This study examines the rise and fall of the modern Belarusian national movement during the quarter century between 1906, the year when the first Belarusian paper appeared, until its demise around 1931, as a result of political repression in the Soviet Union and Poland. While the first steps towards a modern, ethnic definition of the nation, were taken around the turn of the century era, the February Revolution and the German occupation energized the national movement. The 1920s Soviet nationalities policies brought about a Belarusian cultural renaissance, but also highlighted the difficulties of introducing new concepts of nationality in a relatively underdeveloped region. The results of these experimental policies were not what Moscow had expected. In the BSSR the local population often misunderstood the Soviet nationalities policies, resisting the new and unknown taxonomies. While the Belarusization had strengthened the nationally conscious elites in the republic, it failed to generate popular support for Soviet rule among the Belarusian peasantry. In Western Belarus, which was under Polish rule from 1921 to 1939, the peasantry was often alienated from the nationalist intelligentsia. After Pilsudski's coup d'etat established authoritarian rule in Poland in 1926, the Soviet government again became concerned about the threat of a Polish invasion. After a brief experimentation with liberalization of its nationalities policies, the Pilsudski's regime stepped up the efforts to Polonize Western Belarus. At the same time, from 1927 it suppressed, jailed and deported to the Soviet Union many leading Belarusian activists, accusing them for irredentism and pro-Soviet sentiments. By 1929-1930, opposition to unpopular Soviet polices brought the borderlands of the BSSR close to a popular uprising. This, in turn prompted Moscow to crack down on the national communists in Minsk. The purges of the BSSR elites were more thorough than in any other republic, leading to the demise of 90 per cent of the Belarusian intelligentsia. The national mobilization was interrupted. For the next six decades the Soviet Belarusian nation building was carried out from above, increasingly in the Russian language, and with little autonomy for the government in Minsk.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:CHENGCHI/U000NR55405 |
| Creators | Rudling, Per Anders. |
| Publisher | University of Alberta (Canada). |
| Source Sets | National Chengchi University Libraries |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Rights | Copyright © nccu library on behalf of the copyright holders |
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