История белорусского национализма по Валер Булгаков (review)

336 Рецензии/Reviews Serhy YEKELCHYK Валер Булгаков. История бело- русского национализма. Вильнюс: Институт белорусистики, 2006. 331 с. ISBN: 80-86961-15-Х. This interesting book begins with a strikingly humble, even self-deprecatory , preface. Already on pages 10-13 Valer Bulhakau provides a lengthy catalogue of his book’s shortcomings: unoriginal theory and methodology, interpretations often borrowed from more developed Ukrainian scholarship, insufficient knowledge of recent Belarusian publications , sketchy referencing, stylistic and methodological differences among the three parts of the book, and conceptual inconsistencies that occur in the text. To top it all off, the author states that the first hundred Сходные претензии могут быть предъявлены и к месту, ко- торая заняла в книге статья Шни- рельмана “Цивилизационный подход как национальная идея” (она помещена в первой – мето- дологической – части). В этом тексте, как это всегда бывает с ра- ботами, выходящими из-под пера Шнирельмана, читателей ждет изобилие тщательно проработан- ного эмпирического материала. Нет вопросов и к теоретической составляющей работы. Автор весьма убедительно показывает, что “цивилизационный подход”, получивший широчайшее рас- пространение в постсоветском обществоведении, представляет собой политкорректный эрзац “националистического” подхода. Цивилизации для приверженцев данной методологии – не более чем эвфемизм “этносов” и “на- ций”. Только от взора придирчи- вого читателя вряд ли ускользнет, что эта статья имеет весьма от- даленное отношение к теорети- ко-методологическим аспектам изучения национализма. Есть в книге и мелкие огрехи, возникшие от не совсем про- фессиональной работы корректо- ров. Например, Мирослав Хрох (Miroslav Hroch) транслитериру- ется то как “Хрох”, то как “Грох”, Майкла Хектера (Michael Hechter) не сразу узнаешь в написании “Гехтер”, а Петера Альтера (Peter Alter) – за англизированным име- нем “Олтер”. Московской амери- канистке Татьяне Венедиктовой сменили пол: в сноске на C. 34 она фигурирует как Т. Венедиктов. Все это, разумеется, мелочи, которыми можно было бы и пренебречь, не вкрадись они в книгу, вышедшую в издательстве “Наука”. 337 Ab Imperio, 4/2007 pages or so “will not be interesting to specialists” because they simply summarize modern scholarship on nationalism. The book’s very title is misleading because Bulhakau thinks he is writing about the prehistory of Belarusian nationalism. Most of the sins to which the author confesses are real. I am not sure how many readers will continue reading his book after such a preface, but persistent ones will be rewarded with Bulhakau’s original, perhaps intentionally provocative, ideas in the latter part of the book. However, the question of genre needs to be addressed. Published in Russian in Lithuania, this book by a trained literary historian is based on the author’s dissertation, which was written in Belarusian in Ukraine and defended at the Institute of Philosophy of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences. Bulhakau is also a well-known Belarusian oppositional intellectual and editor of the journal ARCHE. The author claims in the preface that this is a semi-popular work (nauchno-populiarnoe izdanie, P. 12), and his decision to translate the text into Russian seems to indicate his intention to reach out to a wider readership in Belarus and elsewhere. Yet only the first part and the epilogue fit this definition stylistically and in terms of level of complexity. Part 2 and the lengthy conclusion will be a challenging read for people without a serious background in history; Part 3 requires an understanding of some basic concepts from the field of literary analysis. On the positive side, every type of reader – historians, literary scholars, and Russophone Belarusian general readers – will find something of interest in Bulhakau’s book. Part 1 is actually a protracted summary of the state of knowledge on nations and nationalism in general , with special attention to the Russian and Polish cases in the last section. Yet the author’s occasional references to Belarusian nationalism signal his unorthodox vision, which is often formulated in a deliberately striking way.At one point, Bulhakau promises to show that “the first Belarusian nationalist” was in fact the Russian monarchist and imperial patriot of Belarusian birth, Mikhail Koialovich, who is usually seen by historians as a reactionary figure (P. 41). This already indicates to the reader Bulhakau’s intention to revise the traditional history of modern Belarusian national identity usually narrated as the story of the gradual introduction of peasant vernacular into high literature. Bulhakau explains his alternate understanding in Part Two. Early writers in modern Belarusian, such as the famous “founder of the new Belarusian literature,” Vintsent Dunin-Martsinkievich, “did not have a direct effect on Belarusian nationbuilding ” (P. 124). They wrote some 338 Рецензии/Reviews 1 Myroslav Shkandrij. Russia and Ukraine: Literature and the Discourse of Empire from Napoleonic to Postcolonial Times. Montreal and London, 2001; Idem. V obiimakh imperii : Rosiiska i ukrainska literatury novitnoi doby. Kyiv, 2004. works in Belarusian, but they did not have a concept of Belarus as a separate ethnic community and remained politically committed to the Polish cause. Ironically, a new concept of Belarus was developed as the result of the Russian imperial project in the aftermath of the 1863 Polish rebellion, hence the importance of Koialovich. According to Bulhakau, the Belarusian nationality “was invented in order to serve the program of intentional Russification of the masses that had not yet acquired unambiguous national consciousness or developed its ‘false,’or Polish, form” (P. 144). Koialovich was the first to describe Belarusians as an ethnic group separate from the Poles and suffering under Polish domination. His aim was to present Belarusians as part of the greater Russian nation, but the conceptual innovation opened up...