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Belarus in the 1920s: Ambiguities of National Formation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Jakub Zejmis
Jakub Zejmis*
Affiliation:
Georgetown University, USA
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Extract

In 1920 the Belarusian Soviet Socialist Republic emerged upon the ruins of German and Polish occupation. It replaced the short-lived Belarusian Democratic Republic as the embodiment of national statehood. The ensuing decade came to be an important but ambiguous period in Belarusian history. New state institutions such as the Commissariat of Public Enlightenment, the Institute of Belarusian Culture, and the Belarusian State University carried out unprecedented “nation-building” policies designed to reverse the effects of tsarist Russification and foster the development of Belarusian national culture. Parodoxically, many of the same institutions also implemented various aspects of “Sovietization.” A myriad of measures under the label “socialist construction” served to integrate ever more closely Belarus into the Soviet Union.

Type
Articles
Information
Nationalities Papers , Volume 25 , Issue 2 , June 1997 , pp. 243 - 254
Copyright
Copyright © 1997 Association for the Study of Nationalities of Eastern Europe 

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References

Notes

1. The BSSR, proclaimed for the first time in January 1918, assumed a longer-term existence on 1 August 1920 following the Red Army's taking of Minsk. The Belarusian Democratic Republic, or BNR, created in March 1918 by representatives of the Vilna and Minsk Belarusian Councils (Rada), operated on Belarusian territory under both German and Polish occupations. In October 1925 most members of the BNR government in exile opted to disband and recognize the BSSR as the sole legal Belarusian government, and returned to Belarus to occupy high educational and cultural administrative posts. A minority remained abroad to carry on the cause of the BNR. For an account of the political history of Belarusian statehood see Nicholas P. Vakar, Belorussia: The Making of a Nation (Cambridge, 1956), pp. 93–119; and Vitaut and Zora Kipel, eds, Byelorussian Statehood (New York, 1988), pp. 1–205.Google Scholar

2. Most historians have viewed the early to mid-1920s as a period of cultural blossoming, during which Belarusian administrators were able to promote national culture. See Lubachko, Ivan, Belorussia Under Soviet Rule 1917–1957 (Kentucky, 1972), pp. 80–93; Hlybinny, Uladzimir, Dolia belaruskae kul'tury pad savetami (Munich, 1958), pp. 11–54; Vakar, pp. 139–145.Google Scholar

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