced a brochure entitled “The
82 chapter two

Belarusian National Question and the Communist Party”. The docu-

ment, consisting of thirteen theses, was published in December 1921.
Following the party line established at the tenth congress, the brochure
discussed two deviations from this line: “great power chauvinism”
and “bourgeois-democratic nationalism”. The authors of the brochure
insisted that the latter was a direct consequence of the former, thus
implying that if the “great power chauvinism” was eradicated, the
“bourgeois-democratic nationalism” would disappear by itself. The latter
was described as a substitution of national interests for the interests of
working classes. According to the brochure, Belarusian culture did not
have class divisions, therefore national interests in Belarus actually coin-
cided with the interests of the toiling masses. Thus, Belarusian culture
was “the culture of the working masses of Belarusians”. This vision of
Belarusians as a nation of peasants and workers, with almost no indig-
enous upper class, had its roots in the Nasha Niva circle, specifically, in
the works of Vaclav Lastouski. The ideas of the founders of the modern
Belarusian nationalism were compatible with Stalin’s national policies.
Throughout most of the 1920s Belarusian national communists were
able to exploit the opportunities presented by this situation.
Personnel changes in the Belarusian Communist Party leadership
improved the chances of nationally minded Belarusian Bolsheviks to
promote their agenda. In 1921, shortly after the tenth congress, Char-
viakou and Adamovich, two moderate nationalists, were promoted to
full membership in the Central Bureau, while Stsiapan Bulat, a national
Communist, was made chairman of the propaganda department. A year
later, Knorin was recalled to Moscow and his place at the helm of the
Belarusian Communist Party was taken by Vaclav Bahutski, who shared
the main ideas of the national communists. In March 1923 the national
communists consolidated their position, as the seventh congress of the
Belarusian Communist Party adopted their resolution on the promo-
tion of Belarusian culture as the means to spread Communist ideology
among the local population. One of the themes of national-communist
speeches at the congress was the recognition of the existence of two
centers of Belarusian national development: one in Minsk, the other
across the border in Wilno (Vilnia in Belarusian). In this context calls
for a greater role of Soviet structures in strengthening of the Belarusian
culture acquired geopolitical significance that was recognized not only
in Minsk, but in Moscow as well. It is likely that geopolitical factors
accounted for the positive reception by the Russian Communist leader-
ship of a petition by their Belarusian comrades to cede the provinces of
Gomel and Vitebsk, as well as some districts of Smolensk province, to
 ex oriente lux 83

Belarus. When a delegation led by Bahutski, Charviakou and Ihnatouski

visited Moscow in June 1923, the discussion of territorial issues was
attended by all but two members of the Politburo. Two months later
the Politburo of the Russian Party issued a resolution which essentially
granted all the territorial requests of Belarusian national communists.
Following this decision, the territory of the Belarusian Soviet Socialist
Republic was enlarged in 1924 and then again in 1926. Belarus received
the provinces of Vitebsk, Mogilev and Gomel and several districts
belonging to Smolensk province. As a result, in 1926 Belarus’s territory
increased to 48,500 square kilometers (more than twice its territory
in 1923), while the population increased from 1.5 million in 1923 to
almost five million in 1926 (Zaprudnik, p. 78).
After the enlargement, Belarusians accounted for more than 80 per-
cent of the republic’s population, Jews were the second largest ethnic
group constituting 8.2 percent of the total, Russians accounted for
7.7 percent and Poles for 2.0 percent (quoted in Zaprudnik, p. 78). In
reality, the national situation in Soviet Belarus was more contradictory
than the aggregate data suggest. In the newly acquired territories, the
share of Belarusian population exhibited unusually abrupt changes in
the twenty five years since the census of 1897. In Vitebsk province, in
1920 Belarusians accounted for 57 percent of the total population, a
considerable drop from 75.6 percent in 1897. At the same time, the
Russian population, whose share in 1897 was 9.8 percent, increased to
32 percent of the total in 1920 (all data quoted in Navitski, 2002). The
province did not experience mass migration between 1897 and 1920. A
plausible explanation of the changes would be that a significant group
of respondents were either unsure of their nationality or found it use-
ful to switch their national identity according to the changing political
situation. In some districts of Gomel province more than 90 percent
of the population defined their national identity as “unknown” in 1897
and “Russian” in 1920 (Navitski, 2002). Moreover, out of a the minor-
ity of Belarusians who could read and write (36 percent in 1926) 52
percent were literate exclusively in the Russian language (Lindner, p. 161).
A major challenge to the nation-building efforts of the national Com-
munists was ignorance and apathy widespread among the very people
they claimed to represent. The fact that the titular nation of Soviet
Belarus was the least educated had serious implication for Soviet
national policies in the republic.
In the 1920s, the official attitudes of Soviet leadership towards
ethnic minorities of the former Russian Empire were denoted by the
word “korenizatsiya”. One of the many ugly neologisms in the Soviet
84 chapter two

newspeak, “korenizatsiya” (from the Russian korni, roots) is commonly

translated as “indigenization”. The meaning of the word, as well as the
purpose of the policies it signified, changes depending on a particular
interpretation. Vakar equates the policy of korenizatsiya in Belarus with
Belorussification of cultural and political life conducted at the expense
of the Russian minority (pp. 139–140). Zaprudnik, while not mentioning
the word itself, describes the 1920s national policies in Soviet Belarus
as the development and nurturing of indigenous Belarusian culture
(pp. 78–79). Lubachko writes about a “Golden Age” of Belarusian
culture ushered in, albeit for a brief period, by the Soviet authorities’
support for Belarusian national development. Robert Kaiser (p. 125)
treats korenizatsiya as a tool of nation-building that emphasized the
territorial dimension of national self-determination.
Equating korenizatsiya with Belorussification is not implausible if
one looks at the policy’s outcomes. Indeed, by the end of the 1920s
Belarusian national institutions in politics and culture were stronger and
more prominent than before the new national policy was introduced.
This view, however, does not tell us much about the political forces
behind this policy. Was the unimpeded national development a true
goal of the authors of the korenizatsiya policy? There are some aspects
of Belarus’s interwar history that invite a more subtle interpretation of
Soviet national policies of the 1920s than the one which is commonly
given. The centralizing proclivities of Communist leaders had been an
enduring and central feature of the Soviet regime from its inception.
Indigenization was no more indicative of the Soviet leadership’s com-
mitment to national independence than the new economic policy was
representative of their dedication to a free market. Opinions and actions
of those Soviet Communist leaders who shaped national policy after
the civil war clearly demonstrate that they were more concerned with
strengthening their position as undisputed rulers of the country than
promoting national development among the non-Russian peoples of the
former Russian Empire. In September 1922, in the course of discussion
about future national policy, Dmitro Manuil’s’ki, then a Secretary of
the Central Committee of the Ukrainian Communist Party, sent a let-
ter to Stalin, who at the time was chairing a commission that prepared
the nationalities issue for discussion at a plenary session of the Russian
Communist Party’s Central Committee. Manuil’s’ki stated quite plainly
that Bolshevik support of national independence movements in the
former Russian Empire was just a concession to “elemental national
forces set in motion by the revolution.” In the post-revolutionary chaos,
 ex oriente lux 85

when the Bolsheviks held to power only tenuously, national sentiment

had to be coopted rather than confronted. According to Manuil’s’ki, as
the Bolsheviks had won the civil war and secured a reasonably strong
grip on power, they could easily reduce the independence of national
borderlands without fear of nationalist backlash. Ideas expressed in the
letter were in line with Stalin’s vision of the future relations between the
nations of the Soviet realm: independence of Ukraine, Belarus and other
Soviet republics should be replaced by their autonomous status within
the Russian Federation. The idea was rejected by Lenin, although not
out of any special regard for the rights of individual Soviet republics.
Lenin did not share the view of Stalin and Manuil’s’ki that national
sentiment among borderland elites could be safely tamed. Instead, he
wanted to provide a semblance of national independence so as not to
provoke separatist forces to declare real independence (the nationalities
debate is discussed in Nahaylo and Swoboda, 1990, pp. 49–51).
National policies of the Bolshevik regime were intended to secure
its control over the vast territory of the former Russian Empire, not
promote national independence and local self-government. Indeed, this
would be the last thing Bolsheviks would want, as it was in those parts
of the Russian Empire where population proved capable of creating
effective structures of nationally-based government that their advance
was resisted with the greatest success. Key Bolshevik leaders knew that
they owe their power not to the popularity of their program but to the
organized brutality of their actions against the opponents who were less
brutal or less organized. Effective resistance to Bolsheviks was delivered
only by those societies which successfully created institutions of self-
government legitimized by the feeling of national unity. In Finland,
Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland this resistance was sufficiently
strong to expel the Bolshevik forces and establish independent nation
states. As the civil war experience demonstrated, in order to maintain
control over the country, Bolsheviks had to prevent local nationalisms
from serving as mobilizing forces for the formation of independent
centers of political power. This could be achieved by coopting local
national elites into the newly created Soviet bureaucracy, thus reducing
the incentives for the emergence of potential nationalist leaders.
The policy of korenizatsiya had another aspect: the recruitment of
local cadres into the newly created administrative apparatus. After their
victory in the civil war the Bolsheviks had to administer a vast multina-
tional country with an administrative system deliberately destroyed by
Bolsheviks themselves. As the administrative vacuum was spread more
86 chapter two

or less evenly throughout the land, new cadres of all levels had to be
recruited locally. In Belarus, the main pool of potential administrators
was unlikely to consist mostly of Belarusians. As already mentioned, in
1926, only 36 percent of Belarusians in Soviet Belarus could read and
write, well below the average 59.7 percent literacy rate for the republic’s
population. Given that Belarusians constituted more than 80 percent of
the population, the discrepancy of 23.7 percentage points indicated that
other ethnic groups were considerably more literate than Belarusians.
Less than ten percent of Belarusians lived in cities and towns. Of this
number, only 60 percent could read and write. This was well below
literacy rates for urban dwellers of other ethnic groups (ranging from
67 percent literacy rate for Poles to 84 percent for Ukrainians) (all
data quoted from Lindner, p. 161). Thus, throughout the 1920s local
administrators were much more likely to be recruited among the non-
Belarusian segment of the population. In 1927, Belarusians accounted
for 51 percent of the employees of the central Soviet administrative
bodies, 31 percent in economic administration, 26 percent in the judi-
ciary (Lubachko, p. 69). The korenizatsiya policy in Belarus had two
components: Belarusian and local non-Belarusian. The former, as the
data above indicate, was limited by the availability of native Belarusian
cadres suitable for promotion. The difference between korenizatsiya
and Belorussification was officially recognized, as the tenth Congress
of the Communist Party (Bolsheviks) of Belarus stated that the Party
line points “not only to the promotion of Belarusians; korenizatsiya
means also the promotion of Jewish, Polish and even Russian workers”
(quoted in Lindner, p. 158).
Belarus’s national Communists recognized the problem and from the
very beginning set out to rectify it by expanding Belarusian education at
all levels, as well as promoting Belarusian culture through the publica-
tion of books and periodicals in the Belarusian language. Lindner quotes
figures that show a significant increase in the number of both book titles
and periodicals in Belarusian. Book titles in Belarusian numbered sixty
one in 1924. The number increased to 275 in 1926 and then to 1,170 in
1930. In 1928 thirty newspapers in Belarus were published in the Belaru-
sian language, by 1931 this number increased to 148. Development of
the national education system was equally impressive. According to
the data quoted by Lindner (p. 161), in 1926 Belarusians accounted
for 8,005 school, college and university teachers in Belarus out of the
total number of 11,326, thus making this professional group perhaps
the only one in which Belarusians were represented proportionately to
 ex oriente lux 87

their share in the total population. By the beginning of 1927 Belarus’s

People’s Commissariat of Education used only the Belarusian language
in its official communications (Lubachko, p. 85).
The educational establishment was the most formidable force of
Belarusian national development. Illiteracy was energetically tackled
as the number of special schools devoted solely to teaching people
to read and write grew from 1,034 in the academic year 1925–26 to
1,484 two years later; the schools reduced adult illiteracy in Belarus
by 300,000 in three years (Lubachko, p. 87). As for the children, the
number of four-year elementary schools (at which attendance became
compulsory in 1926) increased from 3,774 in 1924 to 5,163 in 1927
(Lubachko, p. 86). In the same period, Belarus’s professional schools,
which combined a junior college level education with middle level
professional training, produced more than 15,000 graduates. Belarus’s
three institutions of higher learning: the Belarusian State University,
the Belarusian Agricultural Academy and the State Veterinary Institute,
together had more than 4,500 students (Lubachko, p. 89). For the first
time in history, Belarusians had their own educational system. There
was one fly in the ointment: Belarusians were still under represented
among the faculty of the institutions of higher learning. In 1928, only
eight university professors (out of the total of ninety) were Belarusian.
However, the situation looked promising in the long run, as Belarusians
accounted for twenty three associate professors out of eighty nine and
sixty eight assistant professors out of one hundred forty one.
Another important task of nation building was the creation of a
sufficiently detailed and coherent set of ideas and myths that would
justify the existence of the Belarusian nation in the modern progressive
context. This effort was concentrated mostly in the Institute of Belaru-
sian Culture (Inbelkult), a scholarly organization founded in 1921 with
the express purpose of not only studying Belarusian culture but also
developing its high-brow component. The former was represented by
ethnographic studies, while the latter in linguistic projects that adjusted
the Belarusian language to the modern conditions by introducing native
Belarusian terms into sciences, engineering, philosophy and other fields
of knowledge where the Belarusian language had not hitherto been used.
The study of Belarusian history by Inbelkult lay somewhere in between
the scholarly pursuit and national indoctrination. In 1924, Anton
Balitski, then People’s Commissar of Education, stated that among the
main tasks of the Inbelkult was the creation of a biographical reference
book of all prominent Belarusian personalities since the 10th century
88 chapter two

and work on historiography and bibliography of Belarusian antiquity

(Lindner, 193). The statement apparently implied that Inbelkult should
act on the assumption that an identifiable Belarusian polity and society
existed as early as the tenth century. Thus, historians were invited to
adopt the concept of Belarusian history first introduced by Lastouski
in his Brief Review of Belarusian History and popularized by the Nasha
Niva circle. It is not that Inbelkult scholars needed much encourage-
ment. The vision of Belarus’s history as a sequence of autochthonous
development in the principality of Polotsk, the cultural predominance
in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the Golden Age lost due to Polish
perfidy and treason of local elites, the culture and language faithfully
preserved by the peasants and awaiting the hour of revival was already
well established among Belarusian historians, as Usevalod Ihnatouski, a
long-time forceful promoter of these ideas, was the Inbelkult’s director.
Works of Ihnatouski, Picheta and Dounar-Zapolski served to consoli-
date the romantic nationalist tradition in Belarusian historiography.
There are some notable peculiarities in the Belarusian national devel-
opment under Soviet tutelage. It is not unusual for empires to promote
literacy and education in their borderlands, even if this includes support
of a local language. It is not unusual for a fledgling nationalist intel-
ligentsia to create intellectually credible stories about their nation’s past
by means of selective reading and imaginative interpretation of history.
Indeed, plausible glorification of a nation’s history is indispensable for
legitimation of a national state. It is highly unusual, however, for this
kind of effort to be directly supported by imperial authorities. The lat-
ter have been known to tolerate the growth of intellectual nationalism
among their minorities, but not to devote resources to its promotion. In
post-revolutionary Belarus, local nationalist intelligentsia worked with
full support of the Party apparatus, which after the civil war replaced,
mutatis mutandis, the ruling bureaucracy of the Russian Empire. In
fact, leading contributors to the second Golden Age of Belarusian cul-
ture and scholarship were high-ranking members of the local Soviet
establishment.
Ihnatouski was not only director of Inbelkult, but also a career
Soviet bureaucrat and Party official, a member of the Belarusian Com-
munist Party Central Committee since 1925. Zhylunovich, formerly of
the Nasha Niva circle and strong promoter of the Belarusian national
cause, was another Soviet apparatchik. The intellectual foundations of
modern Belarusian nationalism were created under the benign super-
vision of Soviet bureaucrats. Of course, in the Soviet Union it could
 ex oriente lux 89

not have been otherwise. Mussolini’s dictum “nothing outside of the

state” applied to the Soviet Union perhaps better than to any other
totalitarian regime.
Those who wanted to promote Belarusian national development in the
Soviet Union could do it through the state (and to the extent allowed
by the state) or not at all. It is hard to say whether the “national” or
“communist” component prevailed in Belarusian national commu-
nism. It is, however, clear that modern Belarusian nationalism was
not only compatible with Soviet power structures, but existed within
them in a kind of institutional symbiosis. Even non-Soviet Belarusian
intellectual and political leaders found this arrangement sufficiently
accommodating. In 1925, the Belarusian government in exile declared
that the Belarusian People’s Republic transfered its powers to the
Belarusian Soviet Socialist Republic. Having made this statement, the
government dissolved itself and most of its members moved back to
Minsk. Lastouski and Tsvikevich were among the initiators of the gov-
ernment dissolution. The latter wrote persuasively about the power of
the working class as the supra-national authority in the Soviet Union
and “the real truth” that shone through “the fog of bloody struggle”
in Soviet Belarus, thus allowing Minsk to become “the only center of
the national and state regeneration of Belarus” (Quoted in Lubachko,
p. 83). Upon their return to Belarus, Lastouski, Tsvikevich and others
were given positions in the Soviet apparatus. They were allowed to con-
tinue scholarly research on Belarus’s ethnography, history and politics,
thus contributing still more to the corpus of Belarusian studies emerg-
ing in Minsk in the 1920s. Shortly after that, the Soviet government
negotiated the release of Belarusian deputies to the Polish legislature
(many of whom were sent to prison following their support of the radi-
cal peasant movement) and their repatriation to Soviet Belarus. Symon
Rak-Mikhailouski, Branislau Tarashkevich, and Ihnat Dvarchanin were
among those prominent Belarusian leaders who joined the already quite
impressive gallery of Belarusian national figures in Minsk. Continuing
the traditions of the Belarusian national movement started in the Nasha
Niva period, these men combined dedication to Belarusian cultural
development (Tarashkevich was author of the first Belarusian grammar)
with political activism (all of them were deputies of the Polish Sejm)
and left-wing political orientation.
Non-Soviet Belarusian leaders did not have to compromise their
convictions to make a deal with the Soviets. After all, their vision of
Belarusians as a nation of the oppressed was not incompatible with the
90 chapter two

ideological tenets of the Communist Party. Generous financial subsi-

dies and consistent political support of Belarusian national education
and scholarship could be interpreted as a genuine commitment of the
Soviet authorities to the Belarusian national cause. The prospect of
harnessing resources of a huge empire to lift Belarus to its rightful place
among the nations seemed preferable to the hopeless existence of an
emigre politician or a Sejm deputy representing a neglected corner of
Poland. Belarusian nationalists joined National Communists in mak-
ing the most from the opportunities of the time. According to Vakar,
Belarusian nationalists “used the state might and the state treasury
to force Belorussification upon all phases of life, public and private,
instilling in the fatalistic and self-doubting people a new belief in their
superior character and destiny” (Vakar, p. 145). One should not blame
Lastouski and Tsvikevich, or Ihnatouski and Zhilunovich, for ignoring
the deeply sinister aspects of Communist doctrine, for the time being
hidden under the veneer of social and economic (but not political)
pluralism associated with the New Economic Policy. At that time the
view of Soviet Communism as the way of the future was accepted by
many intellectuals throughout the world. Belarusian nationalists were
in the company of the Webbs, H. G. Wells, Walter Duranty as well as
many others who averted their eyes from the badly concealed inhuman-
ity of Soviet Communism and concentrated instead on the reforming
abilities of the outwardly efficient Soviet state.
The state giveth, the state taketh away. The second Golden Age of
Belarusian culture ended as it started, with a change of policies by the
Party leadership in Moscow. Now that only a few Belarusian national
figures remained outside the Soviet Union, national policy could be
conducted without fear of triggering anti-Soviet repercussions across the
border. As the instability of the Polish state in the wake of the Pilsudski
coup of 1926 proved to be wishful thinking of Soviet propagandists, the
Belarusian community in Poland ceased to be a potential conduit of
Soviet influence and therefore lost its importance in the Kremlin’s geo-
political calculations. Ihhanouski’s wish, expressed in 1923, that “Soviet
Minsk” should win over “bourgeois Vilnia” as the center of Belarusian
culture, came true by 1929. Consequently, geopolitical implications of
the Belarusian national movement were no longer relevant. National
Communists succeeded in linking the Belarusian national cause to
the interests of the Soviet state. The symbiosis worked according to
their projections as long as the Communist rulers of the Kremlin were
intriguing, scheming, and jostling for power positions, uncertain of the
 ex oriente lux 91

future course the empire should take. When the decade of uncertainty
ended with a Party-wide consensus, imposed by Stalin with his cus-
tomary brutal efficiency, the time came to reexamine national policies
in the borderlands. With the new Party line that promoted the center
over the borderlands, the local nationalisms had to be limited, while
prior developments in excess of the new limits had to be corrected. The
brutality of the corrective action actually exceeded the generosity that
allowed the Belarusian nationalism to develop so explosively.
In 1929 the Main Political Directorate (Glavnoie Politicheskoie
Upravleniie, GPU, the secret police) “discovered” two counterrevo-
lutionary organizations, the Union for the Revival of Belarus and the
Union for the Liberation of Belarus with a membership that conve-
niently included virtually all the leading Belarusian nationalists in
administration and academia. The culprits were promptly rounded up
and accused of counterrevolutionary activities, anti-Soviet propaganda,
attempts to separate Belarus from the Soviet Union and a host of other
misdeeds. Among the more than one hundred men arrested on these
patently fabricated charges were historians and linguists, administra-
tors and writers. The tragic absurdity of the proceedings, soon to
become a familiar feature of the Soviet judicial system, was then appall-
ingly unexpected. The very people who for many years tried to make
Belarusian national development compatible with Communist doctrine
were labeled anti-Communists. Anton Balitski, former People’s Com-
missar of Education, who established a network of schools that lifted
Belarusians out of illiteracy, was charged, among other things, with
criminal attempts to wreck Belarusian cultural development. Dzimitri
Prishchepau, the People’s Commissar of Agriculture, who presided over
a steady growth in prosperity in the Belarusian village, was accused of
promoting inefficient forms of land use. Usevalod Ihnatouski, for many
years the driving force behind the development of Belarusian national
scholarship, committed suicide after a preliminary interrogation, appar-
ently dismayed by the surreal and yet deadly serious charges against
him. Of course, the interrogators knew very little of Belarusian history
and culture, education and economy. Their assignment was to remove
the people whose services were no longer needed by the Kremlin. The
sheer inanity of charges conveyed an important message: from now on
Moscow’s policies in Belarus would be unrestrained by local consider-
ations, opinions or even common sense.
During 1929–30, more than ninety leading Belarusian scholars,
writers and administrators were sentenced to various prison terms and
92 chapter two

internal exile. Although the sentences might have seemed compara-

tively lenient, in reality many of the victims perished in prisons and
concentration camps because of the inhumane treatment and harsh
living conditions. Shortly after the first wave of repressions, the atten-
tion of the secret police was turned to the Belarusian national leaders
who escaped to Soviet Belarus from Poland. Many of them were former
deputies in the Polish legislature who spent time in Polish prisons for
support of radical peasant movements. Now, the Soviet secret police
discovered that all of them were in fact Polish spies sent to Belarus to
create anti-Soviet terrorist groups. Rak-Mikhailouski, Dvarchanin and
others were arrested and forced to sign confessions that implicated each
other in actions ranging from sabotage and espionage to terrorism and
fascism. All of them were found guilty of all charges, sent to prison, and
eventually shot or physically liquidated by other means. By 1933, all
politically active members of the old Belarusian intelligentsia were elimi-
nated from the scene. Their work followed them into a long oblivion.
Kuzniatsou (2001) cites a list of books banned in Belarus shortly after
their authors were imprisoned or murdered. The list includes collections
of Belarusian folklore, dictionaries of local dialects, works marking the
quadricentenary of the Belarusian press, Belarusian journals, all works
by Ales Harun (a Belarusian writer who did not return to Belarus after
emigration), proceedings of the first congress of Belarusian archeology,
works of the division of humanities of the Belarusian Academy of Sci-
ences, dictionaries of Belarusian scientific terms, Belarusian folk tales
and proverbs collected by Alyaksandar Serzhputouski. The Belarusian
national narrative was starting anew, with a clean slate and with new
protagonists. Communist regime created the first Belarusian national
state. Now it was re-shaping Belarusian civil society.
The new Party line demanded that Belarusian nationalism be treated
as a greater danger than Russian chauvinism (Lubachko, p. 116). This
set the tone for the new treatment of Belarusian history which now was
presented as a joint class struggle of Belarusian, Russian and Ukrainian
peasants against their oppressors, the latter being almost exclusively
Polish landlords. The banned corpus of Belarusian studies produced by
national scholars in the 1920s could not be easily and quickly replaced
by something more palatable for the new Party ideologues. The result-
ing vacuum was immediately felt at the level of secondary school where
the lack of suitable textbooks eventually led to the abandonment of the
courses in Belarusian history and their replacement by courses in
the history of the peoples of the Soviet Union (Lindner, p. 269). The
 ex oriente lux 93

Belarusian language, which until then was based on the grammar cre-
ated by Branislau Tarashkevich, had been modified to bring it closer
to Russian spelling and pronunciation. These measures did not return
Belarusian national development to the pre-revolutionary level. The
Belarusian national idea was not abandoned altogether, but rather
shaped by Communist ideologues in Moscow and not by Belarusian
national scholars in Minsk. The latter should be credited with more than
just a recreation of a decade-long “Golden Age” of Belarusian culture:
in a very short time they laid the foundations of national institutions
that could withstand the pressure of policy changes in the Kremlin
long after the protagonists of National Communism perished in Soviet
concentration camps.
Throughout the 1930s, the number of newspapers published in
Belarusian remained virtually the same, 149 in 1938, compared to 148
in 1931 (Lindner, p. 162). Vakar (p. 153) reported that 462 book titles
in Belarusian were printed in 1938 in 14,700,000 copies. While this was
a considerable drop from 1,301 titles in Belarusian published in 1931
and most of the titles were translations from the Russian language, the
numbers do not suggest a serious attempt to eradicate the Belarusian
language in the public sphere. At all school levels, Belarusian remained
the predominant language of instruction, while the Russian language
was not a required subject until 1938 (Vakar, p. 153). When the com-
pulsory study of the Russian language was mandated by the government
decree in March 1938, there were not enough teachers trained in the
subject. Belarus’s People’s Commissar of Education had no adequate
schooling in Russian. The gap had to be filled by appointing teachers
from Russia to Belarusian schools. All this indicate that there was no
concerted and sustained campaign of the Russification of Belarusian
education and culture in the 1930s, or else that it failed spectacularly.
Repressions against officials of the Communist Party and Soviet
bureaucracy continued in Belarus throughout the 1930s, peaking during
1937–38, thus following the pattern common to other Soviet republics
and the Soviet Union in general. A sequence of mutual denunciations
by high-ranking Party officials followed by show trials and executions
was a normal tool of personnel policy practiced by Communists in the
1930s. National features were secondary to this process. For example,
in Belarus an official whose time at the top was about to end in front
of a secret police interrogating team was frequently accused of being,
among other things, a Polish spy, while his colleague from Russia’s
heartland was more likely to spy for Germany and the one from the
94 chapter two

Transcaucasian region would supposedly receive payment in guineas

for the services rendered to the British Crown. In 1937 Belarus’s Chair-
man of the Council of People’s Commissars, Mykola Haladzed was
arrested, shortly after a plenary meeting of the Central Committee of
the Belarusian Communist Party where he called on his fellow Com-
munists to freely volunteer their help to the secret police, as the latter
was overwhelmed by the Herculean task of eradication of hidden class
enemies. Some months later, First Secretary of Belarus’s Communist
Party, Vasil’ Sharangovich, was arrested and in March 1938 brought
to a famous show trial in Moscow with Nikolai Bukharin as one of the
co-defendants.
Both Haladzed and Sharangovich duly pled guilty to charges that
ranged from contacts with Trotskyist organizations to spying for Poland
to spreading infectious diseases among livestock in Belarus. Their arrests
were accompanied by a round-up of 2,570 people, mostly administra-
tors, managers and Party officials, on similarly absurd charges. Most
of them were defined by the NKVD as Trotskyists, Socialist-Revolu-
tionaries, Mensheviks, members of the Bund, Rightists and members of
religious sects (Kuzniatsou, 2000). Only 138 were described as “national-
fascist.” Apparently by that time Belarusian nationalism ceased to be
a priority for the repressive branch of Stalin’s Communist regime. Of
course, a mere two and a half thousand arrested was not even the tip
of the iceberg.
Persecution in Belarus (as elsewhere in the Soviet Union) was ubiq-
uitous and could befall virtually anyone, of any station in life, for no
apparent reason whatsoever. The estimated numbers of those who
perished in prisons, concentration camps or in front of a firing squad
are necessarily incomplete and imprecise. Kuzniatsou estimates that
during 1935–40 more than 480,000 people in Belarus were arrested,
out of which number more than 50,000 were shot. Other evidence
suggests that the real number of those killed by the secret police could
be considerably higher, as the excavation of the site in Kurapaty, near
Minsk, unearthed mass graves of people killed in the late 1930s whose
number has been estimated to be well above 50,000 (Zaprudnik, pp.
87–88, Mironowicz, 2004, p. 55).
Belarus did not endure the trauma of murderous collectivization on
the scale of the famine deliberately organized in Ukraine in 1932–33.
Neither did its modest industrialization program match the scale of
industrial investment in Russia or Ukraine. Belarus’s size, comparative
 ex oriente lux 95

lack of natural resources, its dead end location with no access to the sea
and cross-border trade with Poland hampered by Soviet self-isolation
diverted much of the attention of socialist planners to more promising
targets. Of course, Belarus was not completely spared the great social
experiment and its consequences. Collectivization in Belarus started in
the end of 1929, against protests by the republic’s People’s Commissar of
Agriculture, Dzimitri Prishchepau. In May 1930, the Central Committee
of the Belarusian Communist Party issued a secret directive regarding
the treatment of those peasants who lived above the poverty level and
thus were likely to be less than enthusiastic about the confiscation of
their property. Such peasants were divided into three categories: those
who protested most vocally were to be sent to concentration camps, the
richest ones were to be exiled to remote regions of the USSR, while the
rest had their property confiscated and were allowed to stay in Belarus
(Mironowicz, 2004, p. 49). Given the state of communications at the
time and difficulties of collecting detailed information by the central
government, the actual decisions about assignment of individual peas-
ants to a particular category had to be taken by local (village or district)
Soviets. By 1927 Belarusians accounted for 92.3 percent of village and
79.2 percent of district Soviets (Lubachko, p. 68). Although the local
Soviets had undergone restructuring in 1931, there is no reason to
believe that their share changed significantly by May 1930, when the
decree was issued. Thus, for the first time in history Belarusians sat in
judgement over their fellow Belarusians, deciding who would have their
life destroyed and who would only have their livelihood taken away
from them. Apparently, the locals were too lenient, as in 1931, follow-
ing an order from Moscow, Belarus’s local Soviets were reinforced by
industrial workers (most of them Party members) dispatched largely
from outside Belarus (Lubachko, pp. 100–101). The newcomers speeded
up collectivization and the deportations and confiscations that accompa-
nied it. Although collectivization in Belarus took longer to accomplish
than in other regions of the Soviet Union, as it was not completed until
1937 (Lubachko, p. 103), the process still inflicted immense damage on
the countryside by the deportation of 12 to 15 percent of Belarusian
peasants, mostly the most industrious and capable ones. The resulting
drop in agricultural productivity, as well as the personal consequences
of massive social dislocation made collectivization widely unpopular.
Massive and random terror of the 1930s was introduced largely as an
element of the inherently inept economic policy. Starving people had
96 chapter two

to be frightened to prevent them from open protest, while concentra-

tion camps in Siberia employed the cheapest labor force possible, thus
offsetting the waste and inefficiency of central planning.
Industrialization in Belarus, although not nearly as massive as in
other parts of the Soviet Union, had serious social consequences. The
data made available before the deliberate distortion of the first two
five year plans rendered official Soviet economic statistics meaningless
indicate that the republic’s economic profile was undergoing rapid
changes. The share of industrial output in Belarus’s GDP grew from
23.6 percent in 1927 to 53.2 percent in 1932 (Zavaleyev, 1967, p. 235).
Much of the industry was located in rural areas and concentrated in
the low technology primary sector, such as peat-digging and timber-
cutting. However, in addition to this traditional output, Belarusian
industry started to produce machine tools and agricultural machinery,
textiles and electricity. Manufacturing enterprises were mostly located
in urban centers, thus resulting in increased rural-urban migration. In
1926, only 4.3 percent of Belarusians were employed in physical labor
outside agriculture, while in 1939 their share had grown to 23.1 percent.
In 1939, 10.2 percent of Belarusians occupied white collar positions,
a considerable increase from just two percent in 1926 (Kaiser, 1994,
p. 133). The share of Belarusians who lived in cities and towns increased
from ten percent in 1926 to twenty one percent in 1939 (Kaiser, 1994,
p. 122). Although Belarus’s economic development in the 1920s and
1930s did not produce results sufficiently impressive to set the republic
apart from other regions of the Soviet Union, it ushered in changes that
had long-term consequences for the national development.

3. Belarusians in inter-war Poland: hostages to history

While in the east the Belarusian Soviet Socialist Republic moved toward
modernity, in the ethnically Belarusian lands of the reborn Polish
Republic remnants of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania lived on. It was
not only the stagnant economy and the vestiges of an archaic social
structure that distinguished the four ethnically Belarusian voivodships
(Byalystok, Wilno, Novogrodek and Polesie) from the surrounding
regions. The tradition of regarding the territory of the former Grand
Duchy of Lithuania as a separate political entity was kept alive by those
descendants of the Polish Lithuanian gentry who, just as in the centu-
ries past, supplied the Polish state with politicians and poets, soldiers
 ex oriente lux 97

and scholars. Pilsudski was perhaps the most prominent of the “Gente
Lithuani Natione Poloni” of the twentieth century. Throughout his rise
to power, from a social-democratic revolutionary to the authoritarian
leader of a restored Poland, he never completely abandoned an idea of
a Polish state in which Belarusian and Lithuanian territories would be
granted substantial political autonomy, not unlike the position enjoyed
by the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in the pre-Partition Polish Republic
(Machray, 1932, p. 130). As Pilsudski’s vision of the restored Polish-
Lithuanian federation failed to compete or coexist with the ascendant
vision of modern Poland as a nation-state with a clearly identifiable
national majority, the importance of the Kresy (Kresy Wschodnie,
Eastern Borderlands, as the ethnic Belarusian and Ukrainian territories
of the interwar Poland became known) diminished and they faded into
obscurity until the Soviet invasion of 1939.
Information about the part of today’s Belarus, which between the
wars was known as Kresy Wschodnie in Poland and Western Belarus in
the Soviet Union, when available at all, is deeply biased. Contemporary
Polish sources tell about the modest but steady social and economic
process in the lands ravaged by six years of military conflict. The local
population, if mentioned at all, is presented as a beneficiary of the
enlightened Polish policies. The other side is represented by Belarusian
nationally minded historians and contemporary observers. They present
the interwar Kresy as a picture of an unrelenting, deliberately savage
oppression of Belarusian national movement against the background
of dismal economic stagnation. Soviet historians, while just as hostile
to the Polish administration in Western Belarus, emphasize class rather
than national aspect of the allegedly oppressive Polish policies. The
reader is left with the impression that the latter has been caused by
the Polish government policies of exploitation of Belarusian peasants
and workers. The discrepancy between these gloomy images and the
moderately optimistic Polish accounts is so pronounced that it is hard
to believe that both sides are talking about the same region and the
same time period. Perhaps none of the competing national perspec-
tives was well suited for a society, which to a large extent remained
pre-modern and pre-national.
When the Polish armed forces routed the invading Bolshevik armies
at the gates of Warsaw in August 1920 in the move that was almost
immediately hailed as the “miracle on the Vistula” and then attacked
Red Army’s second echelon with even more devastating results three
weeks later at the battle of the Niemen, the whole territory between
98 chapter two

the rivers Niemen, Berezina and Pripet was returned to Polish control.
The Bolshevik government was weakened by the three years of the civil
war and was preparing to attack the remaining anti-Communist forces
in the Crimea. For the latter task it urgently needed the armies that
were holding front against the Polish offensive. The Soviet delegation
at the peace talks in Riga was prepared to concede to the victorious
Poles much of the territory of today’s Belarus.2 For Pilsudski this would
mean a real possibility of a federate Poland where all nations would
have enough power to participate in a political process.
The Eastern borders would determine not only the ethno-political,
but also the strategic and economic fate of interwar Poland. General
Dowbor-Musnicki, one of the Polish military leaders quite familiar
with the Belarusian theater of operations, thought of defensible eastern
borders along the rivers Dvina and Dnieper (Deveroux, 1922, p. 70).
Economically, in a region where paved highways were scarce, railroad
network to a very large extent determined future development by
providing or limiting access to distant markets for local products. The
layout of railroads in the region was such that without access to the
main junctures in Minsk, Orsha and Vitebsk the railroad network in
the region would degenerate into a series of truncated lines leading to
dead ends, as cross border trade volume was likely to be negligible.
Given the Soviet Union’s ideologically inspired confrontational stance
vis-à-vis Poland, both defensible eastern borders and an intact regional
transportation system were imperative for long-term political stability
and sustainable economic development.
Military and economic considerations suggested that Polish nego-
tiators should have at least exploited the recent Polish victories that,
together with war exhaustion and military pressures elsewhere, made
the Bolshevik position in the region increasingly precarious. A more
determined effort could have resulted in territorial concessions beyond
those actually forced from the Bolsheviks. However, the Polish delega-
tion at the peace talks in Riga was driven by projections of the long-
term internal political consequences of drawing the border too far to
the east. The Polish delegation was dominated by National Democrat

2
According to Borzecki (2008, p. 139), Soviet delegation in Riga, as well as the
People’s Commissar of Foreign Affairs, readily accepted the border proposal put
forward by the Polish delegation. This proposal, which roughly coincided with the
border actually agreed upon in the Riga peace treaty, was in fact the smallest of the
territorial claims discussed by the Polish delegation.
 ex oriente lux 99

representative, Stanislaw Grabski, whom Jerzy Borzecki (2008, p. 134)

describes as a brilliant intellectual, able to use his expert knowledge
(Grabski was professor of economics) to advance the agenda of National
Democrats. He was able to persuade the rest of the delegation, including
its head, Jan Dabski, that they should pursue more modest territorial
gains than those offered by the Bolsheviks. To the National Democrats,
large minority groups in the newly created Polish state contradicted
their view of Poland as an ethnically homogenous country. While they
could not shed the territories that were not exclusively or predominantly
Polish, they did make sure that the center of gravity in modern Poland
would be its ethnically Polish core.
Some observers (e.g., Zholtowski, 1950, pp. 212–215) note that Messrs
Dabski and Grabski later justified their decision to limit territorial gains
in the east by the desire to establish long-term friendly relations with
the Soviet Union, a much larger and stronger Eastern neighbor. This
explanation seems not quite plausible. Relations with the Soviet Union
could not be improved by a compromise. The Soviet Union of the
1920s was still run by an ideologically driven Bolshevik clique, which
regarded the spread of revolutionary violence abroad as a legitimate
way to achieve its ultimate goal of the workers’ paradise. Davies (1982,
vol. 2, p. 401) quoted a conversation between Lenin and the German
Communist, Clara Zetkin, which illustrated that Soviet leaders would
not be satisfied unless they had control over the whole country, which
in turn would serve as a stepping point to the European revolutionary
conflagration. This kind of regime could not be coaxed into friend-
ship by a concession of an additional ten thousand square miles of
the territory. The Soviet Union of the 1930s, while shelving the idea
of the world revolution, was resurrecting the Russian Empire under a
different name. Stalin would not be persuaded to limit his expansionist
appetites by references to the restraint of the Polish delegation at the
talks in Riga. For all the changes of the Soviet leadership in the inter-
war period, the preservation of an independent Polish state was never
a goal of Soviet foreign policy.
Whatever their motivations, the Polish representatives at the Riga
conference succeeded in creating Poland’s eastern borders, which were
militarily indefensible and economically unviable. The new borderland
region had an inherent tendency for political instability owing to the
presence of national minorities, which was substantial enough to create
a basis for irredentist politics and at the same time not large enough to
effectively claim territorial autonomy. The decisions made in Riga had
100 chapter two

consequences that would plague the Polish portion of the ethnically

Belarusian lands for almost two decades.
In interwar Poland, regional economic development was to a very
large extent directed by the central government. As decisions to invest
into infrastructure and the state-controlled industries were of essentially
a political nature, the political importance of a particular region was
a major factor in its placement on the list of government economic
priorities. For the ethnically Belarusian regions, the lack of political
clout, largely a result of the decisions made at the Riga peace talks,
meant that the focus of government’s economic development policies
would lie elsewhere. The north-eastern voivodeships of Poland, with
their underdeveloped infrastructure and chronically anemic private
enterprise, suffered considerable devastation in the first World War
and badly needed investment. The region’s scarcity of natural resources,
badly developed transportation network and poorly skilled workforce
provided insufficient incentives for private investment, especially in the
generally depressed business climate of the 1920s and 1930s. The only
solution to the chronic underdevelopment of the eastern borderlands
would have been a credible and consistent economic policy devoted
to the improvement of infrastructure and the creation of an extensive
system of education and vocational training. Absent political pressure
to implement such measures, the region was destined for long-term
economic stagnation.
The government’s insufficient readiness to supply funds to the east-
ern regions was only partly due to weak political incentives. Even less
can it be interpreted as malicious neglect. The restored Polish state
had to attend to numerous economic tasks, many of them crucial for
its survival, while having very limited economic resources at its dis-
posal. The country had to create a unified economic system out of the
three regional economies, each developed in accordance with needs of
another country (Russia, Austria-Hungary and Germany) and without
any regard whatsoever for their mutual compatibility. Much of the
territory of the new Poland was devastated in the course of the first
World War and the Bolshevik invasion of 1920. The eastern regions
bore the brunt of wartime destruction. While the newly independent
country inherited railroad infrastructure (although much of it in dire
need of repair) and some rolling stock from the partitioning powers,
the merchant marine had to be created from scratch. The Danzig sea
port, the only sea shipping outlet to which Poland had access was
insufficient for the needs of the country’s foreign trade and vulnerable
 ex oriente lux 101

to the political exigencies of the Versailles European order. A new

port facility had to be built, together with the new city of Gdynia, on
the short stretch of the Baltic coast that was in Poland’s possession.
Upper Silesia, a region with a major concentration of coal mines and
steel mills, was another important destination for government subsidies
and loans. The urgency of government financial support for Silesian
industries had been stressed by foreign observers who, while com-
menting on the importance of the region for the country’s long-term
industrial development, doubted that Silesia’s industrial complex could
be preserved as a viable economic entity (Kimens, 1928, 1929). Large
scale government industrial projects could not be financed by means
of excessive monetary and credit expansion.
The Polish government, mindful of the brief period of hyperinflation
in the early 1920s and well aware of the potentially disastrous economic
and political consequences of a runaway inflation, maintained strict
limits on monetary expansion throughout most of the interwar years.
Monetary, credit and budget constraints meant that the government
had to concentrate on the development of some regions and industries
at the expense of others. In this situation, priority was given to the
projects whish were indispensable for the country’s industrial develop-
ment and the incorporation of Poland into the system of world trade.
Even the most optimistic observer would not find an economic entity
in the Kresy, which could compete for government funds and private
investment with regions and industries of central and western Poland.
The lack of economic development in the Kresy should not be inter-
preted as willful neglect of a poor and ethnically distinct periphery
by a rich metropolitan power. Poland of the interwar years was not a
rich and well-developed country. It was a predominantly agrarian state
desperately trying to create a modern economy under the pressure of
a chronically recessional global economic environment. The needs of
the eastern territories had to assume lesser priority than imperatives
of national economic survival.
Economic development of the Kresy was not completely neglected.
Railroads were improved and, where possible, new lines were constructed
(Zholtowski, 1950, pp. 262–63). Railroad tariffs were restructured in
such a way that made local shipping of goods by rail economically
viable. New paved roads were built in the region where until then most
travel outside the widely spaced railroad lines was just as difficult and
costly as in the middle ages. Private capital responded to improved
road communication by establishing bus routes connecting cities and
102 chapter two

towns where no scheduled passenger service had ever existed. Emphasis

on the improvement of communications as the focus of the regional
economic development was perhaps the most realistic means to lift
the Kresy economy from its chronically anemic state. Without much
investment, it facilitated the growth of the existing production capac-
ity by providing additional opportunities for the development of local
markets (mostly for agricultural produce). Of course, this policy could
produce results only gradually. Throughout the two interwar decades
the low productivity individual farming remained the predominant
feature of the Kresy economy.
The Belarusian voivodships had the largest share of rural population
among the regions of interwar Poland. The share of rural population
was 81.9 percent in Polesie voivodship; in Nowogrodek voivodship
it was 83.4 percent and in Wilno voivodship it reached 87.1 percent
(Zholtowski, 1950, p. 248). Not only the industrial regions of Poland,
but also the predominantly agricultural provinces of Western Ukraine
had a considerably lower share of rural population (for example, in
the voivodship of Lwow it was 71.8 percent). As non-Belarusian ethnic
groups tended to concentrate in urban centers (a typical town in the
Kresy would be populated by Polish civil servants and Jewish craftsmen
and entrepreneurs), the share of rural population among Belarusians
exceeded the above figures.
Distribution of agricultural land in Poland was characterized by the
predominance of small and very small peasant holdings. More than sixty
percent of all land holdings were under 10 acres (Taylor, 1952, p. 73).
This pattern of land distribution was present throughout the country,
including the ethnically Belarusian regions. Land reform introduced in
1920 and then modified in 1925 allowed peasants to acquire the land
of large estates whose holdings were parceled out by the government.
In the Belarusian provinces the upper limit of the individual holding
not subject to parcellation was 1,000 acres, considerably larger than the
400 acres adopted as the upper limit in central and western Poland.
While Lubachko quotes several Belarusian politicians criticizing the
decision to adopt 1,000 acres as the upper limit of individual family,
Zholtowski provides a very positive assessment of the land reform in
the Kresy. According to him, a combination of measures designed to
increase individual peasant holdings and consolidate a patchwork of
small plots into manageable units succeeded in creating a sizeable group
of medium-size farmsteads. He estimates that in 1931, six years after the
implementation of the second phase of land reform, about half of all
 ex oriente lux 103

agricultural units in the three Belarusian voivodships were 12.5 to 125

acres in size. By 1936, more than 1,500,000 acres of agricultural land
in the region were transferred from large estates to small peasant hold-
ings (all data quoted from Zholtowski, 1950, pp. 278–281). Zholtowski
maintains that the measures of land redistribution and improvement
of land use introduced by Polish authorities in the Kresy considerably
improved the well-being of local peasants and opened better prospects
for long-term development of individual family farming.
While one might agree with the above optimistic assessment, it should
be kept in mind that improvements were taking place only gradually and
from a very low base. One must add that the land reform, although well
designed, had certain problems in its implementation, particularly in
the eastern regions of Poland. Land distribution was supervised by local
authorities from whom peasants had to obtain permission to enlarge
their holdings. In ethnically Belarusian territories there were instances
of abuse of power by local officials who refused to grant such a permis-
sion to Belarusian peasants (Lubachko, 1972, p. 133). While peasants’
petitions were frequently neglected or lost in the bureaucratic maze, the
newly arrived Polish colonists (mostly retired Polish army servicemen)
received the full and benevolent attention of the local authorities. The
colonists (osadniki) received not only the land, but also long-term loans
and government subsidies for purchasing equipment and constructing
buildings (Lubachko, p. 132). As Belarusian peasants generally did not
have access to such loans, the policy of colonization of the Kresy by
Polish settlers undermined the positive aspects of the land reform by the
preferential treatment of the ethnically Polish newcomers at the expense
of the local Belarusian population. Perhaps more important was the
widespread poverty which prevented many peasants in the Kresy from
availing themselves of the opportunities provided by the land reform.
Taylor (1952, p. 64) points out that the agriculture of Poland’s eastern
provinces was “backward and primitive” compared to the rest of the
country. Most peasant households were only subsistence farmsteads with
very little possibility of accumulation of monetary resources. According
to data provided by Taylor (1952, p. 77), surplus agricultural population
in eastern provinces of Poland stood at 53.6 percent in 1930. While
this was somewhat lower than Poland’s average share of the surplus
population of 59.9 percent, it still indicated an alarmingly high level
of rural unemployment. Poverty was one of the consequences of rural
overpopulation. In Polesie voivodship peasants lived below subsistence
level and their lack of purchasing power threatened the existence of
104 chapter two

the regional market (Taylor, 1952, p. 69). The settlement of Belarusian

land by retired Polish servicemen, as well as civilian colonists, should
be regarded not only as a measure to shore up the national situation in
the ethnically diverse border regions but also as an aspect of economic
policy designed to promote gradual improvement of regional economic
conditions. The Polish authorities regarded colonization of the Kresy
as a means to increase the aggregate purchasing power of the popula-
tion, increase demand for local agricultural output and thus, through
increased prices, improve the livelihood of local peasants (Mironowicz,
2002). While the idea was economically sound, the introduction of a
group of newcomers who were both wealthier than the local population
and belonged to a different ethnic group contributed to ethnic and class
tensions in the region and thus created favorable conditions for political
movements that combined nationalism and agrarian radicalism.
The fertile soil for radical politics in the Kresy was exploited both
from within, by the local Belarusian nationalist politicians, and from
without, by the Communist rulers of the neighboring Soviet Union. For
much of the 1920s and 1930s these two groups formed an alliance in
which each side had different ends but similar means. The Communist
Party of Western Belarus (Kommunisticheskaia Partiia Zapadnoi Belo-
russii, KPZB), while formally subordinated to the Communist Party of
Poland, was in fact a direct subsidiary of the All-(Soviet)Union Com-
munist Party. Jackson (1961, p. 190) points to close ties between the
KPZB and its counterpart in the Soviet Belarus. Communists in the
Belarusian voivodships of Poland were not numerous, nor was their
party affiliation compatible with an open participation in the political
process. Of course, their tactics had little use for the latter. Just like
their comrades in other Communist parties, the Bolsheviks of western
Belarus relied on a conspiratorial organization, unwavering ideological
commitment and clear chain of command that led from a small party
cell in a Polesie town all the way to the Politburo in Moscow. These
features, while not endearing the party to the electorate, were ideally
suited for a well-executed seizure of power should a crisis weaken the
existing political structures. This worked well in 1917 when the Bol-
sheviks in Russia successfully exploited the precipitous decline of the
old regime and the power vacuum that followed. In western Belarus,
the Communists were expecting a crisis of similar dimensions, which
would allow them to take power by virtue of their superior organization.
To facilitate such a crisis, they needed a disposable ally, a front party
which would work in the open, appealing to the legitimate grievances
 ex oriente lux 105

and aspirations of the constituency, until the time came for the Com-
munists to take power. Unlike true political allies, the “fellow traveler”
parties and movements were never tolerated after the Communists
had no further use for them. While the use of fellow travelers was an
acceptable tool in the arsenal of Communist parties throughout the
world, the fellow travelers themselves were treated with a more or less
well disguised contempt. Lenin famously called them “useful idiots”. I
do not intend to discuss the details of the strategy, tactics and political
morality of Communist parties and movements. Those readers who
are interested in the subject will be helped by works of Richard Pipes
and Robert Conquest, and indeed by the original writings of such
eminent Communist leaders as Lenin, Trotski and Stalin. The brief
outline presented above is necessary to provide a suitable background
to Belarusian national politics in interwar Poland.
The party chosen to serve as the main front organization for the
KPZB was the Belarusian Peasants’ and Workers’ Hramada. The name
requires some clarification. “Hramada” can be loosely translated as
something between “assembly” and “crowd”. The word implies a mass
gathering of people with no visible structure provided by formal rules
or tangible leadership. The deliberately demotic name was chosen by
the founders apparently to appeal to Belarusian peasants, unversed in
political terminology of the day. The “Workers’ ” part was somewhat
superfluous, as the party was essentially peasant in its program, meth-
ods and projected power base. The party, whose name harkened back
to the pre-War Hramada of the Nasha Dolia/Nasha Niva provenance,
was organized by the Belarusian caucus in the Polish Sejm elected in
1922. Deputies Branisau Tarashkevich, Symon Rak-Mikhailouski, Ihnat
Dvarchanin, Piatrok Miatla and others were the first Belarusian national
politicians to be elected to a legislature of a democratic country and
according to a democratic procedure. For some time they saw their
role as that of promoters of the Belarusian national cause within the
legitimate structures of the Polish state. However, dissatisfied with the
slow development of Belarusian national institutions in Poland and
enchanted by the reports about the results of Soviet national policy
in the Soviet Belarus, they adopted a considerably more radical and
confrontational stance vis-à-vis Poland. In fact, the emergence of
the Hramada in July 1925 marked the decisive turn of the left wing
of the Belarusian national political intelligentsia away from the idea
of cooperation with Poland and towards the incorporation of ethni-
cally Belarusian lands into the Soviet Belarus. The Soviet influence in
106 chapter two

the establishment of the Hramada can be traced through a meeting

between one of its founders, Branislau Tarashkevich, and Aliaksandar
Tsvikievich, a minister in the Belarusian National Republic govern-
ment in exile. Tsvikievich, by then convinced that Soviet Belarus was
the true and the only homeland for the Belarusian nation, met with
Tarashkevich in Gdynia and apparently succeeded in persuading
him to abandon the idea of pursuing the Belarusian national cause
in cooperation with the Polish state and adopt a considerably more
radical stance (Mironowicz, 1998). Several days later, Tarashkevich,
Rak-Mikhailouski, Miatla, Valoshin and Sabaleuski announced the
creation of the Belarusian Peasants’ and Workers’ Hramada. Among
the new party’s goals was the establishment of a revolutionary govern-
ment of workers and peasants, an independent Belarus and an alliance
with other countries that have already established similar governments
(Mironowicz, 1998). As the only country that could claim the dubi-
ous honor to be governed by the revolutionary leadership of workers
and peasants was the Soviet Union, the stated goals of the Hramada
amounted to yet another partition of Poland, this time exclusively for
the benefit of Russia, by means of a revolutionary struggle. In August
1925 Tarashekevich and Rak-Mikhailouski met with several members
of the KPZB leadership who informed their Hramada allies about the
decision by the Comintern’s Moscow headquarters to provide the new
party with financial aid (Johnson, 1966, p. 203).
Originally, the Comintern intended to use the Hramada as a recruit-
ment organization for potential Belarusian guerrilla fighters (Johnson,
1966, p. 203). This limited goal changed in the wake of Pilsudski’s coup
in May 1926. Apparently interpreting the regime change as a sign of an
impending larger crisis, the Communists stepped up their support for the
Hramada. In a classic model of relationships between the leading party
and the fellow travelers, the KPZB (itself but a conduit of the decisions
made in Moscow) stayed in the shadows, while the Hramada mobi-
lized the rural masses around a program that included such demands
as radical redistribution of land, abolition of the existing police force,
transformation of the standing army into a people’s militia, national
self-determination and secession from the Polish state (quoted in:
Johnson, 1966, p. 206). It is unclear to what extent the Hramada leaders
were aware of the role given to them by their Communist supporters.
Tarashkevich, who joined the KPZB in late 1925, probably knew better
than others that Hramada’s actions, if successful, would ultimately lead
to the incorporation of the ethnically Belarusian territories of Poland
 ex oriente lux 107

into Soviet Belarus. Belarusian radical politicians probably knew what

fate awaited the radical peasant parties in Russia after they helped the
Bolsheviks in their bid for power. Perhaps Belarusian nationalists were
so impressed by the state-supported national development in Soviet
Belarus that they did not mind being incorporated into it. Whatever
their motives, the Hramada leaders did exactly what their Communist
allies wanted them to do. They attempted to create a mass revolutionary
movement that, if successful, would destabilize the ethnic Belarusian
regions. This intention led them to a direct confrontation with the
Polish authorities and helped to further isolate Belarusian national
organizations from the mainstream political process.
In the second half of 1926, the Hramada experienced a truly phe-
nomenal growth. It membership, fewer than 1,000 in June, skyrocketed
to 45,000 in September and 68,000 in January. The growth continued
in 1927, reaching 150,000 members in March of that year (Johnson,
1966, p. 204). At the same time, the KPZB, which had 1,000 members
in 1925, grew to 3,000 in 1926 and then decreased to 1,000 members in
1927 (ibid., p. 205). In additions to the two hundred local chapters,
the Hramada supported numerous branches of the Belarusian School
Society, a cultural organization which promoted Belarusian national
education and disseminated some of the radical demands of the Hramda
(Zaprudnik, 1993, p. 84). The growing size of the Hramada, accompa-
nied by a massive propaganda campaign and numerous instances of
civil unrest, prompted the Polish authorities to take action. In February
1927, fifty six leaders of the Hramada were arrested and, after a year-long
investigation, tried behind closed doors and sentenced to prison terms of
various length. Tarashkevich, Rak-Mikhailouski, Miatla, Valoshin, and
Dvarchanin were later extradited to the Soviet Union where they spent
several years occupying prestigious government positions before being
imprisoned or executed. After the leaders were arrested, the Hramada
ceased to exist as a mass movement.
Repressions against the Hramada should not be interpreted as deliber-
ate government attempts to stamp out Belarusian national institutions
in Poland. Tarashkevich and his colleagues spent much of their time
in the Sejm protecting the interest of their Belarusian constituents
and sharply criticizing the abuses by local Polish authorities of the
Belarusian population. Polish authorities allowed Belarusian nationalist
radicals to use the Sejm as a bully pulpit from which they presented
their grievances, mixed with large doses of anti-Polish rhetoric. Not
content with a relatively narrow national audience, Belarusian deputies
108 chapter two

chose the League of Nations as the ultimate destination for their com-
plaints. Their petitions to the latter contained descriptions of mis-
treatment of Belarusian peasants by Polish authorities, presented in
grotesque detail but unconfirmed by an independent source (Vakar,
1956, p. 124). Despite their conspicuously acrimonious stance vis-à-vis
the Polish state, Belarusian radicals were allowed to use their position
as Sejm deputies to present the plight of the Belarusians in Poland to
domestic and international audiences. Their arrest and prosecution came
only after they deliberately chose to pursue a program that included
political destabilization and the territorial partition of the Polish state.
Their treatment in Poland is brought in perspective when compared
with their fate in the Soviet Union. There, they were arrested and tried
by the NKVD on charges, which were blatantly fabricated, sentenced
to death or to enormously long prison sentences and finally perished,
either in front of a firing squad or in one of the many Siberian forced
labor camps. While the Polish attitude to the Belarusian national cause
was less than friendly, it compares very favorably with the policies of
Soviet authorities.
After the destruction of the Hramada, Belarusian radical politicians
formed a new electoral group, Zmahanne (Strife) which received 71,000
votes in the parliamentary elections of 1928 and sent three deputies to
the Sejm (Johnson, 1966, p. 211). There, the three radicals, together with
two Belarusian deputies from other parties, maintained the Zmahanne
as a parliamentary bloc. Five more Belarusian deputies elected in 1928
chose not to join the radical faction.
Hramada and Zmahanne were not the only, or even the dominant,
Belarusian national organizations in the Kresy. Not all Belarusian
national activists saw the alliance with Bolsheviks as the best way
toward an independent Belarus. The Belarusian Christian Democratic
Party, which started in the early 1920s as a predominantly Roman
Catholic political organization, rapidly transformed into an inclusive
Belarusian national party. In 1926, while keeping its strong affiliation
with the Roman Catholic Church, the Christian Democrats declared
that the party was open to all Belarusians, regardless of religious affili-
ation. According to Uladzimir Konan (2003, p. 93) the party leaders
intended to attract members among those Belarusians who belonged
to the Eastern Orthodox Church. Belarusian Christian Democrats
were the most consistent champions of Belarus’s national statehood.
They regarded the struggle for Belarusian national interests within
the Polish state as only a necessarily temporary measure. The goal of
 ex oriente lux 109

Belarusian Christian Democracy was to establish a Belarusian nation-

state, independent from Russia and Poland. Fr Adam Stankevich, one
of the leaders of the BCD, suggested that Belarusians might seek alli-
ance with Ukrainians and Lithuanians, who faced similar problems on
their way to national statehood (Konan, 2003, p. 94). While relations
between the BCD and Polish authorities were strained, the party never
endured the kind of suppression experienced by the Hramada. In 1936,
the BCD attempted to further expand its electoral appeal by changing
its name to the Belarusian National Union (Belaruskaie Natsiyanal’naie
Ab’iadnanne). Despite deliberate attempts to become ever more inclu-
sive, the BCD/BNU never had a truly mass following. Its membership
was confined mostly to the Belarusian national intelligentsia (Vakar,
p. 126). There are no reports about a widespread network of the local
BDC branches. In fact, by most accounts Wilno was by far the most
important center of its activities. Belarusian urban intelligentsia asso-
ciated with the BDC usually had connections with other Belarusian
voluntary organizations.
A number of Belarusian national organizations chose to work within
the context of legitimate Polish state structures, before and after the
Pilsudski coup of 1926. Most of them were small and non-political,
concentrated on cultural economic development of the Belarusian
(mostly peasant) population of the Kresy. The Belarusian Institute of
Economy and Culture (BIEC) was perhaps the most prominent among
such organizations. Created in 1926 by a group of moderate Belarusian
nationalists, the Institute was intended as an organization that helped
the Belarusian population to improve agricultural techniques, develop
local industry and promote Belarusian arts and culture (Moroz, 2000).
In 1927, the Institute, which had its central headquarters in Wilno,
established fifty local chapters with a combined membership of 800 and
twenty two village libraries (Moroz, 2000). Membership in local chapters
of the Institute was never large. The largest figure, reached in 1933, was
nine hundred. By 1936 membership declined to slightly above four
hundred. The Institute was plagued by leadership quarrels, chronically
insufficient funds and the lack of a coherent long-term development
strategy. The main division within the leadership was between those
activists who wanted the Institute to concentrate on economic problems
of the Belarusian peasantry and those who advocated promotion of
national culture as the main goal. As a result of this chronic disagree-
ment about priorities, the Institute’s work was a rather incongruous
mixture of offering bookkeeping courses, founding a bank, which was
110 chapter two

supposed to provide loans to Belarusian peasants and craftsmen, and

staging amateur theatrical performances. Many of the Institute’s activi-
ties were concentrated in Wilno. Among the members of the Wilno
chapter were many educated professionals as well as Belarusian students
of Wilno University. While the Institute’s outreach to its intended
constituency produced rather unimpressive results, its true significance
proved to be in serving as a discussion club for the Belarusian urban
intelligentsia. The development of the Belarusian national idea by the
still small group of intellectuals at that time was just as important as
the spread of practical knowledge among the Belarusian peasants. As
for the nationally-minded intellectuals, they were too enchanted by the
great strides of Belarusian national development across the border in
the Soviet Union to consistently abstain from pro-Soviet radicalism.
Although the Institute, which for many years closely cooperated with
the Belarusian Christian Democratic Party, deliberately distanced itself
from radical factions of the Belarusian national movement in the Kresy,
it eventually was closed by the Polish authorities who cited public safety
as the main reason for the closure.
Suspicions of subversive activities among the Institute leadership
were not entirely unfounded. Since 1936, the Institute closely cooper-
ated with the Union of Belarusian Schools. The latter, although osten-
sibly dedicated to the goal of Belarusian education in the Kresy, had
a political agenda that combined radical Belarusian nationalism with
an explicitly pro-Soviet stance. This combination not only reflected
the attitude prevalent in Belarusian politics in the Kresy (some of the
parliamentary deputies who later joined the Hramada also served as
prominent national educators) but also direct Soviet aid in financing
Belarusian schools in Poland (Vabishevich, 2002). Ideological indoctri-
nation in Belarusian gymnasia (there were six of them in the beginning
of the 1920s, the number declined to only two by 1932) was blatantly
pro-Soviet. Chapters of the Communist Party youth branch were active
in every Belarusian gymnasium. Their pro-Communist activity peaked
at the time of the Hramada affair, thus suggesting a close coordination.
There is no evidence that the administration and teachers did anything
to stop the students from joining Communist-controlled organizations,
publishing anti-Polish pamphlets, organizing protests, etc. In fact, stu-
dents frequently issued statements that reproached their teachers for
not being radical enough (Vabishevich, 2003; Tokts’, 2002).
After the dissolution of the Hramada, the Communist Party of Western
Belarus used the Union of Belarusian Schools as its front organization
 ex oriente lux 111

in the Kresy. According to Siemakowicz (2002), the KPZB influence in

the Union of Belarusian Schools increased considerably after 1927 and
resulted in the establishment of the Union’s chapters in eight districts. In
addition to this, assistance by the KPZB allowed the Union to establish
three chapters in Belarusian gymnasia. In 1929, after a group of Belaru-
sian national activists who disagreed with the political radicalization of
Belarusian education left the Union leadership, the influence of KPZB
had become even more pronounced. It would not be an exaggeration to
say that by the time of its liquidation in 1936 the Union of Belarusian
Schools had become a conduit of KPZB’s policies in the educational
sphere. This was especially visible at the grassroots level. According to
Tokts’ (2002), local Union activists preferred to communicate in Rus-
sian and spent more time and energy disseminating Soviet propaganda
than promoting Belarusian national education.
Radical organizations inspired by the Soviet experience were the pre-
dominant but not the only feature of the Belarusian political landscape
in the Second Polish Republic. A group of Belarusian national activists
believed that their cause was better served by loyal cooperation with
Polish authorities and consistent rejection of Soviet support. Throughout
the 1920s loyalist Belarusian politicians founded six political parties, all
of them small, none lasting longer than three years. While their orien-
tation was broadly pro-Polish and they received funds from the Polish
government, these parties did not support all aspects of official Polish
policies toward the Belarusian minority. The Belarusian People’s Party
criticized the Polish authorities for their oppressive policies towards
Belarusian national education, lack of financial support for Belarusian
peasants, high levels of taxation, and generally neglectful attitude of local
administrators to the Belarusian language and culture (Gomolka, 1997).
Demands for Belarusian cultural autonomy and government subsidies
for Belarusian national education were prominent in programs of all
Belarusian political parties of pro-government orientation. In the long
run, loyalist Belarusian politicians envisioned political autonomy for
Belarus.
Since 1930 Belarusian national activists loyal to the Polish govern-
ment tended to congregate around the Central Union of Belarusian,
Cultural, Educational, and Economic Organizations (Central Union).
The latter had a structure and goals broadly similar to those of the
Belarusian Institute of Economy and Culture. Anton Lutskevich and
Radaslau Astrouski, two prominent Belarusian national activists, were
among the founders of the Central Union. Both believed that Belarusian
112 chapter two

national organizations should be free of Soviet influence not only because

they did not see Soviet Belarus as a desirable model of a Belarusian
national state but also for a more immediate reason: they recognized that
Soviet-inspired radicalization provoked repressions against Belarusian
nationalists by Polish authorities and thus made it more difficult to
promote the cause of Belarusian national development in the Kresy. The
Central Union stayed away not only from the KPZB and the Union of
Belarusian Schools but even from the Belarusian Christian Democrats.
It was not popular among the radical segment of Belarusian national
intelligentsia. Tokts’ (2002) and Vabishevich (2002) write about grass-
roots activists in villages and schools routinely referring to Astrouski
and Lutskevich as traitors to the Belarusian national cause. The rhetoric
used by the Christian Democrats in reference to the Central Union was
only marginally less vitriolic (Mironovicz, 1998). While the hostility
on the part of other Belarusian national organization made it harder
for the Central Union to convey its message to its potential constitu-
ency, internal problems were perhaps more damaging to the long-term
viability of the organization. The Central Union suffered from personal
intrigues among its leadership. Particularly pronounced were divisions
between Astrouski and Lutskevich. Each leader relied on support from
organizations affiliated with the Central Union. This resulted in a split
of the moderate Belarusian national movement and its rapid weaken-
ing. The Union effectively ceased to exist in 1937.
The Belarusian national intelligentsia in the Second Polish Republic
was given an opportunity to develop Belarusian national institutions
compatible with a modern European state. Belarusian politicians gained
experience of a democratic political process, including electoral compe-
tition, building relationships with constituencies, working in legislative
bodies, participating in a broad and relatively free political discourse.
They were able to test the limits of opposition to state policies, com-
municate their grievances to the League of Nations, form ethnic parlia-
mentary caucuses. Belarus’s national intelligentsia learned to compete
for attention of the public in civil society which allowed a relatively
free exchange of ideas. Belarusian national activists in interwar Poland
enjoyed much greater freedom of expression and political action than
their counterparts in Soviet Belarus. One might say that Belarusian
civil society in interwar Poland was more organic and vibrant than in
Soviet Belarus.
It is therefore surprising that the Belarusian intelligentsia in Poland
looked at the Soviet experiment across the border as a preferred alter-
 ex oriente lux 113

native to their own experience. Radical left-wing politicians were not

the only ones expressing their admiration for the Soviet policy towards
Belarusians and supporting Soviet infiltration of the Belarusian national-
ist organizations in Poland. Moderate Belarusian politicians were simi-
larly enchanted with all things Soviet (Mironowicz, 1998). To an extent,
this attitude can be explained by a feature of Belarusian nationalism that
was shared by Belarusian politicians of all political persuasions, from
the extreme left to the moderate center. The anti-Polish tradition of
modern Belarusian nationalism, articulated by Lastouski and reaffirmed
by Ezavitau, became firmly embedded in national Belarusian ideology.
The Belarusian press sometimes grotesquely exaggerated the real extent
of Polish repressions against radical nationalists, thus contributing to
the perpetuation of the animosity toward the Polish state. In this intel-
lectual environment, Soviet Belarus was seen not just as the lesser of
two evils, but the only practical way towards the eventual unification
of all ethnically Belarusian lands into a Belarusian national state.
With the benefit of hindsight, these ideas seem mere delusions. But
in the 1920s, when the “korenizatsiya” policy was in full swing, Belaru-
sian nationalists in Poland could plausibly interpret developments east
of the border as a true beginnings of Belarusian national statehood.
Belarusian politicians in the Kresy had to build their parties from the
grassroots level up, painstakingly crafting viable constituencies out of
the inert mass of frequently illiterate and always desperately poor peas-
ants. Their counterparts in Soviet Belarus had their offices delivered
to them by benevolent bureaucrats from the Peoples’ Commissariat of
Nationalities. In Poland, Belarusian literary figures had to compete for
readership within a diverse audience where many of those who could
read Belarusian could also read Polish and thus had access to a much
greater number of publications (both books and periodicals) than
the nascent Belarusian press could offer. Their counterparts in Soviet
Belarus enjoyed access to state-subsidized publishing facilities whose
operation was not constrained by market forces. The policy of “kore-
nizatsiya” implied that the Belarusian cultural figures were entitled to
the largest readership, while their non-Belarusian colleagues followed
in the order of diminishing significance. Belarusian intellectuals in
Poland had to compete for government funds with Polish scholars,
many of them world-known experts in their fields. In addition to that,
Belarusian scholars had to perform a delicate balancing act: to maintain
their Belarusian identity without being too provincial. Meanwhile, in
Soviet Belarus, academic credentials were bestowed with the generosity
114 chapter two

which made one suspicious of their true value. In short, the Belarusian
national elites in Poland had to pursue the Belarusian national cause
in an imperfect democracy and stagnant market, struggling against
the government which was sometimes indifferent, sometimes hostile,
but never fully supportive of their aspirations. The Belarusian national
elites in the Soviet Union benefitted from a deus ex machina assistance
by the powerful totalitarian state.
It is somewhat more difficult to understand why the Belarusian
activists in Poland remained enamored of the Soviet Union even after
the policy change away from national development and towards impe-
rial hegemony. It is hard to understand why the Belarusian national
intelligentsia in Poland continued to support Soviet penetration of
Belarusian politics and education even after the figures of symbolic
importance for the Belarusian national development were abruptly
removed from their positions, silenced, sent to prison, killed, driven to
suicide. Repressions against radical Belarusian nationalists in Poland
paled in comparison with Soviet atrocities. Still, Belarusian national
organizations continued to serve as conduits of Soviet policies in the
region. Reluctance of Belarusian nationalists in Poland to distance
themselves from Soviet totalitarianism might be explained by the fact
that across the border, Soviet Belarus still existed as an identifiable
political structure, as the closest approximation of a Belarusian national
state. Relatively mild repressions by the Polish state were actions of an
alien power, whose ultimate goal was assimilation of Belarusians. Soviet
repressions against Belarusian nationalists were conducted by a power
which not only retained Belarus as one of the constituent republics but
also promoted Belarusians to the highest levels of the state apparatus.
Belarusian intellectuals in the Soviet Union participated in an exciting
game in which the losers went to Siberia or faced the firing squad and
the winners reaped rewards of prestige and power. Not only victims,
but quite a few of the prosecutors, jailers and executioners were Belaru-
sians who owed their upward mobility to the Soviet state. In contrast
to that, Polish state’s policy toward native Belarusians seemed to be
the opposite: to make expressions of their national identity a burden
on social mobility.
To the Belarusian national elites, the Kresy experience did not seem
an alternative to the Soviet path of nation-building. Belarusian scholars
repeatedly present the Second Polish Republic as an oppressor of the
Belarusian minority. Of course, they acknowledge the sufferings of
national elites in Soviet Belarus, but in the peculiar calculus of national-
 ex oriente lux 115

ism the latter counts for more than the former, as only under the Soviet
rule was Belarus allowed to develop and preserve the characteristics of
a modern nation.
The Belarusian national intelligentsia in Poland was just a fraction of
the total Belarusian population. It is therefore legitimate to ask if the
Belarusians who did not belong to the national elite shared the latter’s
negative attitude toward the Polish government. While Vakar, Lubachko
and Zaprudnik suggest that it was indeed the case, their assessments
are based on the contemporary reports provided by Belarusian national
politicians. The accuracy of these sources, if not supported by indepen-
dently collected data, should be treated with caution. As we are unaware
of public opinion polls among the Belarusian population of the Kresy,
an observer is left with only few crude indicators that might shed
some light on the attitudes of those Belarusians who did not publish
newspapers or participate in political meetings. Perhaps the best way
to understand the Belarusians’ attitude to the Polish state is to look at
their behavior when the state and its oppressive capacity ceased to exist
and have not yet been replaced by another state.
When the Second Polish Republic fell under the coordinated attacks
of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, the Kresy experienced a brief
interregnum, when Polish authority disappeared and the Soviet state
structures had not yet established themselves in every village or small
town of the region. In his definitive work on the Soviet occupation of
Poland’s eastern territories, Jan Gross provides a detailed description
of this brief and chaotic period. According to him, Belarusian peas-
ants did not use the opportunity that arose out of the brief power
vacuum to organize an anti-Polish uprising. Even when commanders
of the advancing Soviet troops urged the locals to take the law into
their own hands, kill the Poles and seize their property, the peasants
were reluctant to follow this advice. Although Poles were killed and
robbed by Belarusians, those crimes were individual acts, committed
for pecuniary motives or just to settle old scores. They did not create
a pattern that could be interpreted as an organized mass movement of
national liberation.
Additional information that might shed some light on Belarusians’
attitudes to the Polish state can be found in Marek Wierzbicki’s
research of Belarusian soldiers (both conscripts and volunteers) in
the Polish Army during the debacle of September 1939 (Wierzbicki,
1996). Information contained in this study indicates that there were
no mass desertions of Belarusian recruits during the mobilization prior
116 chapter two

to the hostilities or in the first two weeks of military operations. As

Soviet aggression against Poland made military resistance impossible,
Belarusian soldiers started to desert en masse. However, Wierzbicki
notes that their desertion rates and patterns did not differ significantly
from those of ethnic Polish soldiers. First, volunteers, both Polish and
Belarusian, tended to stay with their units till the end. Second, conscripts
of Belarusian origin deserted when their units were passing through
the territory where the population was predominantly Belarusian, while
most desertions by ethnic Poles occurred on ethnically Polish territory.
Although necessarily sketchy, the data presented by Wierzbicki do not
suggest that there was a significant difference in behavior of Polish and
Belarusian soldiers throughout the September campaign. For the lack
of a better illustration of attitudes of ordinary Belarusians toward the
Polish state, we may plausibly assume that the behavior of Belarusians
serving in the Polish armed forces serves as such an illustration, however
incomplete. There was little sign of widespread and well-founded anti-
Polish sentiment among the majority of Belarusians, even before they
could compare for themselves life in Poland and in Soviet Belarus.

4. The war of 1941–1945 and the consecration of

the national myth

Belarus does not celebrate its independence day on March 25, the day
on which the first Belarusian People’s Republic was proclaimed in 1918.
Typically, on this day several dozen opposition activists stage a small
demonstration, which is promptly dispersed by riot police. The day
when Belarus ceased to be a constituent Soviet republic in the wake of
the collapse of the Soviet Union in December of 1991, is not publicly
celebrated by anyone. Instead, Belarus celebrates Independence Day
on July 3. The celebration is a grand affair, with military parades and
public processions, wreath-laying ceremonies and Presidential addresses.
The event chosen to symbolize Belarus’s independence took place on
July 3, 1944. On that day the Red Army expelled German troops from
the country’s capital city, Minsk, and restored Soviet power. This is
a somewhat strange choice of a date to celebrate Independence Day.
Belarus did not become more independent on July 3, 1944 than it was
on June 21, 1941, the day before German invasion. However incongru-
ous, the choice illustrates the central importance of the Second World
War for the national mythology of modern Belarus. This centrality
 ex oriente lux 117

is not epitomized in just one day. Belarusian cities are replete with
war memorials. Street names commemorating wartime events or war
heroes are everywhere. At school, students are constantly reminded
that Belarus had lost a quarter of its population while heroically con-
fronting German Nazism. Post-war generations of Belarusians grew
up with the narrative of the Great Patriotic War as the centerpiece of
their national identity.
The official image of the Great Patriotic War in Belarus is, well, great
and patriotic. Attacked by the overwhelming forces of Nazi Germany,
the Red Army in Belarus put up a brave but futile resistance and soon
was forced to retreat. Nazi occupation was heroically resisted by the
overwhelming majority of the local population who promptly organized
a widespread guerrilla campaign which denied the German forces con-
trol over the countryside and threatened their position in urban centers.
German occupiers responded with a campaign of terror, burning whole
villages and killing their inhabitants. This only fueled popular resistance
and resulted in the spread of the guerrilla campaign. The latter soon
became a major military factor on the Eastern Front, paralyzing Ger-
man garrisons, disrupting their lines of communication, tying down
large troop contingents sent to control the guerrillas. As the Soviet high
command recognized the importance of paramilitary operations in the
enemy rear, Belarusian guerrillas received support from the unoccupied
portion of the Soviet Union and were involved in the coordination of
their activities with the overall strategic objectives of the Soviet armed
forces. This coordination culminated in the summer of 1944 when the
guerrilla units, then in control of large swaths of Belarus’s territory,
used their position to strike in the enemy rear just as the Soviet Army
was advancing through Belarus. Thus, Belarus contributed to the Soviet
victory in the Great Patriotic War not only by supplying conscripts to
the Soviet Army but also by fighting against the occupying force virtu-
ally on its own. Belarusian guerrillas were mostly locally recruited and
relied on the local population for supplies and intelligence. Belarus’s
participation in the Great Patriotic War set it apart from other Soviet
republics, adding the moniker “partisan” to its name.
To define Belarus’s war time narrative as “official” would be an over-
simplification. True, it was created shortly after the war by the official
Soviet propaganda machine, then maintained and developed through
the post-war years and eventually taken over by the official propaganda
in post-Soviet, authoritarian and populist Belarus. But in the meantime
the narrative had become firmly ingrained in the national psyche of
118 chapter two

Belarusians. For most Belarusians, heroic images of their country’s

struggle against the German invaders remain central to their national
identity. This conspicuous centrality illustrates the importance of Max
Weber’s vision of the state as the wielder of legitimate violence within a
given territory. Legitimate violence is important not only as a function
but also as a symbol of the state. Histories of Belarus’s neighbors to the
east and west are replete with tales of martial glory. Stories of guerrilla
campaign in which armed groups of Belarusians provided protection
to their countryfolk (or alternatively, were able to secure support of
the local population by credible threat of violence) allowed Belarus to
claim martial glory of her own.
The story of Belarus’s heroic past is, of course told selectively. Quite
a few facts of the country’s wartime past are conveniently missing from
public memory and, if found in history books, are relegated to footnotes.
To begin at the very beginning: Belarus did not become involved in
the Second World War on the morning of June 22, 1941, when Ger-
man troops crossed into the Belarusian territory. Instead, Belarus’s
involvement started on September 17, 1939, when the Soviet Union
joined its Nazi ally in aggression against Poland. Belarus benefitted
from this aggression: it received those regions of interwar Poland which
had a substantial presence of ethnically Belarusian population. These
regions were finally incorporated into one political entity: the Belarusian
Soviet Socialist Republic. Dreams of Belarusian nationalists everywhere
came true as a result of a coordinated action of the Soviet Union and
National Socialist Germany. Of course, the territorial enlargement of
Belarus was but an afterthought in Moscow’s geopolitical plans. As for
the wishes of Belarusian national intelligentsia, they counted for very
little. Despite Wilno’s long-standing association with the development
of Belarusian national culture, the city, originally allotted to Belarus, was
ceded to Lithuania on October 10, 1939, just weeks after its capture by
the Red Army. In the short time of the Soviet occupation, the city was
thoroughly cleansed of all remaining activists of non-Soviet Belarusian
national organizations and movements. Anton Lutskevich and Alyak-
sandar Ulasau, leaders of the Belarusian national movement since the
Nasha Niva and pre-revolutionary Hramada period, were arrested and
later died (or possibly were killed) in prison. The Belarusian poet Makar
Kravtsou was arrested and died in captivity. When Wilno (which briefly
changed name to Vilnia before changing it again to Vilnius) was handed
over to Lithuania, there was no longer a possibility that the city would
become a center of a Belarusian national movement that could provide
an alternative to the Soviet-style Belarusian national development.
 ex oriente lux 119

The ethnically Belarusian voivodeships of Poland occupied by the

Red Army in September 1939 had to be cleansed of the vestiges of
the destroyed Polish state and to be made indistinguishable from the
Soviet portion of Belarus. The transformation of the Kresy into Soviet
Belarus was a relatively easy task. First, the existing social structures
were allowed to crumble in a wave of criminality, perpetrated by the
local population and encouraged by the new Soviet masters. Gross (2002,
pp. 38–40) describes numerous instances of murder, robbery and loot-
ing directly instigated by Red Army officers. The recorded instances of
criminal violence were directed against former Polish administrators,
settlers, Roman Catholic priests, families of military officers, landowners,
in a word, anyone whose possessions were sufficient enough to serve
as a reward for the crime. While Belarusians were mostly among the
perpetrators and Poles among the victims, the latter included Belaru-
sians who were unlucky to prosper under the Polish regime. When the
regular apparatus of repression, familiar to the inhabitants of Soviet
Belarus, was established in the former Kresy, all previously existing
structures of authority were thoroughly weakened by several weeks of
disintegration of the local social fabric. When on October 22, 1939,
occupation authorities staged a Soviet-style election that produced the
National Assembly of Western Belarus, there was no organized group
to oppose the scam. The National Assembly met on October 28, 1939,
in Bialystok and promptly voted for the unification with Soviet Belarus,
confiscation of large landholdings and nationalization of private banks
and industrial enterprises.
The establishment of Soviet power structures in Western Belarus was
accompanied by forcible change of the region’s ethnic composition. In
1939–41 about 500,000 Polish citizens were deported from Western
Belarus to remote regions of the Soviet Union. Approximately half
of them went to concentration camps and prisons, others were sent
to collective farms and industrial enterprises where they had to work
for minuscule compensation (estimates provided by Gross, 2002, pp.
194–95). Most, although not all, of them were Poles. Gross (2002, p. 199)
mentions the ethnic composition of the 120,000 thousand Polish citizens
deported from Western Ukraine and Belarus who were registered by
the Polish Red Cross in 1941–43. Of the total number of deportees, 52
percent were Poles, 30 percent Jews, and 18 percent Ukrainians and
Belarusians. Not all Poles in Western Belarus were rounded up. Soviet
authorities used social class rather than ethnic identity as the main
criterion for deportation. Anyone whose social position placed him or
her above rural or urban underclass was in danger of being deported.
120 chapter two

The categories of those subject to arrest or deportation included (but

were not limited to) officers of the Polish Army, civil servants of the
Polish state, wealthy landowners, owners of large industrial enterprises,
financiers, people with university education, teachers, doctors, engineers,
employees of forestry services, well-to-do peasants, retired military set-
tlers (osadniki), small businessmen (described as “speculators” by the
Soviet authorities), and family members of the people belonging to the
above categories (Anonymous, 1946, p. 51). As Poles made up a majority
of people in many of those categories, the Polish presence in the region
was dramatically reduced, thus contributing to ethnic homogenization
of the territories newly incorporated into Soviet Belarus.
For the first time in history, Belarusian ethnic territories coincided
with an identifiable political entity. Of course, the Belarusian Soviet
Socialist Republic was not exactly an independent nation state, but it
was the closest approximation of it that history had yet afforded. The
unification made Belarus more ethnically representative. It did not make
Belarusians, in the east and the west of the country, freer, wealthier or
happier. Osadniki, as well as other deportees, had their property con-
fiscated. These assets were distributed to the poor peasants. The latter
received about 200 thousand hectares of land, 30 thousand pigs, sheep
and cattle, ten thousand horses, an unspecified quantity of unmecha-
nized agricultural equipment. Mechanized equipment was concentrated
in the hands of local administrative bodies. The more desirable posses-
sions, such as motorcycles, bicycles and valuable household items were
appropriated by Soviet administrators (Kuzniatsou, 2005).
The spoils of the organized looting were too insignificant to make
poor peasants into rich ones. The limited political freedom enjoyed by
Belarusians in Poland was gone with the Polish state. The latter, oppres-
sive as it was towards Belarusian nationalist intellectuals and peasants,
at least allowed the former a modicum of political and cultural expres-
sion, while the latter had a well-defined space in which their private life
and property rights were not likely to be violated by local authorities.
Under the new regime, the intellectuals were killed or driven from the
public arena. In the long run, poor peasants, supposedly the primary
beneficiaries of Soviet regime in Western Belarus, did not gain much
from the new policies.
Shortly after the invasion, the Soviets extended the network of
secret police to the newly acquired territory and made it a major tool
of political control over the local population. Networks of informants,
established by local branches of the People’s Commissariat of Internal
 ex oriente lux 121

Affairs, proved an effective tool of social control. Omnipresent fear of

a seemingly random arrest forced peasants even in remote and isolated
villages to display outward signs of loyalty and devotion to the new
rulers. The system of informers and denunciations had a self-sustaining
quality. Anyone could settle a personal grudge against a neighbor by
informing the secret police of his alleged anti-Soviet deeds or words.
Such denunciations were treated as sufficient grounds for arrest which
was frequently followed by a prison term or deportation. Gross (2002,
pp. 114–122) describes the mechanism of voluntary collaboration of
the local peasants with the Soviet secret police as a prominent feature
of village life in Western Belarus in 1939–41. The climate of fear and
uncertainty caused by denunciations and arrests had a corrosive effect
on village communities, breeding mutual mistrust and hatred.
Although the main burden of repressions was borne by those social
groups whose education or modest prosperity set them above the under-
class, no one, however poor, could feel safe. There are indications that,
once the upper and middle classes were thoroughly destroyed, Soviet
authorities started to turn their attention to the poorer social groups.
Kuzniatsou (2000) mentions that in the second half of 1940 Belarus’s
Supreme Court heard 5,821 cases against defendants from Western
Belarus, against only 67 such cases in the first half of the year. Since
for each case that made it to the Supreme Court there were dozens of
cases which were decided by lower courts or by extra-judicial bodies
introduced by the secret police, there are reasons to believe that after
the first wave of arrests repressions against the local population were
not about to wind down. In the towns, industrial workers had their
pay cut in half, from 60 to the equivalent of 30 zlotys a month (Vakar,
1956, p. 168). The Soviet regime in Western Belarus improved lives of
the few and disenchanted many. When the German Army advanced
int Belarus in June 1941, the enthusiasm of the crowds greeting the
new invaders as liberators seemed genuine.
The Soviet invasion of eastern Polish regions did not make it into
official Soviet mythology of the Great Patriotic War. In today’s Belarus,
the events that enlarged the country’s territory at the expense of its
neighbor’s destruction are remembered, if at all, as a footnote to the
grand epic that started on July 22, 1941. The latter, of course, is remem-
bered selectively as well. The full speed of the German Blitzkrieg, the
rapidity of the Soviet defeat, the ghastliness of the chaotic disintegration
of Soviet power in Belarus do not figure in the commonly accepted
narrative of Belarus’s participation in the war.
122 chapter two

The German advance through Belarus was among the most remark-
able examples of successful mobile warfare. By June 28, German
armored units reached the Berezina river, more than two hundred miles
east of the border. A week later, Guderian’s tanks stood at the Dnieper
river and by July 10 were advancing into Russia, beyond Belarus’s
eastern borders. Despite the high concentration of Soviet armed forces
in Belarus, the whole country was overrun in less than three weeks.
Soviet power structures collapsed even faster. Vakar (p. 171) men-
tions eyewitness accounts of the chaotic flight of Soviet officials, the
evacuation of prisons accompanied by mass executions of the inmates,
the destruction of buildings, industrial and agricultural equipment
conducted by the NKVD and other images of the rapid disintegration
of Soviet authority in Belarus. The combination of the incompetence
and inhumanity of Stalin’s regime was abundantly demonstrated in the
days of the chaotic stampede to the east. Throughout Belarus, people
who witnessed the debacle became rapidly disenchanted with the
government, which abandoned them so quickly. Perhaps this explains
the enthusiasm frequently displayed by Belarusians in the east and the
west toward the advancing German troops. Those who remembered
German occupation of the region during the first World War prob-
ably thought that the new masters would be an improvement over
their Soviet predecessors. After all, then it was German support that
helped the Belarusian nationalist intelligentsia to establish a fledgling
political movement at the end of the First World War. Soon, however,
Belarusians were disenchanted again.
National Socialist Germany had no intention of making Slavic ter-
ritories of the Soviet Union into viable political entities. Hitler’s disdain
for Slavs, well reflected in Mein Kampf, did not diminish by the time
of the attack on the Soviet Union. Shortly after the invasion of the
Soviet Union, Hitler stated on more than one occasion that the Slavic
inhabitants of the conquered territories would be regarded only as
a source of cheap manual labor for the future German settlers (e.g.,
Irving, 1990, pp. 419, 425). Jewish population of the newly acquired
territories was slated to complete extermination. Some Nazi officials
preferred a more gradual approach to the incorporation of new ter-
ritories into Germany’s sphere of influence. However, throughout
much of the war, Hitler’s attitudes to the conquered Slavs provided
the guiding principle to the administration of the occupied lands. The
immediate needs of the armed forces would come first, the economic
needs of Germany second, while interests of the subject peoples were
 ex oriente lux 123

not even a distant third. In addition to economic tasks, the occupation

authorities had a role to play in the “final solution”. The extermination
of local Jewish communities was conducted with open brutality and
frequently contributed to the destruction of the economic life of small
towns where positions of small craftsmen and traders were traditionally
occupied by Jews, who in many places constituted a majority of urban
population. Special units charged with the implementation of the “final
solution” in the east had insufficient numbers for the task and on some
occasions had to bring in volunteers recruited in Lithuania. The latter,
when working alongside their German comrades, sometimes did not
distinguish between Jews and Belarusians, wantonly looting and killing
with such ferocity that even local German administrators expressed their
apprehension about the conspicuous inhumanity of Sonderkommando
actions (Lubachko, 1972, pp. 153–54). Belarusians, who only recently
witnessed the brutality of the NKVD, were treated to an equally blatant
display of brutality by its Nazi counterpart. To add insult to injury, the
German occupation authorities ordered the peasants to keep working
at Soviet-era collective farms. Germans apparently recognized that col-
lective farms are well-suited for taking agricultural produce away from
peasants without having to pay market prices. The harvest of 1941 was
appropriated by German authorities very much in the same fashion as
the harvest of 1940 by the Soviets (Mueller, 1991, p. 108). The new mas-
ters of Belarus proved to be just as respectful of individual liberty and
private property as the old ones.
Under German occupation much of the ethnic Belarusian territory
was included in Belarusian (Weissruthenische) Generalbezirk, an admin-
istrative unit within Reichskommissariat Ostland. Parts of Bialystok and
Grodno provinces were incorporated into East Prussia, while Pinsk,
Brest and Gomel provinces were ceded to the Reichskommissariat of
Ukraine. German authorities planned to include the provinces of Smo-
lensk and Briansk into Belarusian Generalbezirk, but this had to wait
until the end of the war. Throughout the time of German occupation
(June 1941–July 1944) Belarusian territory was divided into civilian
and military zones. The latter, roughly east of the Berezina river, was
administered by military authorities. The civilian zone was presided
over by the general commissar, the position occupied by Wilhelm Kube
and, after his assassination in September 1943, by Gruppenfuehrer SS
Curt von Gottberg. The general commissar, a civilian administrator,
was appointed by the Ministry of Eastern Territories and reported
to the Reich Minister, Alfred Rosenberg. The latter, a Baltic German,
124 chapter two

who had lived in Russia before the revolution and was familiar with
the peculiarities of national and ethnic relations in the region, had
the difficult task of reconciling the practical problems of everyday
administration with National Socialist racial fantasies. The former had
to take into account realities of the region and implied that some kind
of accommodation with the locals must be reached, while the latter
blithely prescribed extermination of some ethnic groups, resettlement of
others and subjugation of the rest according to plans of the expanding
German nation’s Lebensraum.
The official Belarusian narrative of the Second World War dismisses
as traitors those locals who collaborated with German occupation
authorities. However, the realities of wartime occupation meant that
the occupiers needed the locals and the locals needed the occupiers. Ben
Shepherd formulated the main tasks of German occupation administra-
tion as exploitation of the occupied area’s economic potential, pacifi-
cation of the area and engagement of popular cooperation (Shepherd,
2004, p. 35). Obviously, in order to reach the first and the second goal,
cooperation with the locals was necessary. However, the same formula
applies to the locals: they needed a peaceful environment to be able to
continue their economic activities. In order to ensure peace, some kind
of cooperation with occupying forces was necessary. In the context of
events of 1939–41, it would be implausible to put a label of treason on
cooperation of Belarusian peasants and townsfolk with the new regime.
The population of western Belarus could not be expected to develop
loyalty to the Soviet regime in less than two years of the latter’s pres-
ence in the region. Both in the east and the west, people witnessed the
Soviet regime not just crumbling under the German assault but saw
its officials fleeing in panic, oblivious to their duties to the population
and destroying the assets that the local people would need to survive.
In August 1941, a pro-German mood among the Belarusian population
and an antipathy to the Bolshevik regime was reported as far east as
Vitebsk, Orsha and Mogilev (Shepherd, 2004, p. 61).
German officials, in the civilian, as well as the military zone, realized
that they did not have enough men to actually occupy every settlement
in the Generalbezirk. Moreover, the difficult terrain and lack of paved
roads made it impossible to control the countryside from a limited
number of strategic points garrisoned by German troops. Therefore,
the appointment of representatives of the new regime selected from
the local population was necessary. Vakar (1956, p. 180) describes the
procedure whereby such representatives were installed. According to
 ex oriente lux 125

his account, upon the disappearance of Soviet authority, village com-

munities spontaneously organized themselves, sometimes appointing a
commonly respected person as a village headman. For weeks, sometimes
months, a community would successfully govern itself. When German
authorities visited the place, they would select a village administrator
from the local population. Frequently, but not always, authority was
bestowed on the person already selected by the community as their
leader. The new position did not bring with it prestige and respect.
Rather, it simply meant that the person appointed village administrator
was responsible for all dealings between his community and German
authorities.
Organized popular resistance to German occupation was not reg-
istered in the first six months of German occupation (Vakar, 1956,
p. 193). The security units of the German army in the military zone and
the special police forces (SS units and Einsatzgruppen) in the civilian
part of the Generalbezirk concentrated on rounding up of the Soviet
military personnel remaining in the area after their units disintegrated in
the course of Wehrmacht’s lightning offensive. Some of them put down
their weapons and settled in local villages, becoming indistinguishable
from Belarusian peasants. Those who remained in the forests were
hunted down by German troops and either summarily executed or sent
to POW camps. After the first repressions against Jewish communities,
many of their members fled to the forest. They found no safety there.
Following orders of Nazi leadership, German security forces pursued the
genocidal policy of “final solution” in Belarusian forests and swamps.
Jewish communities organized in the wilderness by the escapees from
the towns were relentlessly exterminated. Actions against the Jewish
refugees were not, strictly speaking, anti-guerrilla operations. Although
some German field commanders referred to their quarry as “parti-
sans”, casualty reports do not support this categorization. According
to Shepard (2004, p. 85), in ten weeks in September and October 1941
the 221st Security Division killed 1,746 enemy with the loss of 18 men.
This disparity indicates not a military operation but rather a slaughter
of people who were either unarmed or unwilling to fight.
The real guerrilla campaign in Belarus started in 1942, not as a result
of a spontaneous popular movement, but as a direct military action of
the Soviet government in Moscow. As early as the summer of 1941, the
Soviet high command started to prepare for actions on the territory
occupied by the Germans. In hastily organized special schools young
men and women were trained in intelligence gathering, the use of
126 chapter two

explosives, handling of radio equipment and other tasks associated

with espionage and sabotage. Graduates of such schools were sent to
Belarus in groups of three or five. Vakar (1956, p. 193) reports that
4,650 Soviet special agents were sent to Belarus in the fall of 1941. They
were not expected to organize a popular movement against the occupy-
ing German forces. Instead, their tasks were intelligence and sabotage,
sometimes combined with terrorism. In the spring of 1942, their tasks
changed: from now on groups of Soviet agents in Belarus served as
nuclei for large scale guerrilla detachments, recruited mostly among
the local population. The change of strategy reflected the stabilization
of the central segment of the front after German armies failed to take
Moscow in the fall of 1941 and were subsequently driven back. Another
factor was that intelligence information about the occupation regime
available to the Soviet high command by the spring of 1942 was much
more detailed and credible than it was in the fall of 1941. Finally, the
extension of the Lend Lease act to the Soviet Union in the fall of 1941
ensured that the Soviet air force was supplied with a steadily increasing
number of large and reliable transport aircraft from the US. The arrival
of new aircraft, such as Douglas DC-3 (military designation C-47, also
known as Dakota) drastically increased its airlift capacity and made
it possible to deliver large quantities of weapons and equipment to
guerrilla bases. The Soviets jacked up their military presence in Belarus
because they could, not because the locals asked them to. By the spring
of 1942, more than 26,000 guerrilla fighters were sent to Belarus from
across the front line (Lubachko, 1972, p. 155).
From individual acts of sabotage and concentration on intelligence
gathering, the Soviet underground network in Belarus moved to a sys-
tematic disruption of the enemy’s lines of communications. According
to Shepherd (2004, p. 114), sabotage against railroad network increased
from thirty cases in April 1942 to 208 cases in August 1942, while
military confrontations between German troops and guerrilla units
increased sevenfold. The changing nature and scope of underground
operations, now directed from Moscow headquarters of the partisan
movement (a branch of Soviet high command established in May 1942),
was made possible by increased number and strength of guerrilla units.
The latter raises a question of recruitment. As we have seen, Belarusians
did not harbor much loyalty to the Soviet regime, at least not enough to
make them risk their lives and the future of their families for the return
of Soviet administration. There were very few positive inducements the
Soviet agents could offer to the locals. Thus, the only solution to the
 ex oriente lux 127

recruitment problem was to present the locals with a set of negative

incentives sufficiently strong to make cooperation with guerrillas look
preferable to other options.
By the summer of 1942, Belarusians had many reasons to dislike
German occupation: the excessive requisitions of agricultural produce,
absence of the promised agricultural reform, systematic extermination
of Jewish communities, and occasional atrocities against Belarusian
population. The newly emerging partisan units could not protect the
locals against depredations by German occupation forces. They could,
however, exercise full power over the lives and property of the locals
when German troops were not present. Partisans started their cam-
paign for the hearts and minds of the local population by killing Ger-
man-appointed village administrators, sometimes together with their
families. To prevent the villagers from turning to German authorities
for help, partisans would provoke German reprisals against innocent
and unsuspecting peasants. Vakar and Shepherd are among the authors
who describe how partisans would find a village with pro-German
attitudes, commit acts of sabotage and terror in the vicinity and wait
for the Germans to retaliate against the villagers.
That such actions, repeated multiple times, succeeded in driving a
wedge between the occupiers and the occupied demonstrates that
Germans were unprepared for anti-guerrilla warfare. They grossly
underestimated the scope of the task, as well as its complexity. Typi-
cally, anti-partisan operations were conducted by the military units
unfit for frontline service or, worse, by detachments of Hungarian,
Slovak and Rumanian armies with dismally low discipline and combat
readiness. While detailed and timely intelligence (preferably collected
from the local population) has always been indispensable for success
of anti-guerrilla operations, German security forces neglected this
aspect of counter-insurgency warfare. The low priority of intelligence
gathering in the German army is illustrated by the fact that in security
divisions, the units whose primary task was anti-insurgency operations,
the officer responsible for intelligence and propaganda had a rank of
Lieutenant (Shepherd, 2004, p. 49). The locals were caught between
murderously devious actions of partisans and a brutally ham-fisted
German response.
Belarus’s rural population found itself at the mercy of two powers,
neither able to provide full-time protection against the other and both
capable of effective extortion in those places and at those times when
their military units were present. Thus, the choice of allegiance between
128 chapter two

German occupation authorities and the Soviet partisan movement was

largely a matter of geography: those villages, which had a German
garrison in the vicinity would be pro-German, while those located at
a considerable distance from German garrisons would be drawn into
the partisan orbit. For an individual peasant joining the partisans had
several advantages. His family left in the village would no longer be
targeted by partisans as a source of free food and clothing. On the
other hand, he would be able to obtain free food and clothing from
those peasants whose relatives did not join partisans. He would have
weapons and basic training, thus being able to defend himself. With
Soviet propaganda spreading more news about German defeats on the
Eastern front, he would feel secure in joining what increasingly looked
as the winning side. Of course, partisans frequently press-ganged the
locals into joining the cause, leaving very little room for individual
choice. Vakar (1956, p. 198) estimated that about 45 percent of guer-
rillas were recruited by violence and terror, while only ten percent
were motivated by a political ideal. The overall number of guerrillas in
Belarus by the end of 1943 was estimated anywhere between 200,000
and 300,000 (ibid.).
The partisan movement was not motivated by Belarusian national-
ism. Partisan units were named after Russian military leaders (Kutu-
zov, Suvorov, etc.) or contemporary Soviet rulers, such as Stalin or
Voroshilov. Guerrilla warfare was controlled directly from Moscow,
with little or no consideration for the immediate safety of the Belaru-
sian civilian population. Propaganda leaflets disseminated among the
guerrilla fighters, as well as civilians, emphasized the brotherly relations
among Belarusian, Russian and Ukrainian peoples and were printed
in the Russian language (Vakar, 1956, p. 198). It is hard to disagree
with Naidziuk’s assessment of the partisan movement in Belarus as
organized and controlled from Moscow for the sole purpose of the
restoration of Soviet control over the Belarusian territory (quoted in
Lindner, 1999, p. 354).
However, in one important respect the officially organized Soviet
partisan movement had a lasting and profound impact on the shap-
ing of the modern Belarusian nation. Apart from a nucleus of Soviet
military personnel inserted into the Belarusian territory from the other
side of the front, guerrilla units consisted mostly of locally recruited
Belarusians. These peasants turned partisans had the same rights,
responsibilities and chances of promotion as their comrades sent to
Belarus from Russia. As representatives of Soviet power in Belarus,
 ex oriente lux 129

they could use legitimate violence against both German occupiers and,
more frequently, against their fellow Belarusians. By killing German-
appointed administrators, taking away peasants’ foodstuffs at gunpoint,
skirmishing with German security units, Belarusian partisans reaffirmed
the national statehood of Soviet Belarus. They were neither mercenaries
nor common bandits but soldiers who fought for a specific political
entity: a constituent Soviet republic.
Not only the realities but also the officially accepted selective memory
of the partisan campaign in Belarus were rooted in Soviet politics and
ideology. It was the Soviet wartime policies that created conditions
in which Belarusians were killing other Belarusians and confiscated
their property. After the war, it was Soviet propaganda that eliminated
the negative and accentuated the positive aspects of partisan warfare,
thus creating a national myth firmly ingrained in Belarus’s collective
memory.
Of course, Soviet partisans were not the only guerrilla force fighting
in Belarusian forests. As German occupation authorities were unable
to effectively control the territory they occupied and were unwilling to
delegate such control to local communities, the resulting power vacuum
was filled by all sorts of armed formations. Soldiers from the Red Army
units which disintegrated in the first days of German onslaught some-
times were able to evade capture and form small bands that hid in the
forest throughout the entire war. Jews, escaping from cities and towns,
established settlements in remote and inaccessible places and organized
defensive armed units. However, the main goal of this kind of armed
formations was to evade contacts with German troops. They did not
compete with the Germans for control over the territory.
Apart from the German occupation authorities and Soviet-organized
partisan detachments, there was yet another government competing for
control of at least a part of Belarus’s territory. The Polish government
in exile did not abandon its claim to the Eastern territories (Kresy).
Throughout the time of German occupation, there were units of the
Polish Home Army operating in the Kresy. Their legitimacy as armed
forces of the Polish state was provided by political representatives of
the London government that were present in each Kresy voivodeship
(Bialystok, Wilno, Nowogrodek and Polesie). Representatives, typically
prominent politicians in interwar Poland, presided over small struc-
tures of local government which, at least in theory, included members
of all major Polish political parties (Korbonski, 1978, p. 46). Military
units of the Polish underground government had to be recruited and
130 chapter two

supplied locally, owing to the obvious difficulties of airlifting men and

materiel from Britain over the territory controlled by Germany. In this
situation, organizing cooperation with the Soviet guerrillas would be a
logical choice. In reality, cooperation was sporadic and inconsistent at
best. Typically, Soviet-controlled partisan units would not accept any
offer of cooperation from their Polish counterparts short of complete
incorporation of Polish units into the Soviet ones. As the Poles were
not willing to subordinate their Home Army units to Soviet command,
both sides continued to fight against Germans independently. Some-
times, Polish and Soviet guerrilla detachments fought against each other
(Korbonski, 1978, p. 90).
After April 26, 1943, when the Soviet Union broke off diplomatic
relations with the Polish government in exile, the latter instructed its
armed forces in the East not to attempt cooperation with the Soviet
partisans. This policy changed in the run-up to the Soviet offensive in
Belarus in the summer of 1944. In the course of this offensive, Polish
armed units in Western Belarus and Ukraine sometimes fought the
Germans alongside the advancing Red Army and generally coordi-
nated their actions with the Soviet forces. The Battle for Wilno in July
6–13, 1944, was an example of such a cooperation. The Polish Home
Army started to attack German forces in the city and was soon joined
by the Soviet armies. Shortly after the battle, Polish commanders and
political leaders were arrested by the Soviets. Home Army units either
dispersed, or were rounded up by the Soviets and sent to concentra-
tion camps (Korbonski, 1978, p. 158). In June 1945, after a three-day
trial conducted in Moscow, sixteen leaders of the Polish underground
were sentenced by the Military Collegium of the Soviet Supreme Court
to prison terms that varied from four months to ten years. They were
indicted, tried and convicted for organizing clandestine operations
against Soviet armed forces on the territory of Western Ukraine and
Belarus. The trial, which bore all the hallmarks of similar judicial pro-
ceedings of the Stalin era, effectively put an end to the Polish presence
in Western Belarus (Moscow Trial, 1945). From then on, the region’s
political landscape was occupied by the Soviet state alone.
Some members of the Belarusian national intelligentsia who remained
abroad and thus escaped liquidation by Soviet authorities sought to
revive the Belarusian national state with the help of National Socialist
Germany. Cooperation between a segment of the Belarusian nationalist
movement abroad and official Nazi organizations started well before
the war. A group led by Fabian Akinchits, who styled himself as a
 ex oriente lux 131

Belarusian National Socialist, enjoyed German support as early as 1933

when it started to publish its newspaper New Way (Novy Shlyakh) in
Wilno (Sakalouski and Lyakhouski, 2000). In 1936, a member of the
Akichits group, Uladzislau Kazlouski, was discussing with Ukrainian
nationalist in Germany and Poland the possibility of a united Ukrai-
nian-Belarusian state under a German protectorate. The Akinchits group
figured in German plans of war against Poland. Pro-Nazi Belarusian
nationalists were supposed to distribute anti-Polish propaganda materi-
als among Belarusians in Poland and to engage nationalist Belarusian
youth in acts of sabotage against the Polish army (ibid.). It is unclear
if anything came out of these plans, but the fact that they were dis-
cussed illustrate a willingness by a segment of the Belarusian national
movement to actively participate in Nazi war plans. Shortly after the
German occupation of Poland, Akinchits and his colleagues were asked
by German authorities to organize Belarusian Committees in Warsaw
and other Polish cities. Apparently the Germans hoped that the Com-
mittees would facilitate the emergence of pro-German attitudes among
the Belarusian minority in Poland.
In 1939–40 Belarusian nationalists in Germany created a large num-
ber of Belarusian voluntary organizations. Perhaps the most important
of them was the Belarusian Self-help Committee which included, along
with Fabian Akinchits, veterans of the Belarusian national move-
ment Vasil Zakharka and Kanstantyn Ezavitau. This organization
was regarded, at least by its Belarusian leader, as the nucleus of the
future government of independent Belarus. Of course, as the future
independence was to be ushered by German military efforts, leaders of
Belarusian nationalists in Germany tried to contribute what they could
toward future victories of German armies. The contribution came mostly
in the form of providing intelligence information to the Abwehr and
Sicherheitsdienst (SD, intelligence service of the SS).
The hopes of the pro-Nazi Belarusian national intelligentsia were
realized in a peculiar way. After the German occupation of Belarus,
the Belarusian Self-help Committee did not become a nucleus of the
new government. Instead, it became the closest approximation of a
national government which was allowed by German occupation authori-
ties. Known since October 22, 1941, as Belarusian National Self-help
(BNS), the organization, chaired by Ivan Yermachenka, declared its goal
was “to eradicate poverty and misery caused by Polish and Judaeo-
Communist rule in Belarus and create opportunities for better cul-
tural life of the Belarusian people” (quoted in Hardzienka, 2001). The
132 chapter two

organization was supervised by the head of the Department of health

in the administration of Weissruthenische Generalbezirk, an indication
that German authorities envisioned the BNS as a humanitarian orga-
nization with no political agenda. The Central Council (Tsentral’naya
Rada) of the BNS presided over two outpatient medical facilities, one
pharmacy, three canteens, one hotel, two barber shops and a consign-
ment store (Hardzienka, 2001).
Disappointed by the discrepancy between expectations and reality,
the pro-Nazi Belarusian nationalists petitioned Alfred Rosenberg for
the introduction of Belarusian as the language of instruction in schools
at all levels, the creation of a Belarusian advisory body that would
work with the Generalbezirk administration, and allow the formation
of Belarusian military units for ant-guerrilla operations. The petition,
submitted during Rosenberg’s visit to Belarus in the Spring of 1942, was
ignored by the Reichsminister. However, Wilhelm Kube, Generalkom-
missar of Belarus, met some of the nationalists’ requests. In June 1942
he appointed Ivan Ermachenka as his advisor on Belarusian national
affairs, while three more leaders of the BNS were appointed advisors
on cultural, educational and propaganda work among the Belarusian
population (Hardzienka, 2001). In addition to that, German authorities
allowed the formation of Belarusian Self-defense, an auxiliary police
and anti-guerrilla force recruited and based locally, a battalion per rural
district. While these concessions to pro-Nazi Belarusian nationalists fell
short of their expectations, they considerably added to their personal
prestige: advising the local administrators was much better than man-
aging barber shops and consignment stores.
Belarusian self-help battalions were not a great success. While Vakar
stated that anti-guerrilla forces in Belarus “looked well organized,
adequately equipped, and numerically strong” (Vakar, 1956, p. 201),
this observation included not only the Self-Defense police but all
other categories of non-German auxiliaries, many of them recruited
outside Belarus and attached to regular German military or security
units. The Belarusian village police were badly equipped, distrusted by
German military commanders, and lacked a clear chain of command
(Hardzienka, 2001). Shortages of supplies and equipment forced anti-
partisan forces to confiscate local peasants’ property, thus adopting the
modus operandi of the guerrillas, against whom they were supposed
to protect the population.
Vakar (1956, p. 201) describes frequent instances when guerrilla
and anti-guerrilla detachments would conclude an informal truce and
concentrate on robbing the defenseless peasants instead of attacking
 ex oriente lux 133

each other. As the whole idea of the self defense police force was its
relative autonomy, local police commanders had an opportunity to
do what they want, with very little or no effective control. Less than a
year of existence plagued by organizational shortcomings and failure
to stem the tide of the partisan movement was enough to convince the
German authorities that local Belarusian police force was not worth
keeping. In April 1943, the chief of German security police in Belarus
ordered the self-defense units disbanded. Throughout their existence,
these units were not controlled by pro-Nazi-Belarusian nationalists.
Operational control was exercised by the security police of Weissru-
thenische Generalbezirk. Belarusian National Self-help was disbanded
in June 1943, apparently owing to its persistent attempts to play the
role of the Belarusian government in waiting, whereas German authori-
ties still saw the organization’s role as a provider of social services to
Belarusians and non-binding advice to the Germans.
The last chapter in the saga of pro-Nazi Belarusian nationalists began
on January 22, 1944, when Radaslau Astrouski, a veteran Belarusian
nationalist whose credentials included membership in the first Belaru-
sian government of 1918, was asked by Gruppenfuehrer SS Curt von
Gottberg (who became head of German administration in Belarus after
the previous Generalkommissar, Wilhelm Kube, was assassinated on
September 22, 1943) to select members for a kind of Belarusian national
committee with unspecified functions and severely limited prerogatives.
The Belarusian Central Council (Belaruskaia Tsentral’naia Rada) was
created as a consultative body, which provided advice to the General-
kommissar and sent its representatives to district administrators. At
the same time, the idea of a local Belarusian police force was resurrected,
now under the name of Belarusian Local Defense (Belaruskaia Kraiovaia
Abarona). The latter fared no better than its predecessor, the self-defense
police. While 100,000 men were reported to have been drafted into
the force, Germans did not provide enough weapons to arm the new
paramilitary units. Besides, the new native auxiliaries were not eager to
fight as many were pressed into service under the penalty of death for
draft evasion and deserted at the first opportunity, sometimes joining
the pro-Soviet guerrilla units (Vakar, 1956, p. 202). By then, reverses
suffered by German armies on the Eastern front and elsewhere became
well known (in large part due to the Soviet propaganda effort), so the
incentives to join the partisans increased considerably.
When it was too late and the available resources allowed to do
too little, German authorities decided to make more concessions to
Belarusian nationalists. A Belarusian military school was formed, the
134 chapter two

Belarusian Central Council (BCC) was given authority not only over
education and culture but also over general civil affairs at the district
level. To legitimize the BCC, Germans allowed elections of delegates
to a Belarusian National Convention. In a country where no authority
exercised effective control over the territory, elections could not really
be free and fair. As Vakar notes, the elected delegates did not represent
the Belarusian nation, but instead represented the most active segment
of Belarusian nationalism (Vakar, 1956, p. 204). After the elections, 1,039
delegates convened in Minsk on June 27, 1944, barely a week before
the Soviet armies entered the city. In these conditions, the convention
could have no practical or even symbolic significance. After hastily going
through the motions, including obligatory praise to German occupation
authorities and the National Socialist political system, the delegates
confirmed the Declaration of Independence of Belarus of March 25,
1918 and declared the BCC the only legitimate representative of the
Belarusian nation. Both statements rang hollow against the background
of Soviet cannonade relentlessly advancing from the east.
Perhaps it would not be an exaggeration to say that the participation
of the Soviet Union in the Second World War played a greater role in
the shaping of Belarusian national institutions than any other event of
the 20th century. Before September 17, 1939, important groups of the
Belarusian national intelligentsia existed not only in the Soviet Union,
but also in Poland and elsewhere in Europe. The western part of Belaru-
sian ethnic territory under Polish control had no political designation
based on the ethnicity of its majority Belarusian population. Soviet
Belarus, the only Belarusian political-territorial entity, did not have an
officially approved mythology that would make it clearly distinguishable
from the other constituent Soviet republics. After the war, centers of
non-Soviet Belarusian culture and political thought were wiped out.
Most of the surviving members of the Belarusian emigre intelligentsia
discredited themselves by cooperation with the Nazi authorities. Expres-
sion of the Belarusian national idea was now possible only through the
Soviet medium. The Soviet invasion of eastern Poland united most of the
Belarusian ethnic territories into one political entity. Moreover, Soviet
ethnic policies in western Belarus removed the Polish population and
made the region ethnically homogeneous. Partisan movement during
the time of German occupation produced an opportunity to create
the new nation’s central myth. Official Soviet historians created the
myth and official Soviet propaganda disseminated it. Partisan warfare
had important consequences for the development of the Belarusian
 ex oriente lux 135

social structure and contributed to certain peculiarities of officially

recognized value-patterns. First, armed resistance created a favorable
image of Belarus within the Soviet ideological framework. Belarus was
often referred to as the “partisan republic”. Now, Belarus was able to
identify itself within the existing symbolic system and to find the only
possible source of national identity at a time when all other sources
were either forgotten or forbidden. Second and even more important,
a new generation of Belarusian leaders emerged from commanders of
the partisan units. Victorious guerrilla commanders, many of them
local men, were obvious candidates for promotion to high position in
the Soviet administration and the Communist Party apparatus. By the
time the second post-war decade started, their ideas and attitudes had
become a decisive factor in the shaping of modern Belarus.

5. The enduring charm of real socialism:

Belarus 1945–1991

After the war, Belarus ceased to be a borderland, at least in the purely

geographic sense. The Soviet empire stretched westward beyond Belarus,
over Poland and Eastern Germany. Features of ethnic borderland were
considerably reduced, if not altogether erased, when the ethnic Pol-
ish population was encouraged by the Soviet authorities to leave the
Belarusian territory for Poland. Snyder (2003, p. 89) mentions that
from the Vilnius metropolitan area alone, one hundred thousand left
for Poland during 1944–1948. Vakar (1956, p. 208) estimates that by the
end of the second World War, ethnic Poles in Belarus numbered about
one million. According to the official census of 1959, there were only
540,000 Poles in Belarus (approximately 7 percent of the total popula-
tion), most of them in rural districts in the west of Grodno province
and north-west of Molodechno province. Belarusians accounted for 65.1
percent of the total population in Grodno province and 67.1 percent
in Molodechno province (Polski, 1996, p. 7). With the exception of the
two western provinces, the ethnic composition of Belarus homogenized
considerably. The share of Belarusians in a total population of five out
of seven provinces varied from 86.3 percent in Vitebsk province to 90.5
percent in Minsk province. From 1959 onwards, population censuses
showed that Russians replaced Poles as the largest ethnic minority in
Belarus. In 1959, 660 thousand Russians accounted for 8 percent of
Belarus’s population. In the subsequent years their share progressively
136 chapter two

increased from 10 percent in 1970 to 13 percent in 1989 (Polski, 1996,

pp. 7–10).
The Russian population in post-war Belarus grew mostly due to migra-
tion of Russians from other parts of the Soviet Union. The newcomers
settled in Belarus’s urban centers where they found employment at new
industrial enterprises. At the same time, the ethnic composition of the
urban population started to change in favor of Belarusians. From 1959
to 1989, the share of Russians in Belarus’s urban population actually
decreased slightly, from 19 to 18 percent, while the share of Belarusians
increased from 67 to 73 percent (Kaiser, 1994, p. 221). In 1959, only
21 percent of ethnic Belarusians lived in cities and towns. This number
increased to more than 48 percent in 1989, while the share of ethnic
Belarusians living in rural areas of Belarus dropped from 61 percent in
1959 to 30 percent in 1989 (Kaiser, 1994, p. 212). The share of ethnic
Belarusians living outside Belarus increased from 18 percent in 1959
to 22 percent in 1989 (Kaiser, p. 215).
Changes in the ethnic composition of Belarus’s population and
the distribution of ethnic groups within the territory of Belarus were
occurring against the background of explosive urbanization. In 1939,
21 percent of Belarus’s population lived in urban centers. This figure
did not change in 1950. Ten years later, Belarus’s population was 32
percent urban and 68 percent rural. This proportion was almost reversed
in 1990, when urban dwellers accounted for 67 percent, while the share
of rural population stood at 33 percent. In 1989, about 37 percent of
Belarusians lived in cities with a population larger than 100,000. Minsk,
the capital city of Belarus, grew from a medium size city of 273,000,
accounting for slightly over 3 percent of Belarus’s population in 1950
to a sprawling metropolis of 1,636,000, more than 16 percent of the
republic’s population in 1989 (Polski, 1996, pp. 7–13). Not only did
more Belarusians now live in cities and towns, they also experienced
considerable upward social mobility. In 1959, 57 percent of Belarusians
were unskilled agricultural workers, 31 percent were blue collar workers
and 12 percent white collar workers. Twenty years later, only 18 percent
of Belarusians belonged to the first category, while 59 percent were blue
collar workers (both industrial and agricultural) and 23 percent white
collar workers (Kaiser, 1994, p. 236).
There are no indications that ethnic Belarusians were discriminated
against in getting access to prestigious and high-paying positions. In the
period from 1967 to 1989, the share of ethnic Belarusians among direc-
tors of enterprises and organizations, as well as white collar employees
 ex oriente lux 137

was almost identical to their share in the general population (Kaiser,

1994, p. 241). In Belarus’s Soviet legislative bodies the participation of
Belarusians varied from 70 percent among the delegates to the Supreme
Soviet of the USSR to 74 percent for the Supreme Soviet of Belarus,
rising to 86 percent in local Soviets (Kaiser, 1994, p. 349). Thus, repre-
sentation of Belarusians at the highest level legislative bodies was slightly
below their share in the total population, while at the lowest level they
were over represented. This was not unlike representation in neighbor-
ing Ukraine, but differs from the Baltic states, especially Latvia, where
the share of the native population in legislative bodies of all levels was
considerably higher than its share in the total population.
The aggregate data indicate a healthy national development of
indigenous ethnic groups in post-war Belarus. However, according to
David Marples, that is exactly the period when Belarus started to
become a “denationalized nation”, the words he put in the title of his
book. Earlier writers, for example, Zaprudnik and Lubachko, see the
post-war developments in Belarus as broadly detrimental to Belarusian
language, culture and other elements of national identity. Paradoxically,
both the “positive” and the “negative” interpretation of this period of
Belarusian history are not implausible and both can be supported with
empirical data collected by contemporary Soviet researchers and based
on official Soviet statistics.
In 1926, only 49 percent of Belarusians living in urban centers claimed
Belarusian as their native language (Kaiser, 1994, p. 140). Among the
rural Belarusian population, the native language retention rate was
85 percent. In 1959, more than 77 percent of ethnic Belarusian urban
dwellers claimed Belarusian as their native language, while in rural areas
this figure was almost 99 percent. The figure for the urban population is
especially revealing, as the native language retention rates increased in
the period when the share of urban population grew from 17 percent in
1926 to 32 percent in 1959, mostly due to rural-urban migration. Thus,
ethnic Belarusians who moved into cities and towns from their native
villages did not see their native language as an impediment to everyday
communication in the new and different environment. This was a legacy
of Belarusian national Communists, who in the 1920s created enduring
institutions of Belarusian national education and culture. Interestingly
enough, native language retention rates for the city of Minsk, by far the
largest and culturally most important center of the republic, were 76
percent in 1959, very similar to the average rates for the urban popu-
lation. In the thirty years that followed the census of 1959, the native
138 chapter two

language retention rates for the rural population remained virtually at

the same level. In urban centers, these rates declined significantly. In
1989 in the city of Minsk only 62 percent of ethnic Belarusians claimed
Belarusian as their native language. The steepest decline took place
between 1959 and 1970, from 75 to 65 percent, a full ten percentage
points in ten years (Polski, 1996, pp. 16–17). About the same time,
the number of students in schools with Belarusian as the language of
instruction started to decline. From 1965 to 1972 it dropped by 15
percent (Kaiser, 1994, p. 256). This process occurred against the back-
ground of an unprecedentedly high rural-urban migration. More people
moved to cities and towns from villages than ever before. The native
language of rural Belarusians was still almost exclusively Belarusian.
Unlike the generation of 1926–1959, however, these newcomers chose
not to retain their native language and sent their children to schools
where the language of instruction was Russian.
Although the same interconnected processes of urbanization and de-
nationalization were taking place throughout the Soviet Union during
the three decades of 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, Belarus stood out among
other constituent Soviet republics by de-nationalizing at a consider-
ably faster pace. Overall, for both urban and rural population, native
language retention rates for Belarusians living in Belarus stood at 93
percent in 1959, declining to 80 percent thirty years later (Kaiser, 1994,
p. 273). By 1989, Belarus’s native language retention rate was by far
the lowest of all constituent Soviet republics, while the rate of decline
from 1959 level (13 percentage points) was the fastest. The contrast
with neighboring Baltic states was especially sharp as native language
retention rates varied from 98 percent for Latvia to almost 100 percent
for Lithuania, while the change over the thirty year period was less than
one percentage point.
Perhaps the most revealing aspect of Belarus’s loss of its national char-
acter was reflected in the dwindling numbers of books and periodicals
published in the Belarusian language. In 1970, the share of books in
Belarusian in the total number of titles published in Belarus was only
one quarter of the share of Belarusians in the total population of Belarus.
By 1988, this figure was only 17 percent. The share of newspapers in
Belarusian in the total number of newspapers, which in 1970 was just
slightly below the share of Belarusians in the total population, declined
to 77 percent (Kaiser, 1994, p. 259). For book publication, the decline
of national representativeness in Belarus was less precipitous than for
many other republics, although from a lower base. Belarus started and
 ex oriente lux 139

ended the period with the lowest representation of the national lan-
guage in book publishing among the Soviet constituent republics. For
newspapers, only Moldova had lower presence of the national language,
both in 1970 and 1988.
The significance of these figures becomes clear if we recall that in
the Soviet Union decisions about publishing of books and newspapers
were not made on the basis of market demand. Thus, low representation
of the Belarusian language in this sphere is not a reflection of the lack
of popular interest in having large numbers of books and newspapers in
the Belarusian language. Instead, decisions were made as a result of
interaction between government bureaucrats (this category would
include Communist Party officials) and the officially recognized writers,
poets and journalists (referred to as “creative intelligentsia” by Soviet
officialdom). The significant differences between individual republics,
especially between Belarus and the rest of the Soviet Union, indicate
that the situation in Belarus was not a result of a concerted effort made
by central authorities in Moscow to stamp out national cultures in
every Soviet republic. Perhaps the denationalization trend in Belarus
concentrated within the ruling elite and the intelligentsia. The reasons
for this would be highlighted if one looks at the development of these
two groups in post-war Belarus.
Belarusian national Communist and simply nationalist elites that
laid foundations for the Belarusian national state in the 1920s were
destroyed in the purges of the 1930s. Belarusian leaders of the post-war
generation, while conscious of their national identity, knew that the
nationalism of the “korenizatsiya” period was ideologically impermis-
sible. The 1930s provided little that could set Belarus apart from other
Soviet republics. The post-war generation of Belarusian elites had to
search for the national myths that distinguished Belarus from other
regions of the Soviet Union in a very recent past. The new myths were
centered around the narratives of war-time partisan resistance and
post-war reconstruction. The creation of the new narratives was made
all the easier by the fact that the new leaders participated in the events
that were reflected in the narratives.
By the end of the German occupation of Belarus, many partisan
fighters and commanders were of local origin. The specific character
of guerilla warfare implied that for success and survival such qualities
were instrumental, such as initiative, the ability to gain the support of
the local population, pragmatic rather than an ideological approach to
the problems. After the war, successful partisan commanders were often
140 chapter two

recruited to various positions in the Communist Party and the Soviet

bureaucracy. Those qualities which helped them to succeed during the
war now helped them to deal with the tasks of peacetime reconstruction
and development. They retained close, sometimes personal, ties with
their native communities and often used their positions to help them.
Gradually moving to the highest levels of the bureaucratic hierarchy,
former guerilla leaders became the dominant group in the Belarusian
leadership by the late 1950s and remained in this position for more
than twenty years, thus having an important impact on the develop-
ment of modern Belarus.
The commitment of this generation of Belarusian leaders to the wel-
fare of the common people, their sense of close ties to the local popula-
tion, together with the ability to attain their goals through unorthodox
means to some extent account for the relative prosperity of post-war
Belarus. In the Soviet administrative system it was very important to
be able to bargain for centrally distributed resources. The partisan
past of the post-war Belarusian leaders proved useful in persuading
the central Soviet authorities that more resources should be given to
Belarus’s economy and less taken away from the republic. In this bar-
gaining they did not hesitate to invoke images of Belarus devastated by
the war and of the heroic struggle of the Belarusian people against the
Nazi occupation forces. Their own participation in this epic struggle
made their requests all the more legitimate. As a result, Soviet Belarus
continued to benefit from these ideologically sacred symbols for forty
years after the war ended.
The new generation of Belarusian leaders shared the general attitude
towards the social and economic progress of the Soviet ruling elite.
Large-scale industrialization became the way to the prosperity they
charted for post-war Belarus. Shortly after the war, centrally directed
investments started to pour into the Belarusian economy. Large indus-
trial plants producing diesel engines and heavy trucks, agricultural
tractors, machine tools, electronic equipment, home appliances and
consumer goods sprang up all around the republic. Belarus’s industry
was not infrequently referred to as an assembly line for manufactured
goods produced in the Soviet Union. Most of the new industrial enter-
prises completely depended on supplies of raw materials and constituent
parts from other Soviet republics, while the goods they produced were
shipped outside Belarus. Belarus was the only republic whose borders
coincided with those of an economic region, the principal unit within
 ex oriente lux 141

the Soviet system of a territorial division of labor. This designation

allotted Belarus a special place in the Soviet system of central planning
and facilitated its greater integration in supply chains of the Soviet
economy. Industrial growth did not slow down after the immediate
post-war reconstruction ended. On the contrary, Belarus continued to
develop more rapidly than other Soviet republics throughout four post-
war decades. During 1970–85, Belarus’s rates of growth for GDP and
industrial output were approximately 1.5 times higher than the average
rates for USSR and considerably higher than in any other Soviet republic
or economic region (Goskomstat SSSR, 1987, pp. 123, 133, 135).
Belarus’s transformation from a predominantly agricultural and rural
to a predominantly industrial and urban society had its drawbacks.
Rapid modernization dramatically increased migration from rural
areas to the cities, which resulted in labor shortages in agricultural
production. Chemical plants and oil refineries, which were among the
most attractive symbols of modernity for the Belarusian leadership,
were environmentally unsafe. Increased agricultural productivity was
accompanied by the destruction of wetlands, forests and other important
natural ecosystems. However, those who were immediately affected by
adverse social or environmental consequences of modernization could
not express their grievances, as the underdeveloped civil society in the
Soviet Union precluded free participation in public discourse. As for the
decision makers, their priorities did not include environmental protec-
tion or sensitivity to social dislocation. Thus adverse consequences of
modernization in Belarus (as well as elsewhere in the Soviet Union)
were unnoticed by the general public and ignored by elites.
Modernization rapidly improved living standards for most Belaru-
sians. People who moved to towns and cities from the countryside
would gain access to such conveniences as indoor plumbing and hot
water, central heating, stores with a selection of processed foodstuffs,
and modern health care facilities. All these things, taken for granted
by those who enjoyed them for generations, were taken as dramatic
positive changes by Belarus’s newcomers to urban areas. The migrants
from the countryside compared their improved living conditions with
those of the friends and relatives they left behind in their native vil-
lages. This comparison had an impact on changing attitudes toward the
Belarusian language and culture as they became increasingly associated
with the relatively backward and poor village, while the modern and
prosperous city increasingly tended to speak Russian.
142 chapter two

In the cultural sphere, Belarusian elites accepted their country’s role

as a testing ground for Russification under the guise of Soviet interna-
tionalism. The number of Belarusian schools was dwindling; in other
schools the Belarusian language and literature were becoming a less and
less significant part of the curriculum. By the early 1970s, in Minsk,
the political, economic and cultural center of the republic and a city
with a population of about one million, no school used Belarusian as
the language of instruction (Kennedy, 1991, p. 167). Not a single high
school textbook on the pre-revolutionary history of Belarus had been
published in the first four post-war decades. In the officially allowed
studies of Belarusian history some crucial topics were deliberately
ignored. For example, a student of the Uniate Church in Belarus (the
majority of Belarusians belonged to this Church before its abolition by
the Russian authorities in 1839) would have to rely exclusively on Pol-
ish sources, since no detailed study of this subject has been published
in Belarus.
It is hard to imagine that in any other Soviet republic such a blatant
and sustained offensive against a nation’s language, culture, and his-
tory could have passed unopposed. However, in Belarus there was no
widespread public opposition to this process. The number of dissidents
who tried to publicly express their disagreement with national policies
of Belarusian leadership was extremely small. In the period from the
1960s to the early 1980s, only one person, Mikhal Kukabaka, is known
as a dissident with a consistently national agenda (Lych, 2001, pp. 70–71;
Zaprudnik, 1993, p. 112). Belarusian nationalism found its last refuge
in academe and among artistic and literary community. Of course,
without official support members of the Belarusian nationally minded
intelligentsia could not make their ideas known to the general public.
The latter seemed content with the gradual disappearance of the Belaru-
sian language and culture from the public sphere and their replacement
by the Russian language as the means of communication and Russian
culture as the symbol of modernity.
Belarusians found themselves in a situation not unlike the one that
existed in Poland’s eastern regions between the wars. Then, a Belaru-
sian’s social mobility was contingent upon his adoption of the Polish
language and culture. In post-war Belarus, a Belarusian who aspired to
a position above his native village had to speak Russian at high school,
in college and then at work. However, while in inter-war Poland there
were numerous protests against linguistic and cultural discrimination
against Belarusians, post-war Belarus was remarkably quiet. I would
 ex oriente lux 143

suggest that there are three basic reasons for this. First, the Russian
language was associated with upward social mobility and modernity.
Second, Belarusian culture had been oppressed for centuries (except for
a short period in the 1920s); now, at least, cultural oppression coincided
with improving material conditions. Third, although at the societal
level Belarusian national identity was becoming associated with quaint
backwardness, it still retained its traditional sanctuary at the communal
level in rural areas. All this, together with a feeling of being materially
better off than many other republics, made the situation acceptable
for most of the Byelorussian population. This pragmatic policy of the
Belarusian leaders was quite successful, at least in the short run.
More importantly, changes in attitude toward national culture and
language among the elites were brought about by the process of the
circulation of elites. Rapid industrial growth produced a new type of
leaders. The membership in Belarusian Communist Party grew from
19,787 in 1945 to 520,283 in 1978, thus increasing the pool of candi-
dates for leadership positions. The composition of the Party changed as
well: if industrial workers constituted only 11.9 percent in 1945, their
share rose to 57 percent in 1978 (Urban, 1989, p. 15). The “partisan”
generation began to leave the scene in the early eighties, being gradually
replaced by the technocrats of the late Brezhnev era. The new elites were
different: more rational, better educated, more likely to have an urban
background. The “partisan” generation of administrators usually rose
through ranks of the Communist Party, retaining affiliation with a par-
ticular district or province. They governed territorial not industrial units,
people not technological processes. To them, the Belarusian language
was not an embarrassment or an impediment: they studied it at school
(most of them benefitted from the national Belarusian educational sys-
tem founded by the national Communists in the 1920’s); they used it in
everyday communications with the locals. In 1959, Kiryl Mazurov did
not hesitate to make a speech in Belarusian in the presence of Nikita
Khrushchev during the latter’s visit to Minsk. According to Zaprudnik
(1993, p. 106), Khrushchev was visibly irritated by his subordinate’s
linguistic choice. However, after this incident Mazurov continued to
enjoy a prominent position in the Communist Party hierarchy.
The next generation of Belarus’s elites did not have intimate ties
with local communities. Their careers depended on their ability to
expand industrial production according to the centrally planned targets,
regardless of the social and environmental consequences. Belarusian
industries had numerous connections with other enterprises around
144 chapter two

the Soviet Union. This meant that industrial managers and planners
had to coordinate their work with their colleagues of various national
and ethnic affiliations. Of course, the language of choice in this kind of
communication was Russian. In the course of their promotion, indus-
trial managers were not infrequently rotated to positions in all-Union
ministries or Gosplan in Moscow and then back to Belarus. This kind
of career path meant that upward mobility did not require retention of
national identity. On the contrary, it was quite convenient to belong to
a vague group of the “Russian-speaking people”. Both technological ties
with other regions and career aspirations made the idea of Belarusian
national independence of any kind absolutely alien to the elite of the
late Soviet period. Michael Urban in his study of the Belarusian elites
states that an almost complete absence of nationalist sentiment among
them made Belarus an ideal case for the study of the typical Soviet elite
formation. In particular he notes that the latest generation of the ruling
elite did not possess a well-defined and articulated sense of national
identity (Urban, 1989, p. 16).
Belarus entered the increasingly tumultuous period of Gorbachev’s
“perestroika” more economically developed, more prosperous, more
dynamic, and more urban than it has ever been at any time in its history.
Belarusians were well educated and upwardly mobile and enjoyed bet-
ter living standards than the population in most other Soviet republics.
Ethnic homogeneity meant that simmering national tensions of the kind
that existed in the Caucasus, Central Asia or even in the Baltic repub-
lics or some parts of the Russian Federation did not exist in Belarus.
National myths built around the heroic exploits of Belarusian partisans
during the Great Patriotic War and impressive economic achievements
of the post-war development were accepted by the general public and
left unchallenged even by those dissident intellectuals who dared to
question some aspects of Soviet national policies. The overall impres-
sion was that of economic prosperity, national confidence and domestic
tranquility. Belarus found its place within Soviet civilization. When the
latter began to crumble, readjustment was protracted and painful.
 CHAPTER THREE

BORDERLAND FOREVER: MODERN BELARUS

1. See no evil: Belarus in the twilight of the Soviet era

The reforms started by Mikhail Gorbachev were originally intended to

make the Soviet Union stronger without changing its political system.
While the word “perestroika”, restructuring, soon entered dictionaries
of many languages, the Gorbachev era started with another catch-word:
“uskoreniye”, acceleration. According to this policy, the Soviet Union
had considerable potential, unused in the Brezhnev era, to become the
dominant world superpower, both economically and militarily. Not
that there was something wrong with the systemic principles: the one
Party rule, the impenetrable barriers to democratic political participa-
tion, the suppression of national sentiment, the centralized economy
buttressed by criminal penalties for private entrepreneurship, all these
and many other features of totalitarian regime were there to stay. What
was needed was not an overhaul of the system, but new men in high
places who would be able to make the system work faster (for more on
economic policies of the early Gorbachev era see, e.g., Aslund, 1991,
p. 71; Bryson, 1995, pp. 60–61; Sutela, 1991, p. 147).
Economically, it meant the channeling of resources to the newly
established, more efficient, more technologically advanced enterprises.
Csaba (1995, p. 39) highlighted the main purpose of the new thrust
towards economic efficiency: The new Soviet leadership wanted to retain
the country’s status of a military superpower. Militarily, the West had
to be intimidated into accepting Soviet supremacy. A crucial role in
this was assigned to the recently revealed ability of the Soviet armed
forces to destroy much of Western Europe with brand new intermedi-
ate range missiles. The latter, sufficiently compact and mobile to avoid
the deterrence effect of American ICBM force and capable of indepen-
dent launch with very little preparation time, thus making preventive
destruction of launch complexes by air strikes virtually impossible, had
a range up to 3,000 miles and payload of three 0.15 megaton warheads,
enough to eliminate any target in Western Europe. As the deployment
146 chapter three

of new missiles was completed by 1986, the new weapons became an

important factor in global strategic balance, helping to tip it in favor
of the Soviet Union.
Belarus occupied an important place in the plans of the new Soviet
leadership. Its industry, built after the war, was a pinnacle of Soviet
high technology and thus a potential recipient of additional investments
distributed by central planning authorities in Moscow. Oil exports, an
increasingly important source of foreign currency revenues for the Soviet
economy, to a great extent depended on Belarusian oil refineries and the
extensive network of pipelines. Geopolitically, the territory of Belarus
was a major component of the Soviet Union’s aggressive posture vis-à-
vis NATO in Europe. Soviet land forces in Belarus included hundreds
of thousands of soldiers and tens of thousands of armored vehicles, all
of them ready to reinforce the first echelon of the Warsaw Pact armies
in Eastern Germany. Moreover, the addition of new intermediate range
ballistic missiles and more lethal strategic bombers to the Soviet nuclear
arsenal made Belarus an ideal launching site for a nuclear strike against
targets in Western Europe. Politically, Belarusian national aspirations
were not strong or widespread enough to be a source of concern for
the Soviet leadership. The Belarusian Soviet Socialist Republic was
almost perfectly integrated in the economy, polity, and society of the
Soviet Union.
For the vast majority of Belarusians their republic’s continuing
prominence in the economic and military designs of the new Soviet
leadership did not produce an identifiable concern. Belarusian elites did
not exhibit discernable nationalist sentiment comparable to their coun-
terparts in neighboring Baltic states and, to a somewhat lesser extent,
Ukraine. This attitude seemed to be rewarded by the early Gorbachev
administration. In February 1986, Nikolai Slyun’kov, First Secretary
of the Communist Party of Belarus, has been appointed a candidate
member of the Politburo. This was the only non-Russian appointment
at the Politburo level in the first year of the Gorbachev rule. Barely a
year later, Slyun’kov was elevated to full membership in Politburo and
promoted to a secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
These promotions, which triggered a chain reaction of upward move-
ments in the highest echelons of Belarusian Party and administrative
apparatus, could plausibly be interpreted as an indication of approval
of the policies of Belarusian leaders by the new General Secretary.
Slyun’kov belonged to a group of denationalized technocrats who by
the late Brezhnev era began to replace the “partisan” generation in the
 borderland forever: modern belarus 147

upper positions of Belarus’s power structure. The new administrators not

infrequently were rotated through postings in the central management
and Party structures in Moscow before returning to Minsk to a higher
position. Slyun’kov’s career was a good example of this personnel policy.
Before he became Belarusian Party leader in 1983, he spent eight years
in Moscow heading a division of the Gosplan. In the first years of the
Gorbachev leadership the policy towards the top-level cadres did not
change the pattern established in the late Brezhnev era: those with few
national aspirations and good experience of work in the central Soviet
structures had the best chance of promotion.
For the artistic, literary, and intellectual elites in Belarus, the change
of leadership in Moscow did not bring much hope for the revitaliza-
tion of a national spirit. Those whose work concentrated on the topics
that emphasized the strong connections between the culture, economy,
and society of Belarus and those of Russia continued to benefit from
the privileged access to government funds, while the few intellectuals
working on specifically Belarusian national themes were relegated to
a secondary role. Those intellectuals who understood that Soviet-style
economic development was a poor substitute for national revival could
express their thoughts only in private. Attempts to draw attention of
the new leadership to the plight of the Belarusian language and culture
proved less than successful. In December 1985, twenty eight Belaru-
sian scholars, writers, and artists wrote a letter addressed to Mikhail
Gorbachev asking him take action to prevent the disappearance of the
Belarusian language from education and public discourse. The letter
did not produce immediate changes in the official policy toward the
Belarusian cultural heritage. The small, unofficial cultural clubs were
allowed to exist, so long as their existence was not publicized, while any
kind of open promotion of Belarusian language and culture was strongly
discouraged. Not surprisingly, it was only a small group of nationally-
minded intellectuals who articulated their dissatisfaction with the state
of the Belarusian national culture. The twenty eight signatories of the
letter to Gorbachev, a hundred or so members of the “Heritage” club
of Belarusian culture, a comparable number of scholars who expressed
strong national feelings in private conversations with their colleagues,
have to be viewed against the background of an immense Soviet pro-
paganda apparatus which included tens of thousands of journalists and
writers, scholars and teachers on the payroll of the Soviet state. The
vast majority of them showed no inclination to publicly question the
official Soviet policy.
148 chapter three

For the general public in Belarus, the first years of the Gorbachev
period were hardly distinguishable from the years that preceded it.
The only new policy that was noticed by the public was the campaign
against excessive alcohol consumption. This introduced burdensome
restrictions on the purchase of alcoholic beverages and produced long
lines at the liquor stores. This was a major nuisance, especially for the
industrial workers who were accustomed to getting their fix immediately
after the shift and now had to wait at least an hour in line to purchase a
bottle of cheap drink in a store conveniently located next to the factory
entrance. However, long lines were a fact of life in the Soviet Union,
so the new policy was grudgingly tolerated. At the level of the general
public, Gorbachev’s rule meant business as usual. The new leadership
certainly did not produce any expectations of changes in national policy
in Belarus. In fact, there were no indications of sufficiently widespread
popular desire for such changes. In general, Belarusians were quite
comfortable with the ubiquitous signs of Soviet presence on their ter-
ritory. The huge industrial enterprises, some of them employing tens of
thousands of people, were not regarded as something alien, implanted
onto the Belarusian soil by a foreign power, with little or no regard for
local attitudes. Instead, people tended to see them as an illustration
of the vitality of the Soviet economy which in a few decades made
Belarus a modern industrialized republic. Almost no one expressed
concern about the structure of Belarusian industry, built according to
the principles of Soviet territorial division of labor and badly prepared
for competition in the world market. In 1986, few thought that such a
competition would ever be needed. Belarus enjoyed an important and
secure position in the Soviet economy.
Soviet military presence in Belarus was hard not to notice, while its
potentially damaging consequences were easy to ignore. Military instal-
lations were everywhere, from rural backwaters to the urban centers.
The capital city, Minsk, was surrounded by military bases. One of them,
virtually within the city limits, was a large air base, home to a regiment
of Tu-22 Backfire strategic bombers. While flying the training missions,
the planes frequently overflew the city as they gained altitude after the
take-off. With engines thundering and afterburners glowing, dozens of
angular gray machines announced themselves rather forcefully to the
inhabitants of Minsk before disappearing into the sky on their way to an
unknown mission. This display of military power did not produce signs
of apprehension, much less fear or protest, among the bystanders on the
ground. Few among the Belarusian public realized the implications of
 borderland forever: modern belarus 149

having a major air force base in a suburb of the country’s capital city.
Of course, the decision to deploy strategic assets, such as long-range
bombers with nuclear strike capabilities and intermediate range nuclear
missiles in Belarus placed the country in danger of being devastated in
a nuclear exchange between rival superpowers. The question of whether
the nation’s survival was a suitable collateral for keeping the Soviet
Union as a military superpower did not enter public discourse at any
level or in any form. Belarusians seemed to accept Moscow’s policies
as beneficial or at least harmless.
A nuclear disaster did come to Belarus from across the border, but
not as a result of military action. On April 26, 1986, a nuclear reactor
at the Chernobyl power plant in northern Ukraine blew up, sending
hundreds of tons of highly radioactive debris into the air. The prevail-
ing winds carried the poisonous plume over Belarus, depositing much
of the strontium, cesium, and other equally unwholesome contents
of the nuclear reactor pulverized by the explosion onto the country’s
territory. The Soviet government did not respond to the humanitar-
ian crisis for quite some time. The authorities limited their response
to the containment of the fire at the site of the power station. Even in
the areas immediately adjacent to the site nothing was done for a full
thirty six hours. It is not implausible to assume that the Soviet leaders
hoped that if they did not evacuate population from the affected area,
thus acknowledging the gravity of the situation, the disaster could be
kept secret. Unfortunately for Soviet leadership, the magnitude of the
explosion was such that radioactive contaminants were detected as far
afield as Sweden. A complete coverup was impossible. However, the
Soviet leaders did not disclose the full scale of the catastrophe and
the gravity of the subsequent dangers in a clear and candid statement.
Instead, they chose the worst possible public relations strategy: they
revealed the true situation, but only in a sequence of partial concessions,
each preceded by denials and equivocations. Even this conspicuously
ham-fisted treatment of the catastrophe failed to produce an upsurge
of national indignation among the Belarusians. While the finer points
of public opinion of the time cannot be estimated, it is safe to say for a
considerable period of time the overwhelming majority of Belarusians
really did not appreciate the national dimension of the disaster. Two
years after Chernobyl, Belarusian nationalism at best remained an intel-
lectual and artistic fashion, unable to grow into a truly popular and
politically relevant movement.
150 chapter three

Belarusian political nationalism was born again in 1988. The re-birth

was precipitated by a gruesome discovery: mass graves containing
thousands of bodies buried in the 1930s and early 1940s were found
in Kurapaty, a wooded area on the outskirts of Minsk. The discovery
was not exactly unexpected. For some years, the rumors about the
mass executions by the NKVD at this site (which in the 1930s would
be about five miles away from the city limits) circulated among the
local villagers. In 1988, a team of archaeologists from the Institute of
History at the Belarusian Academy of Sciences was allowed to excavate
the site. Digging through the soft sandy soil in the small pine forest, the
team quickly came across a number of mass graves filled with skeletons
whose skulls bore bullet holes. Bullets themselves were found as well,
almost all of them matching the kind of weapons used by the NKVD,
the Soviet secret police in the 1930s. More than ten thousand bodies
were dug up in a matter of weeks. The way they were buried, the location
of bullet holes, the selection of personal belongings strongly suggested
that the victims died at the hands of Stalin’s secret police as a result of
extrajudicial executions conducted regularly throughout at least five
years (most likely 1936–1941). Estimates of the number of people who
actually perished at the Kurapaty execution site varied considerably, the
highest estimated figure being 300,000 (Zaprudnik, 1993, p. 132). The
actual number is likely to remain unknown, as a highway and a natural
gas pipeline were built on the execution site after the war. Even the
limited excavation by a team of archaeologists was interrupted when the
authorities declared the site a crime scene which has to be investigated
by the criminal prosecutor’s office. The latter, continued the investiga-
tion for many months without bothering to inform the public about its
progress. This move, apparently intended to distract the public atten-
tion from the all too vivid reminder of the realities of the Soviet past,
failed to prevent the consolidation and spread of Belarusian national
sentiment and its rapid transformation from an intellectual fashion to
political movement.
Two members of the archaeological team who excavated the execution
site, Zianon Pazniak and Yauhen Shmyhaleu, published an account of
their discovery in the Litaratura I Mastatstva (Literature and Art) weekly.
As the name suggests, the newspaper’s readership consisted mostly of
people in artistic and literary circles. One of the few remaining news-
papers in the Belarusian language, Litaratura i Mastatstva (popularly
known by the acronym LiM) was also widely read by nationally-inclined
 borderland forever: modern belarus 151

intellectuals. This group was quick to grasp the symbolic importance

of the Kurapaty discovery for the Belarusian national cause, however
inchoate at the time. The mass graves belonged to the Stalin era, a period
which it was safe to criticize under the Gorbachev administration: after
all, the new Soviet leadership proclaimed the cleansing of Soviet society
of the past errors as its main goal. At the same time, the mass graves
were located on Belarusian soil (in fact, they were the first discovery of
this kind in Belarus) and filled mostly with the bodies of Belarusians.
This aspect made Kurapaty a symbol of national suffering that could
serve as a rallying point for the emergent Belarusian nationalists.
Zianon Pazniak, one of the nationally-minded intellectuals at the
Belarusian Academy of Sciences, had quickly assumed the central role
in cobbling together small semi-formal, non-official, frequently secre-
tive groups of people loosely related to the idea of national revival and
making this disparate collection into a creditable political force, perhaps
the first truly political movement in Belarus since its brief period of
independence in 1918–19. On October 19, 1988, barely four months
after the publication of the first reports about the Kurapaty discovery,
more than four hundred people convened in a small conference hall in
Minsk for the constituent congress of the Belarusian Historico-Educa-
tional Society in Memory of the Victims of Stalinism. The gathering,
which included many members of Belarusian literary and artistic elites,
was quite official: even high-ranking Communist Party officials were
present. However, the meeting quickly developed a different agenda: in
what seemed a spontaneous move, the participants voted for the forma-
tion of an organizing committee of the Belarusian People’s Front. The
latter was supposed to be modeled on the mass nationalist movements
already in existence in Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. The Communist
Party apparatchiks, present at the meeting to coopt yet another voluntary
organization into the great panoply of the official policy of “perestroika”,
in vain tried to quell the crowd’s enthusiasm. The gathering promptly
elected Committee members. Among them were Zianon Pazniak and
Vintsuk Viachorka, two men who remained in the lead of the Belaru-
sian political nationalism for many years afterwards. Other seats on the
Committee were filled with prominent Belarusian literary figures, such
as Vasil’ Bykau and Rygor Baradulin, scholars, artists, elites from those
social groups that kept the Belarusian national idea alive, even in its
peculiarly Soviet incarnation. None of them had experience in politics,
management, or any other activity typically associated with leadership
152 chapter three

or organization. The Belarusian national movement was again started

by a group of well-meaning amateurs who based their hopes on the
national myths they themselves created.
Just as their predecessors trying to carve out a national space for
Belarus in the twilight of the Russian Empire and the dawn of the
Soviet Union, the latter day Belarusian nationalists had to confront a
discrepancy between their romantic representation of the Belarusian
national idea and the realities of Soviet Belarus, with its apathetic and
politically inert population. Apparently unaware of this discrepancy,
the members of Organizing Committee acted as though they presided
over a full-blown political movement. The first mass action of the new
Belarusian nationalist movement took place on October 30, 1988, in
the vicinity of the mass graves in Kurapaty. The organizers afterwards
referred to the demonstration as “many thousand strong”. While this
might be an exaggeration, definitely more than one thousand people
gathered to participate in the first unofficial demonstration in their life.
Most of them were in their twenties and thirties, college and university
students, and young professionals. Police (then not yet in full riot gear)
prevented the demonstration from reaching the site of mass graves.
People crowded in the open field between the city blocks and the Kur-
paty forest and listened to an impromptu speech delivered with great
passion by Zianon Pazniak. The speech was definitely not subversive:
in fact the speaker frequently interrupted his account of tragedies that
befell Belarus throughout its history and appealed to the listeners to
obey the law. Still, the police, now presented with a compact target, as
people thronged close to the speaker, promptly swung into action. The
crowd of people was surrounded by police officers who, with gratuitous
use of tear gas and foul language, beat up some, arrested others, and
dispersed the rest. The Belarusian nationalist movement has received its
baptism, not by fire, but by water (from water-cannon) and tear gas.
The demonstration established a pattern of opposition street protests,
which proved remarkably long-lived. An opposition party would apply
for permission to stage a demonstration. The authorities would deny it,
or else give permission with restrictions so narrowly defined that they
were easy to transgress. Then the opposition leaders would decide to
go ahead with the demonstration anyway. The demonstration would
be dispersed by the riot police, with numerous beatings, arrests and
conspicuously excessive use of force. The opposition would remind the
electorate about its existence and add some more pages to its history of
 borderland forever: modern belarus 153

struggle in political wilderness, while the authorities would reaffirm their

full control over political process in the country. This pattern, started
on October 30, 1988, was repeated many times, culminating in the
tumultuous events that followed the presidential elections of 2006.
The events of October 19 and 30, 1988, formed a watershed for
Belarusian political opposition movement. Until then, the national
idea was discussed in isolated circles of artists and writers, academics
and educators. From then on, it has become a unifying force, capable
of mobilizing relatively large numbers of people into collective action.
However small, the number of nationally-minded activists was suffi-
cient for the authorities to notice the emergence of a new force and to
take steps to confront and control it. Leaders of the nascent Belarusian
Popular Front gained experience of addressing potential constituencies,
creating grass-roots networks, mobilizing supporters and, perhaps most
importantly, keeping the scale of the protest within the limits that would
not provoke the authorities to a comprehensive crackdown, which would
endanger the future of the movement. Other opposition movements
and political parties that started to emerge in the early 1990s, while
not sharing profoundly nationalist platform of the BPF, benefitted from
the experience the nationalist movement gained in the early period of
open political activities.
The fledgling BPF had some successes. It managed to mobilize its
followers for repeated peaceful demonstrations, each larger and more
impressive than the previous one. It gained name recognition among
the general public. It created a core of reliable activists. All this, how-
ever, could not hide serious shortcomings. The BPF consistently failed
to increase its power base beyond the quickly emerged core consisting
mostly of young people and centered in Minsk, the largest Belarusian
city with the largest concentration of colleges and universities. It also
failed to translate its mobilizational capacity into a more consistent
political action. While the demonstrations, held mostly in Minsk and
attended predominantly by young people, grew in size, their impact on
political structures of Belarus remained non-existent. Of course, these
limitations were to a very large extent due to the institutionalized oppres-
sion of any opposition inherent in the Soviet regime. There were no
mechanisms, which would allow an opposition movement to influence
political decisions. However, a comparison with national development
in Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia suggested a more troubling source of
the BPF weakness. National Fronts in the Baltic states enjoyed somewhat
154 chapter three

greater freedom than the nascent BPF. This difference was highlighted
by the fact that, while constituent congresses of national movements
in Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia took place on the native soil, the BPF
organizing committee was forced to convene its constituent congress in
Vilnius, as Belarusian authorities refused to grant permission for such a
gathering anywhere in Belarus. Whether this indicated weakness of the
Belarusian nationalist movement compared to its Baltic counterparts,
or the inability of Belarusian nationalists to find followers among the
ruling Communist bureaucracy, the BPF position early on suggested that
in Belarus a repetition of the success experienced by Baltic nationalist
movements would be unlikely.
The constituent congress of the BPF took place in Vilnius on June
24–25, 1989. Out of the total of 280 delegates, 243 had college or higher
degrees, 201 were younger than forty years, 118 delegates were students,
educators, scientists, scholars, writers or artists, while another 100 were
engineers and civil servants. Minsk provided 190 delegates, more than
all other cities and provinces of Belarus put together (all data in this
paragraph from: Doklad Mandatnoi Komissii, 1989). The congress over-
whelmingly voted for Zianon Pazniak as the chairman of the BPF. It
also elected the Soym, a fifty-five member governing body of the party.
Of the fifty five members, there were three workers, four engineers, one
retiree and forty seven artists, writers, scholars, and educators. History
repeated itself: yet another time the Belarusian national idea was repre-
sented by a group of well-meaning intellectuals, unconnected with the
vast majority of Belarusians, unable to coopt a single member of the
ruling elite. In many ways, Belarusian nationalists of the late 1980s were
worse off than their predecessors of the korenizatsiya era of the 1920s.
The latter included several high-ranking Communists and enjoyed an
overwhelming, if temporary, support of the omnipotent totalitarian state.
Particularly important, it was this support that ensured that the spread
of literacy in Soviet Belarus would proceed through the medium of the
Belarusian language. The BPF had to simultaneously fight for its vision
of independent Belarus and against the Soviet political, economic and
cultural institutions, deeply entrenched in the reality of everyday life of
contemporary Belarus. The leaders of Belarusian nationalist opposition
had to find out if the Belarusian national idea would win hearts and
minds of the populace without support of the state.
The task was immensely difficult to accomplish. To begin with,
the romantic nationalist vision of Belarus’s past and future promoted
by the BPF was not shared by a majority of educated young people,
 borderland forever: modern belarus 155

potentially, the BPF’s key constituency. Among the ethnically Belarusian

college students in Belarus, only 19 percent favored the introduction
of Belarusian citizenship, separate from Soviet citizenship. This figure
for college students of titular nationality in Estonia was 96 percent, in
Latvia, 91 percent and in Lithuania, 84 percent (Novikova et al., 1989,
p. 11). When asked what event in modern history of their republic they
consider the most important, 12 percent of Belarusian students named
the establishment of the Belarusian Soviet Socialist Republic (Ibid.,
p. 8). The Belarusian People’s Republic, considered so important by the
nationalist politicians, did not even register in the opinion polls results.
At the same time, in Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, the emergence of
independent nation-states of the interwar period was considered the
most important event in modern history of their countries by consider-
able pluralities of college students of titular nationality. It is more than
likely that in Belarus, national sentiment among the general population
was less developed than among the college students. The differences
between Belarus and the Baltic states in the spread of national senti-
ment did not leave much hope that national development in Belarus
would be just as successful as in its Baltic neighbors.
The weakness of nationalist opposition in Belarus was revealed in the
course of the elections to the Belarusian Supreme Soviet in the spring
of 1990. Although the BPF campaigned tirelessly and benefitted from
an increasingly well-developed grassroots network, it managed to gain
only twenty seven seats in the 345 seat legislature. The remaining seats
were occupied by the usual Soviet-era mixture of Communist apparat-
chiks, regional administrators, managers of state-owned industrial and
agricultural enterprises, and other people dependent on the existing
political system and committed to its preservation. Not surprisingly, the
newly elected legislature did little to hasten the fragmentation of the
Soviet Union along the national fault lines, then already underway. In
a curiously contradictory move, on July 27, 1990, the Supreme Soviet
adopted a Declaration of Belarusian State Sovereignty, which called for
a creation of a union of sovereign socialist states (Zaprudnik, 1993,
p. 153). Such a union could only be a reincarnation, mutatis mutandis,
of the already existing Soviet Union. The BPF deputies, joined by twenty
more parliamentarians of non-nationalist democratic orientation, voted
against the Declaration and suggested their own version of the docu-
ment, which called for a truly independent Belarusian nation-state and
made no mention of a union with the other Soviet Socialist republics.
Their proposal was promptly voted down by a considerable margin.
156 chapter three

Belarus remained overwhelmingly Soviet in its political, cultural, and

economic institutions. Perhaps it is fair to say that the representation
of BPF in the legislature adequately reflected the number of Belarusians
who seriously considered national independence as a viable alternative
to the Soviet status quo.
In late Soviet and early post-Soviet Belarus, popular movement toward
democracy was represented almost exclusively by the organization,
which proclaimed national independence and cultural development as
their main goals.1 While the BPF was the core of this movement for
political change, at any given time its sphere of influence spread over
somewhat more ephemeral satellite groups, such as Talaka (cultural
movement of nationalist youth), Martyrolah Belarusi (society for com-
memoration of the victims of Stalin’s repressions), several opposition
newspapers, etc. At that time, democratic movements with an emphasis
on non-national issues would have name recognition well below of that
of the BPF. For several years, the Belarusian people were presented with
a package in which the idea of democracy was supplemental to that of
national independence. Nationalist leaders were very clear about their
priorities: independence first, all else afterwards. What kind of social
and economic system was to be created by the national leadership of
independent Belarus, was not clear from the BPF program. While goals
of national independence, linguistic revival, and cultural development
were presented in great detail, political and economic arrangements were
treated with vagueness which revealed not only the lack of familiarity
with economic and political theories, but, more importantly, lack of
interest in the issues that had no immediate bearing upon the nation-
ally-specific goals. Belarusian nationalists shared these priorities with
People’s Fronts of the neighboring Baltic republics. However, as the
Soviet Union began to collapse, the Baltic nationalists were prepared
to take political power and lead their countries toward independence.
Belarusian nationalists, on the other hand, simply witnessed their
country becoming independent by default in December 1991, and then
allowed political power to be re-appropriated by the old Soviet elite.

1
While in post-Independence Belarusian Supreme Soviet there existed a parliamen-
tary caucus of non-nationalist democratic orientation, it was the BPF that provided the
focal point for democratic aspirations of Belarusians in the period from 1988 to 1996,
as evidenced in its unique ability to stage large popular demonstrations.
 borderland forever: modern belarus 157

In 1991, Belarus was involved in the events whose scale of historic

and geopolitical significance Belarusian political and social structures
were singularly ill-prepared to match. The mysterious and almost gro-
tesquely unsuccessful putsch of August 19, 1991, was felt in Belarus
only as repercussions of distant and dramatic events. Nothing compa-
rable to the failed show of force by the hapless leaders of the coup in
Moscow was attempted in Minsk. Troops stayed in the barracks, life
went on as usual, even trains ran on time. One cannot say what would
have happened in Belarus had the coup succeeded. In any event, very
few changes had actually taken place. Belarusian leadership swung into
action when the safe course had already been charted by their superiors
in Moscow or neighbors in Ukraine. When the latter declared inde-
pendence on August 24, Belarusian legislators followed suit and, on
August 25, voted to include the 1990 declaration of independence into
the republic’s Constitution. As the declaration did not really envision
radical changes in relations between Belarus and other Soviet republics,
its inclusion in the Constitution was a very safe step. It was initiated
by Belarus’s Communist Party leader, Anatoly Malofeyev, never known
for opposition or nationalist sympathies, and adopted by the legislative
body where ninety percent of deputies belonged to the Soviet establish-
ment. After Mikhail Gorbachev suspended activities of the Communist
Party of the Soviet Union, Belarusian leaders promptly followed with
a similar declaration, suspending both the activities of the Belarusian
Communist Party and their own Party membership.
Among the more important personnel changes that followed the
coup was the dismissal of Nikolai Dementei, a career Communist Party
apparatchik, from the chairmanship of the Supreme Soviet. This move,
however, could not be interpreted as a straightforward victory for the
opposition forces. According to classification provided by Michael
Urban, Dementei belonged to the group of leading Brezhnev clients
(Urban, 1989, p. 154). Even before the Soviet collapse, this group had
been steadily losing power to the technocrats of the Minsk Industrial
Group (Urban’s classification). In fact, Dementei’s last position as the
chairman of the Supreme Soviet was an indication of his relatively low
stature among the ruling elite of Soviet Belarus. In the Soviet Union,
the Party was the most important arm of the state, the executive branch
being the distant second, while the legislative branch was an almost
purely ornamental body whose function was to rubberstamp decisions
made by the Party leadership and provide credulous foreigners with a
158 chapter three

somewhat comical image of Soviet-style democratic decision-making.

Whatever influence a chairman of the Supreme Soviet had was derived
from his old contacts, established while occupying really important
positions in Party or administrative apparatus. Dementei’s replace-
ment, Stanislav Shushkevich, a university professor of physics, had
no such contacts and consequently very little tangible influence. The
Communist Party having suddenly lost its power and the legislature
now being headed by an amateur, the practical outcome of the August
coup for Belarus was the concentration of power in the hands of the
prime minister, Viacheslav Kebich. The latter, a capable technocrat with
credentials that included directorship of a major machine-building plant
in Minsk, the head of the heavy industry department of the Belarusian
Communist Party’s Central Committee, and chairmanship of Belarus’s
Planning Committee, would use this power to help the newly inde-
pendent country to muddle through the economic chaos of the early
post-Soviet era, while being unable to change any of the institutions
inherited from the Soviet Union.
The failure of the August coup was a precursor to the dissolution of the
Soviet Union, which took place on December 7, 1991. Belarus provided
the venue for the event: a luxury hunting lodge in the primeval forest
in the west of the country, preserved for hunting expeditions of the top
Soviet leadership. While Belarus hosted the meeting of leaders of Russia
and Ukraine, the two Soviet republics which, together with Belarus were
signatories to the original treaty that formed the Soviet Union and there-
fore saw themselves as legally entitled to abrogate the document, it was
definitely the junior partner at the meeting. The two guest politicians,
Boris Yeltsin of Russia and Leonid Kravchuk of Ukraine, represented
two of the largest and economically strongest Soviet republics. Both
Yeltsin and Kravchuk were seasoned Party leaders with plenty of politi-
cal power at their disposal. Their Belarusian host, Stanislav Shuskevich,
was a newcomer to politics, unable to establish useful sources of sup-
port among key elite groups in Belarus. He presided over the country
which was much smaller than Russia or Ukraine and whose economy
was more vulnerable to the exposure to the world market. Given the
disparity in size, political power, and overall importance Russia and
Ukraine represented the driving force of the Soviet disintegration, while
Belarus had no other choice but follow in their wake.
From the time Gorbachev’s perestroika and glasnost policies began in
earnest to the time when they led to the dissolution of the Soviet imperial
structures some five years later, Belarusians experienced a gradual, but
 borderland forever: modern belarus 159

very tangible, reduction of state repressive capacity combined with the

progressively increasing exposure to shortcomings, flaws, and outright
crimes of the Soviet political system. The same experience served to
create viable pro-independence political movements in the neighboring
Baltic states. Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, by the end of Gorbachev’s
rule were ready for independence, both in terms of prevailing popu-
lar attitudes (perhaps best exemplified by weeks of dramatic standoff
between the people and the Soviet Army units in Vilnius in the winter
of 1991) and the presence of ruling elites whose aspirations included
full political independence. Nothing on a comparable scale happened in
Belarus. In the end, it received independence from the hands of Yeltsin
and Kravchuk, two politicians from countries that were larger and more
powerful than Belarus and for whom the abolition of the Soviet Union
was a means to advance their career plans and aspirations.

2. Paradise lost: Belarus and the disintegration of Soviet economy

For Belarus, the three years that followed the dissolution of the Soviet
Union may be best described in the words of Edward Gibbon as “an
amazing period of tranquil anarchy”. The tranquility part corresponded
to the Belarusian political scene where all things Soviet, with the singu-
lar exception of the Communist Party, were carefully preserved in the
center of the country’s political firmament, while new political parties,
small and amateurish, clustered uncomfortably on the margins. Anarchy,
meanwhile, reigned in the country’s economy as the centrifugal processes
in the crumbling Soviet economic system were met by utterly ineffectual
attempts to preserve the Soviet-style political economy in Belarus. The
impressive performance of its newly built economy was central for the
national image of Soviet Belarus and served as a continuous illustra-
tion of the benefits provided by the republic’s membership in the Soviet
Union and subsequent participation in the system of regional division of
labor established by Soviet economic planners. This centrality suggests
that we take a closer look at the rapid decline of Belarus’s economy in
the early 1990s as it was unable to meet the challenges of disintegrating
Soviet economic structures. As Belarus’s neighbors: Lithuania, Latvia,
and Estonia, had similar economies and consequently faced very similar
challenges, a comparison between the economic policies in Belarus and
the Baltics would provide an additional dimension to our analysis of
Belarus’s continuing position as a Soviet borderland.
160 chapter three

Belarus, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia shared the same network of

institutions of the Soviet-type economy and therefore were equally
distant from a developed market as late as 1990. However, by 1994 it
had become apparent that market transition in the three Baltic states
had gained momentum and became irreversible. At the same time, in
Belarus economic transformation, slow and haphazard in the first three
years of formal independence, was completely abandoned in 1994 and
reversed later on by the administration of the newly elected president,
Alyaksandar Lukashenka. In 1994 Estonia produced 55 percent of its
GNP in the private sector. The share of private sector in GDP was the
same for Latvia and slightly lower for Lithuania (50 percent). At the
same time, in Belarus only 15 percent of GNP was produced in
the private sector (EBRD, 1994). Thus, the three Baltic states by 1994
had approached a “critical mass” of irreversible market transformations,
subsequently experiencing economic growth driven primarily by private
enterprises (EBRD, 1997). Meanwhile, a combination of political and
social factors in Belarus succeeded in keeping its economy on the old
Soviet track, actually reducing the share of GDP produced by private
sector to below 8 percent in 2005 (IMF, 2006). The differences in mar-
ket transformation between Belarus and the three Baltic states were
so profound, they could not be regarded merely as matters of degree.
Clearly, different outcomes of the first years of reforms were due to
equally significant differences in reform policies.
While means and ends of economic reforms vary from country to
country, reforms themselves have an important aspect in common: all
economic reforms are political actions. While their intended outcome
might be a new economic system, reform policies themselves are influ-
enced by distribution of power within the government bureaucracy,
non-economic aspirations of political masters, and legitimation patterns
of the general population. Regardless of the original intentions of reform-
ers, political considerations in economic reform design often prevailed
over economic rationality. Perhaps privatization is the most political
of all the elements of economic reforms. Throughout the post-Soviet
economic transformations we have been constantly reminded that the
predominance of political motives manifests itself in many ways and
at every stage of privatization, from the initial valuation of assets to
managing privatized enterprises.
In most countries the state-owned assets singled out for privatization
were evaluated by government agencies, with little regard for possible
market demand (or in close cooperation with large investment funds
 borderland forever: modern belarus 161

closely related to the state apparatus). A significant number of shares was

given to the workers and managers of privatized enterprises. In some
countries (for example, Russia) privatization amounted to a transfer of
controlling stakes of shares to insiders as well as to other enterprises,
banks and investment funds directly or indirectly controlled by the state
(Nellis, 1994). Ira Lieberman observed that as a result of mass priva-
tization programs, state institutions (such as state property funds and
committees) invariably ended up being the largest single shareholders
in the country (1995, p. 15) due to the accumulation of unsold shares.
This puts the government into the driving seat of privatization process,
not only during the original transformation of state-owned assets but
also in the process of their final disposal, as some of the assets might
be transferred to private owners while other remain under state control
indefinitely.
In Lithuania, by 1994, more than half of the former state enterprises
had been privatized, amounting to 46 percent of the total number of
enterprises in industry, 39 percent in transportation, 55 percent in trade
and commerce, and 77 percent in services (Simenas, 1995, p. 108).
The Latvian mass privatization program, despite ambitious plans to
privatize around 700 medium and large-scale enterprises by the end
of 1993, came to an almost complete halt, with only 85 enterprises
privatized by April 1994. However, the privatization of small enterprises
proceeded at a much faster pace. By April 1994 two thirds of such
enterprises had been sold to private owners (IMF, 1994b).
In Estonia the situation was very similar, as more than 90 percent
of small enterprises in retail trade and 80 percent in services had
been privatized by the end of 1993. At the same time, privatization of
medium and large-scale enterprises has not been so successful, with
only 50 companies having been sold. It is important to note that the
Estonian reformers have tried to conduct their privatization program
by using open tenders where all potential investors (both foreign and
domestic) can take part. Later, a public sale of shares was increasingly
used as a method of privatization, although without much success
(IMF, 1994a).
On the surface, both the program and progress of mass privatization
in Belarus did not seem to differ from those in Lithuania, or Latvia. The
legal framework created by 1993 allowed both large- and small-scale
enterprises to be privatized. The main privatization agency—the Ministry
of State Property and Privatization—was in a position to make decisions
and determine privatization policies independently of other ministries.
162 chapter three

Judging by the sheer numbers of the privatized enterprises, privatization

in Belarus has been moderately successful. Transformation of property
started in 1991 and by the end of 1992 more than 270 enterprises were
leased to private entities. In 1993, after the Law on Privatization of State
Property and the Law on Privatization Vouchers had been approved, the
privatization process entered a new phase. According to the Ministry
of Management of State Property and Privatization of the Republic of
Belarus, mass privatization of state-owned enterprises began in June
1993 and by the end of that year 140 enterprises had been privatized.
By May 1994 another 73 enterprises were privatized, largely through the
conversion of state-owned enterprises into joint-stock companies. As in
other countries, only a few enterprises were sold through auctions and
tenders (eighteen in 1993, and only four in the first half of 1994).
Judging by the reported speed of property transformation, Belarus
in the early 1990s seemed to be moving toward a market economy.
Headline data, however, are often misleading. If judged by their respec-
tive shares of GNP produced by the sector not directly owned by the
state, Belarus with 15 percent was in its market transition far behind
the three Baltic states, where this share was in each case in excess of
50 percent. More important, perhaps, was the share of large and small
enterprises in the private sectors of Belarus on the one hand and the
Baltics on the other.
In post-Soviet political and economic environment, the most impor-
tant difference between privatization of large and small enterprises was
that the latter did not entail major political considerations. If large
enterprises were politically important because of their sheer size and
therefore in a position to demand continuing support from the state,
small enterprises did not have the same political clout. The state could
easily withdraw its direct support once these enterprises were privatized.
Not only were the small enterprises easier to privatize (due to the
absence of political constraints), their contribution to the develop-
ment of a market economy tended to exceed the share of their assets
in the economy, mostly because their incentives were not distorted
by the “principal-agent” problem. Not surprisingly, most experienced
and successful reformers listed the development of the private sector
through privatization of small assets among the top priorities of tran-
sitional policies (Balcerowicz and Gelb, 1994). In fact, privatization of
the small enterprises can be regarded as the emergence of new small
private firms via the acquisition of the previously state-owned assets
by individual owners.
 borderland forever: modern belarus 163

In those countries where small enterprises were successfully privat-

ized significant progress toward a market economy quickly followed.
This can be seen from the experience of the three Baltic states, where
privatization of small enterprises had been completed by 1994 and the
private sector in all these countries accounted for more than half of GNP.
At the same time, in Belarus, where privatization of small enterprises
was much slower, post-Soviet economic transition had been quickly
reversed by the Lukashenka administration.
The above discussion of the large-scale versus small-scale privatization
illustrates both the limits of government involvement in the transfor-
mation of the structure of property rights under political constraints
imposed by the “distributional coalitions” (Olson, 1982) and potential
avenues of successful property rights transformation. Political pressure
from the existing distributional coalitions effectively prevented structural
reforms of large-scale enterprises. This was the case both in Belarus and
the Baltic states. However, the latter discovered how to proceed with
meaningful restructuring of the economy by means of privatization of
small-scale enterprises. Belarusian economic administrators chose to
ignore this path to market economy and thus preserved the economic
structure of their country as close to its original Soviet shape as possible.
As distributional coalitions based on Soviet-type industrial structures
are well-organized and possess substantial political clout, the reforming
government has to find a way to effectively neutralize their influence on
economic policy formulation. This is an essentially political action based
on the existing patterns of legitimation. Of course, in the Baltics, the
exclusion of a distributive coalition from discussion of economic policy
was made easier by their ethnic composition (large enterprises typically
employed non-indigenous workers who, while hailing from all parts of
the former Soviet Union, conversed almost exclusively in Russian) and
geopolitical situation of the reforming societies. In Belarus, there were
no such reasons for the exclusion of the distributional coalition from
the decision making process.
The differences between economic policies of the newly independent
Belarus and its Baltic neighbors did not end at property rights trans-
formation of state-owned assets. Quite apart from long-term economic
restructuring, at the beginning of the reform process, governments of
the newly independent states had to address a multitude of immediate
and basic economic problems, first and foremost, how to ensure an
uninterrupted supply of basic goods and services. Of course, monetary
adjustments were necessary, but they were considered only as long as
164 chapter three

they had a direct positive effect on the procurement and distribution

of basic goods.
In the three Baltic states, the problem was approached as a short-term
economic stabilization by means of trade liberalization. The logic of
the first stage of the reforms was based on the recognition of one fact:
the old enterprises which worked within the division of labor in the
former USSR were unable to ensure a continuous supply of necessary
commodities, and their immediate restructuring was impossible. There-
fore, the state should reduce entry barriers for new economic agents,
whose private activities would keep the economy alive. The emergence
of viable economic entities on the domestic markets would take time.
Meanwhile, the foreign trade policy should be liberalized. Since foreign
trade with the former Soviet republics was unlikely to produce positive
results, efforts should be made to reorient foreign trade away from the
former USSR. The key prerequisite to this move was the introduction
of a stable domestic currency.
To facilitate the emergence of private economic agents, the neces-
sary laws on rights of private ownership were passed in all three Baltic
states in 1990–1992. However, by 1992 the private sector was still in
statu nascendi, its development hampered by chaos in the banking and
monetary system, as well as by the continuing domination of large
industrial monopolies in the economy. Thus, the problem of monetary
stability had a direct bearing upon the success of economic liberaliza-
tion. Foreign trade with countries outside the former Soviet Union
could not be conducted in non-cash Russian roubles, the only kind of
currency the Baltic states could issue. Exit from the rouble zone and
introduction of their own currency had become an urgent task. These
actions would also benefit the incipient domestic private firms by easing
access to credit and reducing uncertainty.
In 1992, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania had exited the rouble zone
and started to introduce their own currencies. Lithuania introduced its
provisional Talonas in May of 1992 and made it the sole legal tender
by September of the same year, when all Russian roubles had been
withdrawn from circulation. The Latvian Rublis (also provisional) was
introduced in May 1992 and became the sole legal tender two months
later. The Estonian Kroon was the sole legal tender after its introduc-
tion in June 1992.
Both Latvia and Lithuania followed a two-step process in the intro-
duction of their respective currencies. During the first stage, the goal
 borderland forever: modern belarus 165

was simply to introduce the national currency and establish at least a

very basic control over monetary circulation. This stage did not include
stabilization of the currency and its convertibility vis-à-vis the main
Western currencies. These steps, however, followed very shortly. Perma-
nent, stable and convertible currencies were introduced in Lithuania and
Latvia in 1993. Estonia introduced its Kroon as a permanent currency
from the outset and ensured its stability and convertibility by pegging its
value to the German Mark and providing full backing by the country’s
gold and foreign currency reserves.
The introduction of new currencies in the Baltic states and their exit
from the rouble zone had almost immediate positive effects. Inflation
in all three countries was brought under control in 1993 and did not
exceed ten per cent a month. Foreign trade was rapidly oriented away
from the former USSR toward the West. A dramatic increase in foreign
trade with countries outside the former Soviet Union coincided with the
exit from the rouble zone. For Lithuania, the share of the former Soviet
republics in the total volume of exports fell from 95 percent in 1991 to
68 percent in 1993. In 1991 only 13 percent of Latvia’s imports came
from outside the former Soviet Union, while in 1993 this figure was
31 percent. For Estonia the share of non-Soviet countries in the total
volume of imports increased even more dramatically, from 15 percent
in 1991 to 76 percent in 1993 (Shen, 1994).
The first stage of the economic reforms provided the Baltic states
with the necessary conditions for market development. They established
stable monetary and banking systems, reduced the uncertainty inherent
in hyperinflation, opened the incipient market to competition (both
domestic and foreign). Most importantly, the economic collapse that
seemed inevitable in the first year of independence had been success-
fully avoided.
By comparison with the Baltics, Belarusian foreign trade in the first
years of independence still concentrated on the continuing exchange
with the former Soviet republics. In relative terms, countries outside
the former Soviet Union accounted for 1.77% of the Belarusian import
expenditure and 2.72% of export revenues in 1993, the earliest year for
which disaggregated foreign trade data are available (IMF, 1994a). In
fact, the official Belarusian statistical documents did not include the
trade with the former Soviet republics in the category of foreign trade,
suggesting the unwillingness of the authorities to part with the Soviet-
style division of labor.
166 chapter three

Belarus had chosen to remain in the rouble zone. It was confronted

with the same problem as its Baltic neighbors: a chaotic and unpredict-
able nature of cash injections from other republics into the domestic
economy. When it became clear that Russia would not coordinate its
supply of roubles with Belarusian needs, steps toward the introduction
of the national currency were finally taken, albeit reluctantly. In May
1992 the new Belarusian currency was introduced into circulation.
Officially defined as a “payment coupon”, it was intended to supple-
ment the Russian rouble during the temporary shortages of the latter
on Belarusian territory (IMF, 1994a). The new payment coupon (also
referred to as the rubel, the Belarusian for rouble) was to be used only
in cash transactions, with all non-cash operations still conducted in
Russian roubles. As late as in the summer of 1994, the Belarusian rubel
had not yet become the sole legal tender in Belarus.
Price liberalization in Belarus, which started in 1991, was liberaliza-
tion in name only. Prices were divided into three categories: “controlled”,
“limited”, and “free”. Prices in the first category were subsidized by the
state. Both wholesale prices of oil and other energy sources delivered to
enterprises and retail prices of heat and electricity used by household
belonged to this category. “Limited” prices included those on products
of the enterprises considered to occupy a monopolist position. These
enterprises were allowed to raise prices up to a certain limit established
by the authorities. Since most enterprises were monopolies in their
respective fields, this measure amounted to the Soviet-style price con-
trol and was just as inefficient. The last category included all goods and
services delivered to the non-state sector, as well as goods and services
produced by it. This last feature of the Belarusian price system discrimi-
nated against those few private enterprises that existed in Belarus. Unable
to compete with the subsidized state industries, private entrepreneurs
were forced to concentrate on retail trade, where the cost of inputs did
not present a major disadvantage.
At the same time, the government took several steps to keep afloat
financially unviable state owned enterprises. Negative-interest loans
were routinely issued to the industry and agriculture. The authorities
did not express their intention to bring interest rates closer to the rate
of inflation. In fact, such attempts by the chairman of the Belarusian
National Bank were expressly prohibited by the government.
In the crisis, similar in its nature and magnitude to those experienced
by the Baltic states, the strategy of the Belarusian leadership was the
opposite of the one adopted by its Baltic counterparts. Instead of mon-
 borderland forever: modern belarus 167

etary stabilization and economic liberalization, they opted for continuing

subsidies and protection of the state enterprises. Their hope for revi-
talizing the economy lay in close relations with Russia. To explain the
differences between the economic strategies of the Baltic and Belarusian
leaders, we should examine the interests of crucial social groups and
the cognitive models of the ruling elites.
The preservation of Soviet economic structures in Belarus, facilitated
by a peculiar pattern of privatization, deliberate procrastination with the
introduction of national currency, and failure to re-orient trade flows
away from Russia and towards the rest of the world, might not look like
a sequence of rational economic decisions. However, for the Belarusian
planners, those decisions were rational within the only economic para-
digm they knew. The preservation main elements of the Soviet-style
economy was the underlying purpose of their response to post-Soviet
economic imbalances. It was dictated by their training, experience, and
historical memory. Any other alternative went against the grain of the
experience of modern economic development in Belarus. Modernity
and prosperity came to Belarus during the Soviet era and in Soviet
form. To deviate from this pattern was to venture into uncharted and
potentially dangerous waters. On the other hand, clinging to the Soviet
past promised the only way to preserve full employment, industrial
assets, and equitable income distribution. As it happened, the Russian
economy was rapidly shedding its Soviet attributes and adjusting to
market mechanisms, however distorted. Thus, Belarus could only cling
to a memory of the Soviet economy, as the real thing did not exist
anywhere but Belarus.
Chasing illusions can be costly. Belarus paid for the early post-Soviet
economic policies with a precipitous drop in living standards, persis-
tent hyperinflation, severe economic dislocations, and the reversal of
the hitherto healthy economic growth. Inflation was perhaps the most
conspicuous consequence of preserving the Soviet-type economy in
post-Soviet world. Between 1989 and 1995, prices in Belarus increased
by 60,000 (sixty thousand) times (World Bank, 1997, pp. 2–3). Of course,
much of the increase can be plausibly ascribed to the disruption of
the monetary system in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union,
as well as the rapid adjustment of prices of energy and other export-
able natural resources to their world levels. The latter factor, however,
affected individual post-Soviet economies to the extent they lacked
such resources. Both factors were beyond control of Belarus’s economic
decision-makers and thus do not reflect the impact of specific policy
168 chapter three

decisions on macroeconomic conditions. It is therefore legitimate to ask

whether hyperinflation in Belarus was caused primarily by external or
internal factors. In 1989–95 only five of the fifteen post-Soviet republics
experienced inflation, which was higher than in Belarus. The compari-
son will perhaps provide a better illustration of the state of affairs if we
recall that four out of the five states: Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and
Tajikistan, were suffering from ethnic strife, almost on the scale of a
civil war, that threatened their very existence. This exceptionally parlous
situation made their monetary developments considerably more irregu-
lar than the already distorted transformation of monetary and banking
systems in the rest of post-Soviet space. The Transcaucasian states and
Tajikistan excluded from the comparison, Belarus would occupy the
place at the top of inflation-generating post-Soviet economies, second
only to Turkmenistan. As for the Baltic states, which shared Belarus’s
vulnerability to rising energy prices and dependence on the crumbling
Soviet market, their aggregate inflation indicators for 1989–95 were
lower than in Belarus by several orders of magnitude (World Bank,
1997, pp. 2–3). Moreover, in all three Baltic states inflation was halted
(in Estonia) or dramatically reduced (in Latvia and Lithuania) imme-
diately following the introduction of national currencies in 1992. In
Belarus, on the other hand, steadily galloping inflation continued after
the domestic currency was introduced in 1992 and then throughout the
1990s. Indeed, it has never been tamed, but only mitigated by unusual
and unsustainable terms of trade in 2005–06.
Even the highly aggregated indicators convincingly demonstrate that
the greatest part of Belarus’s post-Soviet inflation was domestically gen-
erated rather than externally induced. Growth of money supply (M3,
broad money) was 376% in 1992, increasing to 965% in 1993, and then
to 1,931% in 1994. Consumer price inflation responded, growing from
505% in 1992, accelerating to 637% in 1993, and reaching the level
of 2,469% (two thousand four hundred sixty nine percent) in 1994
(World Bank, 1997, p. 150). The rates of consumer price inflation were
consistently higher than the rates of monetary expansion owing to the
fact that the Belarusian rubel was not the sole legal tender throughout
the period, and particularly to the high level of dollarization of the
economy.
Credit expansion was the main instrument of the excessive injection
of money into the ailing Belarusian economy. This is illustrated by a
World Bank study which showed that rates of credit expansion were
 borderland forever: modern belarus 169

only slightly below the rates of inflation from 1992 to 1995 (the differ-
ence is most likely explained by the already mentioned dollarization of
Belarus’s economy as a result of avoidance of the rapidly depreciating
domestic currency in some types of transactions). In current prices,
bank lending increased from 1.1 billion Belarusian rubels in 1990 to
8,771.8 billion in 1995. Of this amount, less than ten percent was issued
to finance investment, as credit expansion was directed overwhelmingly
towards the preservation of working capital (World Bank, 1997, p. 135).
Belarusian enterprises, suddenly unplugged from the Soviet-era cen-
tral distribution system and unable to sell their output in competitive
markets, had to restructure or go bankrupt. As the former option was
readily available to very few and the latter was politically unaccept-
able, Belarusian government used its newly acquired money-printing
prerogative to keep the giant and obsolescent factories, erstwhile pride
of Soviet industrial complex, afloat.
The support of unsustainable enterprises by means of subsidized
credit was intended to preserve the existing structure of economic assets,
full employment, and continuous economic growth. The first two goals
were achieved: the Belarusian economy remained staunchly unreformed
while the officially reported unemployment rate grew from 0.5% of the
total labor force in 1992 to 2.7% in 1995 (World Bank, 1997, p. 99).
However, the reckless credit and monetary expansion failed to preserve
economic growth. Belarus’s GDP declined steadily and by 1995 was only
62.7% of its 1990 level in real terms. Other macroeconomic indicators
declined even faster. In 1995, investment was only 42.3% of its 1990
level, exports, only 38.2% (World Bank, 1997, p. ix).
For Belarusians the downward trend exhibited by abstract macroeco-
nomic indicators easily translated into a very tangible and precipitous
decline in living standards. From 1990 to 1995 aggregate consumption
declined by 40%. While growth in wages seemed impressive in the short
run and in current terms, in the longer run and in real (adjusted for
inflation) terms, wages actually declined, generally following the steady
downward change of GDP in 1991–95. Moreover, macroeconomic
imbalances inherent in an essentially Soviet-type economy of Belarus
prevented one-time excessive boosts in wages from spilling over into
aggregate consumption thus providing at least limited growth in domes-
tic demand. The only tangible effect of wage increase was to lessen the
competitiveness of Belarusian manufactured goods in Russian markets,
as the cost of wage increases was necessarily reflected in higher prices.
170 chapter three

As a result of the deep structural crisis exacerbated by the loss of

traditional Russian markets, the Belarusian economy, while providing
at least a semblance of full employment, was manifestly unable to stop
the decline in living standards. The poverty rate rose sharply, from just
one percent in 1990 to thirty six percent in the first quarter of 1995
(World Bank, 1997, p. 73). In addition to that, the prolonged period of
hyperinflation wiped out most savings, thus reducing not only income
but also the wealth of the majority of Belarusians. The negative public
perception of the economic situation could not have been helped by the
changing patterns of social inequality whereby the old system of privi-
leges provided to high-ranking Communist Party officials was replaced
by a much more visible display of social stratification by the new rich.
Belarusians had many reasons to feel disenchanted with their economy
which, after many years of welfare standards somewhat higher than in
the rest of the Soviet Union, proved unable to provide the basic stability
and expected level of consumption in the changing world.
Belarusian government officials had reasons to be satisfied with the
results of their policies: for four years they preserved the only type of
economic system they knew. They derided reform proposals as ama-
teurish or worse and acted as though the great transformation of the
Soviet political economy was just a temporary crisis, albeit of unusual
complexity, depth, and duration. Throughout the crisis, they preserved
what they considered important for the Belarusian economy: structures
made of brick and mortar, concrete and steel, large industrial buildings,
agricultural complexes, impressive collections of obsolescent machin-
ery, and millions of people on the payroll. In the process they wrecked
something less material but more promising: a chance, however slim and
remote, for Belarus to become a modern European economy. However,
a drift away from Russia and towards Europe was regarded by Belaru-
sian leaders as a danger to be avoided and not an opportunity to be
pursued or even explored. On the other hand, successful avoidance of
economic restructuring was a reason for self-congratulatory statements.
In 1994 Belarus’s prime minister, Vyacheslav Kebich, proclaimed that his
government “managed to stem the tide of reformist euphoria. Thanks
to this our people were not hungry, had their homes heated in winter,
produced goods, tilled the soil” (Quoted in Savchenko, 2000, p. 115). Mr
Kebich was about to find out if the people whose welfare he protected
throughout his tenure shared his opinion on the results of Belarus’s
economic policies. In the summer of 1994 he would run for presidency
in the first presidential elections in Belarus’s history. This event opened
a new and rather unexpected period of Belarus’s history.
 borderland forever: modern belarus 171

3. Back to the future: populist Belarus under Alyaksandar Lukashenka

In 1994, Alyaksandar Ryhoravich Lukashenka, a man with “a heavy

moustache and ruggedly handsome features” which made him look like
a poster of Big Brother in Orwell’s 1984, became the first uncontested,
unchallenged, unaccountable ruler of independent Belarus. It was not
a revolution that brought him to power. Instead, he was elected by a
vast majority of the popular vote in Belarus’s first and only democratic
presidential elections. Soon after, people started to refer to their Presi-
dent as “bats’ka”, the Belarusian for father.
David Marples, analyzing the outcome of the presidential elections
of 1994, concluded that “the election of Lukashenka per se was neither
startling nor illogical; indeed from the perspective of June–July 1994,
many voters may have thought that they lacked choice” (Marples,
2003, p. 28). This vision of the Belarusian political scene in 1994, while
broadly adequate, invites a more detailed analysis of the factors that
made the Belarusian electorate think of Lukashenka as the only logi-
cal choice. On the face of it, election of Lukashenka in the summer of
1994 was far from a foregone conclusion: he was just one of the four
major candidates (not counting the two also-rans), each with his own
distinctive image and program. The prime minister, Viacheslav Kebich,
looked to be a formidable presidential candidate owing to his proven
track record of economic administration, well-detailed program of eco-
nomic revitalization of Belarus by means of closer relations with Russia,
and the power of incumbency, an immense advantage in a political
system without a well-developed party structure or independent mass
media. Stanislav Shushkevich professor of physics and former Chair
of the Presidium of Belarus’s Supreme Soviet, enjoyed the reputation
of a moderate reformer and was viewed as a public intellectual with a
strong appeal to the urban intelligentsia. Zianon Pazniak, leader of the
Belarusian People’s Front, boasted strong nationalist credentials, good
grassroots campaign facilitated by the BPF, and an inspiring program of
national independence. Alyaksandar Lukashenka had no national-level
administrative experience, intellectual gravitas, or nationalist credentials.
What he had was a combination of youthful energy and the irresistibly
vacuous demagoguery of an entry-level Communist apparatchik. The
hand dealt Mr Lukashenka before the elections was not the best one,
but he played it very skillfully.
One should not underestimate the importance of the 1994 presidential
elections in Belarus’s political history. It was the first free and unim-
peded expression of political will of the Belarusian people. Before, the
172 chapter three

Belarusians could express themselves only within a Byzantine system

of Soviet politics and before that, the only memory of free political
expression was limited to parliamentary elections in the Polish part of
Belarus in the 1920s. However, as we already know, the latter did not
produce a lasting impression on the Belarusian national memory. Thus,
1994 was the first time when the Belarusian electorate could express
its wishes freely, with virtually no oppressive interference by the ruling
regime. Belarusians could make informed choices based on the infor-
mation provided in a free and unimpeded discussion by all candidates.
In 1994 Belarus came as close as it ever would, or ever before had, to
a civilized electoral process. Granted, some elements, notably a party
system or independent media, were either weak or missing altogether.
At the same time, their absence allowed fewer avenues for excessive
manipulation of the electorate by special interest groups. It is therefore
legitimate to look at the result of the elections as a truly popular choice,
unaffected by oppression or misinformation. Belarusians received what
they voted for: a strong presidential regime headed by a man driven by
nostalgia for the Soviet era.
There were some significant national peculiarities in the 1994 presi-
dential elections. Political parties did not play a role of comparable
importance as those in countries with a better established political
tradition (notably, Belarus’s neighbor, Poland and the Baltics). The only
major candidate who ran as a representative of a particular political party
was Zianon Pazniak, then leader of the Belarusian People’s Front (BPF).
Stanislav Shushkevich, while his campaign leaflets claimed support of
his candidacy by the United Democratic Party and Belarusian Social-
Democratic Hramada, had no identifiable party affiliation. Besides, both
parties were small and their combined number of less than a thousand
of grassroots activists could not provide tangible support for an electoral
campaign, Two front-runners: prime minister Viacheslav Kebich and
Alyaksandar Lukashenka, ran without any party affiliation and did not
seek endorsement by any political party.
Programs were only marginally more important than party affiliations.
In fact, programs of Kebich, Shushkevich, and Lukashenaka seemed to
differ only in style but not in substance. All called for a socially oriented
distributive economy, but none spelled out what social group would
provide the bulk of the revenue. All promised accelerated economic
growth, but none specified what structural reforms would ensure it.
All insisted that Belarus should be truly independent, but none stated
clearly that true independence would mean that special relationships
 borderland forever: modern belarus 173

with Russia must come to an end. Lukashenka was not an exception.

His program proffered close relations with Russia as the solution to
Belarus’s economic crisis. This did not give Lukashenka advantage over
Kebich, as the latter had a very similar solution to Belarus’s economic
ills. However, call for the closer economic ties with Russia was the
most specific part of Lukashenka’s program. Beyond that, it was just a
mishmash of unsubstantiated and unrealistic promises.
The BPF candidate, Zianon Pazniak, presented a consistent program
of national independence and cultural revival. The BPF charted a path
to Belarus’s future as an essentially European country. The tenor of
their campaign could be expressed in one sentence: “toward Europe
and away from Russia”. The program emphasized that Belarus should
demand the full withdrawal of Russian troops, as well as removal of
weapons and military installations left by the Soviet Army, from the
territory of Belarus. As the successor of the Soviet Union, Russia would
be held accountable for the Chernobyl disaster and should be asked
to compensate Belarus for the clean-up of the contaminated areas. All
disputes between Russia and Belarus stemming from the distribution
of various assets left after the collapse of the Soviet Union should be
resolved equitably and on the basis of international law. After that,
relations between the two countries would be neighborly, friendly
and neutral. Russia will lose its privileged position in Belarus’s foreign
policy and become just another neighbor, an important one, to be sure,
but without the claim to special relationship based on the “brotherly”
nature of the two peoples. The BPF made its vision of Belarus’s destiny
very clear: historic, economic, and geopolitical reasons place Belarus
in Europe. Only as a European country can Belarus be not only politi-
cally independent but also culturally viable. Domestically, the program
envisioned a free market economy emerging as a result of structural
economic reforms and the introduction of a stable national currency.
Populist aspirations were not forgotten: the program promised a steeply
progressive tax on the new rich, compensation of losses to individual
savings as a result of hyperinflation, subsidies to young families with
children, and a state-guaranteed pension fund. Just as all other candi-
dates, Pazniak promised to fight against corruption, to protect law and
order, to provide sufficient resources for education and science.
Personally, the candidate fielded by the BPF looked no less formidable
than other presidential contestants. Zianon Pazniak, with his well-
known dissident credentials, leadership of national independence move-
ment, role in the gruesome discovery in Kurapaty, had been a familiar
174 chapter three

anti-establishment figure in Belarus for several years. While his academic

background did nothing to enhance his image as a capable politician at
the national level, his four-year tenure at the Supreme Soviet ensured
that he is aware of the workings of Belarusian political system. He
enjoyed support of his party, which consistently proved that it could
use its grass-roots organization to mobilize large numbers of people
for street protests. The position of the BPF looked not unlike that of
the nationalist movement Sajudis in Lithuania whose leader, Vitautas
Landsbergis, a person with a background very similar to that of Zianon
Pazniak, successfully navigated his country towards full independence
during his presidential tenure of 1990–92.
Belarus again demonstrated that it was different from Lithuania. Dur-
ing the presidential polls held on June 24, 1994, Pazniak received only
13 percent of the votes, thus coming a distant third after Kebich, with
17 percent and Lukashenka with 45 percent. The third place excluded
the BPF candidate from participation in the second round of elections.
In the second round Lukashenka won in a landslide, collecting more
than 80 percent of the vote. An erstwhile political indoctrination officer
in the border troops of KGB, small time apparatchik, director of a state
farm, parliamentary demagogue, Alyaksandar Lukashenka had been
elected to presidency of Belarus by the popular vote in the freest and
most transparent elections Belarus ever had before or since.
Some researchers (e.g., Silitski, 2003) attribute Lukashenka’s victory
to mistakes made by his opponents, especially the BPF. This reasoning
requires some qualifications. Silitski mentions the excessively pugna-
cious tone of Zianon Pazniak’s campaign, specifically his less than
friendly remarks about Russia (Silitski, 2003, p. 42). However, one might
plausibly argue that electoral rhetoric of nationalist movements in the
Baltic states was more nationally assertive than that of the BPF and yet
they managed to be consistently victorious at the polls. The BPF never
defined the non-Belarusian population of Belarus as “migrants”, a term
commonly used by Baltic nationalists in reference to their respective
non-indigenous national groups. Unlike the nationalist parties in the
Baltics, which always promised and upon gaining power, began to
implement policies which discriminated between citizens of different
ethnic origins, the BPF always emphasized that its goal is a multinational
and multiethnic state where equal rights will be enjoyed by all citizens
irrespective of ethnic, national, or religious affiliation.
The Belarusian national movement suffered from an image prob-
lem. The latter was not created by the nationalists but rather inherited
 borderland forever: modern belarus 175

from the Soviet era. Throughout the late Soviet and early post-Soviet
period, Belarusian media, both electronic and printed, continued to be
dominated by government controlled organizations. Even in printed
media, where some presence of opposition newspapers was allowed,
government newspapers far exceeded independent publications both in
number of newspapers, circulation and popularity. In 1993, out of 653
periodicals registered in Belarus, only 80 were published by voluntary
organizations, 77 by individuals, 12 by religious organizations and 56 by
small businesses and cooperatives. The remaining 428 were published
by the government or government-controlled entities (Source: Ministry
of Information, internal memo).
The predominance of government-controlled media was not only a
quantitative matter. For many years, the only source of information,
opinion, and analysis available to the vast majority of Soviet people was
mass media fully controlled by the government. Generations of Soviet
people, in Belarus and elsewhere, lived with a government information
monopoly and grew to regard it as a normal state of affairs. According
to Vladimir Shlapentokh (2001, pp. 61–62), by the end of the Soviet era
most people believed the official propaganda directed at them through
the government-controlled media. It is plausible to assume that the trust
in officially provided information did not wear off immediately upon the
collapse of the Soviet Union. Therefore, it is likely that most Belarusians
believed what they were told about the nationalist opposition.
From its inception, Belarusian political nationalism was subjected to
persistent attacks by official media. The BPF and its satellite organizations
(Talaka, Martyrolah, regional nationalist movements) were described
as nationalist radicals, political extremists, ideological heirs of Nazi
collaborators, and, at least until the collapse of the Soviet Union made
the last charge sound a bit hollow, bourgeois nationalists. At the same
time, some periodicals published in Moscow and controlled by Russia’s
reformers occasionally defended nationalist aspirations of Belarusian
intelligentsia (Zaprudnik, 1993, pp. 133–134). It raised quite a few eye-
brows, therefore, when the BPF leader, Zianon Pazniak, stepped up his
anti-Russian rhetoric after Belarus gained independence in 1991. Shortly
before the electoral campaign for the presidential polls of 1994 started,
Pazniak wrote a column for Belarus’s largest independent newspaper
in which he bitterly criticized Russia’s tradition of imperial domination
and asserted that, even with liberal reformers in power in the Kremlin,
Russian policy towards Belarus would remain that of an imperial power
towards a temporarily independent province. According to Pazniak,
176 chapter three

Russia would try to re-incorporate Belarus into the reconstructed empire

(Pazniak, 1994). The column, written with a combination of nationalist
passion and scholarly precision, surprised some, infuriated many, and
persuaded few. Silitski (2003, p. 42) even goes so far as to imply that it
strongly contributed to the BPF’s loss in the first round of presidential
polls by providing the authorities with an opportunity to portray the
nationalist opposition’s candidate as a power-hungry radical and an anti-
Russian xenophobe. The significance of this piece, however, should be
considered against the background of the already mentioned persistent
anti-BPF campaign waged by the official media over several years. This
prolonged and relentless campaign shaped the climate of public opin-
ion, especially among politically uncommited voters, those who would
choose a government newspaper or TV broadcast as the default source
of information and would not bother looking for an alternative view.
This is precisely the group of voters which, according to Silitski, was
lost by the nationalist opposition owing to the latter’s statements, which
moderate voters could perceive as extremist. Furthermore, by alienat-
ing the moderate voters, BPF electoral campaign unwittingly opened
the door to Lukashenka. This vision of the 1994 elections prompts a
question: to what extent could BPF accommodate the moderate voter
while at the same time keeping its program of national independence,
re-orientation toward Europe, and cultural revival?
Contrary to the view fostered by official media, Belarusian national-
ist opposition was neither radical nor xenophobic. The program of the
BPF emphasized that it did not discriminate on the basis of nationality,
ethnicity, or religion. While it called for support, indeed, restoration, of
the Belarusian language by adopting laws that would ensure its status
as the only officially recognized language of government institutions, it
also promised to support the rights of non-Belarusian ethnic groups to
produce publications, radio and television broadcasts in their languages.
Far from calling for the “blood and soil” type of nationhood, it stated
that any permanent resident of Belarus, regardless of nationality, ethnic-
ity, or language, should be considered Belarusian citizen. The BPF never
called for a complete break with Russia, just for a well-balanced foreign
policy in which Russia, while losing its privileged position, will remain
an important partner of Belarus. This position, while clearly nation-
ally assertive, was far from radical or xenophobic. The latter epithets
were used by the official propaganda which deliberately distorted the
opposition’s intentions. Understanding the problem, the BPF repeated
 borderland forever: modern belarus 177

its commitment to rights of all nationalities living in Belarus, plans to

maintain good relations with Russia, aversion to any kind of coercion
in implementation of its cultural and linguistic policies. Campaign
materials in Russian were just as common as in Belarusian. The BPF
even issued a leaflet listing the things Zianon Pazniak would not do if
he was elected president (he would not force people to communicate
in Belarusian, he would not persecute former Communists, he will
not break ties with Russia, etc.). This, however, proved of little help: as
Silitski correctly notes, the nationalist opposition was unable to attract
voters from outside of the already established voting bloc of commit-
ted nationalists.
Now, the electoral campaign and the presidential polls of 1994 pro-
vide an important picture of the Belarusian electorate three years after
independence. First, if we follow Silitski’s argument and agree that the
nationalist candidate attracted only ethnically conscious Belarusians,
then it follows that this group accounted for only about 13 percent of
the electorate. Second, even if the BPF and moderate reformers man-
aged to keep a united front, their combined number, about 23 percent
of the electorate (combined number of those who voted for Pazniak
and Shushkevich) were still more than 21 percentage points behind
Lukashenka in the first round and therefore were unlikely to gain victory
in the second round as those who voted for Kebich in the first round
(17 percent) would have been unlikely to vote for a liberal reformer
and much more likely to vote for Lukashenka. Finally, and perhaps the
most importantly, the vast majority of voters believed the Soviet-style
official propaganda, or did not care for the attempts by the opposition
to set the record straight, or simply was not moved by the opposition
message of reforms and national revival. Perhaps, as the BPF pointed
at the post-Soviet development of the Baltic states as the preferred
template for post-Soviet Belarus, independent and oriented towards
Europe, one of the reasons of the unpopularity of their message was that
a vast plurality, if not outright majority, of Belarusian electorate built
their perception of living standards in Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia
on reports by the Belarusian official media, which presented the path
taken by the nationally-aware Baltic neighbors as a dead end. As the
official press seized every opportunity to drive home the message that
excessive independence from Russia meant high energy prices, while
orientation to Europe produced the misery of monetarist economic
policies, it is not unlikely that Belarusians simply thought that the Baltic
178 chapter three

way to independence was too costly and therefore rejected the BPF as
the only party that promoted it.
The overwhelming rejection of the nationalist vision of the country’s
future by the Belarusian electorate was a very significant event in the
modern political history of Belarus. The Belarusian People’s Front was
in many ways a pioneer in party politics in Belarus. It was the first ever
Belarusian nationalist party whose ideology was not expressly Social-
Democratic. This was an important break with tradition of Belarusian
political nationalism, as the first Belarusian national party, the Social-
Democratic Hramada, as well as virtually all Belarusian political parties
in interwar Poland concentrated on the left side of the political spectrum.
The BPF’s program, while displaying the obligatory populist statements,
called for a free market as the main goal of the party’s economic poli-
cies. Perhaps more importantly, the BPF, unlike the national parties that
represented the Belarusian minority of interwar Polish Republic, aspired
to gain support of a broad power base, not confined to a particular eth-
nic group, but instead crafting a constituency that would include all the
voters who accepted the BPF’s platform, irrespective of their national or
ethnic background. Ironically, it was the development of national-state
structures in Belarus throughout the Soviet era that allowed the BPF
to become a nation-wide party with realistic aspirations of promoting
its candidates to nation-wide office. The same process, however, shaped
the Belarusian national identity in such a way that it became tied to the
Soviet past of Belarus. This essentially relegated the BPF to the margins
of the political landscape.
In rejecting both the nationalist (Pazniak) and moderate democratic
(Shushkevich) reformers the Belarusian electorate did not vote for the
preservation of the status quo. Instead, they seized an opportunity to
express their disagreement, not with the politics, but the personality of
the politician. Kebich, a competent Soviet-era administrator, promised
to stay the course: avoid structural reforms, keep Belarus within Russia’s
economic and political orbit, and maintain the cultural environment
shaped in the Soviet period (with the Belarusian language relegated to
the secondary role). As his main competitor, Lukashenka, was presenting
essentially the same program, it is clear that a vast majority of Belarusian
voters saw nothing wrong with the course per se but doubted the ability
of the old guard to pursue it. What they needed was not a change of
course but a new man at the helm.
The first election of Alyaksandar Lukashenka to the presidency of
Belarus raises interesting questions about cultural underpinnings of
 borderland forever: modern belarus 179

charisma. Marples (2003) explains Lukashenka’s popularity by the fact

that he was “man of the people”, spoke their language (a sloppy mixture
of Russian and a rural dialect of the Belarusian language), was easily
distinguishable from the intellectual elite or the administrative cadre
of the Soviet era. While this is certainly true, the observation invites a
further inquiry into the reasons for Mr Lukashenka’s elevation from a
deputy of the Supreme Soviet, only marginally more popular than his
colleagues, to the first President of Belarus whose increasingly auto-
cratic proclivities were repeatedly endorsed by a substantial portion of
the electorate.
Lukashenka was not known to Belarus’s general public until 1990
when he was elected deputy of the Supreme Soviet of Belarus (then still
a constituent Soviet Republic). His term in the Supreme Soviet brought
him some notoriety. He was appointed chair of the parliamentary
anti-corruption commission. Corruption in Belarus, although it had
never achieved the scale of Russian criminal capitalism of the Yeltsin
era, was still an issue bearing an extremely high emotional charge. For
the general public, unversed in particulars of the dismal science of
economics, the newly discovered corruption of the ruling class was a
convenient explanation of inflation, shortages, factory closures, declining
standards of living, and other economic ills, which accumulated pari
passu with the avalanche of allegations about corruption in high places.
Consequently, a parliamentary deputy serving on an anti-corruption
commission would acquire an image of a fighter for social justice as well
as a practical man who could really improve the collapsing economy.
Thus, Lukashenka’s appointment to chair the anti-corruption committee
of the Belarusian legislature put him in the spotlight of public opinion.
He exhibited all the conspicuous stridency of a common man visibly
outraged by the machinations of nefarious elites, promptly accusing top
officials, including the prime minister, Viacheslav Kebich, and chairman
of the Supreme Soviet, Stanislav Shushkevich, of embezzlement, abuse
of office, and general corruption. The scope of the latter is illustrated
by Mr Lukashenka’s greatest success as chair of anti-corruption com-
mittee: he managed to accuse Shushkevich of embezzling two boxes of
nails for repair work on his summer home. The accusation had never
been proven, but Mr Shushkevich was embarrassed into resigning his
chairmanship. Although it looked like an incredibly bad comedy, the
story is nonetheless true. As more than one author commented, it serves
as a revealing reflection of the state of political culture in Belarus. The
Shushkevich affair, grotesquely squalid though it was, served to create a
180 chapter three

favorable image of Lukashenka within the Belarusian electorate. Atten-

tion to detail in pursuit of social equality that would ensure that no one
would have an extra box of nails was definitely the kind of leadership
the Belarusians would expect from their rulers, past, present, and future.
In 1993, before his appointment to the anti-corruption committee, Mr
Lukashenka had an approval rating of 0.3 percent, well below Pazniak
with 3.3 percent and Shuskevich with 4.1 percent. After several months
of tenure as an anti-corruption deputy, just on the eve of the start of
the electoral campaign of 1994, Mr Lukashenka’s rating’s skyrocketed
to 42.0 percent, while those of Shushkevich’s and Pazniak’s languished
in the single digits (Rotman and Danilov, 2003, pp. 102, 103). If the
preposterous pettiness of Mr Lukashenka’s anti-corruption crusade
damaged his standing with Belarusian voters, opinion polls seem not
to have registered it.
Tactically, Lukashenka’s campaign benefitted from the fact that Kebich
and the democratic opposition (both Pazniak and Shushkevich) con-
centrated on criticizing each other, thus allowing Lukashenka to convey
his message to the electorate virtually criticism-free. This observation,
presented by Silitski (2003, pp. 43–44), is true. It does not, however,
capture the full picture of the electoral situation in 1994. Kebich and
the democratic reformers, both moderate (Shushkevich) and national-
ist (Pazniak), espoused very different visions of Belarus’s future: for
Kebich and his nomenklatura cohorts it was an essentially post-Soviet
Russian borderland continuing to reap benefits of special relationships
with the imperial power, while for Pazniak and, to a lesser degree,
Shushkevich, it was a European country, open to the West from whence
it would derive support and guidance. The two sides could plausibly
criticize each other’s program on the substantive basis. Lukashenka’s
program, substantively indistinguishable from that of Kebich, could not
be criticized by the latter. On the other hand, the democratic opposi-
tion, even if it realized the importance of the Lukashenka candidacy
and decided to confront him early in the campaign, would have had
a hard time painting a person with anti-establishment credentials, just
recently obtained through his well-publicized fight against corruption,
with the same brush as Kebich, a consummate insider. When in the
second round of elections Kebich ran against Lukashenka, he attacked
his rival as an inexperienced, untested, and unproven administrator.
There was little he could say about Lukashenka’s program, as much of
it was indistinguishable from his own policy.
 borderland forever: modern belarus 181

The substantive issues of Belarus’s future were resolved in the first

round of the 1994 presidential polls. The European vector of Belarus’s
development, well articulated in the programs of the democratic opposi-
tion, especially the BPF, and persuasively and consistently presented to
the voters, was overwhelmingly rejected by the electorate in the most
free and fair electoral contest Belarus had ever had. The election’s second
round, in which Kebich and Lukashenka squared off, was more about
style than substance of the remaining contenders. Both promised to
return Belarus to the familiar pseudo-prosperity of the Soviet era by
keeping the country within Russia’s sphere of influence. There was a
difference between the candidates, however: Kebich had been pursuing
this policy for some time and with a result that most Belarusians found
less than satisfactory. As they apparently thought the policy itself to be
sound, what they needed was the change of leadership. Lukashenka’s
inexperience was beside the point: perhaps in the first demonstration
of national political will Belarusian voters wanted to replace an admin-
istrator, however competent and tested, by a national leader, young,
dynamic, and, in the view of ordinary Belarusian men and women,
handsome. Lukashenka’s explosive elevation almost perfectly illustrates
Weber’s thesis about the opposition of charisma to any kind of rational,
routine, or bureaucratic organization (Weber, 1964, p. 361). The only
thing Lukashenka had to prove was his commitment to the nation’s ide-
als, shaped in the course of its recent history and shared by the major-
ity of the population. From Lukashenka’s earnest performance in the
run-up to and the course of his first presidential polls, it was clear that
he was committed to a particularly petty type of social justice, demotic
interpretation of Belarusian national identity, and political system built
around a strong leader. Apparently these qualities helped to spin his
personal charisma, which in turn made his promises of dignified and
prosperous future believable by most Belarusians, however incredible
they might have seemed to the outsider.
Appeal of charisma spans classes and social groups. Lukashenka’s
appeal was not limited to uneducated rustics or the industrial proletariat.
He quite deliberately addressed some of his campaign leaflets to young
professionals, promising them better conditions for promotion and
self-expression under a more dynamic and young leader who would
sweep away the old bureaucracy and invite the young to prove them-
selves where the old guard faltered. In my informal interviews, con-
ducted in the summer of 1994 with five young (in their twenties to
182 chapter three

mid-thirties) members of the emerging Belarusian middle class, many

of whom were very different from Lukashenka in their educational and
professional background, as well as political views, the respondents
tended to express qualified support for Lukashenka’s candidacy. The first
layer of support was due to his widespread popularity. All respondents,
among them two bankers, one editor of an independent English-lan-
guage newspaper, and one head of a voluntary organization (currently
in opposition to the Lukashenka regime), stated that Lukashenka had
sufficient people’s support to conduct unpopular economic reforms and
lead Belarusian economy out of the quagmire. When asked why they
thought Lukashenka, should he be elected president, would conduct
market-oriented reforms, they invariably pointed to members of his
campaign team, most of them young and ambitious. The argument was
that Lukashenka and members of his team were young and wanted to
stay in power for a long time. To secure their position, they had to fol-
low the immutable rules of economics and introduce market reforms.
If Lukashenka did not understand this, his advisors were sufficiently
sophisticated to realize that the road to long reign lies through economic
restructuring and were sufficiently trusted by Lukashenka to be able to
persuade him to follow their advice.
This reason for support was augmented by another, deeper one. All
the respondents were in favor of Belarus’s independence. However, they
did not share Pazniak’s vision of Belarus as a nationally-aware country,
deliberately re-creating its cultural landscape and seeking inclusion into
the European community of nations. My respondents expressed two
objections to this vision. First, they expressed their reservations about
the revival of national culture and language conducted by the state. They
suspected that government intervention in cultural and linguistic sphere
would result in totalitarian interference with people’s private lives. They
were also afraid that a vigorous enforcement of language laws would
force those people for whom the preferred language was Russian to
leave the country. As many members of the Russian-speaking minor-
ity were skilled workers and educated professionals, their departure
would damage the national economy of Belarus. As for the inclusion
in Europe, my respondents did not mind that at all. Indeed, they all
insisted that Belarus was a European country, with institutions, norms,
and values that emerged as a result of interaction with Europe (how-
ever, they specified neither what those values were nor the mechanism
whereby they were transmitted from Europe to Belarus). At the same
time, they knew enough about Europe and Belarus to understand that,
 borderland forever: modern belarus 183

however desirable and even feasible in the long run, practical adjustment
of Belarus’s economy, polity, and society to European standards was
impossible in the short run. Therefore, Belarus had to keep its special
relationship with Russia, at least for the time being. In this context they
trusted Lukashenka to be a better protector of Belarus’s national interests.
According to them, Kebich, after many years spent in government posi-
tions in Moscow, had acquired a non-national imperial Weltanschauung
and could easily sell Belarus to the highest bidder among the Russian
criminal oligarchs. Lukashenka came across as a realistic reformer and
patriotic politician, a combination all other candidates lacked.
Of course, at the time of Lukashenka’s first presidential elections, the
office of President was not endowed with almost dictatorial powers of
the kind it acquired later. In 1994, the Constitution still limited pow-
ers of the President through a system of checks and balances, which
included the Supreme Soviet (then still with a small but vocal group
of opposition deputies) and the Constitutional Court. Marples (2003,
p. 28) notes that in the first months of Lukashenka’s presidency a
number of his decrees were rejected by the Constitutional Court, thus
illustrating the effectiveness of the existing system that limited President’s
powers. However, while Marples implies that Lukashenka’s elections
was influenced by the realization on the part of the voters that the
new president would be controlled by other branches of government,
the referendum of May 14, 1995, less than a year after the presidential
elections, indicated that in fact Belarusian electorate wanted a strong
leader, unrestrained by legalistic minutiae. The referendum included
four questions. The voters were asked if they want to give the Russian
language the same status as Belarusian, to replace the country’s coat of
arms and flag with the new ones (derived from old Soviet symbols), and
to express their support for Lukashenka’s policy of economic integration
with Russia. The fourth question, although listed as non-binding, had
the most far-reaching consequences for Belarus’s political landscape.
The question asked if the voters agreed with the necessity to amend the
Constitution of 1994 so as to give the President power to dissolve the
Supreme Soviet. According to the official data provided by the Central
Electoral Commission, out of 7.446 million voters eligible to take part,
4.823 million actually cast their votes. The vast majority of those who
took part in the referendum supported the legal equality of Russian and
Belarusian languages (83.3%), the introduction of Soviet era symbols
(75.1%), president’s policy of integration with Russia (83.3%), and
president’s right to dissolve the legislature (77.7%). Although the voter
184 chapter three

turnout was not impressive, just below 65 percent of the electorate,

the majorities that carried all for questions were quite persuasive. One
should keep in mind that, coming on the heels of the 1994 presidential
polls, the 1995 referendum was conducted by a regime which had not
yet established the strong oppressive capacities associated with the later
years of Lukashenka’s long tenure. It is not unreasonable therefore to
interpret results of the referendum as a very close approximation of the
genuine expression of people’s will.
While Lukashenka was channeling people’s support towards increasing
his power and making its application increasingly less transparent, the
legislature, mired in pointless squabbling, was making itself increasingly
irrelevant. Parliamentary polls of May 14, 1995, the same day as the
referendum, failed to attract enough voters to elect the new legislature.
After the second round of the elections, two weeks later, less than one
half of the 260 seats in the Supreme Soviet was filled (Silitski, 2003,
p. 45). There was an obvious disparity between the number of people
willing to vote in the referendum and those interested in parliamentary
elections. Those parties and groups that could be associated with oppo-
sition politics failed to gain a single seat in the first round of elections.
To some extent, the failure could be explained by the inability of vari-
ous opposition parties to work together towards achieving a sizeable
combined representation in the newly elected legislature. The main
rift was between the BPF and a bloc of parties of loosely democratic
orientation. As the latter did not share the nationalist priorities of the
BPF, Zianon Pazniak alleged that their candidates were aiding and
abetting Russia’s attempts to subjugate Belarus (Silitski, 2003, p. 44).
Excessively pugnacious rhetoric cost BPF dearly: when the dust settled
they found themselves with no parliamentary representation, a sharp
drop from the thirty deputies associated with the party in the previous
Supreme Soviet.
The nationally uncommited democratic opposition parties managed
to salvage at least some of the seats by putting together a new political
entity, the United Civic Party, and agreeing with the BPF not to run
against each other’s candidates. As a result, the newly created party
fared reasonably well in repeat elections held on November 29, 1995.
Twenty one deputies elected to the Supreme Soviet were supported by
the United Civic Party. Since then the UCP had been steadily gaining
influence within the opposition segment of Belarusian politics owing to
its intellectually consistent program, ability to forge compromise while
 borderland forever: modern belarus 185

still keeping key planks of the platform intact, and good connections
with like-minded politicians in Russia, mostly those associated with
the Union of Right Forces. Still, the real winners were Communists
and Agrarians, representatives of old nomenklatura hastily disguised
as candidates of political parties. Their predominance was illustrated
by the choice of the speaker. Siamion Sharetski, chairman of the Agrar-
ian Party who made an illustrious career in the field of Communist
indoctrination and collective agriculture. The democratic opposition
had no choice but to support him, as other candidates were staunchly
unreformed Communists. Both the Agrarians and the Communists,
however, tried to use the Supreme Soviet as a nascent alternative
power center that might challenge the rapidly increasing authority of
the president. While insufficiently organized to effectively challenge
Lukashenka’s supremacy, the legislature presented a breeding ground
for dissidents of all sorts and served as a medium for criticism of the
increasingly autocratic regime. More importantly, the Supreme Soviet
served as a podium for the UCP and its supporters through which
they could address the voters, present their program to the public, and
gradually build their power base. To eliminate the potential danger of
the emerging political pluralism in Belarus, the president turned again
to the Belarusian people for help.
The referendum of November 24, 1996, was in fact two competing
referenda telescoped into one. The core question of the referendum was
about the future structure of presidential and parliamentary preroga-
tives. Two opposing amendments to the Constitution were proposed:
one, by the president, increasing his power; the other, by the Supreme
Soviet, preserving the emerging system of checks and balances in the
Belarusian political process. The two competing questions, placed on the
referendum after much political maneuvering, presented voters with a
choice: to continue to muddle through an imperfect democratic process
or to help the president to tailor the executive branch to suit his, already
well established, dictatorial inclinations. If approved, amendments
proposed by the president would allow him to appoint members of the
Constitutional Court and Central Electoral Commission. Moreover, the
legislature would be reduced in size and divided into two chambers.
The lower chamber, House of Representatives, would have all its 110
members elected by popular vote, while eight of the sixty four deputies
of the upper chamber, Council of the Republic, were to be appointed
by the president. Thus, the president’s proposal would radically change
186 chapter three

the power distribution in favor of the executive branch at the expense

of the other two branches of government, opening the door to a con-
stitutionally enshrined dictatorship.
The Central Electoral Commission reported that voter turnout for
the referendum was very high, more than 84 percent of those eligible to
vote. Out of this number, only 9.4 percent supported the amendments
introduced by the Supreme Soviet, while the president’s amendments
were approved by 83.7 percent of the voters. The significance of this
vote presented an even more compelling illustration of Belarus’s politi-
cal culture than did the outcome of the 1995 referendum. In 1996, the
voters were asked to chose between two centers of political power, both
able to present their positions to the public forcefully and in detail. By
the time of the 1996 referendum, just two years into his presidency,
Lukashenka did not yet possess a potent apparatus of political oppres-
sion of the kind he developed in later years. While his administration
might have had an opportunity to rig the vote, it was limited by the
relative independence of the Central Electoral Commission, then
headed by Viktar Hanchar, a rising star of the democratic opposition.
The referendum results correspond with independent public opinion
polls which indicated that in 1996 Lukashenka’s approval rating was
43.6 percent, considerably higher than all other political figures whose
combined ratings were below 17 percent (Rotman and Danilov, 2003,
p. 102). Once again, the Belarusian people had spoken in favor of a
strong leader and against meddling politicians.
It took Lukashenka slightly more than two years to consolidate power
and rebuild the country’s political system according to his long-term
plans. The referendum of 1996 gave him autocratic powers not only by
adopting his version of constitutional amendments but also by allowing
him to secretly, and still legitimately, stash away money to finance the
projects he did not want to make known to the public. The Supreme
Soviet, attempting to ensure that the president’s ability to spend money
would depend on decisions openly made by the legislature, put a ques-
tion on the referendum asking if all branches of government should
be financed only by means of openly distributed budget funds. The
question was voted down by a margin of two to one. It would be fair
to conclude that about two thirds of the Belarusian electorate willingly
allowed the emergence of pervasive opacity in financial management
of the Presidential Administration, thus allowing it to engage in ques-
tionable, and quite possibly illegal, activities, which would have been
impossible had the legislature retained full control of the distribution of
 borderland forever: modern belarus 187

funds through the budget. Yet another question put on the referendum
by the Supreme Soviet and intended to limit the president’s authority
in the regions produced the opposite outcome to what the authors
expected. By a larger than two to one margin the voters rejected the
proposal that heads of executive branch at provincial, city, and district
level should be elected by the voters of respective territorial entities.
This gave the president the right to appoint local administrators, thus
further increasing his control over the country by means of a vertical
power structure with president himself at the top and his appointees
occupying each level of the structure.
The autocratic political regime that emerged as a result of the ref-
erenda of 1995 and 1996 was not really a novel political arrangement.
While Lukashenka shaped the political institutions of post-Soviet
Belarus, it would be implausible to name these institutions after him.
Belarus did not acquire an entirely new brand of populism or totali-
tarianism comparable to Peronism in Argentina, Fascism in Italy, or
National Socialism in Germany. One ought to resist the temptation to
hold forth on the rise of “Lukashism”, especially after Lukashenka, in an
interview with the German newspaper Handelsblatt in November 1995
hinted at his intention to emulate Hitler’s policies of strong national
leadership. In fact, Lukashenka did not attempt to create his own ver-
sion of National Socialism. Instead he used the late Soviet system as a
template for his regime. His creation differed from the standard Soviet
model only in one respect: the absence of the Communist Party as a the
center of political power. This functional gap was filled by the president
himself as a one-man Politburo and the Presidential Administration
which for all intents and purposes performs the function of the former
Central Committee. The Administration, by serving as the conduit of
the president’s vast powers over virtually every aspect of economic or
political activity in Belarus, is positioned above the ministries and state
committees. Its central importance for the regime is emphasized by the
fact that it was always headed by a man with proven personal loyalty to
the president. The Administration’s work is not subject to public scrutiny,
an aspect it inherited from the Central Committee of the Communist
Party. Government ministers, while subject to parliamentary oversight,
really serve at the pleasure of the president who can dismiss them at
will. The most important ministerial positions: minister of the interior,
chairman of the State Security Committee (still known by its Soviet-era
name KGB), minister of defense, and chairman of the Central Bank,
are filled with political appointees chosen on the grounds of personal
188 chapter three

loyalty to the president, just as similar appointments in the Soviet sys-

tem would require approval of the Politburo. The legislature, unable to
exercise control over the executive branch, is reduced to irrelevance,
while courts, whose judges are appointed by the president, are even
more impotent than the legislature. Mass media are controlled by the
government. Radio and television are directly run by a government
department, while the press to the extent it is published by private
entities, is controlled through a system of intrusive regulations as well
as through the state monopoly of newsprint distribution. Regional
administrators are appointed by the president and report to him, thus
being immune to control by local legislatures.
Thus, Belarus under Lukashenka has become a kind of miniature
Soviet Union. Strong central authority and virtual absence of private
enterprise made the emergence of alternative power centers unlikely if
not impossible, while control over media combined with considerable
repressive capacity, rebuilt under the Lukashenka presidency, made
political dissent only marginally more effective than dissident activi-
ties of the Brezhnev era. If one measured oppressiveness of the regime
in terms of the number of political prisoners, Lukashenka’s Belarus is
comparable with Brezhnev’s Soviet Union, if one takes into account
its much smaller size (ten million versus more than two hundred mil-
lion). Just as in its larger predecessor, there are officially no political
prisoners in Belarus. The regime regards active political opposition as
a criminal offense.
In Belarus, the transition from chaotic emerging democracy to the
Soviet-style dictatorship went surprisingly smoothly. Unlike Hitler or
Mussolini, Lukashenka did not have to create a private force of storm-
troopers or march on the capital in front of a crowd of thugs in order
to obtain almost unlimited power. Unlike Lenin and Stalin, he did not
have to wage a bloody civil war or intimidate people into submission by
sending millions to their deaths. The manner in which the new political
arrangements were introduced does not suggest a revolution, or even a
forcible restitution of an old regime. What it does suggest is a continua-
tion of the old Soviet-style polity after a short and indecisive democratic
hiatus, during which democracy debates failed to sway anyone but a
narrow circle of intellectuals and aspiring political entrepreneurs. The
people of Belarus saw a disruption of the social contract they grew
accustomed to throughout the Soviet era. They were afraid that the
contract had been irreparably damaged, just as it was in Russia, where
former Communist elites and their close associates appropriated the
 borderland forever: modern belarus 189

country’s wealth and shed their responsibilities while justifying their

actions by hastily learned free-market rhetoric. Kebich, Lukashenka’s
main rival in the 1994 presidential polls, was seen as too close to cor-
rupt bureaucrats in Russia, a sentiment expressed in the interviews I
conducted with middle-class professional Belarusians in the summer
of 1994. The respondents strongly voiced their doubts about Kebich’s
ability to abstain from a corrupt privatization of the Russian model,
which would succeed only in selling the country’s key assets to Rus-
sian oligarchs. The social contract between Soviet elites and ordinary
citizens, mentioned by more than one Sovietologist and most recently
described by Shliapentokh (2001, pp. 67, 76), boiled down to the obli-
gation by the former to provide decent living conditions in exchange
for the acceptance of unlimited rule by unelected elites on the part of
the general public. Lukashenka happened to be the only candidate who,
without modifying the Soviet era social contract, was perceived by the
electorate as capable of preserving and maintaining it. Mussolini is
famously credited with making Italian trains run on time. Lukashenka
put Belarus back on track. From then on, Belarus would be comparing
itself not with the western market democracies, but with its own Soviet
past. Political pluralism, democracy, freedom of speech, all the abstract
ideas subject to heated debates in the West, would be rejected by the
Belarusian president so unequivocally empowered by the electorate to
do just that. Instead, security, social justice and equality of every single
voiceless subject before the omnipotent tyrant would count among the
underlying principles of post-Soviet Belarus as the country would settle
back into the familiar routine of austere egalitarianism inherited from
the Soviet time.

4. Political economy of institutional symbiosis:

Belarus and Russia building the future together

Consent of the governed had to be obtained by the government’s abil-

ity to hold to its end of the bargain. In Belarus it meant that people
would agree to remain politically voiceless as long as the government
provided the standard of living the people regarded as tolerable. Thus the
government was required to maintain a certain level of economic per-
formance, a task made especially difficult by the commitment to reform
avoidance as the overarching economic policy contrasted with structural
economic reforms in neighboring countries, all of them major markets
190 chapter three

for Belarus’s industrial goods. In addition to that, the general economic

slump that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union and the supply
chains maintained by central control from Moscow affected Belarus to
a considerably greater extent than many other post-Soviet countries,
such as Russia or Ukraine. Belarus, unlike most Soviet republics, had
very few deposits of natural resources which could provide a ready
source of hard currency export revenues. Almost completely lacking
domestic sources of energy, it had to import almost all its crude oil,
all natural gas, and much of electricity from Russia. When Russian oil
and gas monopolies discovered that the same commodity can be sold
at much higher prices in the West, they periodically demanded that
Belarusian customers pay world-level prices for oil and gas shipments.
On the other hand, the manufacturing industry, Belarus’s pride and joy,
was completely dependent on supplies of component parts from other
post-Soviet countries, mostly Russia, and was geared toward producing
the output made to specifications of Soviet distribution system. These
items, with very few exceptions, could not be sold in competitive for-
eign markets and thus did not represent a potential source of export
revenue. Moreover, the chaos of post-Soviet reconstruction meant that
even in a traditional market for Belarusian exports in Russia and other
post-Soviet countries demand was considerably reduced. As a result,
export revenues were subjected to downward pressure at the time when
import expenditures were growing rapidly, mostly in response to price
adjustment on the part of Russian energy providers.
Belarusian economy developed a chronic trade deficit, generated
mostly in trade with Russia. From 1993 to 1995 it increased from 348
million US dollars to 876 million US dollars. While in the same period
balances in trade with the rest of the world produced only a small deficit
and in some years were positive, the negative balance in trade with Rus-
sia contributed to the overall foreign trade deficit, which grew from 569
to 856 million US dollars from 1993 to 1995 (World Bank, 1997, p. 107).
Unable to pay for the natural gas supply, Belarus accumulated arrears
in payments to the Russian gas monopoly, Gazprom. These arrears,
which have since become a chronic problem of Belarusian balance of
payments, grew from zero to 196 million US dollars between 1993 and
1995 (World Bank, 1997, p. 106). External debt grew apace and reached
1,649 million US dollars in 1995 (World Bank, 1997, p. 119).
As Belarus suddenly discovered that it was highly dependent on for-
eign trade (in 1995 foreign trade turnover at 117,789 billion Belarusian
 borderland forever: modern belarus 191

rubels was only marginally smaller than GDP at 118,521 billion Belaru-
sian rubels), it also found that deteriorating terms of trade negatively
affect almost every aspect of its macroeconomic performance. Budget
was perhaps the focus of this adverse impact, especially given the state’s
continuing commitment to redistributive social policies and support of
financially non-viable enterprises. From 1993 onwards Belarus expe-
rienced increasing budget deficits, growing in current terms to 3,349
billion Belarusian rubels in 1995 (World Bank, 1997, p. 127). Although
the absolute amount of the budget deficit was not alarmingly high,
being only about three percent of GDP, this was beyond the capacity
of the existing system of financing because the securities market was
underdeveloped. As a result, much of the deficit was financed simply
by printing additional amounts of cash, thus helping to fuel the already
rampant inflation. The latter, while having a devastating effect on the
economy, actually masked the real depth of fiscal problems experienced
by Belarus at the time, as budget projections were made in current prices,
while revenues received some time after that were already artificially
magnified by inflation. Although in a high inflation economy it is not
atypical to make corrections to the budget more than once a year, the
inflated revenues serve to distort the true fiscal performance.
The extent of inflationary pressure in Belarus is visible from the
simple observation: from January 1993 to April 1995 monthly rates of
consumer price inflation never dropped below double digit levels, rang-
ing from 10.2 to 53.4 percent (World Bank, 1997, p. 150). These figures
would be alarmingly high if they referred to annual inflation rates. For
monthly inflation, these rates were nothing short of catastrophic. Driven
by consistently excessive growth of money supply, which increased the
broad money M3 almost threefold in the period between December
1994 and December 1995, while cash in circulation grew fivefold in
the same period, inflationary economic policies helped to keep unem-
ployment very low, at only 2.1 percent in 1994 and 2.7 percent in 1995
(World Bank, 1997, p. 99). They also kept the wages of those employed
depreciating rapidly, helped to establish a practice of denominating
major transactions in US dollars rather than domestic currency, and
precipitated the switch of preferences from the Belarusian rubel to for-
eign currency as net foreign assets consistently accounted for up to one
third of the total amount of money in circulation throughout 1994 and
1995 (World Bank, 1997, p. 133). Excessive dollarization of Belarus’s
monetary system in turn still further reduced the government’s ability to
192 chapter three

control macroeconomic processes. However high the price of runaway

inflation, it was not sufficient to stabilize the real economy. From 1991
through 1995 the GDP decline accelerated steadily, from 1.2 to 10.1
percent annually (World Bank, 1997, p. 104). Industrial production
decreased even faster, output in 1995 being only 59.1 percent of the
1990 level, while investment was mere 47.7 percent (World Bank, 1997,
p. 57). The situation was exacerbated by the growth of unsold goods
in warehouses of industrial enterprises. Growth of unsold inventories
was faster than decline in GDP and for some enterprises inventories
were chronically as high as 76 percent of annual output (World Bank,
1997, p. 58). The country’s economy was about to collapse and even
to people with no understanding of monetary theory it was clear that
printing more money would only make matters worse.
Experience of neighboring Baltic states, as well as Poland, would
suggest that Belarus should engage in rapid and all-embracing eco-
nomic restructuring, including price liberalization, tightening of credit
and monetary expansion, and, most importantly, the introduction of
property rights system, which would encourage the growth of private
business. In this situation, the large and inefficient state-owned industrial
enterprises could be allowed to wither on the vine, while private entities
would soon provide the bulk of GDP and most of employment. Agri-
culture was in need of an even more aggressive privatization program,
which would allow the private farmers to buy and sell land, thus mak-
ing possible the rapid emergence of efficient private agriculture. While
by 1995 these reform policies in the Baltic states (and even earlier in
Poland) had started to bear fruit, it was their very success that must
have dissuaded the Belarusian authorities from following this path. As
the experience of the Baltic states and Poland demonstrated, market
reforms, if properly conducted, produce a large and politically influential
class of private entrepreneurs. In Belarus, this class would have become
a constituency of the United Civic Party or Belarusian People’s Front, as
the conspicuous autocracy of the Lukashenka regime would not endear
it to private entrepreneurs. Thus, economic liberalization, while promis-
ing to revitalize the economy, would jeopardize Lukashenka’s long-term
political future. The preservation of Soviet-style institutions demanded
a different approach to economic stabilization.
An obvious choice would be to re-establish economic ties with Rus-
sia and other post-Soviet countries, which would restore demand for
Belarusian manufactured goods and ensure relatively inexpensive energy
supplies. The problem with this scenario was that by the mid-1990s
 borderland forever: modern belarus 193

Russia’s economy was very different both from that of contemporary

Belarus and the defunct Soviet Union. Run by the newly rich entrepre-
neurs, not directly controlled by the state, the Russian economy was
becoming increasingly less compatible with Belarusian economic model,
which remained managed by the government. Simple restoration of
Soviet-era supply chains would not work. A more elaborate arrangement
was needed, one which would take into account not only economic and
internal political interests of post-Soviet Belarus, but also satisfy the geo-
political aspirations of bitterly post-imperial Russia. The latter’s political
class, then presided over by an affable alcoholic, Boris Yeltsin, needed to
keep Belarus in Russia’s sphere of influence. Retaining a remnant of the
empire, at the time when all other former Soviet republics increasingly
asserted their independence, would preserve a modicum of legitimacy
for Russian ruling elites by appealing to the Soviet-era nostalgia and
imperial nationalism of the Russian general public.
For the military segment of the Russian ruling elites, Belarus had
more than a symbolic significance. The extensive network of military
installations built in Belarus during the Soviet time provided an oppor-
tunity to maintain an active strategic posture in the western direction,
something that Russian military was loath to abandon altogether. Even
more important were the immediate consequences of the geopolitical
reorientation of the Baltic states, as some of the major military facili-
ties located on their territory were lost. The need to replace the early
warning radar station in Skrunda, Latvia, became especially pressing
when the host country announced in 1994 that Russia would only be
allowed to use the facility for four more years and then would be given
another eighteen months to dismantle the equipment. Large phased
array radars (LPAR) are not easily moved or quickly constructed. It
takes years to build one such facility and then some more years are
needed to make it fully operational. At the same time, absence of radar
coverage of a major sector of air and space significantly diminishes the
overall capabilities of strategic air and space defenses. In a sense, such
a gap would further reduce Russia’s profile as a military superpower. It
was therefore essential to utilize the LPAR facility in Belarus, near the
city of Baranovichi, which had been under construction since the late
1980s. Another military facility, equally important for Russia’s ability
to retain the global reach of its military, was the long-range naval com-
munications center located near the town of Vileika. Just as immovable
as the Baranovichi LPAR, the center provided communication link with
submerged nuclear submarines in the Atlantic. From a strategic and
194 chapter three

geopolitical standpoint, therefore, Belarus remained essential for long-

term Russian national interests, as the latter were articulated mostly by
non-economic elites.
Belarus and Russia found themselves in a relationship that can be
defined as “institutional symbiosis”. Virtually all national institutions of
modern Belarus were rooted in the country’s Soviet past. One of the
key features of post-Soviet Belarus was the egalitarian social structure
made possible by redistributive efforts of the government, which directly
controlled the economy. Economic restructuring, while immediately
improving economic efficiency and, in the longer run, increasing people’s
prosperity, would also destroy the familiar egalitarianism of Belarusian
society by increasing social inequality and introducing new patterns
of social mobility. To survive without economic reforms, thus keeping
intact the country’s essentially Soviet profile, Belarusian elites needed
Russia as the only possible supplier of cheap energy and buyer of
Belarusian manufactured goods.
On the other hand, in Russia botched privatization failed to usher
in a civilized capitalist economy, but instead produced a vast class of
criminal entrepreneurs and further corrupted the already corrupt gov-
ernment. At the same time, Russia suffered from what looked to be an
unstoppable decay of the already diminished empire. Not only did it
lose the vast periphery of East European vassal states, but many former
Soviet national republics asserted their independence sometimes in
decidedly anti-Russian terms. Moreover, within the Russian Federation
itself, a disastrous conflict in the North Caucasus and feistily separat-
ist aspirations among the Moslems in autonomous republics, such as
Tatarstan and Bashkortostan, were giving an impression of irreversible
decline and impending collapse of the reduced, but still very large and
powerful country. In this situation, the loss of Belarus could become the
proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back, camel in this case being
the double-headed (double-humped?) Russian elite: criminal capitalists
and corrupt government officials, both unable to legitimize the regime
that allowed them to get rich while presiding over the impoverished
country.
The presence of Belarus as a satellite, albeit the only one, within the
Russian orbit indicated that Russia’s field of gravity was sufficient to at
least allow it to have an orbit. Belarus was a proof that Russian impe-
rial past was not dead and could therefore be referred to as a source of
legitimacy in times when the latter commodity was made exceedingly
scarce by the Russian ruling elite. In addition to that, one had to con-
 borderland forever: modern belarus 195

sider the military brass, a group with an inherent potential for taking
over the government in conditions of low legitimacy. Keeping Belarus
as a satellite state allowed the Russian military to keep the facilities
associated with its recent grandeur and thus be more concerned with
maintaining defensive posture vis-à-vis NATO than plotting a coup
d’etat against the government.
Thus, the institutional symbiosis between Belarus and Russia involved
the preservation of a Soviet-style economic inefficiency and political
oppression in the former while providing a modicum of legitimacy for a
consortium of crooks governing the latter. Arranging and nurturing this
symbiosis was the main task of Alyaksandar Lukashenka’s regime.
The building of a “special relationship” with Russia started shortly
after Mr Lukashenka’s landslide electoral victory in 1994. In August,
1994, he went on his first foreign visit as head of state. The destina-
tion was Moscow, of course. More than twelve years later, Lukashenka
reminisced about the first meeting with his Russian counterpart, Boris
Yeltsin. In 2007, speaking in an interview with Alexander Prokhanov,
editor of Russia’s extremist publication Zavtra, Lukashenka told how
Yeltsin, at first less than hospitable, became friendly when his visitor
said that coming to Moscow was to him like returning home. The first
visit created the atmosphere of conspicuous cordiality between Lukash-
enka and Yeltsin. Of course, the cordiality was a poor substitute for a
disparity in size, wealth, and military importance of the two countries.
In February, 1995, Russia and Belarus signed a Treaty of Friendship,
Good Neighborliness, and Cooperation. The treaty allowed Russian
military to continue to use the crucial early warning and communica-
tion facilities on the Belarusian territory. The Belarusian side frequently
pointed out that the concession was made in return for Russia’s promise
to supply Belarus with oil and natural gas at prices below the regional
European level. While Russia did promise to supply its junior partner
with cheap energy, thus providing vital support for the chronically
inefficient Belarusian economy, it never delivered on the promise in
a straightforward and unequivocal way. Throughout more than ten
years that followed the treaty, Belarus would receive Russian energy
at discount prices. However, the supplies would be interrupted, prices
raised on a short notice, and the whole arrangement in oil and gas trade
would be maintained by means of frequent negotiations accompanied
by considerable acrimony on both sides. Both countries benefitted
from the symbiosis, but Russia could throw its weight around, while
Belarus had little choice but to resort to exhortations of its brotherly
196 chapter three

Slavic neighbor. Slavic brotherhood, however, remained outside of the

realm of realpolitik.
Perhaps even more important than supplies of cheap energy from Rus-
sia was the opening of the Russian market for Belarusian manufactured
goods. The customs union, concluded between Russia and Belarus later
in 1995, allowed Belarusian manufacturers to re-establish the Soviet-era
supply chains, thus ensuring the continuing demand for their products
from Russian customers. The share of Russia in Belarus’s export rev-
enues, which fluctuated between 40 and 45% between 1993 and 1995,
would surpass the 50% mark and grow still further in the decade that
followed. Belarusian industrial enterprises, until 1995 scaling down
production, watching their unsold inventories grow, and borrowing from
the government just to be able to pay their workers, started to return
to normal as old customers began to buy their products. Lukashenka’s
electoral promise “to jump-start the factories” seemed to be working.
Why would Russian customers be willing to buy Belarusian manufac-
tured imports? After all, unlike their Belarusian counterparts, Russian
enterprises had been restructured, privatized and, at least in theory, are
free to pursue more efficient development free of centralized govern-
ment intrusion and seek suppliers anywhere in the world. In reality,
the economic chaos of the first post-Soviet decades had been equally
damaging to all existing industrial manufacturers, in Belarus, Russia, or
elsewhere in post-Soviet space. Quite apart from the badly misguided
privatization, which actually created incentives for individual enrich-
ment by means of asset-stripping, the reforms invariably created the rift
between primary (extracting) and secondary (manufacturing) sector. The
former benefitted from the eased government controls and possibility
to sell its products, unprocessed or semi-processed natural resources,
in export markets at world prices. For the latter, reforms did not open
an immediate road to prosperity.
Manufacturing enterprises, each created as a component part of
a centrally controlled economy which ideally was supposed to work
as an administrative and technological, rather than economic, entity.
New incentives could not work for enterprises which were not easily
restructured, owing to their size and technological obsolescence. In
fact, a radical restructuring of the economy would involve a wave of
bankruptcies, those enterprises unable to attract investment simply going
out of business. The continuing decline of capital investment in the
Russian economy through 1998 does not suggest that macroeconomic
restructuring was followed by technological modernization. Obviously,
 borderland forever: modern belarus 197

for individual enterprises it was preferable to restore the Soviet-era ties

with their buyers and suppliers, including those from Belarus, than to go
out of business altogether. As for Belarus’s consumer goods exports, very
few Russian customers could afford high-quality imports from the rest of
the world, so consumer goods made in Belarus, and enjoying a reputa-
tion of being of somewhat higher quality than similar products made
in Russia, found a ready market once the customs union removed price
disparities between domestic Russian goods and Belarusian imports.
Favorable conditions for Belarusian manufactured exports to Russia
were actively used by the Belarusian government which sent countless
trade delegations to Russian provinces and promoted the Belarusian
manufacturers as viable long-term business partners.
Favorable trade conditions with Russia, combined with the pro-active
stance of Belarusian economic administrators in re-establishing the
old Soviet supply chains began to pay off almost immediately. Inertia
inherent in macroeconomic processes was reflected in the continuing
decline of aggregate indicators 1995. This, however, is not the whole
story. The 1997 World Bank report indicated that while inflation
aggregates finished the year at 244% for consumer price inflation and
140% for producer price inflation (both figures end of period), monthly
inflation rates decreased dramatically in the second quarter of 1995,
to 3.4% for consumer price inflation (in May, a considerable decrease
from the 14.5% monthly CPI rate in April) and 1.7% for producer price
inflation (in May, a drop from 7.6% monthly PPI rate in April). For the
remainder of the year, monthly PPI rates stayed below CPI rates, thus
indicating that the source of reduction in inflation rates was domestic
rather than external, e.g. lower prices of major imports. The World Bank
report (1997, p. 4) emphasized that the inflation rates reduction in the
second quarter of 1995 was entirely owing to the increased monetary
and credit restraints and not fixed exchange rate of the national currency
(which, by contributing to real appreciation of the national currency
would reduce the price of imports denominated in Belarusian rubels).
The considerably reduced expansion of monetary mass, recorded in
1995, supports this view.
Meanwhile, the macroeconomic position of Belarus was further
strengthened by the IMF approval of a $293 million stabilization loan
in September 1995, thus further reducing inflationary expectations and
buttressing the national currency. The latter was reinforced by the elimi-
nation of virtually all restrictions on foreign exchange operations. This
measure, by dampening the speculative component of forex demand,
198 chapter three

served to increase demand for the national currency and thereby stabilize
the rubel exchange rate against the US dollar and the Russian rouble.
Among the results of this development was the reduction in share of
net foreign assets in broad money (M3) from more than one third in
December 1994 to less than one sixth in December 1995. This allowed
the government to increase its effective control over the monetary cir-
culation. While on the whole, developments could only be assessed as
positive, there was one potentially damaging consequence of monetary
stabilization combined with the government-established fixed nominal
exchange rate. Real appreciation of the rubel against both US dollar and
the Russian rouble accelerated in 1995, owing to the accelerating infla-
tion rates. Appreciation against the former was much faster than the
latter, thus resulting in a considerable gap which in turn had adverse
implications for terms of trade, as fast real appreciation against the US
dollar resulted in a reduced competitiveness of Belarusian exports in
dollar-denominated markets, while relative stability against the Russian
rouble did little to reduce price of Russian energy imports on domestic
market.
The above discussion of Belarus’s macroeconomic aggregates should
by no means be interpreted as a demonstration of a new approach to
economic policy by the country’s leadership. Far from suddenly seeing
the light and turning to economic regulation by means of monetary
and credit policies combined by an occasional intervention on forex
markets to keep the national currency within projected parameters, the
Belarusian leadership was more than ever committed to the perpetu-
ation of an excessively centralized and detailed economic intervention
rooted in the political economy of the former Soviet Union. Monetary
and credit policies were tightened and forex operations liberalized
mostly because the real sector, buoyed by the upward swing in Russian
demand for Belarusian manufactured goods allowed the government
to reduce subsidies to financially unviable enterprises, as their number
decreased and the financial situation improved. The stabilization of
1996 was not a result of deft macroeconomic manipulation that would
ultimately lead to a market economy. Instead, it followed a forceful and
deliberate restoration of Soviet-era supply chains. At the same time, the
government studiously avoided any structural reforms that might have
produced an irreversible change in the direction of Belarus’s long term
economic development.
The Belarusian government retained virtually all the mechanisms
of direct intervention in the economic process. Industrial enterprises
 borderland forever: modern belarus 199

remained fully owned by the state or, if transformed into joint stock
companies, effectively controlled by it through the government-owned
share of their assets. Price controls were not abolished. While the
number of goods and services whose prices were directly established
by the government was limited, indirect control of prices persisted
and informal price controls were widely practiced by the government
officials. Agriculture, owned and controlled by the state, was supported
by regular inflows of the negative-interest rate credit, issued by govern-
ment-controlled banks. Not coincidentally, even during the period of
macroeconomic stabilization, the growth of money in circulation spiked
in the Spring and the Fall owing to additional funds disbursed to finance
sowing and harvesting campaigns. In the environment marked by
continuing commitment to government interference and the vast array
of tools allowing it to follow this commitment, monetary stabilization
could not survive for long.
In the event, Belarusian economic planners could only endure the
indignity of having a portion of their economy being governed by the
proverbial “invisible hand” of economic laws long enough to obtain
the IMF’s decision to provide Belarus with a stabilization credit. Once
the IMF credit was approved, but not yet fully disbursed, the mon-
etary prudence was abandoned and regulatory instincts re-asserted
themselves. Perhaps Belarusian government officials in charge of the
economy would not mind if macroeconomic monetary indicators were
in self-regulating equilibrium. In fact, they knew so little about these
matters, they would hardly notice. However, when the abstract notions
of credit prudence or forex liberalization interfered with the real sector
performance or contradicted the principle of unlimited government
control over all aspects of economic performance, the pretense of civi-
lized economic policy would have to be sacrificed, the IMF criticism
notwithstanding.
The determination to keep residual controls over currency exchange
by means of fixed exchange rate produced unsustainable over-valuation
of the rubel, mentioned above. The adverse consequences of the spread
between exceedingly fast real appreciation of the national currency
against the US dollar and considerably slower appreciation against the
Russian rouble accumulated for several months and finally caught up
with Belarus’s economic stability in the beginning of 1996. The foreign
trade deficit almost doubled in 1995 compared to the levels of the previ-
ous two years. As should have been expected from the growing spread in
rubel/dollar and rubel/rouble exchange rates, exports to hard-currency
200 chapter three

denominated markets stagnated and contributed to a relatively small

deficit in this segment, while imports from Russia grew unsustainably
and produced the bulk of the overall $856 million deficit in merchandise
foreign trade for the year. Meanwhile, the national currency, already
suffering from the negative current account balance (most of the deficit
being generated by merchandise trade balance), came under pressure
as a result of over-valuation. The government responded, but not by
devaluing the currency or abandoning fixed exchange rate, which would
be the correct choice under the circumstances. It chose instead to use
the meager forex reserves of the central bank to intervene on forex
markets. This failed to prop up the currency but succeeded in depleting
hard currency reserves at the central bank, driving them to the level
barely sufficient to cover three weeks of imports (IMF, 1997).
The way Belarus managed to weather the gathering storm seemed
to have vindicated the government’s economic strategy by which the
“special relationship” with Russia enabled the retention of Soviet-era eco-
nomic controls (and, of course, the vast bureaucratic apparatus needed
to impose them). Reduced price of Russian natural gas allowed Belarus’s
arrears to natural gas suppliers to be cut in half in 1995 compared to the
level a year earlier, thus reducing the pressure on the already strained
external position. In addition to that, in February 1996, Russia cancelled
the $417 million worth of debt owed by Belarus. As for the excessively
incompetent and pervasive controls, those returned with a vengeance.
Early in 1996, several presidential decrees imposed strict controls on
forex operations, including restrictions on purchase of foreign currency
from non-Belarusian economic entities and introduction of maximum
allowed size of individual transaction. More important was the provision
that required all enterprises to sell their export proceeds at the Inter-
bank Currency Exchange at the officially fixed rate. Simultaneously, the
Interbank Currency Exchange was placed under control of the central
bank, which in turn lost its independence and effectively became just
one of government departments. From then on monetary policy in
Belarus was fully and directly controlled by the presidential adminis-
tration. The latter established import priorities, including selection and
volume of imported commodities, and then purchased hard currency
from government-controlled enterprises paying them in overvalued
Belarusian rubels. While this arrangement removed economic incen-
tives for expansion of export sales by individual enterprises, Belarusian
planners could directly order the enterprises (which were government-
controlled) to attain a certain level of export sales.
 borderland forever: modern belarus 201

The monetary and credit policy of the next two years was a hodge-
podge of contradictory and ineffectual measures which did not suc-
ceed in putting the national currency on the right track and gradually
increased inflationary pressure which lifted monthly CPI above ten
percent as early as January 1997. The real sector, however, buoyed by
cheap energy supplies and supported by the re-discovered Russian
demand for Belarusian manufactured goods, began to grow steadily.
After a modest increase of 2.8 percent in 1996, GDP accelerated to 11.4
percent in 1997. Industrial production, after several years of decline,
increased by 4.0 percent in 1996 and then by 19.0 percent in 1997.
Even capital investment grew by 20.0 percent in 1997, although from a
very low base reached after several years of steep decline. Unlike other
indicators, investment did not establish a clear upward trend until 2002,
as it continued to fluctuate between growth and decline annually in
the preceding years. Agriculture, unreformed, obsolete, inefficient, and
susceptible to weather fluctuations, more or less followed the weather
pattern prevalent at the time of the harvest of major crops, thus having
its output varying from a ten-percent decline to seven-percent increase
annually. Overall, however, the economy was doing rather well, by
post-Soviet standards, mostly owing to very dynamic and consistent
growth in the industrial sector. The “Belarusian economic model” had
finally taken shape.
Both the political and economic system of modern Belarus were
formed in 1996 and functioned without major changes for more than a
decade since then. Yet another major development, related to Belarus’s
internal political and economic arrangements, was the continuing rap-
prochement with Russia. On April 2, 1996, Ayaksandar Lukashenka and
his Russian counterpart, Boris Yeltsin, signed a treaty on the formation
of a community between Russia and Belarus. The treaty envisioned
creation of a single economic zone, harmonization of the two countries’
tax codes, coordination of national security efforts, and a host of other
measures designed to strengthen cooperation between the two coun-
tries at all levels. It also promised the introduction of a single currency,
although the date was not specified.
The 1996 treaty created foundations for further integration between
the two countries. It created several supra-national bodies: the Supreme
Council, the Executive Committee, and the Parliamentary Assembly.
Largely ornamental, with little or no real power, either in Belarus or in
Russia, the newly created structures were intended to serve as a blueprint
for the future. More importantly, they demonstrated to the Belarusians
202 chapter three

that their president was serious about integrating their country into
an “ever closer union” with Russia. By the time of the referendum of
1996, the electorate was well informed about the treaty itself, as well
as the events that followed, including the meetings of the newly cre-
ated Supreme Council and Parliamentary Assembly, exchange of high-
ranking delegations, discussion of further unification by leaders of Russia
and Belarus. Thus, the referendum, which can plausibly be interpreted
as a nation-wide vote of confidence for Lukashenka’s strategy of the
nation’s development, approved, among other things, close union with
Russia as presented to the voters in reports on the treaty. Not only did
Belarusians agree to give their president authoritarian and potentially
unlimited power, they also approved of the conspicuously pro-Russian
direction of Belarus’s national development.
Indeed, there are many reasons to think of the year 1996 as the pivotal
moment in the formation of the independent Belarusian nation-state.
Its economic structure, based on central government controls over
the real sector combined with restricted relevance of macroeconomic
monetary instruments, had fully taken shape in the course of the 1996
stabilization. The same year marked the establishment of a political
system centered on the office of the president, from which the “verti-
cal line of power” (an expression widely used in Belarus to connote
the pre-eminence of presidential power) reached to branch ministries
and provincial executives, while the legislature could do little else
than rubber stamp decisions of the president, and the judiciary was
reduced to the irrelevance it was accustomed to during the Soviet era.
Provisions for competitive political activity, at least inchoately present
in the chaotic polity of early post-Soviet Belarus, had no institutional
foundation and was abolished by default when the highly centralized
power structure had been built in 1996. From then on, it was easier for
the authorities to suppress any political dissent, however weak, than for
dissenters to have their claims, however legitimate, be recognized by
the authorities. Finally, in the international arena Belarus chose to cast
its lot with Russia, mostly to maintain the institutional symbiosis that
allowed the Lukashenka regime to effectively rebuild Soviet economy
and polity without paying the price. From then on the Republic of
Belarus, the first Belarusian nation-state, could be succinctly defined
as an unexpectedly successful throwback to the Soviet era dependent
on Russia for the preservation of its national identity.
Russia’s role in the preservation of Belarus’s national institutions was
not confined to the propping up of its smaller neighbor’s economy by
 borderland forever: modern belarus 203

supplies of inexpensive energy and provision of markets for low-quality

low-price Belarusian manufactured goods. International support by
Russia, as the latter consistently took the side of Belarus in any inter-
national dispute, made the Lukashenka regime feel less isolated than it
would otherwise have been. From 1996 onwards Belarus was steadily
moving away from the internationally accepted standards of political
participation, freedom of political speech, and human rights in general.
This, of course, was noticed and criticized by international human rights
organizations, as well as governments of the European Union and the
United States. At the same time, the Russian government conspicu-
ously abstained from criticizing the increasingly dismal human rights
record of the Lukashenka administration. Given the disparity in size
and power between Belarus and Russia, as well as the ready access to
Russian media in Belarus, this inaction could only be interpreted as
strong, if tacit, support for Lukashenka’s preferred way of dealing with
political opponents. Russia’s support served to ease Belarus’s growing,
and largely self-imposed, international isolation. It also demonstrated to
the opposition politicians that they should not count on sympathy, much
less help, of the Russian establishment, thus leaving Belarus’s democratic
forces to the tender mercies of the Lukashenka regime. Perhaps more
important was the symbolic aspect of Belarus’s rapid rapprochement
with Russia. The process was deliberately styled as a restoration of the
ties that existed between the two countries when they were constituent
Soviet republics. Belarusians, still living in the immense theme park of
Soviet symbols, saw the unification of their country with Russia as a
positive, even natural, process (Nesvetailova, 2003, p. 153, quotes some
of the public opinion data illustrating this attitude).
In general, Russia played an absolutely indispensable role in the
shaping of post-Soviet Belarus. Had Russia been a truly neutral neigh-
bor, moderately friendly but with no interest in keeping Belarus in its
sphere of influence, Belarusian political and economic systems would
have had no choice but to evolve differently. On the other hand, had
Belarus decided to distance itself from Russia, following the example of
its Baltic neighbors, its development in the last fifteen years would have
been very different. As it is, the Belarusian ruling elite chose to keep
their country a Russian borderland in exchange for resources needed
to maintain Soviet-style polity and economy. They recognized that a
substantial segment within the Russian ruling elite would be prepared
to play along and pay a price for retaining a remnant of the empire.
They recognized as well that their own constituency is well-disposed
204 chapter three

toward the idea of close ties with Russia, strong nationalist sentiment
on the part of Belarusian intelligentsia notwithstanding.
The policy of a special relationship with Russia was not just a conces-
sion to the conditions of the chaotic aftermath of the Soviet break-up.
Instead of using the remaining ties with the Russian economy to keep
the economy afloat and unemployment within socially acceptable limits
while at the same time reforming the economy and preparing to enter
the competitive market outside the post-Soviet space, Belarusian eco-
nomic decision makers used the time provided by the stabilization of
1996 to strengthen the statist components of the economy and make
liberalization even more difficult than it was before 1994. Politically,
without disengagement from Russia, Belarus could have diversified its
foreign policy by establishing multiple ties with European countries,
as well as the US, thus protecting herself from the vagaries of Russian
politics. Instead, Belarusian foreign policy combined orientation toward
Russia with an increasingly acrimonious, and then openly hostile, stance
toward the European Union and the United States.
The institutional symbiosis between Belarus and Russia survived
several challenges. The first one came in the second half of 1998, when
the Russian economy suffered a precipitous meltdown led by a massive
crash of the country’s financial institutions. While the full and detailed
discussion of the Russian financial crisis of 1998 is beyond the scope
of this book, its impact on the Belarusian economy in the short run,
as well as more long-term implications, have to be discussed here. As
already mentioned, the stabilization of 1996 had been achieved without
structural reforms and with full and deliberate neglect of macroeco-
nomic regulatory mechanisms. The latter’s importance became apparent
when Russian crisis put pressure on the Belarusian national currency
and precipitated a series of ill-conceived measures, none successful in
macroeconomic terms, but all seemingly unrelated to the real sector
economic performance.
It can be plausibly argued that the Belarusian monetary and banking
crisis of 1998 was only exacerbated by the Russian meltdown, while
being originally produced by domestic economic policy. According to
the 1999 IMF Country Report, currency slide on a scale sufficient to
prompt the central bank to intervene started as early as March 1998,
several months before the Russian crisis, which began in August. It is
likely that, in addition to the already mentioned growing inflationary
pressure which steadily increased the supply of rubels in the national
economy, the restrictions on forex operations, which included at least
 borderland forever: modern belarus 205

five officially established exchange rates, reduced demand for the rubel
and resulted in its slide against the Russian rouble and US dollar in
some segments of forex market. The rubel’s artificially high exchange
rate was used by the government to siphon hard currency from export-
ers through mandatory sales and thus accumulate funds necessary to
finance centrally prioritized imports. The central bank intervened at the
government’s behest, to keep the rubel unsustainably high against major
hard currencies, with a predictable result: the depletion of its meager
forex reserves below the level sufficient to finance two weeks worth
of imports failed to stop the currency slide. The bank acknowledged
the failure by adjusting the official exchange rate from 30,740 rubels
per dollar at the start of the year to 37,540 by the end of the second
quarter (IMF, 1999, p. 84). The measure, undertaken at great cost to the
country’s forex reserves, succeeded in providing further disincentives
to exports (both directly, by confiscating large portion of exporters’
revenues, and indirectly, by maintaining the rubel’s real overvaluation
and thus reducing competitiveness of Belarusian exports). Meanwhile,
depletion of reserves made the country’s monetary system singularly
badly prepared for the events of the second half of 1998.
The Russian crisis affected Belarus in two principal ways. First, Rus-
sian rouble deposits held by Belarusian economic entities depreciated
precipitously thus negatively affecting their financial situation. Second,
Russian customers reduced purchases of Belarusian goods, thus depriv-
ing Belarusian manufacturers of a substantial portion of their export
market. Overall, exports declined by 23 percent in the first quarter of
1999 compared to the same period of 1998. In the same period Russia’s
share of Belarusian foreign trade declined from 72 percent to 52 percent
(IMF, 1999, p. 7). Belarusian authorities found themselves in a predica-
ment: industrial enterprises, geared toward Russian markets, could not
sell their output elsewhere and were faced with growing inventories
and reduced financial viability, while the political obligations, implicit
in the “Belarusian economic model”, prevented the government from
economic restructuring which would reduce employment, at least in the
short run. The government responded by a combination of inflation-
ary credit expansion and tightening restrictions in price formation and
money market operations.
According to IMF analysis, the 1998 credit expansion was designed
to boost aggregate domestic demand and thus reduce the impact of the
slump in Russian demand for Belarusian exports. Originally planned
to grow by 27 percent in 1998, the net domestic credit actually grew
206 chapter three

by more than 117 percent. The growth was accompanied by decline in

the central bank real refinancing rates and real lending rates charged
by commercial banks. The average lending rate declined from the high
point of 29.8 percent in March 1998 to 25.2 percent in November, while
consumer price inflation accelerated in the same period from 46 to
137 percent in annual terms (IMF, 1999, pp. 51, 77). Real lending rates
therefore were strongly negative, reaching almost –250 percent in late
1998 before climbing back to –50 percent in early 1999 (IMF, 199, p. 32).
The cost of negative-rate lending was covered by consistent monetary
expansion, as broad money growth accelerated from the average 7.25
percent a month in 1998 to 9 percent in the first half of 1999 (IMF,
1999, p. 14). Predictably, the combination of loose monetary policy and
unsustainable credit expansion resulted in accelerated inflation. Monthly
CPI and PPI rates soared to 17.6 percent and 12.1 percent respectively in
August 1998 and continued to grow in the following months, producer
price inflation rate reaching the high point of 40 percent a month in
December 1998. The year ended with consumer price inflation at 182
percent and producer price inflation at 200 percent, most of the growth
accumulated in the second half of the year.
On the restrictive-regulatory side government was somewhat more
inventive than in the field of inflationary expansion, although just as
successful in undermining macroeconomic stability. First, understand-
ing that inflation is not something to be proud of, although apparently
not quite comprehending why, the government decided to limit it by
the most potent means at its disposal: pervasive and complex appara-
tus of price controls. The latter, always present in Belarusian economy,
were tightened with considerable regularity in response to economic
pressure. Actually, the tightening of price controls was reported before
the Russian contagion, as early as March 1998 (IMF, 1999, p. 6), most
likely due to the strong belief by government decision makers that the
inflation they choose to report always equals the real inflation. This
belief was rooted in the following procedure: consumer price inflation
was measured as price increase for a representative sample (“basket”)
of consumer goods; to avoid high inflation, government would simply
prohibit sellers to raise prices on much of the goods included in the
sample. In 1998, more than fifty percent of the sample consisted of the
goods whose prices were established by the government. This should
be taken into account when one looks at the officially reported inflation
figures: government price controls ensured that the real inflation rates
would be higher than the ones reported.
 borderland forever: modern belarus 207

The mechanism which creates this discrepancy is well known: the

goods subject to government-mandated prices would be in short supply
in those stores that are legally allowed to sell them, but would be readily
available at the black market at prices established by a combination of
supply and demand. Typically, the artificially low prices would also serve
as disincentive to producers, although in case of Belarus this could be
overcome by direct government interference. In addition to a classical
case of latent inflation, hard to measure but easily recognizable as wide-
spread shortages, price controls in Belarus had an additional avenue of
distorting influence. As the prices in Russia were considerably higher
and the border between the two countries was easily crossed without
inspection, those Belarusian traders who could get hold of large amounts
of consumer goods at low government-controlled prices had significant
incentive to sell them at much higher price in Russia. This trade made
shortages even more pronounced and even persuaded the authorities
to ease some of the price controls.
Price controls tightening was accompanied by a similar process
in the field of forex operations. Government restrictions, never fully
abolished, but at least somewhat eased in the wake of the 1996 sta-
bilization, returned with a vengeance at the first signs of the pressure
on the national currency. The mechanism enabling the government to
intervene included five exchange rates, all different, all established by
the government. The highest rate, whereby the buyer could purchase
foreign currency at a discount, was open to the government-owned
enterprises which were allowed to purchase investment goods abroad
according to the centrally administered investment program. The lowest
rate was that of retail currency traders selling forex to individuals. The
spread between these rates, more than 80 percent prior to the Russian
contagion, rose to 380 percent in November 1998. The discrepancy was
maintained by a set of restrictions on forex transactions specifying who
could purchase, sell, or use in transactions what kind of currency and
at what rates. Without examining the subject in full detail, suffice it to
say that the main outcome of the multiple and complex restrictions
on forex transactions was considerable reduction in demand for the
national currency and extensive dollarization of the economy. The lat-
ter effectively reduced the ability of the government to control national
currency exchange rates, the exact opposite of the intended outcome of
restrictionist regulatory policy.
Throughout the 1998 crisis, monetary and exchange policy of Belaru-
sian authorities made little, if any, practical sense. They did not control
208 chapter three

what they could, e.g. monetary mass, and tried in vain to control what
they could not, e.g. prices and exchange rates. What is truly surprising,
the real sector seemed to be impervious to the series of spectacular
macroeconomic blunders diligently carried out by the leadership of the
central bank. As the latter lost the remaining modicum of independence
with the appointment of Piotr Prakapovich, a political appointee with
no experience, education or knowledge relating to financial matters, it
is not implausible to trace the decisions all the way up to the real power
center in Belarus: the presidential administration and president himself.
The origins of the policy explain much of its potentially destabilizing
inconsistencies. However much though the policy contributed to the
long-term imbalances in financial sphere, it seems to have had minimal
impact on the real economic performance. The national currency was
depreciating not only against the US dollar, but also against the Rus-
sian rouble, itself in full downward slide; inflation was back to the 1994
levels; foreign trade, current account, and balance of payments were
posting exorbitant deficits; not only individuals but also the government
tended to denominate important things, such as big-ticket consumer
items, wages, or pensions, in dollars rather than the national currency.
All signs pointed to an economic collapse. At the same time, the real
economy continued to grow. Belarus’s GDP grew by 8.7 percent in 1998.
The slowdown to 3.4 percent in 1999 was due to the dismal performance
of the agricultural sector, always vulnerable to weather fluctuation. Still,
industrial production was increasing at a healthy pace: 12.8 percent in
1998 and 10.3 percent in 1999 (IMF, 2000, p. 5). Average wage, denomi-
nated in dollars, fell by 20 percent in 1998, but then shot up by more
than 20 percent in 1999 and continued to grow in 2000. It looked as
though there were two economies in Belarus, only loosely connected.
One, based on monetary flows and incentives, was doing very poorly.
The other one, based on a different set of incentives and different type
of information, was growing at a healthy pace.
Indeed, there were two economies: one, the Soviet-style system, based
on direct commands by branch ministries to individual enterprises,
either owned directly by the state or controlled by the government. To
this economy the complex panoply of macroeconomic stimuli developed
throughout the 20th century was just a later addition, barely compatible,
hardly necessary. The other economy, consisting of markets of various
shades of gray, from the prohibited black market to the barely tolerated,
albeit formally legal, private enterprise, responded to monetary stimuli
 borderland forever: modern belarus 209

quite readily and suffered the consequences of macroeconomic dis-

array to a much greater extent than the official government controlled
economy. Interestingly enough, the latter proved quite compatible with
the Russian economy: during the crisis the financial and monetary
imbalances were avoided by resorting to barter exchange which at its
height accounted for more than 30 percent of trade between Belarus
and Russia.
For the Belarusian leadership, the country’s economic performance
through the crisis of 1998 served as a vindication of the “Belarusian
economic model”, a centrally-controlled socialist economy where politi-
cal decisions take precedence over economic laws and the latter apply
only to the permanently suppressed and marginalized private sector. The
mainstay of the economy: preferred connections with Russia, survived
the crisis without major damage. While the level of trade with Russia
dropped in 1999, it quickly picked up in the years that followed. Instead
of recognizing the danger of pinning the long-term economic future of
the country on preferential ties with just one export and import market,
Belarus’s leadership seemed to have interpreted the developments of the
1998 crisis as a vindication of this arrangement.
The next challenge, this time from the political side, to institutional
symbiosis between Russia and Belarus came with the change of lead-
ership in Moscow. During the presidency of Boris Yeltsin, relations
between Russian and Belarusian leaders were conspicuously cordial.
Visits to Moscow by Alyaksandar Lukashenka were accompanied by
pomp and circumstance, meetings in the ornate halls of Kremlin palaces,
benedictions by the Moscow Orthodox Patriarch, and overall display of
fraternal relationship. The latest occasion for this kind of spectacle was
the signing of the Treaty on the Creation of the Union State of Russia and
Belarus. The treaty, signed in Moscow on December 8, 1999, envisioned
a union of the two countries which included supranational institutions,
such as the Supreme State Council, Parliament, Council of Ministers,
and Supreme Court. It also included a provision on the introduction of
a joint currency, harmonization of fiscal systems of the two countries,
and joint customs and tariffs policy. The union state was supposed to
have its own budget, formed by the funds disbursed from the national
budgets of the two countries. The impression given by the document
was of a clear program of multi-sided and profound integration.
Some of the treaty’s articles seemed to ignore reality. For example,
the treaty promised, and in great detail, to bring the main economic
210 chapter three

indicators of the two countries to the same level. This included delib-
erate attempts to equalize rates of growth, monthly incomes, GDP per
capita, labor productivity, consumer price inflation, etc., in Russia and
Belarus. How this was supposed to be achieved, given the differences in
economic structure, size, and performance between the two countries,
was not explained. Monetary unification was supposed to be achieved
by the year 2005, yet another unrealistic projection, as Russian economic
policy never relied on the degree of monetary profligacy customary for
Belarusian economic decision makers. However unrealistic, promises
of economic integration played an important, and not wholly symbolic,
role: they served to reduce inflationary expectations in Belarus by imply-
ing the introduction of a stricter monetary discipline as a precondition
for unification with Russian monetary system.
Overall, the treaty was more ornamental than functional. It was quite
obvious that the disparity in size, wealth, and power would prevent the
two countries from enjoying full equality in the context of the union
state. It was equally obvious that the supra-national bodies, rather
grandly described in the treaty, would never be able to overturn deci-
sions of their national counterparts and are therefore superfluous. The
clause calling for the equalization of prices of oil and natural gas in the
two countries (effectively by lowering the prices in Belarus to the level
paid by Russian customers) was a particularly egregious bit of wishful
thinking. Overall, it looked as though the document was authored by a
latter day Rip van Winkle, who went to sleep circa 1990 and composed
the draft treaty upon awakening nine years later, blissfully unaware of
the changes that took place in the meantime. The authors assumed,
or pretended to assume that the Russian criminal capitalist economy
will mold itself into Belarusian-style socialism and proceed to work
for the benefit of the latter. This possibility would never be considered
seriously by Boris Yeltsin, an architect of post-Soviet Russian pseudo-
capitalism, or Alyaksandar Lukashenka, who by the time of the treaty
signing must have been well aware that charity has no place in Russia’s
policy towards its former vassal states. For all its lofty verbiage and
reassuring timetables, the treaty should be treated as nothing more or
less than a script for an elaborate political theater whose performance
in the years that followed captivated Russians, Belaruasians, as well as
foreign observers.
The dramatis personae changed shortly after the treaty was signed
and ratified. On December 31, 1999 Boris Yeltsin resigned his post as
president of the Russian Federation and appointed Vladimir Putin in
 borderland forever: modern belarus 211

his stead. The almost clownishly expressive cordiality which marked

relations between presidents of Russia and Belarus in the Yeltsin era was
now gone. Mr Putin, who won presidential elections in March 2000 and
then was re-elected for the second term in 2004, consistently displayed a
sterner and more businesslike attitude toward Russia’s western neighbor.
On more than one occasion he quite plainly stated the obvious: Belarus
is a small and poor country, while Russia is considerably larger, richer,
and more powerful. Therefore, the union between Russia and Belarus
should be conducted in the interests of the former. On June 13, 2002,
Mr Putin caused a considerable stir when talking to reporters he sug-
gested that to unite Belarus and Russia makes just as much sense as to
unite flies and meatballs. The earthy rudeness of the comparison was
buttressed by a simple calculation: Belarus’s economy is less than one
thirtieth that of Russia. Disparity in geopolitical gravitas and military
power was not even mentioned, so obvious it was. Russia’s president
proceeded to a corollary: a union of the two countries of vastly different
size and power cannot include equal rights in supra-national bodies.
Putin specifically pointed out that the treaty on the union state contains
contradictory statements, insisting on independence of the member
states and at the same time calling for creation of supra-national govern-
ment bodies with vast, although badly specified functions. He hinted at
his vision of further integration: Belarus may join the Russian Federation
as a province (or a set of six provinces) with no political rights what-
soever. The only alternative to this scenario would be a continuation
of the status quo: close economic and military cooperation, as well as
coordination of foreign policy. If Mr Lukashenka really thought that
the treaty would resurrect the Soviet Union for the benefit of Belarus,
his Russian counterpart disappointed him terribly. Anyway, Mr Putin’s
statement was very much at variance with Mr Lukashenka’s customary
rhetoric. The Belarusian president had to respond.
Mr Lukashenka really could not afford to be overly indignant. By 2002
he had thoroughly destroyed all the bridges leading to closer relations
with the West. In the summer of 1998, he evicted Western diplomats
from their residences under a specious pretext and in violation of all
internationally accepted norms of the treatment of foreign diplomats.
He regularly treated the audience to verbose, colorful, and pugnacious
anti-Western diatribes. He ignored entreaties by the US, EU, and inter-
national human rights organizations to ease the oppression of political
opponents. In fact, there were strong suspicions that the presidential
administration was behind the unexplained disappearances of several
212 chapter three

political figures known for their particularly outspoken opposition to Mr

Lukashenka’s policies. Repeated calls for investigation of these incidents
were conspicuously ignored by the Belarusian authorities. Whether
willingly or not, by the time of his second term, which he won in an
election described as illegitimate by Western governments, Mr Lukash-
enka managed to isolate himself from Europe and the United States.
Belarus still had contacts with countries that shared Mr Lukashenka’s
political philosophy: Iraq (then ruled by Saddam Hussein), Iran, Cuba,
China, and North Korea. These ties with far-flung tyrannies, however,
would do nothing to the ease the almost complete international isola-
tion from all countries in the region, with the all-important exception
of Russia. Thus, Mr Lukashenka could not repay the snub by his Russian
counterpart in kind.
Some kind of indignation was expected, however. By 2002, Belarusians
were already thinking in national terms. While by 2002 more than 40
percent of Belarusians were in favor of restoration of the Soviet Union
and more than 60 percent expected a positive outcome from a further
integration between their country and Russia (quoted in Nesvetailova,
2003, 153), these were hypothetical situations, related either to the past
or the future. The present was defined by independence, with all its
attributes, including the nationally defined structure of political power.
In this situation, for a president of a newly independent nation-state to
let the offending statement pass would be unthinkable.
Mr Lukashenka responded to the Russian president’s statements with
unusual restraint. He opined that Russia was a democratic country, and
its president can say whatever he likes. Nothing in this response was even
close to truth, but a false platitude was the only way for Mr Lukashenka
not to lose face and at the same time to avoid an open confrontation with
Mr Putin. The latter, of course, was not the real culprit. According to Mr
Lukashenka, all this was an attempt by an unidentified high-level cabal
to drive a wedge between the two brotherly nations. From then on, Mr
Lukashenka would acknowledge in many of his public speeches that there
are forces in Russia who want to stymie the further integration between
Russia and Belarus. President Putin did not belong to these forces. In
fact, later in 2002, during a press-conference that followed a meeting
between the two presidents, Mr Lukashenka and his Russian counter-
part were conspicuously deferential toward each other, praising mutual
cooperation, expressing understanding of each other’s problems, and
promising to move forward with the integration process. Perhaps more
importantly, Mr Putin expressed his understanding of Belarus’s needs
for Russia’s energy imports and pledged his cooperation in the matter.
 borderland forever: modern belarus 213

From 2002 onwards, Lukashenka’s rhetoric changed considerably.

Balanced acknowledgment of mutual dependence of Russia and Belarus
replaced the excessive enthusiasm on the subject of the fraternal union
of the two nations. The Belarusian president has become more nation-
ally assertive, regularly reminding his audience about the importance,
indeed indispensability, of Belarus as a reliable and geopolitically crucial
ally of Russia. Mr Lukashenka began with increasing frequency to refer
to Belarus as a European country and even mentioned a possibility of
improving relations not only with the European Union but also with the
United States. The theme of multi-vectored foreign policy was frequently
raised in speeches of Belarus’s president. Generally speaking, in the years
since 2002 Mr Lukashenka’s style made him look increasingly less as
a satrap of the Russian government and more a national leader who,
while acknowledging the importance of good relations with Russia, is
ready to defend vital interests of Belarus.
Lukashenka’s nationally-assertive rhetoric, as well as Putin’s business-
like style, did not lead to noticeable changes in the substance of rela-
tions between Russia and Belarus. Regardless of the rhetoric, from 1996
onwards Belarus and Russia maintained fairly well-structured coop-
eration. Belarus received Russian oil and natural gas shipments below
market price and was allowed to sell its manufactured goods on Russian
markets. More importantly, Russian rulers consistently demonstrated
considerable indulgence toward the increasingly authoritarian Lukash-
enka regime. The latter remained just as illiberal and authoritarian as
ever. Political dissent remained successfully suppressed, democratic
opposition marginalized, independent press weak. Electoral campaigns
were routinely accompanied by the tightening up of the political oppres-
sion in order to ensure the desired outcome of elections. The latter did
not have to be a simple victory for the incumbent at the presidential
polls or the pro-government majority in the parliament. Those goals
could be reached even without resorting to additional oppressive mea-
sures. The regime needed to consistently exclude the opposition from
the political process, and this required special effort in the run up to
elections. On the other hand, one should not underestimate dangers for
the regime in the long run should an open political contest be allowed
at least once: then the opposition might obtain an opportunity to convey
their agenda to the electorate and thus shape the electoral campaigns in
the future. Thus, Russia’s acquiescence in, and possibly tacit support of,
regular spikes in the volume of political repression in Belarus should
be considered crucial for the successful preservation of the Lukashenka
regime from 1996 onwards.
214 chapter three

The pattern of Russia’s conspicuous non-interference in Belarus politi-

cal repression started before the advent of the Putin administration. As
early as 1999, the democratic opposition in Belarus attempted to con-
vene presidential elections based on the 1994 Constitution, before the
amendments adopted by the 1996 referendum (deemed illegitimate by
the opposition) changed, among other things, the date of the upcoming
presidential polls. The opposition, though, insisted that the term of the
first Lukashenka presidency should end no later than summer 1999, five
years after the first presidential elections.
Attempts by the opposition to stage an unofficial presidential election
in the spring of 1999 did not produce the desired result. The opposition
failed to generate popular support for the venture, mostly owing to the
regime’s considerably increased oppressive capacity. The BPF leader,
Zianon Pazniak, in exile abroad since 1996, disrupted the electoral
campaign by first announcing his decision to run and then withdraw-
ing his candidacy in order to prevent the elections from taking place,
thus creating an unnecessary rift within the opposition camp. Silitski
(2003, p. 48) explains Pazniak’s behavior by his desire to stop the other
candidate fielded by the opposition, Mikhail Chyhir, from rising to
political prominence. By that time, Pazniak, never famous for his ability
to work with political allies outside his party, was losing support within
the BPF. Trying to shore up his position, he presented himself as the
only politician capable of promoting Belarus’s independence. At the
same time, he accused other politicians of collaboration with Russia.
The main target of these accusations, Mikhail Chyhir, former prime
minister in the Lukashenka administration, was persuaded by the oppo-
sition to return to Belarus from Moscow, where he spent several years
after his tenure in Belarus’s government ended, to run in the alterna-
tive elections. Upon his return, he was promptly arrested on charges of
dubious validity, thus making his participation in the electoral campaign
exceedingly ineffective. Another prominent opposition figure, Viktar
Hanchar, chaired the unofficial electoral committee. In this capacity, he
designed a voting process which was open to irregularities and possibly
even fraud, thus undermining the validity of the elections (Marples,
2003, p. 30). The opposition attempt to unseat Lukashenka by means
of alternative elections proved utterly unsuccessful.
The elections’ repercussions included the split of the BPF in September
1999 into two parties. One, still headed by Zianon Pazniak, was renamed
the Christian Conservative Party of the BPF. The other, considerably
larger party, the BPF “Revival” was headed by Vintsuk Viachorka. The
 borderland forever: modern belarus 215

latter, a veteran opposition leader, considerably improved the position

of his party by forging a close alliance with the UCP, by then the most
important opposition party in Belarus. Another repercussion was the
ratcheting up of political repression by the Lukashenka regime. Mikhail
Chyhir was brought to trial and sentenced to a lengthy prison term.
Viktar Hanchar fared even worse: in September 1999 he disappeared
under suspicious circumstances and has never been seen or heard of
again. Viktar Hanchar, whose companion disappeared with him, was
among several opponents of the regime who met the same fate. Russian
authorities, although clearly aware of the imprisonment of Mr Chyhir
and disappearance of Mr Hanchar, remained conspicuously silent on
both issues, despite the pleas from the opposition and the families of the
victims. The pattern of Russian non-interference in Belarus’s political
oppression had become a major element in the relationship between
the two countries.
This pattern was further reinforced in the course of the presidential
elections of 2001. This time, the elections were official and held in
accordance with the constitution amended at the 1996 referendum.
The democratic opposition, which now included the UCP, the BPF
“Revival”, the Belarusian Social Democratic Party (People’s Hramada),
the Belarusian Social Democratic Party, and the Party of Communists
of Belarus (not to be confused with the pro-regime Communist Party
of Belarus), supported Uladzimir Hancharik, a former leader of official
Soviet-style Belarusian trade unions. In conditions of total media black-
out, unable to use radio and television (both government-controlled),
and having only limited ability to express themselves through the print
media, thus effectively isolated from the electorate, the opposition had
little hope of victory. In fact, the polls of September 9, 2001 produced
predictable results: the incumbent, Alyaksandar Lukashenka, won in
the first round with 75.6 percent of the vote, while Hancharik came
a very distant second, with 15.4 percent. Electoral observers from the
Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) declared
the elections falling short of international standards and did not recog-
nize them as legitimate. President Putin of Russia, on the other hand,
called Mr Lukashenka the day after the elections and congratulated
him on the victory.
Three years later the same pattern of Russia’s tacit approval of political
oppression by the Belarusian regime was repeated in the wake of the
constitutional referendum of October 17, 2004. The referendum, which
asked the voters to lift the two-term limit on presidential tenure and thus
216 chapter three

allowed Mr Lukashenka to stay in office indefinitely, was handily won

by the regime, as the constitutional amendment to lift term limits was
supported by more than 88 percent of participating voters in a turnout
in excess of 90 percent. Even in the city of Minsk, traditional strong-
hold of the opposition, almost 77 percent of the voters supported the
amendment. Those were the official data. Credible allegations of electoral
fraud were raised by the opposition. However, the crucial reason for yet
another victory for the Lukashenka regime was the deliberate, consistent,
and long-standing suppression of freedom of political speech in Belarus.
When the opposition, unable to convey its message to the electorate by
regular means, took to the streets to peacefully protest the referendum
results, the protesters were dispersed with conspicuous brutality by the
riot police. Leader of the UCP, Anatol Lyabedzka, was arrested near the
site of the street protest, beaten while being arrested and then, while in
police custody, beaten again. Two Russian TV cameramen covering the
street protests in Minsk were beaten by the riot police. The display of
the regime’s readiness to use force against political opponents was hard
to ignore. The European Union and the US protested the heavy handed
handling of the situation by the regime. Russia limited its response
to the expression of concern over the treatment of Russian television
crews. Just to demonstrate that this expression does not reflect Russia’s
government commitment to human rights in Belarus, shortly after the
announcement by the US about the introduction of sanctions against
the Lukashenka regime the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov,
publicly criticized the measure and stated that Russia would never sup-
port it. The additional aspect of the Russia-Belarus symbiosis: defense
of Belarusian regime’s oppressive actions by Russia against criticism by
Western democracies, was by then firmly in place (for a mor detailed
analysis of the events surrounding the 2004 referendum, see e.g. Mark
Mac Kinnon, 2007, pp. 234–239).
More recently, Russia put its weight behind the Lukashenka regime
in the course of the presidential elections of March 19, 2006, which
brought Mr Lukashenka yet another predictably stunning victory. As
reported by the Central Electoral Commission, the incumbent received
83 percent of the vote in the very heavy turnout of 92 percent of reg-
istered voters. By then, the opposition was divided into the coalition
built around the traditional alliance of the UCP and the BPF and the
left-wing Social-Democratic Party (Hramada). The former campaigned
on the platform consisting of a familiar combination of liberal economy,
democratic polity, national revival, and pro-European orientation. The
 borderland forever: modern belarus 217

coalition chose Alyaksandar Milinkevich, a multi-lingual university

professor who sympathized with the BPF but stayed away from party
politics, as their candidate. Social-Democrats, whose program of demo-
cratic socialism was hardly distinguishable from official policies of the
current Belarusian regime, had no choice but to build their campaign
on an anti-Lukashenka platform. Their candidate, Alyaksandar Kazulin,
had career not dissimilar from that of his rival. A former Komsomol
(Young Communist League) functionary, former university administra-
tor, former high-ranking bureaucrat in the Lukashenka government, has
been well familiar with Soviet and post-Soviet official power structures
before trying his luck as leader of the BSDP (Hramada). In the event,
neither of opposition candidates had much luck. Alyaksandar Milin-
kevich received 6.1 percent of the vote. Kazulin did even worse with
2.2 percent of the vote. Both Mr Milinkevich and Mr Kazulin disputed
the election results and came out with strong allegations that electoral
irregularities deliberately allowed by the authorities contributed to Mr
Lukashenka’s victory. The OSCE observer mission described the election
as falling short of democratic standards.2
Of course, just as in previous elections and referenda, electoral irregu-
larities, alleged by opposition candidates and indirectly reflected in the
independent post-election research, were not the only reason for Mr
Lukashenka’s victory. Considerably more important was the successful
building by the regime of a long-standing climate of fear of independent
political discourse. On the eve of the elections oppression increased.
Opposition activists were persistently harassed. Vintsuk Viachorka,
leader of the BPF, was arrested and sentenced to a fortnight prison
term, allegedly for participation in an unsanctioned electoral campaign
meeting. Alyaksandar Kazulin was beaten up by the police before the
election and then arrested and sentenced to five and a half years in
prison after the election. Nine journalist who covered the event were
beaten up as well. At least one independent newspaper and one NGO
were closed in the run-up to the elections. Meanwhile the authorities
issued thinly veiled threats to those who attempted to express their
opinion on pre-electoral developments. In a statement posted on its
website Justice Ministry warned against expression of anti-Lukashenka

2
Indeed, the post-election analysis suggests that the actual vote might not have been
as favorable for Mr Lukashenka as reported by Belarus election officials. According
to independent pollsters, Mr Lukashenka received 63.3 percent of the vote, while 20
percent of the vote went to Mr Milinkevich.
218 chapter three

sentiments which were described as “anti-state hysteria”. Belarus’s secret

police, the KGB, published information about alleged coups planned
by the opposition in order to disrupt the election and take over the
country.
While the opposition candidates had to struggle against the tide of
intimidation and harassment, Mr Lukashenka effortlessly glided through
the electoral campaign. Officially, he did not campaign at all, being too
busy running the country. At least that was what he said almost every
time he used government financed mass media to present himself to the
Belarusian people. A master of self-promotion, he readily confirmed the
KGB’s allegations of multiple coups against the constitutional integrity
of Belarus, described his opponents as paid agents of foreign powers
and repeatedly reminded the audience of his own stellar record as the
president. Mr Lukashenka’s prima donna performance, when contrasted
with the uphill battle waged by other presidential candidates high-
lighted an immense disadvantage endured by the opposition. When the
incumbent’s campaign can freely draw on resources of the state while
his opponents are forced into semi-clandestine existence, the election
cannot be plausibly described as free and fair, adherence to the letter
of electoral law notwithstanding.
Anticipating Mr Lukashenka’s victory, opposition forces were pre-
pared to challenge it over the alleged electoral fraud, as well as proven
suppression of the opposition’s electoral campaign. Inspired by Messrs
Milinkevich and Kazulin, thousands of demonstrators repeatedly gath-
ered on a square in the central part of Minsk for several days following
the elections. In a show of solidarity with Belarus’s democratic forces,
ambassadors of several Western countries joined the protesters. Several
hundred protesters did not leave the square, but instead camped there
in improvised tents, apparently attempting to repeat a similar action
by Ukrainian protesters in the course of the Orange Revolution. Police,
while not attempting to disperse the demonstrations, were arresting the
participants as they returned home after the end of the rallies. More
than two hundred protesters received prison sentences of various dura-
tion. Among them was the Social-Democratic presidential candidate,
Alyaksandar Kazulin, who was charged with hooliganism, detained
pending trial, and later sentenced to five and a half years in prison (he
was pardoned by President Lukashenka and released from prison in
August 2008). On March 24, the protesters’ camp on the central square
was destroyed by riot police who arrested four hundred protesters and
innocent bystanders. Among those detained were several foreign citizens,
 borderland forever: modern belarus 219

including a former Polish ambassador in Belarus and a Canadian jour-

nalist. Opposition staged another mass protest on April 26, the twentieth
anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. As almost all opposition
demonstrations, this one was peaceful. Still, Alyaksandar Milinkevich,
an opposition presidential candidate, was arrested and sentenced to a
fortnight prison term for staging an unauthorised demonstration.
The blatantly oppressive treatment of the opposition did not make
Mr Lukashenka any more popular with the democratic countries of
the West. The European Union and the Council of Europe issued state-
ments criticising the intimidation of the opposition in the run-up to
the presidential polls. Following the elections (whose legitimacy was
disputed by both the US and EU) and their tumultuous aftermath, the
EU announced new sanctions against the Belarusian officials who will
not be allowed to travel to member states of the European Union. Simi-
lar measures were already in place in the US. Canada announced the
introduction of a similar ban. To make the ban even more intolerable
to the government officials, their visas to their opposition rivals were
readily issued by Western embassies in Minsk.
Isolated from the West, Mr Lukashenka found solace in consistent
and vocal Russian support of his actions. Russia’s president, Vladimir
Putin, called Mr Lukashenka in the wake of the elections to congratu-
late him on yet another victory at the polls. No mention was made of
arrests, beatings, and intimidation of political opposition in Belarus.
Russia did not hesitate to challenge the international criticism of the
oppressive policies of the Lukashenka regime. Shortly after the elections,
Russian foreign ministry issued a statement in which it accused the
Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) of taking
sides in Belarusian political contest and described the OSCE report as
disappointing and contradictory. In another statement, it blamed the
opposition for the street violence and invited the Western countries to
abstain from unjustified criticism of Belarusian authorities attempts to
defend their country’s constitutional order. Throughout all the elections,
referenda, and other crucial points of the consolidation of the Belaru-
sian political regime Russia could tip the balance of power in Belarus
in favor of democratic forces. Simply by charging Belarusian recipients
of its natural gas shipments the same prices as those paid by European
customers, Russia would impose considerable strain on the Belarusian
fiscal system, as residential heating, dependent to a very large extent
on natural gas, was a major recipient of budget subsidies. The resulting
budget crisis, reverberating throughout the economy, would highlight
220 chapter three

the flaws inherent in the “Belarus economic model” and force a con-
siderable portion of the electorate to question economic policies of the
Lukashenka administration. If timed to a politically sensitive moment,
such as presidential polls or an important referendum, adjusting natural
gas prices to the market level would serve to erode the public support
for the regime and make the electorate to take the opposition (which
always claimed that the government economic policies are unsustainable)
seriously. However, Russia, which did not hesitate to use its position of
monopoly provider of natural gas to exercise political pressure vis-à-vis
other countries, never used this leverage in relation to the Lukashenka
regime. Instead, Russian government-controlled natural gas monopoly,
Gazprom, consistently sold natural gas to Belarus at prices significantly
lower than those paid by other countries in the region.3
Another external factor that became a crucial component in Belarus’s
industrial development of the recent years has been a combination
of high prices for oil refinery products on European markets, which
shadowed the global upward trend in prices of crude oil since 2003,
and relatively low prices of oil imported by Belarus from Russia. Before
January 2007, Belarusian oil refineries used to purchase crude oil from
Russian suppliers at prices which are considerably lower than those
paid by European customers. While the spread fluctuated, it remained
significant from month to month and exhibited a strong upward trend,
from the average of 43 dollars per ton in 2002 to 141 dollars per ton in
2005 (IMF, 2006b, pp. 40, 41). The situation persisted in 2006, when in
April, not an atypical month, average price of crude oil imports from
Russia to Belarus was 258 dollars per ton, while average price of oil
products exports from Belarus was 424 per ton, thus further increasing
the spread to 166 dollars. According to IMF estimates, in 2004 Belarus

3
According to IMF (2005), from 2000 through 2004 the price paid by Belarus for
1,000 cubic meters of Russian natural gas was less than one third of the price paid by
Germany and half of the price paid by Ukraine. Even after Gazprom raised prices for
natural gas shipped to Belarus in 2004 and then 2007, Belarus continued to pay less
than a half of prices paid by Germany and three quarters of prices paid by Ukraine.
This changed in 2007. At the time of the acquisition of controlling stake in Belarusian
natural gas pipelines (the deal, concluded in December 2006, went in effect in May
2007), Gazprom set up a new mechanism of price increase. In 2008 Belarus paid 67%
of the price paid by European buyers of Russian natural gas imports and the share is
set to grow to 80% in 2009 and then 90% in 2010. Thus, as the world market price
of natural gas goes up, so does Belarus’s import bill. Gazprom announced that in the
coming years price paid by Belarus will be gradually equalized with the regional prices
of natural gas (Belarusian Review, 2007).
 borderland forever: modern belarus 221

earned up to ten dollars per barrel of oil imported from Russia and
processed at Belarusian oil refineries (IMF, 2005, p. 9). The revenues
increased as world prices for crude oil continued to grow. Not surpris-
ingly, in 2005 Belarusian oil refineries processed more than 20 million
tons of oil, two million more than in 2004. The increase in oil processing
was accompanied by growing exports of the output of oil refineries. In
the first two months of 2006, physical volume of oil refinery products
increased by 16.3%. Its value increased by 72.2%, owing to the growing
world prices for oil (calculations based on information from IMF 2006b).
Some estimates credited the increase of exports of oil refinery products
in 2004 with as much as 3 percentage points annual increase of GDP
(IMF, 2005, p. 9). As price differentials between imported crude oil and
exported refined oil products grew in 2005 and 2006, their impact on
GDP growth in those years was even larger. There was a pronounced
political component in Belarus’s windfall profits from trade in oil refinery
products. Russian oil companies exporting to Belarus did not have to
pay export duties. This made export to Belarus marginally more profit-
able than export outside CIS, as in latter case the export duties would
reduce their profit, despite considerably higher export price.
The effects of the trade regime which included the imports of crude
oil from Russia below world market prices and exports of refined oil
products to the West at world prices significantly buttressed Belarus’s
economic stability. The cheap imported oil kept in check inflationary
pressures by relieving the government from the need to support structur-
ally unviable enterprises. The export proceeds from trade in refined oil
products contributed to further stabilisation of the national currency by
ensuring a continuing influx of foreign currency into the country. Gains
from the favorable trade regime, distributed throughout the economy,
boosted domestic demand.4 So long as these two factors have remained
in place, Belarus’s monetary and credit policies were able to accomplish
the seemingly contradictory tasks that included high social spending
and support of failing agriculture, while maintaining a relatively low
inflation rates and stability of the national currency.
The stabilizing effect of low oil and gas prises allowed Belarus to
step away from the previously established model of economic growth
bought at the price of excessive monetary and credit expansion. This

4
A detailed discussion of the mechanism whereby trade gains were contributing to
Belarus’s economic growth can be found in IMF, 2006a, pp. 5–6, 9.
222 chapter three

combination is illustrated by the economic performance of 2001, when

the 4.2 percent GDP growth, 7.2 percent growth in industrial output,
and 1.6 percent expansion in agricultural production were accompa-
nied by consumer price inflation of 61.1 percent (IMF, 2006b, p. 3). In
2005, higher rates of economic growth (9.2 percent for GDP and 13.5
percent for industrial output) were reached with consumer price infla-
tion of only 10.1 percent (ibid.). The trend toward lower inflation rates,
supported by a thirty percent reduction in broad money growth and
almost fifty percent lower credit expansion in 2005 compared to 2001
brought Belarusian consumer price inflation rates close to the average
inflation among post-Soviet and East European transition economies
(IMF, 2006b, p. 3; IMF, 2006a, p. 9). Perhaps even more important to the
popularity of the regime’s economic policy was the fact that the average
wage grew from the equivalent of 106 dollars at the end of 2001 to 261
dollars at the end of 2005 (IMF, 2006b, p. 3).
The balanced economy made possible for several years by unusually
favorable external factors could have been a perfect starting point for
a relatively painless economic restructuring. This, however, was not an
intention of Belarus’s economic planners. Although the economy was
modernized, as capital investment almost reached the 1990 level in 2005
(in industry, it exceeded the 1990 level in 2004), the modernization of
physical plant was not accompanied by restructuring of property rights.
From 2001 to 2005, the number of state-owned enterprises transformed
into joint-stock companies each year remained very low. Moreover, this
kind of transformation did not amount to much, as the state retained the
right to interfere in microeconomic decisions of joint-stock enterprises
regardless of the amount of government-owned share in their assets (the
so-called “golden share” rule, eventually abolished by the presidential
decree of March 5, 2008). Sales of government-owned enterprises to
private investors were non-existent for large enterprises (mostly in
industry) and very sluggish for small enterprises (mostly in retail and
catering). By the end of 2005, the Belarusian economy remained under
direct centralized control of the government. Small enterprises (not all
of them private) produced 6.5 percent of GDP in 2001. In 2005, this
figure grew to 8.1 percent (IMF, 2006b, p. 44).
The relatively relaxed external conditions were not used by Belaru-
sian economic planners as an opportunity for a reform. The conditions
tightened in 2007, after Russia forced Belarus to re-distribute wind-
fall profits from oil trade between budgets of both countries (Russia
 borderland forever: modern belarus 223

receiving 85 and Belarus 15 percent of the total). This step, however,

was not interpreted as an indication that “Belarus economic model”
can only be supported externally and is unsustainable in the long run.
The Belarusian socialist economy remains in place. It is unclear if it
would be able to retain balance without external support or, as high
inflation rates return in the wake of the recent deterioration of terms
of trade, it would sustain progressive destabilization of monetary and
credit system. These questions are broader than the issue of economic
relationship between Belarus and Russia. As for the latter, shortly after
the introduction of profit-sharing in the export of Belarusian refined oil
products, Russia softened the blow by announcing that it will provide
a large stabilization loan to Belarus. The loan, in the amount of US$1.5
billion, was disbursed in December 2007, giving a much needed boost
to reserves of Belarus’s central bank. Another large loan, this time of
US$2.0 billion, followed in 2008. Meanwhile, Belarus’s budget revenues
are supplemented by annual transfers received from the Russian natural
gas monopoly Gazprom in payment for the controlling stake in Belarus’s
natural gas pipeline network, acquired by Gazprom in 2007. While
institutional symbiosis is by no means a conflict-free arrangement, there
is no reason to interpret Russia’s recent decisions on oil and gas trade
with Belarus as a deviation of a well-established pattern of economic
support as a price for geopolitical advantage.
Despite occasional statements to the contrary, neither the Russian
nor Belarusian leaders want to make the two countries into a fully
integrated economic entity. Nothing illustrates the limits of economic
integration better than the unwillingness of both sides to adopt the
single currency, a goal enshrined in the Union Treaty. All attempts to
make the Russian rouble the sole legal tender on the territory of both
Russia and Belarus came to naught, although central banks of both
countries declared the measure technically feasible. Politically, it would
encumber Russia with subsidies for the largely unreformed Belarusian
economy, something that is unlikely to be popular with the Russian
electorate. On the other hand, the Belarusian government would have
to cede its powers to print money to Russia’s central bank, thus losing
full control over the economy. Neither country wants Belarus to make
steps toward a more liberal economy. After all, now most Belarusians
are effectively employees of the state and therefore depend upon the
government for their well-being. Should this change, should a new
class of privately-employed citizens emerge, the political power of the
224 chapter three

Lukashenka regime would be undermined. A different government,

more liberal economically, would not depend on a special relationship
with Russia to the extent as the current regime does. Thus, a centrally
controlled Belarusian economy remains an important component of
Russian geopolitical interests in the region.
The economic and political system, established in Belarus by Alyak-
sandar Lukashenka and crystallized by the end of 1996, has survived
for more than a decade. It lived through economic crises, international
isolation, ups and downs in relations with Russia. It managed to avoid
civil strife, widespread overt corruption, excessive poverty, and social
polarization, the ills that plagued all former Soviet republics, with the
signal exception of the three Baltic states, after independence. Ukraine’s
chaotic democracy, Russia’s corrupt pseudo-capitalism, civil wars of the
Caucasus, and the return to medieval emirates as the preferred form of
political organization in Central Asia have not yet proven more con-
ducive for social progress and individual welfare than the Soviet-style
populism of the Lukashenka regime. Once again, Belarus is a more
comfortable, more stable and safer place to live than most other regions
of former Soviet Eurasia. Perhaps this perception of their country’s
place among former Soviet republics makes it easier for Belarusians
to acquiesce in, if not actively support, the illiberality of the Lukash-
enka regime. Their collective national frame of reference, the grid of
criteria used to compare and assess such things as prosperity, social
mobility, political participation, and other social institutions associated
with modern society, has been formed in the twentieth century in the
context of economic, political, and social changes conducted by Soviet
power. Experience of generations of Belarusians acquired throughout
the Soviet era naturally prompts them to compare their country with its
eastern, rather than western, neighbors. The West is known from books,
magazines, television, the Internet, sometimes an occasional tourist or
business trip. Ideas of market and democracy associated with Europe
are not unattractive, but abstract and remote from everyday life. By
contrast, Russia and other post-Soviet countries serve as a rich source
of personal memories, experiences, symbolically important events in
modern Belarusian history. The imperatives of economy and politics
might force post-Soviet Belarus to stay in Russia’s orbit, but it is the
institutionalized memory of the Soviet past that makes Belarusians
comfortable in a borderland.
 CONCLUSION

WHITHER BELARUS?

In the late 16th century, the time frequently described by the national
Belarusian historians as the “Golden Age” of Belarusian cultural, politi-
cal, and social achievement, Sir Jerome Horsey, an English diplomat
traveling from Warsaw to Moscow, stopped in Wilno, capital of the
Grand Duchy of Lithuania, which nationally-minded Belarusian intellec-
tuals from the late 19th century onwards regarded as a proto-Belarusian
state. He was received by “the great duke voivode Ragaville (Nicholas
Radziwill the Red), a prince of great excelencie, prowes and power”, who
entertained the visitor in a truly royal fashion (Horsey, 1856, spelling
of the original). While impressed by the pomp and circumstance of the
reception, which he describes in great detail in a report to his sovereign,
Horsey took great care to emphasize that this was not a diplomatic
function, just a private reception, however splendid. The Radziwills,
who owned large tracts of the territory of today’s Belarus, could not
conduct foreign policy on behalf of their clan, or even the Grand Duchy
of Lithuania. This prerogative was vested in the person of the King of
Poland, ex officio Grand Duke of Lithuania. It would be more than four
hundred years later that a political leader claiming legitimacy within
the Belarusian territory would receive credentials of foreign ambas-
sadors. This ruler, of course, would be Alyaksandar Lukashenka, the
first president of the Republic of Belarus. That Western diplomats are
unlikely to write glowing reports about the entertainment provided by
this potentate is beside the point. Whatever the “excelencie, prowes and
power” of Mr Lukashenka, he is definitely a more fitting personification
of independent Belarus than any of the Radziwills, Sapiehas, Oginskis
or other Polish-Lithuanian magnates.
Indeed, the time since 1991 has been the first period in the history of
Belarus when it possessed all the attributes associated with a sovereign
nation. The country conducts its own foreign policy, is free to choose trade
partners, is represented in various international organizations (includ-
ing the non-Aligned Movement, where Belarus is the only European
country), all three branches of Belarus’s government are formed accord-
ing to laws of the country and based on decisions taken by its citizens.
226 conclusion

Perhaps more important is the presence of nationally defined social

institutions associated with the modern nation-state. Those include
the patterns of social interaction associated with social mobility, the
formation of national elites, attitudes to political participation and eco-
nomic activity, and relations between the individual and the state. These
institutions existed in Belarus for seventy years before independence,
but they had not emerged until ethnic Belarusian territories have been
incrementally incorporated into the Belarusian Soviet Socialist Republic.
Until then, Belarusian nationality was almost incompatible with upward
social mobility, political participation of any kind, or involvement in
modern economic activity. In other words, until the advent of Soviet
Communism, Belarusians had to choose between their nationality and
social mobility. For all but a very few, these two were incompatible.
Most European countries consolidated their national institutions
before Belarus. The period stretches from as early as the 16th century
for France and England, through the 19th century for the majority of
the states on the European continent, to the interwar years for the Baltic
states and the Mitteleuropa nations. When the Soviet empire spread
westward, nations from Estonia to Poland to Hungary already had non-
Soviet experience of modernity. Belarus did not. Its history, modernity
and national awareness are inextricably linked with the Soviet era.
The nascent Belarusian nationalism of the early 20th century was
not incompatible with the Communist ideology. Left Social-Democratic
nationalism of the Nasha Niva circle (circa 1906) had roots in pre-
political demotic nationalism of the literary figures of the late 19th cen-
tury. From its inception, the Belarusian national idea had been culturally
demotic, socially populist, politically left-wing Socialist, economically
statist. Ideas associated with conservatism, individualism, or liberalism
were almost completely absent in Belarusian national discourse. Thus,
from the very beginning Belarusian national thought was confined to
a small segment of political spectrum.
For the intellectuals who ushered in Belarusian political nationalism,
upper-class Belarusians existed only in the distant past. In the present,
the Belarusian nation was composed exclusively of poor, simple, toil-
ing multitudes, ready to be led to a brighter future by a group of well-
meaning intellectuals. This populist national ideology was eminently
compatible with Communism, a more powerful, and more sinister,
political philosophy created by well-meaning intellectuals for the ben-
efit of the toiling masses of the world. It is not surprising, therefore,
that the founding fathers of the Belarusian national idea found it easy
 whither belarus? 227

to accommodate their vision of the Belarusian national state with the

policies of the Bolshevik rulers of Belarus. After ten years of nation-
building, the National Bolsheviks were eliminated by their less nationally
inclined comrades. Before that happened, however, they created the
whole network of modern Belarusian national institutions concentrated
around the system of education which survived their demise and made
an enduring imprint on the development of the Belarusian national idea.
Thanks to their work, made possible by the Soviet policy of korenizatsiya,
Belarusians no longer had to make a choice between their nationality
and social mobility. The triad of national culture, nationally-informed
civil society (severely truncated under Soviet totalitarianism, but almost
non-existent prior to it), and national state (not equal to a nation-state,
but the latter never existed in Belarus before the Soviet era) was first
experienced in the Soviet time and under Soviet auspices. Belarusian
National Bolsheviks, direct heirs of the Nasha Niva national intellectuals,
harnessed the power of the Soviet state to the Belarusian national cause.
This was one part of the legacy left by the National Bolsheviks. The other
side of the coin, however, was the enduring integration of Belarusian
national institutions into the greater Soviet polity and economy. It could
not have been otherwise, as Belarusian national leaders of the koreni-
zatsiya period could only work within the limits expressly outlined by
the totalitarian Soviet state and only with its support.
Embedded in the structures of the Soviet state, Belarusian national
institutions survived and developed until the collapse of the Soviet
union. It is interesting to note that only viable alternatives to the sym-
biosis between Belarusian and Soviet institutions were the arrange-
ments made by Belarusian national leaders with other authoritarian
or totalitarian states During the First World War, it was the German
military authorities, which allowed the formation of the Belarusian
People’s Republic. From July 1941 to July 1944, non-Soviet Belarusian
national leaders had built good working relations with the regional
National Socialist administration thus making it possible to create an
alternative to the Soviet incarnation of Belarusian national politics, for
several months prior to the liberation of Belarus by the Soviet Army.
The Belarusian national idea fared rather worse in conditions of imper-
fect democracy in interwar Poland. Apparently unwilling to adjust to
a moderately competitive political scene, unable to harness the power
of the Polish state to the cause of Belarusian secessionism, seduced by
the radicalism of Soviet-inspired agrarian movements, leaders of the
Wilno variety of Belarusian nationalism became disenchanted with the
228 conclusion

casually oppressive Poland of Pilsudski and decided to place their bets

on the totalitarian Soviet Union under Stalin.
The successful symbiosis of Belarusian national idea and Soviet politi-
cal economy continued after the Second World War, when centrally
distributed investments into the hitherto backward Belarusian economy
resulted in a rapid economic growth accompanied by industrialization,
urbanization, and dramatic improvements in living conditions for the
majority of Belarusians. While putting Belarus among the best Soviet
republics in terms of both economic performance and quality of life,
this process made it increasingly impossible to think about Belarus
outside the Soviet context. When the Soviet Union collapsed, Belarus’s
self-perception as the model Soviet republic had become less than
useful in making plans for the future. Belarus found itself between
Europe and Russia, the former alluring but dauntingly unfamiliar,
the latter, a de facto successor of the Soviet Union, offering a realistic
possibility of salvaging at least some of Belarus’s achievements in mod-
ern nation-building. European orientation was promoted by a small
group of well-educated, articulate, passionate patriots whose vision of
Belarus as a European country was based on a creative interpretation
of a centuries-old past and a rational assumption that human beings
will always choose prosperity and freedom over misery and serfdom.
Proponents of a pro-Russian orientation were not nearly as passionate
or cerebral. Instead of trying to find fault with their opponents’ concep-
tions of historical legacy or economic transition, they simply pointed
to the great edifice of the state, the visible embodiment of Belarusian
nationhood here and now, not in the distant past or uncertain future.
The state was not just an abstract idea: it provided employment, paid
pensions, built apartment blocks, schools, colleges, and hospitals. By
all accounts, it did its work of caring for its subjects rather better than
a less benevolent Leviathan in Russia or a less diligent one in Ukraine.
The state was central to the everyday life of Belarusians. Should they
choose Europe, they would lose too many familiar avenues of social
promotion, modest prosperity, income and job security. They had no
memories of life without the total dependence on the state. In fact, it
was through the state that three generations of Belarusians improved
their living conditions, moved to the cities, received education, found
employment. To risk all this for an uncertain promise of an unfamiliar
future, Belarusians needed a strong motive. There was none. History
offered no example of viable alternative nationhood to strive for. Overall,
Soviet Belarus was the best among Belarusian nation-building projects.
 whither belarus? 229

When elected president, Mr Lukashenka understood that he had the

people’s mandate to return his country to the status quo ante. Since
1996, he has lived up to expectations.
The Lukashenka regime, perhaps the closest approximation of Soviet
polity and economy in the post-Soviet space, does not exist solely, or
even predominantly due to its oppressive capacity. However impres-
sive the latter, the ability of the administration to harness the Russian
economy to preserve Socialism in Belarus has been more important
in perpetuating the main features of the regime: economic centraliza-
tion, populist dictatorship, social conformity. While remarkably stable,
the system does not lack the proverbial Achilles heel: although Mr
Lukashenka managed to deftly avoid a full absorption of his country
by Russia, he created a system which cannot survive without Russia’s
economic and, to a lesser extent, political, support. It remains to be
seen if this vulnerability will ever prove the undoing of post-Soviet
Socialist Belarus.
“Who controls the past, controls the future”. George Orwell’s maxim
points to a likely future of Belarus. The one-dimensional history of mod-
ern Belarus, made possible by its position as Russia’s borderland, leaves
few alternative scenarios of future development. The state, effectively
controlling most of the economic activity in the country, makes most
of its working-age citizens government employees, unlikely to mount a
political challenge to the provider of their livelihoods. Mr Lukashenka
might have restored this Soviet-era arrangement, but it really transcends
his personality. As long as Russia continues to regard Belarus as its
strategic outpost in the west, Belarusian economy will have its inef-
ficiencies covered by Russian subsidies, both open and covert. At the
moment, Russia seems to be increasing its assertiveness vis-à-vis Europe
and the US, a stance that is likely to preserve its military cooperation
with Belarus and willingness to pay for keeping it within Russia’s orbit.
Russia’s geopolitical imperatives will preserve Belarus’s economic status
quo. Thus, potential for the emergence of a power base for opposition
parties or alternative centers of power that might undermine the regime
is not likely. Belarus will not become another Russian province—insti-
tutional symbiosis allows each country to achieve its goals without full
political integration. It will, however, remain Russia’s borderland until
such time as Russian leadership changes its mind about the usefulness
of such an arrangement.
There are alternative trajectories of Belarus’s future. The one detailed
in this book is based on a specific concatenation of the development of
230 conclusion

national culture, society and state in the context of geopolitical aspira-

tions of an imperial power. However, civil society has a momentum of
its own. For all the authoritarian inclinations, current regime did not
inherit from the Soviet past the totalitarian will to control thoughts of its
subjects. It is not unlikely that in the access to Western institutions, both
new, such as the Internet and old, such as the Roman Catholic Church,
might shape the future discourse in Belarus’s civil society in such a way
that public sentiment will be shifted away from the resurgent Russian
Empire and towards the united Europe. However, at the moment there
are few facts that support this scenario. Perhaps its exploration should
wait until more information becomes available.
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 INDEX
Akinchits, F. 140, 141
Astrouski, R. 121, 122, 143
Bahutski, V. 82, 83
Balitski, A. 79, 87, 91
Belarus: under Polish occupation
74–77; territorial gains in 1924 and
1926 83; korenizatsiya policy
84–86; national education 86–87;
Stalin’s repressions 91–94;
collectivization 95; schools
in Western Belarus 110–111;
territotial gains in 1939 118–119;
Nazi administration 123–125;
Nazi genocide 123–125; guerrilla
warfare 125–129; changing ethnic
composition 135–136; Soviet
military presence 145–146, 148;
hyperinflation 169; Russian military
presence 193
Belarusian Christian Democratic
Party 108, 110
Belarusian economic model 193, 201,
205, 210
Belarusian language 10, 41, 44, 53, 54,
61–65, 74, 80, 86, 87, 93, 111, 137–139,
141–143, 147, 150, 154, 176, 178, 179
Belarusian National Union 109
Belarusian People’s Republic 65, 72,
89, 116, 155, 227
Bohuszewicz, F. 63
Borderland 1, 2, 4, 5, 8, 9, 11, 13, 15,
17, 19, 21, 23, 25, 27, 29, 31, 33, 35,
37, 39, 41, 43, 45, 47, 49, 51, 53, 55,
57, 59, 61, 63, 65, 67, 75, 85, 99, 135,
145, 147, 149, 151, 153, 155, 157, 159,
161, 163, 165, 167, 169, 171, 173, 175,
177, 179, 180, 181, 183, 185, 187, 189,
191, 199, 201, 203, 205, 209, 211, 213,
215, 217, 221, 223, 224, 229
BPF 153–156, 171, 173–178, 181, 184,
214–217
BSDP (Hramada) 227
Bulat, S. 79, 82
Chernobyl 149, 173, 219
Civilization 5–7, 62, 144
Civil society 7, 8, 18, 22, 61, 64, 67, 68,
78, 92, 112, 141, 227, 230
Collectivization 78, 94, 95
Communist Party 11, 23, 73, 75, 78,
79, 80–82, 84, 86, 88, 90, 93–95, 104,
110, 135, 139, 140, 143, 146, 151,
157–159, 170, 187, 215
Culture, Belarusian 32, 54, 60, 61, 74,
77, 78, 80, 82, 84, 86–88, 90, 93, 134,
147
Dementei, N. 157
Democracy, 1, 18–20, 36, 51, 53, 109,
114, 156, 188, 189, 224, 227
Deportations 58, 95
Dunin-Marcinkiewicz, V. 62
Economic development 56, 57, 61, 96,
98, 100–102, 109, 147, 167, 198
Economic policy 12, 13, 78, 84, 90,
95, 100, 104, 163, 189, 198, 199, 204,
210, 222
Economic reforms 160, 165, 173, 182,
189, 194
Ermachenka, I. 132
Estonia 15, 17–20, 85, 151, 153, 154,
155, 159–161, 164, 165, 168, 177, 226
Europe 1, 2, 4–6, 9–11, 15–17, 19, 21,
24, 27, 33, 36, 51, 53, 68, 134, 145,
146, 170, 173, 176, 177, 182, 212, 215,
219, 224, 228, 229, 230
European Union 14–17, 203, 204, 213,
216, 219
Ezavitau, K. 74, 76, 113, 131
Gentry 1, 9, 26–30, 32–40, 44, 52, 58,
62, 63, 65, 96
German occupation in WWI 69–70,
72
Gomel 2, 23, 80, 82, 83, 123
Gorbachev, M. 145–148, 151, 157
Gottberg, C. von 123, 133
Grand Duchy of Lithuania 2, 9, 25–40,
42–46, 48, 51, 60, 62, 63, 66–70, 73,
75, 88, 96, 97, 225
Grodno 2, 23, 36, 38, 44, 47, 49, 50,
58, 67, 123, 135
238 index
Hanchar, V. 186, 214, 215
Hramada: before the 1917
revolution 63–65, 68, 71, 118; in
eastern Poland 105–110
Ihnatouski, U. 74, 77, 79, 80, 83, 88,
90, 91
Illiteracy 53, 59, 65, 87, 91
Industrial development 59, 101, 220
Industrialization 4, 10, 57, 94, 96, 228
Industry 12, 24, 57, 96, 109, 140, 146,
148, 158, 161, 166, 190, 222
Intellectuals 10, 11, 16, 25, 36, 37, 50,
55, 56, 63, 72, 78, 90, 110, 113, 114,
120, 144, 147, 151, 154, 188, 225, 226,
227
Intelligentsia 9, 44, 61, 62, 65, 69, 70,
71, 73, 75, 78, 79, 88, 92, 105, 109,
110, 112, 114, 115, 118, 122, 130, 131,
134, 139, 142, 171, 175, 204
Investment 13, 57, 81, 94, 100–102,
160, 161, 169, 192, 196, 201, 207, 222
January (1863) Uprising 38, 42–51,
56, 58
Jewish communities 3, 67, 89, 90, 123,
125, 127
Jewish craftsmen and
entrepreneurs 58, 102
Jewish population 58, 122
Jewish refugees 125
Jews 58, 65, 67, 83, 119, 123, 129
Kalinowski, K. 44, 46, 53
Kazulin, A. 217, 218
Kebich, V. 158, 170–174, 177–181,
183, 189
KGB 174, 187, 218
Knorin, W. 79, 80, 82
Kolas, J. 64, 66
Kosciuszko, T. 47
KPZB 104–107, 110–112
Kresy Wschodnie 97, 101–104,
108–115, 119, 129
Kube, W. 123, 132, 133
Kupala, J. 64, 66
Kurapaty 104, 150–152, 173
Lastouski, V. 65, 75–77, 82, 88–90, 113
Latvia 15, 17–20, 25, 85, 137, 138, 151,
153–155, 159–161, 164, 165, 168, 177,
193
Lithuania 15, 17–20, 25, 28, 29, 32, 36,
37, 44, 54, 69, 70, 73, 85, 118, 123,
138, 151, 153–155, 159–161, 164, 165,
168, 174, 177
Lukashenka, A. 2, 24, 160, 163,
171–174, 176–184, 186–189, 192, 195,
201–203, 209–220, 224, 225, 229
Lutskevich, A. 64, 69, 72, 111, 118
Lutskevich, I. 64, 75
Lyabedzka, A. 216
Mickiewicz, A. 37, 62
Milinkevich, A. 217–219
Minsk 2–4, 23, 36, 38, 47, 49, 58, 60,
62, 63, 67, 69, 71–73, 77, 80–82, 89,
90, 93, 94, 98, 116, 134–138, 142, 143,
147, 148, 150, 151, 154, 157, 158, 216,
218, 219
Modernity 1, 4, 9, 13, 16, 25, 34, 40,
51, 56, 96, 141–143, 167, 226
Modernization 8, 9, 61, 141, 196, 222
Mogilev 2, 23, 26, 38, 47, 49, 56, 58,
83, 124
Monetary policy 200, 206
Moscow 4, 25, 27, 30, 39, 40, 51, 56,
77, 78, 80, 82, 83, 90, 93, 94, 95, 104,
106, 125, 126, 128, 130, 139, 144, 146,
147, 157, 175, 183, 190, 195, 209, 214,
225
Nasha Niva 63–67, 69, 71, 74, 78, 79,
82, 88, 89, 105, 118, 226, 227
National Communists 79–83, 86, 90,
137, 143
Nationalism 16, 37, 44, 51, 61, 63, 66,
67, 69, 71, 79, 82, 88, 89, 91, 92, 94,
104, 110, 113, 128, 134, 139, 142, 149,
150, 151, 175, 178, 193, 226, 227
Nation-state 9, 13, 16–18, 21, 25, 72,
97, 120, 155, 202, 212, 226, 227
Nazi (National-Socialist) Germany 24,
115, 117, 118, 122, 130
NKVD 94, 108, 122, 123, 150
Nobility 7, 26–29, 32, 33, 35, 37, 38,
44, 45, 51, 64
North-Western Territory 27, 35, 37,
39, 44, 46–48, 50, 53, 60, 64
Oil, trade in 12, 20, 141, 146, 166, 190,
195, 210, 213, 220–223
Opposition, democratic 2, 180, 181,
184–186, 213–215
Orthodox Church 1, 3, 41, 58, 108
Pale of settlement 57
Partitions of Poland 34, 41
 index
Pazniak, Z. 150–152, 154, 171–178,
180, 184, 214, 234
Pilsudski, J. 37, 42, 73, 74, 90, 97, 98,
109, 228
Pinsk 2, 123
Poland 1, 2, 4, 5, 8, 10, 13–15, 24,
26–31, 33, 34, 36–38, 40–46, 49, 50,
62, 68, 69, 73–77, 85, 90, 92, 94–116,
118–120, 129, 131, 134, 135, 142, 172,
178, 192, 225–228
Poles 2, 8, 9, 29, 34, 37–39, 43, 44, 49,
51, 53–55, 59, 60, 65, 67–69, 75, 76,
83, 86, 98, 115, 116, 119, 120, 130,
135
Polonization 29, 31, 33, 40, 55, 58
Putin, V. 210–212, 214, 215, 219
Radziwills 30, 31, 35, 225
Rak-Mikhailouski, S. 89, 92, 106, 107
Referendum: of 1995 183, 184;
of 1996 185–187, 202, 214, 215;
of 2004 215, 216
Riga, the treaty of 77, 98, 99, 100
Roman Catholic Church 1, 53, 108,
230
Russia 1, 2, 4, 5, 8, 9, 11–15, 17, 20,
21, 24–32, 34, 39, 40, 42, 43, 52, 54,
55, 60, 69, 72, 75, 77, 80, 81, 93, 94,
100, 104, 106, 107, 109, 122, 124, 128,
147, 158, 161, 166, 167, 170, 171,
173, 174, 176, 177, 183, 185, 188–197,
200–216, 219–224, 228, 229
Russian Empire 3, 8, 15, 19, 27, 34, 37,
39–42, 50, 55–57, 69, 81, 83–85, 88,
99, 152, 230
Semashko, I. 41
Serakowski, Z. 47
Shushkevich, S. 158, 171, 172, 177–180
239
Soviet Union 4, 10, 11, 15, 17, 19–21,
24, 69, 78, 88–97, 99, 104, 106, 107,
108, 110, 114–119, 122, 126, 130, 134,
136, 138, 139–141, 144–146, 148, 149,
152, 155–157, 163–165, 167, 170, 173,
175, 188, 190, 193, 198, 211, 212, 227,
228
Stalin, I. 81, 84, 85, 91, 99, 105, 128,
130, 151, 188, 228
Subsidies 78, 90, 101, 103, 111, 167,
173, 198, 219, 223, 229
Tarashkevich, B. 89, 93, 105, 106, 107
Traugutt, R. 37, 45, 47
Tsvikevich, A. 57, 58, 61, 65, 75, 89, 90
Uniate Church 39–42, 56, 142
Union of Brest 39, 40
Union of Lublin 28, 29
United Civic Party 11, 184, 192
Urbanization 10, 57, 136, 138, 228
Viachorka, V. 151, 214, 217
Vilnia 69, 82, 90, 118
Vilnius 69, 118, 135, 154, 159
Vilno 38, 44, 45, 47, 48, 54, 56, 58, 63,
67, 69, 70, 72, 75
Vitebsk 2, 23, 26, 38, 47, 49, 58, 80, 82,
83, 98, 124, 135
Wilno 30, 36, 69, 82, 96, 102, 109, 110,
118, 129, 130, 131, 225, 227
Yeltsin, B. 158, 159, 179, 193, 195, 201,
209–211
Zhylunovich, Z. 73, 79, 80, 88, 90
Zmahanne 108