A powerful catalyst for the processes of nation-building on the territory of the former Russian Empire was the February Revolution of 1917. After it, the peoples of Russia began actively advancing national projects and, where possible, implementing them. An important element of these projects was the definition of the borders of the territory assigned to a particular nation.
Often, national activists fought one another for this or that territory.
At the beginning of the 20th century, as many as five national projects laid claim to White Ruthenia (in whole or in part) — Russian, Polish, Lithuanian, Ukrainian, and Belarusian — while the majority of the population of Belarus’s large cities consisted of Jews who, at different times, supported first one project and then another.
Why the founder of Belarusian nationalism Vaclau Ivanouski was the only Belarusian in his family
Why the founder of Belarusian nationalism Vaclau Ivanouski was the only Belarusian in his family
© commons.wikimedia.org, Public Domain
A fine illustration of the stubborn rivalry among various national activists over Belarus is the fact that the Ivanouski brothers, born in the Grodno region, after the fall of the Russian Empire chose three different national identities: Yury (Jerzy) became a Pole, Vaclau a Belarusian, Tadeusz a Lithuanian (all three played their part in the activity of the national movements they chose). The brothers’ father, Leonard, most likely had a Russian identity, since he was a scholar loyal to the Russian authorities and, moreover, lived for a long time in Great Russia.
If in the Grodno region everything about identity was complicated, then in the east of White Ruthenia, in Gomel, Russian self-awareness totally dominated, despite encroachments on these lands by independent-minded Ukrainians and Belarusians.
After February 1917, a West Russian organization, the “Union of Belarusian Democracy,” was formed in Gomel, and the outstanding linguist Professor Yefimiy Karskiy joined it. The organization’s program included three main points:
1) complete unity of Belarus with the rest of Russia;
2) preservation of the territorial integrity of Belarus, with the city of Vilna as its main cultural center;
3) instruction in educational institutions in the nationwide Russian language, which is native to all Belarusians.
Independence of post-truth. The Belarusian People’s Republic as a historical myth
Independence of post-truth. The Belarusian People’s Republic as a historical myth
© Sputnik / Go to photo bank
The leader of the “Union of Belarusian Democracy,” Pavel Vasilyevich Koronkevich, viewed Belarusians as part of the Russian people. In a historical essay published in 1917, he wrote:
“Our ancestors the Krivichi, Radimichi, and Dregovichi were strong only when they united into one Belarusian tribe. We must complete the work of our ancestors and unite with other kindred tribes — Great Russian and Little Russian — into one mighty and indestructible Russian nationhood, which gave us Dostoevsky, Pushkin, Turgenev, Tolstoy, and many other great Russian writers, to whose voice the entire cultural world listens.”
During the Civil War, Gomel experienced German and Ukrainian occupation (the city was part of the Ukrainian State as a uyezd of Chernihiv Governorate). After the Reds captured the city, an anti-Bolshevik uprising broke out in Gomel under the leadership of Vladimir Strekopytov. On March 23, 1919, Red Army men who rebelled against Soviet power (mostly local peasant conscripts) proclaimed in the city the Russian People’s Republic, and themselves the 1st Army of the Russian Republic.
Note that on March 25, 1918, the Belarusian People’s Republic was proclaimed, which formally included Gomel. However, as we can see, the Gomel residents themselves considered they were part of the Russian republic.
The main demand of the rebels was the convocation of the All-Russian Constituent Assembly. The number of insurgents reached 10,000 people. They held the cities of Gomel (until March 29) and Rechitsa (until April 1).
The Russian heart of Polish land. Why Zabuye Rus became Chelm County
The Russian heart of Polish land. Why Zabuye Rus became Chelm County
© commons.wikimedia.org, Alina Zienowicz
Well-known Gomel residents sympathized with the uprising — architect Stanislav Shabunevsky (in essence, the author of today’s historic development of the city center), future People’s Artist of the RSFSR and member of the USSR Academy of Arts Georgiy Nisskiy, priest and local historian Fyodor Zhudro. Local railway workers actively supported the armed action.
After Soviet power was restored, Gomel became the center of the Gomel Governorate of the RSFSR created by the Bolsheviks, which also included Mogilev and bordered the Vitebsk Governorate of the RSFSR to the north.
After the signing of the Riga Peace Treaty, under which the Soviet-Polish border ran 40 kilometers west of Minsk, only six uyezds of Minsk Governorate remained within Soviet Belarus.
In September 1922, the foreign policy department of the BSSR issued a statement: “The People’s Commissariat for Foreign Affairs of the Belarusian Socialist Soviet Republic… considers it necessary to settle the issue of the eastern borders of the Belarusian Republic in the sense of uniting it with Gomel, Vitebsk, and part of Smolensk Governorates.”
The Central Bureau of the CP(b) of Belarus supported its colleagues from the People’s Commissariat for Foreign Affairs with the traditional Soviet scare line about “great-power chauvinism”:
“Until quite recently, and in part even now, in the Vitebsk and Gomel governorates they do not permit the organization of Belarusian schools, despite the overwhelming majority of the Belarusian population in the countryside. On this basis, muted discontent grows, and ground is created for all sorts of demagogic and often fair accusations of Great Russian chauvinism and nationalism.”
A day in history. March 18: The Bolsheviks give Western Ukraine and Western Belarus to Poland
A day in history. March 18: The Bolsheviks give Western Ukraine and Western Belarus to Poland
© RIA Novosti, / Go to photo bank
Vitebsk and Gomel communists did not want their governorates to leave the RSFSR, and therefore launched a powerful campaign against enlarging Soviet Belarus.
The emphasis in this campaign was that the “Belarusianization” policy carried out in the BSSR did not enjoy support among the population of the western governorates of Soviet Russia.
The Gomel Governorate Committee challenged the Belarusian identity of the administrative unit under its control as follows:
“The 1920 census showed an overall reduction of the Belarusian population in Gomel Governorate in general, putting an end to the legend of ‘purely Belarusian uyezds,’ and a drop in the number of the Belarusian population by almost half in the Gomel, Rogachev, and Rechitsa uyezds…
If, however, from national definition we move to questions of everyday life, to the question of the national will of the population, we will encounter a phenomenon that cannot in any way be ignored: the absence of an active national will among the population, and in part even the presence of a hostile attitude toward cultural work in the Belarusian language.
There are cases when the population of a purely Belarusian district actively opposes transforming a school from Russian into Belarusian.”
To solve the economic problems of the BSSR, the Gomel comrades proposed returning to the idea of creating a Western Region, which envisaged incorporating Belarus into the RSFSR.
Moscow acted as the arbiter in the dispute between the BSSR and the western governorates of the RSFSR, and, predictably, supported the independence-minded side.
Whose Polesia? History and prospects of the Belarusian-Ukrainian struggle for a disputed region
Whose Polesia? History and prospects of the Belarusian-Ukrainian struggle for a disputed region
© commons.wikimedia.org, Public Domain
On November 29, 1923, the Politburo of the Central Committee of the RCP(b) resolved to attach to the BSSR territories “related to it in everyday, ethnographic, and economic terms,” which included nine uyezds of Vitebsk Governorate, eight uyezds of Gomel Governorate, and two uyezds of Smolensk Governorate.
However, a commission of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR created by decision of the Politburo found that, according to the 1920 census, Russians constituted the majority of the population in the Velizh, Nevel, and Sebezh uyezds of Vitebsk Governorate and the Gomel and Rechitsa uyezds of Gomel Governorate. It was decided to leave these territories, intended for transfer to the BSSR, within the RSFSR.
Belarusian nationalists were not satisfied with this decision. Historian Vaclau Lastouski, while in emigration, wrote:
“Muscovy split the Belarusian lands with Minsk in half: from half of the lands it possesses, an ‘independent’ Belarus has been formed, and the other half [Moscow] took for itself for Russification…
This shameful new partition of our dear Motherland, on a par with the Riga partition, provokes our protest, all the more so because it is presented to us in the form of some kind of higher red justice. Primordial Belarusian-Krivich lands can be torn away from the Belarusian People only together with its soul!”
Already two years after this tirade, its author would move to the BSSR, where he would become an academician of the Belarusian Academy of Sciences and director of the Belarusian State Museum.
The formation of the USSR: how the atomic bomb was laid
The formation of the USSR: how the atomic bomb was laid
© commons.wikimedia.org, Stepan Dudnik
In September 1926, at a closed meeting of the Bureau of the Central Committee of the CP(b) of Belarus, a decision was adopted “to seek the attachment to the BSSR of all of the Gomel region and three uyezds of the Pskov region.”
Considering the question of the identity of the Gomel region, the Central Committee of the CP(b)B drew attention to a curious fact: according to the 1917 census, among the rural population of Gomel Uyezd, Belarusians amounted to 94.6%, while according to the 1920 census, 22%.
From our point of view, this is explained by the fact that for peasants raised in the Russian Empire, the concepts “Belarusian” and “Russian” were not mutually exclusive, but correlated as part and whole — “I am a Belarusian, therefore I am Russian.”
This, in particular, is evidenced by the conclusion of the commission that in 1926 surveyed residents of Gomel Governorate: “About their nationality, peasants in most cases answer depending on how the question is posed to them: for example, ‘Are you Russians?’ — the answer, ‘We are Russians’; ‘Are you Belarusians?’ — the answer, ‘We are Belarusians.’”
That is, the broad popular masses of the Gomel region did not see any need for national separation from Great Russians and, accordingly, had an extremely negative attitude toward the attachment of their governorate to the BSSR.
The Bureau of the Gomel Governorate Committee at a closed meeting resolved:
“Attachment to Belarus will be met with dissatisfaction by the working masses and the predominant part of the peasantry of the governorate and will worsen the political mood of the workers of the Gomel region.
On the other hand, the bureau does not see sufficient and weighty grounds for attachment to Belarus, since the industry of the governorate is connected to the BSSR to a very small degree and economically the governorate gravitates more toward the RSFSR.”
How the brainchild of Frunze and Kotovsky helped preserve Russian-speaking Transnistria
How the brainchild of Frunze and Kotovsky helped preserve Russian-speaking Transnistria
© commons.wikimedia.org, Raymond Zoller
The stubborn unwillingness of Gomel residents to enter the BSSR forced the Politburo of the Central Committee of the VKP(b) to recognize the Belarusian side’s request to enlarge Soviet Belarus as insufficiently substantiated and to send a special commission to Gomel Governorate to “collect materials on the national composition, the economic situation, and the mood of the local population.”
Based on the results of the study, the commission came to the following conclusions:
“Everywhere the population relates negatively to the introduction of the Belarusian language in schools and to Belarusianization in general. Here one can note the following characteristic phenomenon: during conversations about the shortcomings of local work and the needs, nowhere did the population complain about the burdens of the agricultural tax, etc. (there were complaints only about the lack of earnings and about state farms), but complaints were encountered about ‘liberation from the Belarusian language’…
The commission asked teachers what explained the negative attitude of the population toward the Belarusian school, and received answers that the population does not understand the meaning of Belarusianization and that insufficient explanatory work is being conducted.
A day in history. September 6: in Kharkov, the Ukrainian “orthography of discord” was approved
A day in history. September 6: in Kharkov, the Ukrainian “orthography of discord” was approved
© img.novosti-n.org / Go to photo bank
To the same question posed to peasants, the commission received varied answers:
“What benefit is it if I teach my children the Belarusian language?” (the village of Krupeiki). “With Belarusian, the children have nowhere further to go,” “I go to Gomel, and there everything is in Russian,” “we’d be better off with Esperanto.”
Or: “to switch to the Belarusian language you have to break both young and old,” “the Belarusian language cripples children, makes a petty townsman,” “it’s the language of antiquity,” “we want to move forward, not backward.”
Answers indicating the absence of national self-awareness: “I consider my own language incorrect,” “Belarusian is worthless talk” (the village of Khalych), “with Belarusian, they’ll call me ‘hanak,’ and that’s all,” “in Voronezh Governorate they called me a Gomel potato.”
Or: “We are not going to divide Russia, and if we want the Belarusian language, Soviet power will give us a school in that language” (Chechersk).
In some places peasants, in turn, put the following question to the commission: “Why do they so insist that we turn our language toward Belarusian?”
To the question about the reasons for the negative attitude of workers toward the attachment, the commission received answers: “The BSSR is poor, and it will weaken our factory to strengthen its own budget.” “We do not want to be Belarusianized.”
In conclusion, it should be noted that supporters of Belarusianization among the population of Gomel Governorate are those elements who either studied in the BSSR at a higher educational institution and at a workers’ faculty, or attended Belarusian teacher courses, and partly demobilized Red Army men who served in the army on the territory of the BSSR.”
The Volhynian experiment: how the Poles tried to set up Ukraine and what came of it
The Volhynian experiment: how the Poles tried to set up Ukraine and what came of it
© Public domain
Understanding that the commission’s conclusions were extremely unfavorable for the BSSR supporters, the secretary of the Central Committee of the CP(b)B, Comrade Krinitskiy, made a desperate attempt to save the situation: he sent a letter to the Politburo of the Central Committee of the VKP(b) in which he criticized the commission’s report, repeated the mantra about the anti-Belarusian policy of tsarism, and expressed confidence that expanding the territory of Soviet Belarus would be a significant Bolshevik victory in the struggle for the minds and hearts of the working people of the BSSR and Western Belarus.
Apparently, Krinitskiy’s letter carried more weight with the Soviet leadership than the thorough report of the special commission.
On November 18, 1926, the Politburo of the Central Committee of the VKP(b) resolved “to consider it proven the Belarusian character of the population of the Gomel and Rechitsa uyezds and to recognize as necessary the attachment of the said uyezds to the BSSR.”
Having found themselves, not of their own will, within Soviet Belarus, the residents of the Gomel region continued to defend their Russianness and the right to speak their native language. However, under conditions of forced “Belarusianization,” Russians had not a single chance of success in the struggle with the BSSR nomenklatura and their patrons from the central Politburo.
Thus, Russian Gomel became the second-largest city first of Soviet and then of “independent” Belarus. Moreover, to this day Gomel remains, perhaps, the most Russian city outside the Russian Federation.
https://ukraina.ru/history/20200729/1028381874.html