The Rise and Fall of Belarusian Nationalism, 1906–1931 by Per Anders Rudling (review)

In his award-winning study, Per Rudling opines that the "story of Belarusian nationalism is an unusual, even unlikely story, and one hardly ideal for the purpose of modern myths of national consolidation" (317). The poverty and ignorance of the Belarusian peasant were the greatest obstacles to the development of national consciousness, he insists, not tsarist repression and censorship. Promoters of nationalism relied on access to and dissemination of the printed word, but the low rate of literacy among Belarusians impeded the task of the small circle of national elites. It was less that the Belarusian villagers were "deaf" to the siren call of nationalism, they simply did not hear at all.

Rudling's account is valuable because of its long-range concern, particularly its detailed discussion of the heady years of civil war. Communist activists in Minsk and beyond rejected the nationalizing impulse of Belarusian elites during this period, but they still recognized a Belarusian territorial unit and sponsored its union with a short-lived Lithuanian Soviet state in order to stave off the territorial ambitions of Józef Piłsudski and the recently declared Second Polish Republic. Piłsudski also embraced the idea of a Belarusian state, but in federation with Poland and Ukraine. Polish support for the Belarusian national movement, premised on an alliance to unify pre-1772 Polish territory, was strategic and provisional. The Poles and Soviets shared a skepticism of the reality of the Belarusian nation. However, competition over this territory motivated Moscow's support for the creation of a Belarusian Soviet Socialist Republic (BSSR) as a constituent part of the Soviet Union.

The BSSR drew from the legacy of the Belarusian People's Republic (BNR), whose ousted leadership sought refuge in Lithuanian and Polish military support. But, with the passage of time, other BNR adherents came to admire the BSSR's continued support for and amplification of Belarusian national culture. Rudling distinguishes between the Soviet policy of korenizatsiia (indigenization), the promotion of non-Russian cadres throughout the country, and Belarusization. This distinction is particularly important in the case of Belarus because of its ethnically diverse population and the state's parallel advancement of Yiddish and Polish linguistic cultures, although all these policies went hand in hand. Rudling argues that key figures involved in Belarusization, such as the first president of the Belarusian Academy of Sciences, Usevalad Ihnatouski, prioritized national lessons: "The political rhetoric behind mobilization in the republic was based more on nationalism than on communism" (239). It is unclear, however, why promotion of Belarusian national culture was antithetical to the building of socialism. Arguably, for those involved in these campaigns this was not the case. Furthermore, what did resistance to Belarusization mean? Rudling cites a party report on a group of peasants who objected to the policy because "they only spoke Russian," when in fact "they were explaining themselves in fluent Belorussian [Belarusian]"(233). The privileging of Russian and rejection of a Belarusian identity in a borderland like the BSSR required a particular intentionality. Similarly, although Belarusization was coerced, artificial, and "tactical" to some, those who enabled and benefitted from it made a conscious decision to align.

Officially, the BSSR recognized the equal standing of Belarusian, Yiddish, Polish, and Russian. Furthermore, whether they wanted to or not, BSSR citizens had to define themselves in national terms. Rudling argues that this sort of quadralingualism created a "fractured and unwieldy" society. (162) National minorities, particularly religious Jews, demonstrated an aversion to this sort of national identification, opposing the enrollment of their children in "ethnic" (Yiddish) schools, while other Jews (and Poles) associated use of the Russian language with modernization and social mobility. But this was not universally the case. As Elissa Bemporad has demonstrated, many Belarusian Jews cultivated a vibrant Yiddish-speaking culture in the capital of Minsk. Some proportion of Jews and Poles clearly celebrated the Soviet patronage of national cultures. Promotion of Russian alone would...