Belarus
Belarus
Names in other languages
Latin: Ruthenia Alba, Russia Alba; English: Belarus, obsolete: Byelorussia, Belorussia; French: Biélorussie, Bélarus; Spanish: Bielorrusia, Belarús
Etymology
The name of the country is composed of the elements ‘bela-’ ( Slavic for ‘white’) and ‘Rus’ ’ (the name of the medieval East Slavic realm). There are various theories regarding both the etymology of the word ‘Rus’and the historical significance of ‘bela-’ in this context. The prevailing view is that ‘Rus’can be derived from the Old Finnish ‘rūōtsi’ ( ‘the rowers’) , a term for the Scandinavian Varangians, and that ‘bela-’ forms part of a system for designating cardinal directions using colours (cf. also Black Rus’ or Red Rus’/Rotreußen), with the colour white referring to the west of the former Kievan Rus’.[1]
Controversy surrounding the country’s name
The German terms ‘Weißrussland’, ‘Weißrussen’, ‘weißrussisch’ etc. have recently come under increasing criticism. It is argued that these terms suggest a political, cultural and linguistic dependence of the country and its inhabitants on Russia. Supporters of this view advocate using the name ‘Belarus’ for the country, and in some cases also spellings such as ‘Belarusians’ and ‘Belarusian’, in order to create greater distance from terms such as ‘Russians’, ‘Russian’, etc. Opponents counter that the word element ‘Weiß-’ is merely a translation of the semantic component ‘bela- ’. Spellings such as ‘Belarusen’ and ‘Belarusisch’ instead of ‘-russen’, ‘-russisch’ would, moreover, raise the problem that, according to the rules of the German language, the orthographic change would also have to entail a change in the established pronunciation, namely from a voiceless to a voiced ‘s’. Thirdly, it is argued that the country name‘Russia’and its derivatives also contain an etymological link to the Rus’. If, therefore, the country name ‘Belarus’ is rejected, then, by the same token, the name‘Russia’must also be called into question. This is because it presents modern-day Russia as the sole semantically ‘unmarked’ successor to the medieval Rus’.
Similar controversies regarding the naming or spelling of the country, its inhabitants and the national language have arisen in relation to their rendering in other languages, including Russian, English and Swedish.
Topography
The territory of Belarus is flat, apart from the Belarusian Ridge, which runs through the country from the west-south-west to the east-north-east. The highest point is Dzerzhinsky Hill (Belarusian: Dzjaržynskaja hara, Russian: Gora Dzerzhinskaya), which stands 346 metres above sea level and is situated about 30 kilometres west of Minsk. The northern part of the country is characterised by a gently undulating landscape with numerous lakes, whilst the south is characterised by the Polesie marshes (Belarusian: Palesse; Russian: Poles’e; Polish : Polesie; Ukrainian : Polissja), which lies in the border region between Belarus, Ukraine, Poland and Russia.
Historical Geography
During the era of Kievan Rus’, several principalities existed within the territory that is now Belarus. The most politically significant of these, the Principality of Polack (Belarusian: Polack, Russian: Polock), encompassed large parts of what are now the northern and central regions of the country, as well as a smaller part of what is now south-eastern Latvia. Following the collapse of Rus’ as a result of bloody succession struggles and the so-called Mongol invasion, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania began to take shape from the 13th century onwards. At its greatest extent in the mid-15th century, it stretched roughly from present-day Lithuania in the north-west to the Ukrainian steppes in the south-east, and from the area around Brest (Belarusian: Brėst or Beras’ce; Russian: Brest) in the west to the regions around Smolensk (Russian: Smolensk) and Bryansk (Russian: Bryansk) in the east. The status of present-day Belarus as part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania remained unchanged even after the Polish–Lithuanian Personal Union of 1569. As a result of the Partitions of Poland–Lithuania (1772–1795), the Belarusian territories became part of the Russian Empire, and until 1912 were grouped together with Lithuanian territories in the North-Western Region (Russian: Severo-zapadnyj kraj).
Following the events of the First World War, the western regions of what is now Belarus became part of the German-occupied territoryknown as ‘Ober Ost’, which was administered by the military. Following the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk on 3 March 1918 and the subsequent German occupation of the whole of Belarus west of the Dnieper (Belarusian: Dnjapro, Russian: Dnepr), the Belarusian nationalist movement established the Belarusian People’s Republic (Belarusian: Belaruskaja Narodnaja Rėspublika, BNR) was proclaimed by nationalist Belarusians, and a territory was claimed that stretched from Białystok to Bryansk in an east-west direction, and from Dünaburg/Daugavpils to the Pripyat Marshes in a north-south direction. In December 1918, German troops withdrew from Belarus, and under the protection of the advancing Red Army, the Belarusian Socialist Soviet Republic (Belarusian: Belaruskaja Saveckaja Sacyjalistyčnaja Rėspublika; Russian: Belorusskaja Sovetskaja Socialističeskaja Respublika, BSSR) was proclaimed at the turn of the year 1918–1919, its territory roughly corresponding to the territorial claims of the BNR. Owing to military setbacks in the war with Poland and Lithuania, the Bolsheviks merged the BSSR with the Lithuanian Soviet Republic in February 1919 to form the Lithuanian-Belarusian Socialist Soviet Republic (Lithuanian: Lietuvos-Baltarusijos Tarybinė Socialistinė Respublika, Belarusian: Litoŭska-Belaruskaja Saveckaja Sacyjalistyčnaja Rėspublika, Russian:Litovsko- Belorusskaja Sovetskaja Socialističeskaja Respublika, LitBel). However, due to Poland’s military successes, LitBel lasted for only about five months, and it was not until the Treaty of Riga/Rīga in March 1921 that the borders of Soviet Belarus were formally established. Through two Central Committee resolutions of 1924 and 1926, territories were initially annexed to the BSSR in the north-east and east, and subsequently in the south-east of the present-day national territory. Following the invasion of eastern Poland by Soviet troops in September 1939 as a result of the Hitler–Stalin Pact, the western Belarusian territories, which had previously been part of the Polish state, were incorporated into the BSSR. Following the Wehrmacht’s invasion of the BSSR in June 1941, the General Commissariat of White Ruthenia was established in September of that year under German occupation. Together with the General Commissariats of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, it formed part of the Reich Commissariat Ostland.
The post-war order agreed upon by the Allies was based, for the demarcation of the Polish-Soviet border, on the Curzon Line, which had already been announced by the Western Allies in 1919. The territory of the Republic of Belarus, which has been independent since 1991, corresponds to the territory of the BSSR following the Second World War.
The Age of Rus’
The Principality of Polack is regarded as the political centre of power in what is now Belarus during the Early and High Middle Ages; alongside it, there were other, smaller principalities.
Around the middle of the 9th century, the territories that are now part of Belarus became embroiled in the conflicts between the Northern Alliance, led by Veliky Novgorod, and the Southern Alliance, led by Kyiv, within the realm of Rus’. Polack’s role in this rivalry is highlighted by an account in the Nestor Chronicle for the year 980: At that time, both Prince Vladimir of Novgorod (c. 960–1015) and Prince Yaropolk of Kyiv (c. 958–980) are said to have sought the hand of Rahneda (Russian: Rogneda, c. 962–c. 1002). According to the chronicle, Rahneda’s decision in favour of Yaropolk led Vladimir to seize Polack by force, kill the local prince Rahvalod (Russian: Rogvolod, d. c. 978) and force Rahneda to become his wife.
After Vladimir had subjugated Kyiv, he was baptised in 988 according to the Byzantine rite. In the period that followed, Orthodoxy spread, together with Church Slavonic literature, into what is now Belarus. Following Vladimir’s death, decades of bloody struggles over the succession to the throne in Kyiv ensued, during which Polack was able to maintain a high degree of autonomy and expand his territory.
At the turn of the 12th to the 13th century, the influence of German merchants grew in the Principality of Polack, and the missionary activities of the Order of the Sword Brothers began; from 1237, this order became part of the Teutonic Order. Furthermore, the ongoing dynastic struggles between the princes of Rus’ for the throne in Kyiv, which led to the gradual erosion of Rus’, were significant for the subsequent development of what is now Belarus. Added to this was the so-called Mongol invasion, with the conquest of Kyiv (1237–1240), from which the territories of present-day Belarus were, however, largely spared.
The Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth
Following the collapse of Rus’, the territories that are now part of Belarus became part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania–Rus’–Samogitia (usually referred to simply as the Grand Duchy of Lithuania). This confederation of states, initially dominated by a Baltic but increasingly Slavised ruling class, served not least to defend against common enemies, in particular the German Orderand the Tatars. Apart from the core Lithuanian territories, the majority of the population, following extensive territorial gains, increasingly consisted of Eastern Slavs of the Orthodox faith. With the aim of pooling foreign policy and military resources, the Union of Krėva (1385), a personal union was established between Poland and Lithuania, in the course of which the Lithuanian Grand Duke Jogaila (before 1362–1434) converted to the Roman Catholic faith, married the Polish heiress to the throne, Hedwig of Anjou (Polish: Jadwiga Andegaweńska, 1373–1399) and ascended the Polish throne as Władysław II Jagiełło. As a result of this alliance, a combined Polish–Lithuanian force defeated the army of the German Order at the Battle of Tannenberg (Grunwald) in 1410. In the period that followed, the Grand Duchy of Moscow became the Grand Duchy of Lithuania’s most significant adversary, claiming sovereignty over all the territories of the former Kievan Rus’ (‘Union of Russian Lands’).
Moscow’s military successes in the Livonian War (1558–1583) led to an even closer alliance between Poland and Lithuania, culminating in the Union of Lublin (1569). This transformed the previously existing personal union into a real union, the‘Republic of Both Nations’(Rzeczpospolita Obojga Narodów), with a joint Sejm for both parts of the realm and a common foreign policy.
Another significant development from the mid-16th century onwards was the spread of the Reformation into what is now Belarus, initially primarily Lutheranism, then Calvinism. The Reformation’s programme of turning towards the language of the ‘people’ also found resonance amongst the Orthodox upper classes of Lithuania and led to an ever-wider use of the autochthonous Ruthenian (‘Old Belarusian’) in official contexts. This development came to an end due to several factors, including the rapprochement between sections of the Roman Catholic and Orthodox clergy resulting from the Union of Brest (1596), the Counter-Reformation with its educational programme similar to that of Protestantism, and the appeal of Polish aristocratic culture within the unified state. Consequently, there was a largely voluntary Polonisation of large sections of the East Slavic elites, as well as the replacement of Ruthenian by Polish in official language use.
Russian Empire
As a result, first of the Partitions of Poland-Lithuania (1772, 1793 and 1795), and then of the reorganisation of Europe decided upon at the Congress of Vienna (1815) following Napoleon’s defeat, the territories that are now part of Belarus came to lie entirely within the Russian Empire. Under the fairly liberal educational and cultural policies of Alexander I (Aleksandr I, 1777–1825), Polish dominance in culture and education initially persisted, as evidenced, for example, by the re-establishment of the University of Vilnius (1803) and the expansion of the network of Polish schools. This policy came to an end as a result of the uprising of 1830–31, which aimed to restore the independence of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. Residents of what are now Belarusian territories fought partly on the side of the insurgents and partly for the Russian military. A decisive event in religious terms was the forced reintegration of the Uniate Church into the Orthodox Church (1839).
In 1863, another uprising against the Russian authorities took place. Perceived by St Petersburg/Leningrad as a Polish national uprising, the revolt led to the removal of Poles from the administration of the Belarusian-Lithuanian north-western region of Russia (Severo-zapadnyj kraj).
Russian aristocratic culture played a decisive role in the assimilation of the elites in what are now the Belarusian territories into Russian culture; for the upper classes, it was just as attractive as Polish aristocratic culture had been prior to the Partitions of Poland-Lithuania. The data from the first census of the Russian Empire, conducted in 1897, show the following proportions of responses regarding mother tongue for the combined territories of Belarus and Lithuania, from which the nationality of the respondents was inferred:[2]
| Belarusian | 54.12% |
| Yiddish | 14.05% |
| Lithuanian (8.59 per cent) or Schemaitic (4.43 per cent) | 13.02% |
| Russian | 5.62% |
| Polish | 5.60% |
| German | 0.49% |
Furthermore, the groups defined by their native language were unevenly distributed between urban and rural areas: Whilst only 2.56 per cent of the urban population of Belarus and Lithuania were among those respondents who named Belarusian as their mother tongue, the proportion of the urban population speaking Polish was 26.79 per cent, for Russian 37.32 per cent and for Yiddish 43.54 per cent. For German, the proportion of the urban population was 36.65 per cent.
The period from the bourgeois revolution in the Russian Empire in 1905 to the First World War is regarded as a phase of the ‘First Revival’ of the Belarusian language and culture,[3] as the liberalisation measures introduced from 1906 onwards created a space for the Belarusian national movement to flourish and led to increased publishing activity amongst the Belarusian-oriented intelligentsia, particularly in the newspaper *Naša Niva* ( ‘Our Field’), published in Vilnius from 1906 to 1915.
The Soviet era, the Second Polish Republic and the Second World War
Following the First World War, the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic (BSSR) was founded in 1919; Western Byelorussia was ceded to the re-established Polish state under the Polish–Soviet Peace Treaty of Riga (1921). Politics in the BSSR during the 1920s was characterised by ‘indigenisation’ (Russian: korenizacija), that is, the endeavour to place members of the titular nation in leadership positions within the state and the party, as well as linguistic and cultural ‘Belarusianisation’. With the change in the party line in the early 1930s and the campaign to combat ‘local nationalisms’, a policy of repression against the Belarusian intelligentsia began, and during the ‘Great Terror’ from 1939 to 1941, numerous Belarusians were also deported to Siberia and the Far East.
Poland’s policy towards ‘its’ Belarusian minority was characterised by an attempt to align ethnic boundaries with those of the state through Polonisation in the education system and the settlement of Polish war veterans in the eastern territories of the state (Polish: Kresy Wschodnie).
Under German occupation during the Second World War, the Nazis killed approximately 1.6 million of the originally around nine million inhabitants of the Belarusian territories in operations behind the front lines; of these, around 700,000 were prisoners of war, 500,000 Jews and 320,000 alleged partisans.[4]
Soviet republic after 1945
The post-war order confirmed the incorporation of Western Belarus into the BSSR, which had already taken place in September 1939 following Poland’s military defeat and the secret additional protocol to the Hitler–Stalin Pact. In the decades that followed, the Communist Party (CP) promoted, on the one hand, the individual development of the socialist nations, but, on the other, the goal of bringing the Soviet peoples closer together and merging them under Russian leadership. In Belarus, this went hand in hand with industrialisation and urbanisation, which, whilst making Belarusians the dominant nationality in the cities for the first time, also created pressure to conform to Russian in the Party, the administration and industry due to the influx of Russian-speaking managerial cadres.
Not least as a result of the Chernobyl/Čornobyl’ nuclear disaster in 1986, which affected Belarus most severely, and the discovery of mass graves from the Stalin era in Kurapaty (Russian: Kuropaty) near Minsk in 1988, a national and anti-communist movement (Belarusian Popular Front, Belaruski Narodny Front, BNF) took shape in the BSSR; however, it remained weaker than, for example, in the Baltic states and Ukraine. However, the failed coup attempt by conservative Communist Party officials in Moscow (19–21 August 1991) nevertheless led, in Belarus too, to the erosion of the old party leadership’s power and to state independence (25 August 1991: Declaration of Independence of the Republic of Belarus, 3 December 1991: Dissolution of the Soviet Union).
Independence since 1991
The early years of Belarusian independence were characterised not least by an attempt at linguistic and cultural ‘Belarusianisation’ and are therefore often referred to as a phase of the ‘Second Renaissance’ of the Belarusian language and culture. However, particularly within the education system – which had previously been dominated by the Russian language for decades – there was strong resistance to this policy, which was perceived as being imposed; its legal basis was a language law passed during the Soviet era (1990), which had declared Belarusian to be the sole official language.
With the promise of ending ‘forced Belarusianisation’ and tackling corruption within the state apparatus, Alexander Lukashenko (Belarusian: Aljaksandr Lukašėnka, Russian: Aleksandr Lukašenko, born 1954) won the election as Belarus’s first President (1994) and has been the country’s dominant political figure ever since. In a controversial referendum in 1995, Russian was introduced as a second official language and thus effectively confirmed as the dominant language of public life. Since Lukashenko took office, the power struggle with parliament has intensified, culminating in 1996 in a constitutional referendum marred by manipulation and procedural irregularities, which led to the expansion of the president’s powers and the installation of a new parliament (‘cold coup’). Apart from the establishment of an authoritarian presidential system and the restriction of democratic civil rights, Belarus under Lukashenko was characterised in the years that followed by an alignment with Russia, which, however, has become less close since the mid-2000s due to recurring economic conflicts and, since 2014, as a result of Lukashenko’s reluctance to align with Russia’s policy on Ukraine.
Data on the national and linguistic situation in the country is provided by the most recent census from 2009. The three largest ethnic groups in terms of numbers are Belarusians (83.7 per cent of the total population), Russians (8.3 per cent) and Poles (3.1 per cent). 53.2 per cent of the total population identified Belarusian as their mother tongue, whilst 41.5 per cent identified Russian. By contrast, 23.4 per cent cited Belarusian and 70.2 per cent cited Russian as the language usually spoken at home.[5] However, the data on the linguistic situation cannot be regarded as reliable, as, on the one hand, they do not take into account the widespread phenomenon of Belarusian-Russian mixed language use and, on the other hand, respondents were only allowed to give a single answer.[6]
On the history of the Germans in present-day Belarus
The history of German settlement in what is now Belarus can be traced back to the early 14th century, when missionaries, traders, craftsmen and knights of German origin settled in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. In the second half of the 16th century, the first compact rural settlements of Germans emerged in the west of present-day Belarus. The proportion of the rural population of German origin increased in the period that followed as a result of further land leases, but remained low overall. From the end of the 19th century, German colonists from Volhynia began to settle in the south of present-day Belarus.
In the wake of the First World War and wartime propaganda, most people of German descent were forced to leave their settlements and only a few returned after the October Revolution. In the 1920s and 1930s, there were two German national communities in the BSSR. At the start of the Second World War, around 8,500 Germans were living in the Soviet part of what is now Belarus. Some of them were deported to Kazakhstan in 1941. Most of the remaining Germans were resettled in 1943 to the German Reich or to the German-occupied Polish territories.
After the Second World War, people of German descent were also among those migrating from other Soviet republics to the BSSR. In the wake of political liberalisation and, ultimately, the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the Germans of Belarus organised themselves into the nationwide association ‘Wiedergeburt’. German cultural centres sprang up in several Belarusian towns, although by 2017 only one – in the town of Babrujsk (Russian: Bobrujsk) – was still active. The number of Germans in Belarus fell from 4,805 to 2,474 between the 1999 and 2009 censuses.[7]
4. Culture of memory and remembrance
The culture of memory and remembrance in Belarus oscillates between the poles of a Russophile-imperial and a Belarusian-national perspective on commemoration, each with its own distinct historical emphases and interpretations. Under President Lukashenko, the state’s policy on remembrance has for a long time been quite clearly aligned with the Russophile-imperial tradition. However, due to the not entirely conflict-free relationship with Russia in recent years, as well as the increasing ageing of Lukashenko’s support base, it has in recent times sought to integrate certain elements of the Belarusian-nationalist view of history into its narrative.
Nationally oriented popular historiography emphasises the autonomy of the principalities on what is now Belarusian territory, particularly the Principality of Polack, whilst Russian-oriented historiography highlights the ties to Kievan Rus’ and thus the early unity of Belarusians, Russians and Ukrainians. The era of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania is romanticised as a ‘Golden Age’ in Belarusian national collective memory, with reference to the supposedly Belarusian character of the state and the official and chancery language used within it.
According to the Belarusian national narrative, the incorporation of what is now Belarusian territory into the Russian Empire following the Partitions of Poland–Lithuania represented an externally imposed severance of the organically developed cultural ties between Belarusians and Western Europe. From a ‘pro-Russian’ perspective, however, 1795 was the year of the reunification of the Belarusians with the Russians, having previously been ‘artificially’ separated by Polish and Roman Catholic expansion.
Of particular significance for nationally oriented Belarusian historiography is the Belarusian People’s Republic (BNR), which existed for only a few months under German protectorate in 1918, as it represented the first attempt to establish a Belarusian nation-state. In the government-aligned historical narrative, on the other hand, particular emphasis is placed on the resistance of the pro-Soviet faction of the Belarusian partisans against Nazi rule, as well as the victory in the ‘Great Patriotic War’, both of which are prominently honoured in the official culture of remembrance.
Bibliography
- Nelly Bekus: Struggle over Identity. The official and the alternative ‘Belarusianness’. Budapest et al., 2010.
- Dietrich Beyrau, Rainer Lindner (eds.): Handbook of the History of Belarus. Göttingen 2001.
- Thomas M. Bohn, Victor Shadurski (eds.): A Blank Spot in Europe. The Imagination of Belarus as a Contact Zone between East and West. Bielefeld 2011 (Histoire 29).
- Thomas M. Bohn, Rayk Einax, Julian Mühlbauer (eds.): Colourful Spots in Belarus. Places of Remembrance between the Polish–Lithuanian Union and the Russian–Soviet Empire. Wiesbaden 2013.
- Bernhard Chiari: Everyday Life Behind the Front – Occupation, Collaboration and Resistance in Belarus 1941–1944. Düsseldorf 1998.
- Mark Brüggemann: The Belarusian and Russian Languages in Relation to Belarusian Society and the Nation: Ideological and Programmatic Standpoints of Political Actors and Intellectuals 1994–2010. Oldenburg 2014.
- Christian Gerlach: Calculated Murders: German Economic and Extermination Policy in Belarus 1941 to 1944. Hamburg 1998.
- Bert Hoppe, Imke Hansen, Martin Holler (eds.): The Persecution and Murder of European Jews by Nazi Germany 1933–1945, Volume 8: The Soviet Union and Annexed Territories, Part 2: General Commissariat of White Ruthenia and Reich Commissariat of Ukraine. Berlin 2015.
- Rainer Lindner: Historians and Power. Nation-building and the Politics of History in Belarus in the 19th and 20th Centuries. Munich 1999 (Ordnungssysteme 5).
- Mathias Niendorf: The Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Studies on Nation-Building in the Early Modern Period (1569–1795). Wiesbaden 2006.
- Per Anders Rudling: The Rise and Fall of Belarusian Nationalism, 1906–1931. Pittsburgh (Pitts Series in Russian and East European Studies).
- Timothy Snyder: The Reconstruction of Nations. Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus, 1569–1999. New Haven, London 2003.
Web links
- http://www.laender-analysen.de/belarus/ (Belarus analyses by the Centre for Eastern European Studies at the University of Bremen and other specialist institutions on the country’s political, economic and social development, since May 2011, published every two months as a PDF).
- www.memorialmuseums.org/laender/view/29/Wei%C3%9Frussland (Memorial portal of the foundation ‘Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe’ on places of remembrance in Belarus).
Notes
[1] See Witold Mańczak: ‘Biała, Czarna i Czerwona Ruś’ [White, Black and Red Rus’]. In: International Journal of Slavic Linguistics and Poetics 19 (1975), pp. 32–39, here pp. 35–39. The use of colours to denote cardinal directions is found in Turkic languages. Following the collapse of Kievan Rus’, the Tatars are said to have referred to the western part of the former Rus’—which became part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania—as White Rus’. Red Rus’ was the southern part of Rus’, which was incorporated into the Kingdom of Poland, whilst Black Rus’ was the northern part, which belonged to the domain of the Golden Horde (the ‘Muscovite state’).
[2] For an awareness of the issue (which was certainly also a contemporary concern) regarding the relationship between mother tongue and nationality, see Henning Bauer, Andreas Kappeler, Brigitte Roth (eds.): The Nationalities of the Russian Empire in the 1897 Census. Part A: Source-Critical Documentation and Data Handbook. Stuttgart 1991, pp. 144–151. In this study, only the figures for the language groups with the highest proportions are given, as well as – irrespective of their numerical ranking – the group of respondents who stated German as their mother tongue. Figures according to Henning Bauer, Andreas Kappeler, Brigitte Roth (eds.): The Nationalities of the Russian Empire in the 1897 Census. Part B: Selected Data on the Socio-Ethnic Structure of the Russian Empire – Initial Analyses of the Cologne NFR Database. Stuttgart 1991, pp. 215ff.
[3] From a linguistic perspective, the designation ‘First Revival’ draws on the ‘lost’ chancery language of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, often referred to as ‘Old Belarusian’. From a linguistic perspective, however, the modern written Belarusian language is less a continuation of the old linguistic form than a new creation based on the Belarusian dialects.
[4] Timothy Snyder: *Bloodlands*. Munich 2010, p. 259.
[5] Data from Belstat – Nacional’nyj statističeskij komitet Respubliki Belarus’ [National Statistical Committee of the Republic of Belarus]: www.belstat.gov.by/ (accessed 19 September 2018).
[6] In particular, the figures for Belarusian are to be regarded as significantly inflated; cf. Gerd Hentschel, Bernhard Kittel: ‘Belarusian Trilingualism? On the linguistic situation in Belarus based on Belarusians’ assessments of the prevalence of ‘their languages’ in the country. In: Wiener Slawistischer Almanach 67 (2011), pp. 107–135, here p. 134.
[7] Federal Ministry of the Interior: German Minorities Introduce Themselves. 2nd, revised edition, Berlin 2017, p. 23. 3rd edition online: www.bmi.bund.de/SharedDocs/downloads/DE/publikationen/themen/heimat-integration/nationale-minderheiten/deutsche-minderheiten-stellen-sich-vor.html (accessed 19 August 2021).
Citation
Mark Brüggemann: Belarus. In: Online Encyclopaedia on the Culture and History of Germans in Eastern Europe, 2019. URL: ome-lexikon.uni-oldenburg.de/p32644 (as at 25 August 2020).
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