«Fierce, insulting criticism of all things Belarusian. But from the past to the future, it's impossible to bypass the present». Nasievich thoroughly responded to Ales Bely

St. Michael's Church in Svir, a former town in Ashmyany County, Vilna Governorate (now Belarus). Photo: Wikimedia Commons

The dispute began with a post by Ales Bely, in which he categorically refutes the Belarusianness of the Vilna region — which he attributes to almost all of northwestern Belarus. The researcher states that the entire Vilna region throughout its history was Lithuania and never was Belarus until the Russian Empire began to "brand" it as such literally a quarter-century before its demise.

According to him, imperial science and propaganda only began attributing Vilnius and the Vilna region to White Ruthenia in 1890-1891. This was not a natural evolution of the local population's self-awareness but a coordinated action by the education and propaganda system.

Павялічыць

"Ethnographic map of the Belarusian tribe," created by academician and philologist Yevfim Karsky based on almost two decades of field research and published in 1903 in the first volume of his fundamental work "Belarusy." Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Bely attributes a significant role in this process to the renowned philologist Yevfim Karsky, whom he calls a staunch "Western Russian" and a follower of Mikhail Koyalovich. It was Karsky who, in 1903, published an ethnographic map that included the entire Vilna region with Vilnius as part of "Belarus." As Ales Bely writes, this map was later used in 1918 to create "the map of the BNR — a state that did not actually exist."

It should be noted here that a part of the Vilna region was identified as Slavic as early as 1827 by Pyotr Köppen, who used samples of local speech to delineate between Lithuanians and Belarusians. Later, the Belarusian character of most of its counties was confirmed by the research of Roderich Erckert (1863), Alexander Rittich (1875), the results of the All-Russian Population Census (1897), and the one-day census of primary schools in the Russian Empire (1911). Many maps can be found where these territories are called entirely Polish, but such maps are not based on actual scientific research.

Bely writes about "the lie of the founding fathers of Belarus"

Ales Bely speaks particularly sharply and insultingly about the motives of the leaders of the Belarusian national movement at the beginning of the 20th century.

He states that in that same year, 1903, a group of gentry, whose parents still called themselves "Litvins," founded the Belarusian Socialist Hramada and began to fight for the distinctiveness of Belarus precisely within the borders drawn by imperial science as part of the concept of the "triune Russian people."

The Belarusian movement, according to the historian, relied in its argumentation on the developments of imperial propaganda, which asserted that Catholicism and Polish-speaking in the region were the result of Polonization, while historical Lithuania was hushed up.

As Bely writes, a myth was created that everyone here was once "White Ruthenians," and then Poles came and "seduced" a part of the White Ruthenians into Catholicism and Polishness.

The author claims that this was a lie, which the gentry-founders of the movement knew perfectly well, but this lie was convenient for them, and they repeated it to poorly educated people.

Ales Bely himself fundamentally distances himself from such a historical paradigm, classifying himself within a microscopic group that "does not resort to lies" and calls themselves Litvins.

Viachaslau Nasievich responds to Ales Bely

Historian Viachaslau Nasievich responded extensively to these reflections. He does not dispute the historical facts of changes in language and identity (which also happened with other peoples) but draws attention to Ales Bely's methodology.

Nasievich called Bely's text an example of a very common and typical error in thinking, made by many, but very difficult to realize when one is mistaken oneself.

Nasievich explains this error through the mechanism of how a person forms identity and sets goals. Typically, people connect certain points in their past (point A) and extend them to the present (point B), and then define a desired future (point C).

The essence of the error lies in extending a line from a significant point in the past to a desired future, completely bypassing the point of the present. This usually happens when the path from today to a desired tomorrow is not visible.

To illustrate his point, Nasievich gives the example of an athlete. In the past, this person trained successfully and won, and in the future dreams of becoming a star and a champion. However, in the present, he has a serious injury that eliminates his chances of success. A reasonable solution would be to change trajectory: for example, become a coach or choose another sport. But the error occurs when a person stubbornly refuses to accept the reality of the present moment and continues stubborn training, which, due to the injury, will never lead him to championship.

Viachaslau Nasievich transfers this metaphor to Ales Bely's position.

For Bely, the ideal past is the first third of the 19th century — the era of Mickiewicz and Syrokomla, when an anti-Russian "Litvin" self-awareness was formed and clearly manifested within the Polish-speaking intellectual elite.

The researcher sees the desired future as the revival of this identity within the framework of European, but not inherently Polish, culture.

However, the trajectory from the ideal past to the desired future in the author's mind bypasses the current state of affairs. Nasievich emphasizes that

despite the fact that Belarusian identity may have been, to one degree or another, "imposed" on the descendants of Litvins, it has long become an objective reality. Therefore, any route to the future must be led precisely from this point of the present.

The historian reminds that the inhabitants of northwestern Belarus themselves perceive themselves as Belarusians. According to Nasievich, how historically justified such self-awareness is, in this case, is not fundamental.

For him, what is fundamental is that the fierce and sometimes insulting criticism of all things Belarusian in culture, politics, and everyday life, consistently carried out by Ales Bely, will never lead from the point of current reality to the future desired by Bely.

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