All-Russian idea versus Byelarussian nationalism: variants of Byelarussians’ national self-determination

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This article examines the competition of alternative projects of national self-determination of Byelarussians: the all-Russian idea and Byelarussian ethnic nationalism. The situation between Byelarus, Ukraine and Russia is an example of the struggle of integration and separatist tendencies. The integrationist tendency is embodied by the idea of a big Russian nation, which includes all ethnic groups of the Eastern Slavs, and a “big” Russian language as an aggregate of all East Slavic dialects united by a common literary form. The separatist beginning is embodied by the Byelarussian and Ukrainian national projects, advocating for the formation of the Byelarussian and Ukrainian nations with separate languages. The author notes that the disintegrative tendencies were primarily associated with the entry of Western Russia into the zone of Polish-Catholic geopolitical and cultural influence. Revolutionary upheavals were also directly reflected in the solution of the national question in the lands of historical Western Russia. At first, the Bolsheviks encouraged the Byelarussian and Ukrainian national movements, as well as the struggle against the all-Russian concept as a manifestation of Russian “great-power chauvinism”. A policy of “korenization” unfolds, and those who disagree with it are denigrated as “great-power chauvinists. Later, however, there is a transition from the doctrine of “exporting the revolution” to the doctrine of “building socialism in one country”. Soviet patriotism prevailing over national and regional identities was required. The Soviet leadership turned to the meanings and symbols of the Russian Empire (adapting them to the communist ideology), on the geopolitical basis of which the USSR emerged. After the war, the USSR was experiencing de facto national integration of the Eastern Slavs on the all-Russian model. However, this process was largely spontaneous without being conceptualized or recognized. Despite the renunciation of “korenization” in its radical forms, the Soviet authorities have not definitively departed from the “Leninist national policy”. There was a gap between the integration of the Eastern Slavs, which was going on objectively on the all-Russian basis, and the national separateness, even though “brotherly”, declared by the state. The result was a ghettoization of the nationalist humanities intelligentsia, which occupied the cultural and educational infrastructure of Byelarus and Ukraine, but was not in demand by the mainstream population, which was focused on the space of Russian-speaking culture. In the post-Soviet period, the Ukrainian and Byelarussian national projects have received a second chance. The author draws parallels with the situation in Ukraine. The inconsistency and incompleteness of the processes of national self-determination of Byelarussian society, fraught with confl icts in the future, are noted.