[LINK] "Belarus: a European country with a European future"

[rfmcdonald]

Open Democracy featured today an essay by Belarusian writer Uladzimir Arlou, making the case that Belarus' current isolation from Europe is an anomaly, that Belarus has played a major role in European history. One interesting confusion he observes is that of names which obscure Belarusian contributions: the retrospectively confusingly-named Grand Duchy of Lithuania which actually had its heartland in modern Belarus not the modern Lithuanian republic, while thanks to the Grand Duchy of Lithuuania's Polonization many famous figures from Belarus have been identified as Poles.

I should like to think I am wrong when I say I fear that for most Europeans our country is a kind of “lost world” lying somewhere outside Europe. But for many centuries Belarus was the eastern outpost of European civilisation and very much part of it.

In the 10th century a large part of what is now the Republic of Belarus was occupied by the Principality of Polatsk. This was a strong state, similar in size to its contemporaries, the Duchy of Bavaria or the Kingdom of Portugal. The capital, Polatsk, is mentioned in the Russian Primary Chronicle in 862 and there were another 15 or so towns, including the current capital of Belarus, Minsk. The Principality had access to the Baltic Sea, where it traded with Scandinavia and the German cities of the Hanseatic League. From the 10th to the 13th centuries Polatsk was ruled over by the princely house of the Rogvolodovichy: in 1157 Sophia, the daughter of Prince Volodar, married the illustrious Danish king, Valdemar I. Their children would ascend the thrones of Denmark, Sweden and France..

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The thousand-year old tradition of Belarusian statehood was continued during the period of unification with the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, which started in the 13th century at the time of the union between the old Belarusian Principality of Nowogrodek and the Lithuanian prince Mindaugas. He was acknowledged as king by Pope Innocent IV in 1253. The unification of the Slav and Baltic lands in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania enabled them to avoid a humiliating dependence on the Tatar-Mongols. The Russian principalities were crushed and, therefore, not able to escape this fate. One of the suggestions for the etymology of Belarus is indeed connected with this independence: “belaya” [white] means pure and free.

The invitation to Grand Duke Vytautas (Witold) to ascend the Czech throne at the beginning of the 15th century is an indication of the Grand Duchy's significance in the geopolitical situation of the time. This was during the period of the Czech national liberation movements known as the Hussite Wars. Responding to the invitation, Witold managed to avoid confrontation with the Catholic world by sending a military force of 5,000 to help the Hussites.

Belarusian lands were dominant in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, or Lithuania tout court: Old Belarusian was the state language until the end of the 18th century. At the same time our ancestors, at the behest of the state, called themselves Litvins, which is what their neighbours called them too. The names Belarus and Belarusians to designate the territory and people of our country today only became current at the end of the 19th century. The fact that today's Belarusians were for a long time called by a name which was subsequently used to designate a neighbouring people has given rise to a multiplicity of confusions and historical mishaps.

In the Middle Ages and the Modern Age Belarus was the eastern border of a united European world, as today's travellers can see from art and architecture in all the artistic styles Europe has known. The life of our towns was based on the Magdeburg Law of self-government. Craftsmen and merchants formed workshops and guilds to protect their interests, as did their colleagues in England or Spain. Thousand of young Belarusians were sent to acquire knowledge in the universities of the Czech lands, Germany, Poland, Italy, Switzerland and France. In 1579 Vilnius, the capital of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, opened its own academy with the status of a university.

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In Belarus the Renaissance was closely linked to the Reformation, as it was in other European countries. Calvinism was the most widespread theological system. In the 16th century our Protestants had 10 printing houses, so Belarusian readers had access to the works of Erasmus of Rotterdam, Michel Montaigne and Francis Bacon, to name but a few.