Basic concepts of the origin of the Belarusian ethnic group. “Who should Lithuania be with – the eternal dispute of the Slavs”
When covering this topic ideologically, two extremes should be avoided in every possible way: You can neither belittle nor excessively elevate your ethnic group. In the first case, you can completely lose your historical, cultural, linguistic roots. In the second - to “slide” onto the road of nationalism and racism. Therefore, we must adhere to historicism, objectivity, i.e. scientificity in explaining our origin and development.
The formation of Man on Earth begins about 2 million years ago in Africa. About a million years have passed since the settlement of the Mediterranean, the Caucasus and southern Ukraine. It was no longer prehistoric man who came to the territory of Belarus, but “ Homo sapiens"- Homo sapiens about 40 thousand years ago. The harsh climate of our territories, generated by the Ice Age /16-8 thousand years BC/, scared away the nomadic primitive people from this region. Two are open ancient sites people on Belarusian territory. Near the village of Yurovichi, not far from Mozyr, on the Pripyat River and on the Sozh River, near the village of Berdyzh, near Chechersk. About 50 people lived there, about 23 thousand. years ago.
As the glacier melted and retreated /8-5 thousand years BC/ and the territory of Belarus was populated more massively by newcomers from different places and directions. In the valleys of the largest rivers, a permanent population was established, as evidenced by the discovered 120 sites of people of that period, with a total population of up to 6 thousand people. A nomadic person, not bound by a permanent household, settled the territories most suitable for gathering, hunting and fishing on a spontaneous basis.
Soviet academician V.Yu. Bromley explained the formation of different ethnic groups this way. A small group of people /family, clan/, living in a limited territory, forms the basis of an ethnic group: language, culture, type of economy and way of life. The increase in its numbers forces us to look for and develop new territories for living, since natural resources are becoming scarce, and agriculture and cattle breeding have not yet appeared. Subject to circumstances, part of this ethnic group went in search of new lands rich in resources, sticking to rivers, lakes and seas, which provided a diversity of flora and fauna, a favorable habitat for humans. Rivers played the role of a compass, roads and provided the pioneers with a solution to their problems. If they met indigenous people along the way, they could be conquered and subjugated. However, mutual experience, languages, cultures, mixing and interacting with each other, mutually enriched and improved. This is how related, but different from each other, especially over time, ethnic groups were formed. In the opposite case, when the natives subjugated the newcomers, the cultural and life potential of the latter also did not disappear without a trace, but was integrated, at least partially, into general culture new ethnic formation. If the lands new to the newcomers were not occupied, then in this case their language was enriched, new labor skills, traditions, etc. appeared. The old culture adapted to new conditions and inevitably changed itself.
Concept by V.Yu. Bromley is also very important for understanding the process of formation of the Belarusian ethnic group, especially its Indo-European period. It is associated with the first great migration of peoples, which occurred in the 3-2 millennia BC. Due to the sharp increase in the Earth's population, Europe from the Rhine to the Volga began to flood wave of immigrants from the Indo-European language group. There was no unity on the question of their origin. European localization concept claimed that the ancestral homeland of the Indo-Europeans was Northern Germany and Southern Scandinavia. She was actively supported in fascist Germany. But science clearly stated that Europe was settled by migrants from south to north, and not vice versa. And cattle breeding and agriculture took hold in northern Europe later than, for example, in the Balkans.
Didn't clarify the situation and Balkan concept their origin. After all, the Indo-Europeans came to this territory from outside.
There was also a concept according to which the Indo-Europeans migrated from the southern steppes Eastern Europe and vast areas of Siberia. This theory also did not survive, mainly because the original homeland of ethnic groups, as science claims, cannot be so vast.
A more deeply grounded concept won and took hold. the Western Asian ancestral home of the Indo-Europeans. Since the 70s of the XX century. this concept prevails. According to it, the Indo-Europeans spread to the west, north and east of Europe from the territory of present-day Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan. Various sciences /archaeology, toponymy, ethnography/ prove that Indo-Europeans came from the mountainous south. They knew about mountain glaciers, deserts, lions, elephants, etc. As a result of their arrival, on a vast territory covering the basins of such rivers as the Vistula, Neman, Dnieper, Western Dvina, a new ethnic group - the Balts. In it, the local population was assimilated by Indo-Europeans, who brought with them the skills of cattle breeding and agriculture. Iron tools appeared and were improved. The population on our territory has increased to 50-75 thousand people. The type of settlement also changed: these were already fortified settlements, of which there were up to a thousand.
With the arrival of the Slavs/ IV-V centuries. AD / came modern ethnic stage history of Belarus. From the 8th century AD Slavs en masse established themselves on the right bank of the Dnieper, along the Berezina, in the Podvina region, and along the Neman. The Baltic population was partially destroyed, part of it was forced out to the Baltic states, where it contributed to the formation of the ethnic groups of Latvians and Estonians, and the rest were assimilated by the Slavs until the 13th century. and later. As a result of the historical interaction of the Slavs and the Balts, new ethnic communities arose: Krivichi, Radimichi, Dregovichi. The Krivichi lived in the upper reaches of the Dnieper, Western Dvina and Volga. In Polesie, between Pripyat and Berezina - Dregovichi, between Sozh and Iput - Radimichi.
In the second millennium AD The tribal organization of our ethnic group is being replaced by a political one. The emergence of cities and principalities unified their life on a political, state basis. Conditions arise for the emergence of a larger community of Belarusians – a nation.
In parallel with the described ethno-demographic processes, others took place that had an impact on the formation of the Belarusian ethnic group. History highlights second great migration. It dates back to the 4th-7th centuries AD, but it began before our era movement of the Scythians and Sarmatians from the territory of modern Central Asia and Kazakhstan from Altai to the Danube. In addition, one of the East German tribes, goths, from the Baltic Sea coast / in the territory modern Poland/ moved through our lands to the south of Ukraine, spreading its influence from the Baltic to the Black Sea. The Slavs in their settlement from the Elbe to the East European Plain, starting from the 6th century. had a direct influence on the formation of our ethnic group.
As a result of these intensive mass migrations of peoples in the Middle Dnieper region within Kievan Rus An ancient Russian people appeared with a common name - Rus. But later /from the beginning of the 12th century/ she divided into three related peoples: Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian. Each of them created and experienced own story, preserving and increasing the community of connections while asserting ethnic and political independence.
On the territory of present-day Belarus, after the collapse of Kievan Rus, two dialect-ethnographic zones clearly emerged: the Poleshuks and the ancient Belarusians, who became the direct ancestors of modern Belarusians. From the end of the 15th century. the dominance of an independent complex was consolidated within the current borders of Belarus ethnic culture with its own language called “White Rus'”. The inhabitants of the territory began to be called “Belarusians”.
The territory of Ancient Rus' was divided into “White Rus'”, “Black Rus'”, “Red Rus'” based on the tradition of using colors to designate the cardinal directions: white is west, blue is east, black is north, red is south. So Belarusians are the western part of the Slavs. In addition, white color also meant purity, independence and freedom from paying tribute.
The formation of the Belarusian ethnic group is not explained ideologically so clearly. Back in the 19th century. the Polish and Great Russian concept appeared, according to which the Polish side /L. Galembovsky, A. Rypinsky/, on the basis that the Belarusians allegedly do not have their own independent Slavic language, considered the Belarusian language a part, a dialect of Polish, respectively, integral part Polish ethnicity. On the Russian side / A. Sobolevsky, I. Sraznevsky / - on the contrary, on the same basis they considered Belarus to be part of the Great Russian ethnic territory, and the Belarusian language to be a dialect of Russian.
Both approaches generally denied the Belarusian people the right to an independent national existence, much less a state existence. But history has put everything in its place. Now the Belarusian nation, the Belarusian state are real and legally equal subjects of international relations with other nations and states, recognized by the world community. Is it true, The process of formation of the Belarusian nation dragged on until the 20th century for a number of objective reasons. After all, a nation is a historically established community of people who have common language, general theory, community of economic and cultural life. Nations in the world were formed on the basis industrial production with the victory of bourgeois relations over feudal ones. In Belarus, both came quite late, as well as in the Russian Empire as a whole, in which Belarus existed as a peripheral agricultural northwestern region. Industrial and bourgeois-democratic transformations came here later than in the political and economic centers of Russia, and even in a reduced form.
Frequent wars, redistribution of territory with its subsequent polonization and Russification hindered the formation of territorial stability and integrity of Belarus. This also prevented the consolidation of the national Belarusian language and national identity among the people. The economy of an agricultural region with a rural population and domination of Russian and Jewish capital in the cities also did not contribute to consolidation Belarusian people to the nation with a single culture. This process was also hampered by the division of the population along religious lines into Orthodox and Catholic. The situation was overcome through the socialist revolution and industrialization already in the 20th century.
The Belarusian nation is characterized by such generally recognized stable characteristics as tolerance, i.e. a tolerant attitude towards others (to religion, culture, different opinions, to other people, nations, races). It could not be otherwise in the conditions of multifaceted and active interaction with other ethnic groups and states. We also have such a trait as hard work. Formed mainly as a peasant nation, earning their livelihood through hard work in an area of risky agriculture and far from the best soils, the Belarusians could survive, survive and develop only through hard and systematic work. And in the conditions of industrial development, with very limited natural resources, it is possible to exist and progress only by multiplying hard work by professionalism and high qualifications of labor. Our nation is also characterized by such features as heroism in defense of the Fatherland, obedience to the law, respect for human rights and the pursuit of social justice. The combination of these qualities constitutes a positive image /image/ of Belarusians and the state of Belarus in the world community.
Analyzing the history of the formation and current state of the Belarusian ethnic group, modern science proves that Belarusians are a typical European nation. So, A. Mikulic, anthropologist, geneticist, doctor of biological sciences, laureate of the State Prize, deeply scientifically substantiated this position. His arguments are as follows. The Baltic-Black Sea watershed passes through Belarus. The anthropological division of the northern Caucasian population and the southern one also takes place here. At the turn of the new and previous eras, the Scythian, Germanic, Baltic and Finno-Ugric tribes interacted here. And in the middle of the first millennium AD. The Slavs also came here. The question arises: what kind of blood flows in our veins more - Scythian, Baltic, Slavic?
A. Mikulich, as an anthropologist, studied rural population of Belarus, where the basis of the gene pool is still preserved, in contrast to the urban population, where interethnic and even interracial migration is much more significant. Belarusian political scientist Yu. Shevtsov also claims that in our country “migration, as a rule, was not associated with the mass relocation of a foreign population to the countryside. Migrants settled primarily in cities with an almost complete absence of rural areas that would have been completely colonized by foreign migrants.”
A. Mikulich's research showed that the South European admixture is manifested among Poleshuks, and the North European /Fino-Ugric/ admixture is manifested among northeastern Belarusians. But in general, on the world map, the established Belarusian type occupies its own niche assigned to it by nature and history. On geographical map In Belarus, the genetic components of the blood of our indigenous population change smoothly from the southwest to the northeast /as well as changes in flora and fauna, in the type of forest/. As in all of Europe, the hair color of our population also changes: from dark among the Poleshuks to light among the inhabitants of the Podvina region. On genetic level It is also confirmed that Belarusians have 5-6 types of faces, 6 clearly defined ethnographic regions: Eastern Polesie, Western Polesie, Ponemonie, Central Belarus, Dnieper and Podvinia. They were already formed at the beginning XVII century. And the general Belarusian genotype, with its local characteristics, was formed 3 thousand years ago, when the Balts lived here. Since then, our ancestors have been similar to you and me.
The ethnographic regions of Belarus, according to A. Mikulich, coincide with the map of Belarusian dialects compiled back in 1903 by the Russian ethnographer E. Karsky and with the latest electronic map compiled on the basis of ethnogenomics (differences between ethnic groups at the DNA level). These same maps also indicate that the borders of the Belarusian ethnic group are wider than the borders of the state of Belarus: they capture the Baltic states, part of Poland and Russia.
Polesie is a special region of our country. Natural conditions contributed to the preservation of the deepest features of our gene pool here. In Polesie, A. Mikulich discovered genotypes of the so-called paleo-European race: they were once present in the ancestors of all Europeans, but are now preserved only in Spain among the Basques and in northern Europe among the Lapps. In general, Belarusians are like all Europeans and therefore, notes A. Mikulich, that we are, as it were, “of the same blood.” The first and second blood groups predominate among Belarusians /35-37% each/. The third group is found in 17-20% of the population. There is little (5%, and in the east of the country - up to 9%) type IV blood. On the map of blood groups of the Eurasian subcontinent, a trend is clearly visible: the further to the east, the more more population with III and IV blood groups. Among Mongoloids, group III generally predominates. And vice versa - the further to the west of this vast territory - the more people there are with blood groups I and II.
Thus, the Belarusian ethnos is an independent, long-formed and stable ethnos, which has taken its place in the anthropological, ethnocultural and political life Europe. Even the bloodiest wars that swept through our territory, destroying up to ¾ of the Belarusian population (Livonian War of 1557-1582, War of 1648-1667, Northern War of 1700-1721, Napoleon’s invasion, World War I 1914-1918, Civil War in ruins of the Russian Empire and the Second World War) could not destroy the Belarusian people. He survived, asserted himself and took the path of progress and prosperity.
On August 5, 1772, the first partition of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth took place. Austria received Galicia, Prussia received Western Prussia, and Russia received Belarus.
Russians and Belarusians admit: we differ little from each other. But still we are different. How Belarus was formed and what makes it unique
History of White Rus'
The ethnonym "Belarusians" was finally adopted by the Russian Empire in the 18th - 19th centuries. Together with the Great Russians and Little Russians, the Belarusians, in the eyes of autocratic ideologists, constituted a triune all-Russian nationality. In Russia itself, the term began to be used under Catherine II: after the third partition of Poland in 1796, the empress ordered the establishment of the Belarusian province on the newly acquired lands.
Historians do not have a consensus on the origin of the toponyms Belarus, Belaya Rus. Some believed that White Russia was the name given to lands independent of the Mongol-Tatars (white is the color of freedom), others attributed the name to the white color of clothes and hair local residents. Still others contrasted white Christian Rus' with black pagan Russia. The most popular version was about Black, Red and White Rus', where the color was compared with a certain side of the world: black - with the north, white - with the west, red - with the south.
The territory of White Rus' extended far beyond the borders of present-day Belarus. Since the 13th century, foreigners-Latins called North-Eastern Rus' White Russia (Ruthenia Alba). Western European medieval geographers almost never visited it and had a vague idea of its boundaries. The term was also used in relation to the Western Russian principalities, for example, Polotsk. In the XVI – XVII centuries the concept of “White Rus'” was assigned to the Russian-speaking lands in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and the northeastern lands, on the contrary, began to be opposed to White Rus'.
The annexation of Ukraine-Little Russia to Russia in 1654 (do not forget that, along with the Little Russian lands, part of the Belarusian ones were also annexed to Moscow) provided state ideologists with an excellent opportunity to put forward the concept of the brotherhood of three peoples - Great Russian, Little Russian and Belarusian.
Ethnography and potato pancakes
However, despite the official ideology, Belarusians for a long time there was no place in science. Study of their rituals and folk customs it was just beginning, and the Belarusian literary language was taking its first steps. Stronger neighboring peoples who were experiencing a period of national revival, primarily the Poles and Russians, laid claim to White Rus' as their ancestral homeland. The main argument was that scientists did not perceive the Belarusian language as an independent language, calling it a dialect of either Russian or Polish.
Only in the 20th century was it possible to highlight that the ethnogenesis of the Belarusians took place on the territory of the Upper Dnieper, Middle Podvina and Upper Ponemania, that is, on the territory modern Belarus. Gradually, ethnographers identified the original aspects of the Belarusian ethnic group and, in particular, Belarusian cuisine. Potatoes in Belarusian lands took root back in the 18th century (unlike the rest of Russia, which knew the potato reforms and riots of the 1840s) and by the end of the 19th century, Belarusian cuisine was replete with an assortment of potato dishes. Draniki, for example.
Belarusians in science
Interest in the history of Belarusians, the emergence of the first scientifically based concepts of the origin of the ethnic group is a matter of the beginning of the 20th century. One of the first to take on it was Vladimir Ivanovich Picheta, a student of the famous Russian historian Vasily Osipovich Klyuchevsky. Based on the settlement of the Slavs according to the Tale of Bygone Years, he suggested that the ancestors of the Belarusians were the Krivichi, as well as the neighboring tribes of the Radimichi and Dregovichi. As a result of their consolidation, the Belarusian people emerged. The time of its origin was determined by the separation of the Belarusian language from Old Russian in the 14th century.
The weak side of the hypothesis was that the chronicled tribes have been disappearing from the pages of the chronicles since the middle of the 12th century and it is difficult to explain the two-century silence of the sources. But the beginning of the Belarusian nation had been laid, and not least because of the systematic study of the Belarusian language that had begun. In 1918, a teacher at Petrograd University, Bronislav Tarashkevich, prepared his first grammar, normalizing spelling for the first time. This is how the so-called Tarashkevitsa arose - a language norm later adopted in the Belarusian emigration. Tarashkevitz was contrasted with the 1933 grammar of the Belarusian language, created as a result of the language reforms of the 1930s. There was a lot of Russian in it, but it gained a foothold and was used in Belarus until 2005, when it was partially unified with the Tarashkevitsa. As a noteworthy fact, it is worth noting that in the 1920s, on the official flag of the BSSR, the phrase “Workers of all countries unite!” was written in as many as four languages: Russian, Polish, Yiddish and Tarashkevich. Tarashkevitsa should not be confused with Tarasyanka. The latter is a mixture of Russian and Belarusian languages, found everywhere in Belarus even now, more often in cities.
Belarusians from Old Russian people
After the Great Patriotic War The national question in the USSR became greatly aggravated and on this basis, to prevent interethnic conflicts in the ideology of the Union, a new supranational concept began to be widely used - “ Soviet people" Shortly before this, in the 1940s, researchers of Ancient Rus' substantiated the theory of the “Old Russian nationality” - a single cradle of the Belarusian, Ukrainian and Russian peoples. There were few similarities between these two concepts, but their active use by the USSR during this period is striking. Such features of the Old Russian people as “common territory, economy, law, military organization and, especially, common struggle against external enemies with the awareness of their unity,” can be safely attributed to Soviet society of the late 1940s - 1960s. Of course, ideology did not subordinate history, but the structures with which scientists-historians and political ideologists thought were very similar. The origin of Belarusians from the ancient Russian nationality removed weaknesses"tribal" concept of ethnogenesis and emphasized the gradual separation of three peoples in the XII - XIV centuries. However, some scientists extend the period of formation of the nationality to late XVI century.
This theory is still accepted today. In 2011, at the celebration of the 1150th anniversary of the Old Russian State, its provisions were confirmed by historians of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. During this time, it was supplemented by archeological data that showed active connections between the ancestors of Belarusians and the Balts and Finno-Ugric peoples (from which the versions of the Baltic and Finno-Ugric origins of the Belarusians were born), as well as a DNA study conducted in Belarus in 2005 - 2010, which proved the closeness of the three East Slavic peoples and large genetic differences between the Slavs and the Balts in the male line.
Another Rus'
In the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, which included almost the entire territory of modern Belarus in the 13th – 16th centuries, the Old Belarusian language (that is, Western Russian) was the first state language - all office work was carried out in it, records were written literary works and laws. Developing in a separate state, he experienced strong influence Polish and Church Slavonic, but remained a book language. In contrast, spoken Belarusian, experiencing the same influences, developed mainly in rural areas and has survived to the present day. The territory where the Belarusians were formed did not suffer so much from the Mongol-Tatars. The population constantly had to fight for their faith - Orthodoxy and against foreign culture. At the same time, much of Western European culture took root in Belarus faster and easier than in Russia. For example, book printing, started by Francis Skaryna almost 50 years earlier than in Muscovy. Finally, another important factor in the formation of the Belarusian people was the climate, which was milder and more fertile than in central Russia. That is why potatoes took root in Belarus 75–90 years earlier. The Belarusian national idea was formed later than that of other peoples and sought to resolve issues without conflicts. And this is her strength.
Those who asserted the national identity of Ukrainians and Belarusians thereby faced the need to explain the reasons for its emergence. At the first stage this was done quite superficially. Thus, N.I. Kostomarov laid the foundation, so to speak, of the “tribal concept”, according to which the differences between the Great Russians and the Little Russians were inherited from different groups of Slavic tribes (“princedoms”) mentioned in the “Tale of Bygone Years”. The ethnic characteristics of the Belarusians were explained to them simply: “Where the Krivichi were, there are now Belarusians” (5). Obviously, by Belarusians he understood only the inhabitants of the territory that in the first half of the 19th century. was called “White Russia”: the north, northeast and partly the center of modern Belarus, coupled with the Smolensk region. This territory was indeed close to the territory of settlement of the Krivichs in the Tale of Bygone Years.Russian historian V. O. Klyuchevsky in late XIX V. formed, and in 1904 published a different, although equally superficial, explanation. The initial tribal differences, in his opinion, had already become indistinguishable by the 13th century, when Rus' split into two poorly connected regions - the southern (Kyiv) and northeastern. “The Great Russian tribe... was a matter of new diverse influences that began to act after this break in the nationality,” and a significant role was played by interaction with the local “foreign” population (in modern terminology - the substrate), as well as adaptation to natural conditions Volga-Oka interfluve. As a result of the Tatar invasion, the southern center was depopulated, and its surviving population fled to the territory of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. In the XV-XVI centuries. his descendants repopulated the steppe outskirts, mixing “with the remnants of ancient nomads who wandered here,” which led to the formation of “the Little Russian tribe as a branch of the Russian people” (6). V. O. Klyuchevsky did not touch upon the origin of the Belarusians at all, but from general scheme we can conclude that it could also be explained only by the “new and varied influences” of the 13th-16th centuries.
All further proposed explanations of the ethnogenesis of the East Slavic peoples can be reduced either to one of these two extreme positions, or to their combination in different proportions. At the same time, a rather characteristic pattern emerges: representatives of the Ukrainian and Belarusian national movements were generally inclined towards the “tribal concept”, i.e. they postulated the original differences between the ancestors of the three peoples, while Russian (later orthodox Soviet) researchers clearly shifted their emphasis towards secondary influences, tearing apart a once united ethnic group.
The two most developed versions were proposed at the turn of the 20th century. A. A. Shakhmatov and E. F. Karsky. The first of them recognized the division of the tribes of the Tale of Bygone Years into three groups of dialects (northern, middle and southern), but believed that these groups experienced leveling mutual influence in the era of Kievan Rus and served only as the basis for the formation of the East Slavic peoples. In general, this process took place after the Tatar invasion, within the framework of the new states - Moscow and Lithuania. In particular, the Belarusian nationality developed on the basis of the western branch of the Central Russian group of dialects, but thanks primarily to political isolation from the eastern and northern dialects, which evolved in the direction of the Russian language (7).
E.F. Karsky, following N.I. Kostomarov, saw the origins of ethnic-forming traits in the characteristics of the ancient Slavic tribes. But, since in his time the concept of “Belarus” became much broader, including residents of Polesie and upper Ponemania, a mechanical comparison of Belarusians with Krivichi became impossible. E. F. Karsky pointed to three ancient Russian tribes that gave rise to the Belarusian ethnic group: Krivichi, Dregovich and Radimichi. But he dated the formation of a single nationality on their basis to a later time - the 13th-14th centuries, when the descendants of these tribes became part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Thus, secondary influences were still decisive, although E.F. Karsky, in fact, never specified what they were (8).
As an example of the evolution of the “tribal concept”, an interesting version was proposed by the figure of the Belarusian national revival V. Lastovsky. It was formulated in the preface to the Handy Russian-Kriv (Belarusian) Dictionary he published in 1924 (9). Already in the 10th century, according to V. Lastovsky, the Belarusians were a fully formed people who act under the name “Krivichi”, and a number of tribes in the “Tale of Bygone Years”: Dregovichi, Drevlyans, Radimichi, Vyatichi (as well as those mentioned by him by obvious misunderstanding “Mountains”) - were simply branches of a single “Kriv tribe”. It was the tribal characteristics that, in his opinion, were key in the formation of the Belarusian (“Kriv”) people, and all secondary influences (entering into Rus', the adoption of Christianity, Lithuanian, and then Polish and Russian rule) only eroded the purity ancient ethnic group which should be preserved and revived as far as possible. It is interesting that V. Lastovsky did not notice at all the vicious circle underlying his concept: the basis for the inclusion of ancient tribes in the “Kriv tribe” was their localization in the territory, which at the beginning of the 20th century was ethnically Belarusian, while the originality of this territory was explained by the heritage of these same tribes.
The development of the opposite idea led to the formulation of the concept of “Old Russian nationality” in Soviet historiography. Following Klyuchevsky and partly Shakhmatov, its supporters argued that already in the era of Kievan Rus, tribal differences lost their significance, and the main distinctive features of the East Slavic peoples arose later, after the collapse of Rus' and the division of its territory between the Moscow State and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (GDL). In the spirit of this concept in the 40s. a number of attempts have been proposed to explain the reasons for the emergence of the Belarusian ethnic group and its differences from the Russian "". The main factors were postulated to be political unification within the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and economic ties between individual regions of the future Belarusian territory, and the mechanism of action of these factors was not explained. The subsequent works of A. N. Tikhomirov and L. V. Cherepnin substantiated in some detail the key role of the period of Kievan Rus for the formation of East Slavic unity in the form of the Old Russian nationality (11). The question of the reasons for the differences completely receded into the background. In the field of linguistics, the idea of the secondary nature of the distinctive features of the East Slavic languages was developed in the works of F. P. Filin. He justified the addition by the first half of the 12th century. all-Russian language. in which he distinguished northern and southern ethnographic zones. The formation of three East Slavic languages was, in his opinion, the result of subsequent evolutionary processes. In particular, in the western part of the all-Russian area around the XIV-XVI centuries. such secondary phenomena as hardening of the sound “r”, “dzekanie” and others have developed characteristic features Belarusian language (12). Linguists tend to explain the reasons for such innovations by the internal laws of language development (by analogy with biology, they can be called a kind of “mutations”).
Moscow archaeologist V.V. Sedov, relying mainly on archeological and toponymic data, in a number of works formulated a concept that can be conventionally called “substrate” (13). According to this theory, the initially single Slavic massif, when settling throughout the territory of Eastern Europe, was layered on different ethnic substrates. On the territory of modern Belarus, the Slavs mixed with tribes of the Baltic language group, related to the Lithuanians and Latvians. The assimilated descendants of the ancient Balts introduced original features into the culture and language of the Krivichi, Dregovich and Radimichi, which subsequently did not completely disappear during the era of Kievan Rus and reappeared after its collapse. It was on their basis that the integration of the descendants of these tribes into a single Belarusian ethnic group took place. This concept met with a rather cold reception during the Soviet period, mainly for ideological reasons. Firstly, adherents of the official dogma were alarmed by the very emphasis on differences rather than on commonality. Secondly, the similarity with the “tribal concept”, whose adherents at that time were labeled “bourgeois nationalists,” was too striking.
The situation changed dramatically after the formation of new independent states. As might be expected, the “tribal” and related “substrate” concepts have become increasingly popular. The article by V. P. Gritskevich “What should Belarusian historical science be like,” which appeared in 1992, contains a whole list of “myths and omissions that have been last decades took shape in Soviet Belarusian historical science and, with the help of historians, took root in the minds of people.” Among them are the myths “about progressive role the Slavic element in the formation of the Belarusian ethnos”, “about the common ancient Russian nationality”, as well as “about the belated formation of the Belarusian ethnos until the XIII-XIV centuries” (14). It is clear that the only alternative can be the recognition of the progressive role of the Baltic substratum, the denial of the ancient Russian nationality and dating the formation of the Belarusian ethnic group to the period no later than the 9th-10th centuries, i.e. before the inclusion of the Belarusian lands into Kievan Rus.
The political meaning of the opposing concepts is quite obvious. It is also obvious that for their supporters it is not so much the correspondence of these ideas to reality that is important, but the conclusions that flow from them “on the topic of the day.” But get the point ethnic processes within the Eastern Slavs is possible only by relying on real historical facts. So, the differences between Belarusians and Russians and Ukrainians can go back either to the ancient substrate (through the Dregovichi, Krivichi and Radimichi, who absorbed it to the greatest extent), or to the period of the existence of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (the second half of the 13th-18th centuries). Naturally, it cannot be ruled out that contributions to ethnic identity were made in both periods. What do the available facts say?
The Tale of Bygone Years gives general indications of the localization of Slavic tribal princes, but contains only very meager data about their origin. Only the Western (“from the Poles”) origin of the Radimichi and Vyatichi is reported. Archaeological data allows us to somewhat clarify this information. Thus, according to modern ideas, on the eve of the mass settlement of the Slavs in Eastern Europe, the area of their settlement was the Prague archaeological culture, which existed in the 6th-7th centuries. in the middle Dnieper region, the Pripyat and Western Bug basins. In the VIII-IX centuries. in its place, the culture of Luka-Raikovetskaya emerged, the features of which were then directly continued in the antiquities of the Volynians, Drevlyans, Polyans and Dregovichi of the 10th-11th centuries. Thus, these tribes represent a closely related group, in the formation of which the role of any substrate cannot be traced (15).
The process of formation of the Krivichi, Radimichi and Vyatichi was not so straightforward. They developed as a result of several waves of Slavic penetration into the area of the ancient substratum population, which traditionally belongs to the Baltic language group on the basis that the names of rivers and lakes in this area find the best correspondence in modern Lithuanian and Latvian languages. Traces of this local population can be traced back to the 8th century, and Slavic traits finally prevailed only in the next century - probably as a result of the final wave of migrations. At the same time, the antiquities of the Radimichi and Vyatichi are indeed very close to each other, which corresponds well to the chronicle report of their joint migration. The Krivichi culture stands somewhat apart, moreover, its area covered in the 9th-11th centuries. not only the north and northeast of Belarus and the Smolensk region, but also the Pskov and significant parts of the Tver region, where the substrate was not Baltic, but Finnish. Judging by archaeological data, the closest to the Krivichs were their northern neighbors - the Slovenians of Novgorod.
Thus, various groups East Slavic tribes really existed, but neither written nor archaeological data provide grounds for identifying among them a single Proto-White-Russian (as well as Proto-Ukrainian and Proto-Great Russian) group. The Polotsk Krivichi, the indisputable ancestors of the Belarusians, were closest to the Smolensk and Pskov Krivichs, who later became part of the Russian people. The descendants of the related Radimichi and Vyatichi also later joined different ethnic groups. Finally, the Dregovichi had common roots with the Volynians and other southern tribes(ancestors of Ukrainians, and partly Poles).
The area of the Baltic substrate also does not completely coincide with the later area of the Belarusian ethnic group. In addition to most of modern Belarus, it covered not only the Smolensk and Bryansk regions, but also the Kaluga, Tula and Oryol regions (16) (the area of the Moshchin archaeological culture, replaced by the antiquities of the Vyatichi in the 8th century (17)), the inhabitants of which were not related to ethnogenesis Belarusians. And vice versa, on the territory of Belarusian Polesie, pre-Slavic features had completely disappeared by the 6th century, so the Poleshuks’ belonging to the Belarusian ethnos can only be attributed to the substrate with great stretch.
In short, on the basis of the “tribal” and “substrate” concepts it is impossible to explain why the descendants of the Pripyat Dregovichs became Belarusians, and the descendants of the Drevlyans and Volynians - Ukrainians, why the descendants of the Vyatichi from the upper reaches of the Oka became Russians, and the descendants of the Radimichi - Belarusians. And it is completely incomprehensible what common heritage could lead to the merger of the Pinsk Dregovichs with the Polotsk Krivichi into a single ethnic group. (For the sake of accuracy, we note that part of the Dregovichi area, namely in Central Belarus, absorbed the same substrate as the Krivichi-Polotsk residents, but this does not apply to the original area of the Dregovichi on the banks of the Pripyat, now indisputably part of the Belarusian ethnic territory.)
At the same time, the concept of “ancient Russian nationality” does not stand up to criticism, by the time of its formation the features of the tribal identity of the previous era allegedly disappeared. Archaeological data, analysis regional features phonetics and vocabulary reflected in ancient Russian chronicles and birch bark letters, as well as the territorial distribution of later dialect features, allow us to assert the preservation of tribal characteristics not only in the 12th-13th centuries, but also up to the present day. They, say, do a good job of explaining the Dregovichi heritage of the presence in Polesie dialects of an unstressed “o” or hard consonants in words like “ide”. “moves”, “ishly”. uniting them with dialects on the territory of Ukraine. In turn, the mixture of “ts” and “ch” (“Polotsane.” “German”) recorded in the sources unites the descendants of the Krivichi in the Vitebsk and Pskov regions, and the Vyatichian “akanie” even today brings Moscow dialects closer to Belarusian ones (18). There is a coincidence between the ancient area of the Krivichi and the Novgorod Slovenes with the characteristic funeral rite of the “kurgan-zher type” that developed in the 12th-15th centuries. (19) Traces of it are clearly visible in this territory until the 20th century. in the form of gravestones and stone crosses.
Nevertheless, we're talking about namely, dialect features that make it possible to identify local features within ethnic groups (including those common to adjacent ethnic groups), but not to distinguish ethnic groups from each other. The appearance of signs that unite all Belarusians into one whole and separate them from Russians and Ukrainians requires a completely different explanation.
It turns out that none of the opposing concepts corresponds to the entire sum of the facts. Tribal characteristics not only existed, but also survived to this day in the form of local dialect and ethnographic zones, but they did not form the basis of modern ethnic groups, since they do not coincide territorially with them at all. On the other hand, there was no single ancient Russian massif, which was later torn apart by secondary processes. The emergence of three modern ethnic groups can be compared to pictures or words made from children's cubes: the components are the same, but arranged in a completely different combination. The concepts of A. A. Shakhmatov and E. F. Karsky correspond to this situation relatively better than others. Their main ideas were recently reproduced in the work of M. F. Pilipenko (which, despite the pretentious subtitle “New Concept,” did not introduce anything fundamentally new) (20). But they also lack the main thing - an explanation of the mechanisms of action of the force that created a new pattern from the old cubes.
It seems that the reason that fairly professional researchers for decades have not been able to find a convincing solution to this problem lies in the initial setting: the search was conducted exclusively at the level of material factors. Meanwhile, it is known that the main ethnically defining feature - common self-awareness or, in other words, the “national idea” - belongs to the category of intangible. The role of ideas in the formation of common features of material culture and language has been practically unstudied. This is not surprising - not only in the orthodox Soviet methodology, but also in the neo-positivist materialism characteristic of many Western researchers, the very formulation of the question in such a form (the idea forms material objects) sounds like a heresy. Although even the founders of Marxism recognized that an idea, having mastered the masses, can become a material force, it was still believed that “being determines consciousness,” and not vice versa.
This dilemma is similar famous question about the primacy of the egg or the chicken. The answer simply lies on a qualitatively different plane. Ideas are born, take hold of the masses and change the world, and these material changes, in turn, give rise to new ideas. An example is the history of the awakening of Belarusian and Ukrainian self-awareness. very briefly stated at the beginning of this article. There is no doubt that both national ideas arose in the heads of specific people as a result of their awareness of objective ethnographic features. However, these objective differences themselves were the result of the influence on the language and culture of the local population of previous ideas, including “national”, or rather “pre-national” or state ones (although none of them was subjectively recognized, and objectively they were neither Belarusian, neither Ukrainian in the modern sense).
At the current stage of study of the issue, it is impossible to demonstrate in detail, especially in a short article, exactly how ideas changed the ethnic map of Eastern Europe. One can try to indicate only the main stages in the evolution of these ideas, in the hope that the mechanism of their influence will be traced later. Below we offer one such rough attempt.
Since during the period of the Slavic “principals” it is difficult to discern traces of ideas leading to the formation of the Ukrainian or Belarusian nationality, it remains to look for them in more later eras. The period of the collapse of Rus' into semi-independent principalities seems promising in this regard, but only at first glance. There were clearly more centers of consolidation in that period than there are modern ethnic groups. V. O. Klyuchevsky’s conclusion about two centers (Kiev and Vladimir-Suzdal) seems clearly simplified. We can talk about at least five more fairly independent centers: Galicia-Volyn, Chernigov-Seversk, Novgorod-Pskov, Smolensk and Polotsk. Continuing our analogy with the cubes, we can say that this was not yet their final combination.
The fact that the Polotsk land at that time was distinguished by special separatism also cannot explain the emergence of the Belarusian ethnic group, especially within its current borders. Even if we recognize the attempts to see the beginnings of Belarusian statehood in the Principality of Polotsk as justified, its territory covered no more than half of modern Belarus. Its entire southern part was at that time much more closely connected with Kiev, Chernigov and Volyn than with Polotsk. Suffice it to recall that Gomel and Rechitsa in the 12th-13th centuries. belonged directly to the Chernigov principality, Mozyr - to the Kiev principality, Mstislavl - to the Smolensk principality, and Brest - to the Vladimir-Volyn principality. The independent Grodno and Turovo-Pinsk principalities also gravitated more to the south than to the north. And the isolation of Polotsk from the rest of the Russian principalities should not be overestimated. In the charter drawn up by the Polotsk residents in 1264, it is unambiguously stated that “the Russian land is called Polochskaya” (21). It was during this period that the all-Russian consciousness was finally formed, which was then preserved for centuries.
Moreover, the idea of Polotsk independence was rather ephemeral. Its last surge, perhaps, can be traced during the reign of Andrei Olgerdovich (1340-1380s), but subsequently the self-awareness of the inhabitants of the Polotsk land never went beyond the regional (zemstvo) level. In the XV-XVII centuries there is no need to talk about any special separatism of this land compared to other regions.
Much more important consequences for ethnogenetic processes had the formation on the territory of Rus' of two completely independent and even hostile states: the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Grand Duchy of Moscow. It is no coincidence that all researchers who rejected the “tribal” concept turned their attention to this period. Indeed, the state border between the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Moscow state, which formed by the beginning of the 16th century, surprisingly exactly coincides with the modern ethnic border between Russians and Belarusians. Moreover, changes in the political border, as a result of which the Smolensk and Bryansk regions periodically moved either to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania or to Moscow, correspond well to the “intermediate” ethnic state of these territories, which only in the 20th century. ended with their inclusion in the Russian ethnos (on most ethnographic and linguistic maps of the late 19th - early 20th centuries, these territories are still designated as Belarusian (22)).
Nevertheless, factors derived from the political division of Rus' explain well only the western border of the Russian ethnic group, but not the ethnic border between Belarusians and Ukrainians. There have been no significant differences in the political history of these two peoples since the mid-14th century. until 1569, when, as a result of the Union of Lublin, the territory of Ukraine entered directly into the Kingdom of Poland, and Belarus remained part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, which retained its independent status within the federal Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. And the political independence of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania was later largely formal, and the main cultural, religious and, to a certain extent, socio-economic processes took place in all the eastern lands of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth almost synchronously.
Moreover. the very fact of different behavior of the Belarusian and Ukrainian gentry on the eve of the Union of Lublin, which led to the inclusion of Ukraine into Poland, indicates serious differences in self-awareness - despite the similarity of external (material) conditions. The reason for these differences requires an explanation.
The process of formation of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania began, as is known, in the middle of the 13th century, immediately after the Tatar invasion of Rus'. The surviving principalities in the north and west of Belarus (Novogrudok and Polotsk) came under the rule of the Lithuanian princes. It is possible that they themselves agreed to an alliance with Lithuania in order to avoid the much more unpleasant subordination to the Golden Horde. Over the next few decades, the young state repelled attempts to subjugate it from the Tatars, the Galician-Volyn principality and the Teutonic Order, which proved the viability of the new state (naturally, not national!) idea, which can be conventionally called “Lithuanian”. It engulfed a population characterized by extreme ethnic diversity. It included Baltic-speaking Lithuanians and related people from Prussia and Yatvingia, as well as the Slavic population of the Podvina region (basically consisting of Krivichi-Polotsk), Central Belarus (descendants of the Dregovichi, who experienced the influence of a rather strong substrate in this area) and the upper Ponemania, where There was a mixing of migration waves of Krivichi, Dregovichi and Volynians, layered on the Yatvingian substrate (culture of stone graves).
The ruling dynasty in this state was of Lithuanian origin, which contributed to the assignment of the polytonym “Lithuania” to it, which also became one of the self-names of the mixed population. At the same time, the local Slavic (mixed Krivichi-Dregovichi) dialect, called the “Russian language” in sources, probably became the “language of interethnic communication.”
At the same time, among the surviving population of the forest and forest-steppe zones of Right Bank Ukraine, basically consisting of the descendants of the bearers of the Luka-Raikovetskaya culture, after the loss of ties with other Russian lands, consolidation processes could not help but intensify. They were facilitated by the political unification of this territory under the rule of Daniil Galitsky and his descendants. It must be assumed that the Turovo-Pinsk land was under the influence of the same center, which was facilitated by its initial proximity to Volyn. In fact, in this region there was a process of formation of an independent ethnic group, which, based on one of the names of this area, can be conventionally designated as “Chervono-Russian”.
Another center of consolidation emerged at this time in the Novgorod and Pskov lands, where local descendants of the Slovenes and northern Krivichi had previously absorbed a significant Finno-Ugric substrate. After the loss of previous ties with the devastated south, local peculiarities. There has been a tendency towards the emergence of a separate “North Russian” ethnic group.
The rest of the territory of Rus' was in a state of deep decline and desolation, aggravated by Tatar rule. The first symptoms of overcoming the crisis appeared only in the 1320s, when the fourth center of consolidation was revived on the territory of the Vladimir-Suzdal land. Moscow and Tver fought for the championship. The victory of Moscow and its acceptance of the role of leader in the fight against the Horde yoke led to the emergence of the Great Russian " national idea"and the "Muscovite" ethnic group.
But this arrangement of cubes was only intermediate. The emerging processes of ethnogenesis soon experienced a number of profound transformations. Lithuania, under the rule of the talented politician Gediminas, became so strong that it began to subjugate the neighboring Russian lands. At first, this led to a conflict with the southern (“ChervonoRussian”) hearth, from which Lithuania came under control around the 1320s. the southern lands of Belarus (Pinsk and Brest) were ceded. But soon the situation changed even more dramatically when the dynasty of the descendants of Daniil of Galicia came to an end. Their possessions became an arena of struggle between Lithuania and neighboring Poland, and by the middle of the 14th century. found themselves divided between them.
Thus, the southern ethnogenetic center lost its unity. Its western part (Galicia) became part of Poland for several centuries, while Volyn, following Polesie, fell under the rule of the Gediminovics. This could not eliminate the objective similarities of local residents, but it made the subjective awareness of this similarity extremely difficult. On the contrary, the political and intellectual elite in Galicia could not help but be strongly influenced by the ideas of Polish statehood, and in the rest of the territory by similar ideas of “Lithuanian” statehood (in the above-mentioned “interethnic sense”). After the Union of Krevo in 1386, when both states formed a confederation under the rule of a single monarch, competition began between the Polish and “Lithuanian” ideas.
The position of the local gentry on the eve of the Union of Lublin, when the sejmiks of Podlasie, Volyn land and most of the Kyiv voivodeship spoke in favor of direct inclusion into Poland, was the result of this competition. At the same time, the gentry of the Brest, Pinsk and Mozyr districts, ethnographically close to the Volynians, decided to remain part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, which can be regarded as evidence of the complete disintegration of the southern Russian ethnogenetic center. In one part of its territory the Polish idea prevailed, in the other - the “Lithuanian” one. As a result, its population later merged into two different peoples, the dividing line between them ran precisely along the border between the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Kingdom of Poland after the Union of Lublin.
The North Russian ethnogenetic center had also disappeared by this time as a result of the conquest of the Novgorod land by Moscow in the second half of the 15th century. The final blow to him was dealt by Ivan the Terrible during the years of the oprichnina, when Novgorod suffered an unprecedentedly brutal defeat. After this, the surviving local population lost all support for ethnic consolidation and gradually merged with the Great Russian ethnic group.
Plan
Introduction
1 Concepts of ethnogenesis
1.1 “Polish” and “Great Russian” concepts
1.2 "Tribal" concepts
1.3 “Old Russian” concept
1.4 “Baltic” concept
1.5 "Finnish" concept
1.6 Other opinions
2 Genome research
References
Introduction
The ethnogenesis of Belarusians, that is, the process of formation of the Belarusian ethnic group, is quite complex and contradictory. There is no consensus among scientists about the time of the appearance of Belarusians as an ethnic group, or about the ancestors of modern Belarusians. It is believed that the ethnogenesis of the Belarusians took place on the territory of the Upper Dnieper, Middle Podvina and Upper Ponemonye. Some researchers (Georgy Shtykhov, Nikolai Ermolovich, Mikhail Tkachev) believe that the Belarusian ethnic group existed already in the 13th century. Archaeologist Valentin Sedov believed that the Belarusian ethnic community developed in the 13th-14th centuries, Moses Greenblat - in the period from the 14th to the 16th centuries.
1. Concepts of ethnogenesis
There are several fundamentally different concepts of the ethnogenesis of Belarusians.
1.1. “Polish” and “Great Russian” concepts
Chronologically, the first to arise "Polish"(L. Galembovsky, A. Rypinsky) and "Great Russian"(A. Sobolevsky, I. Sreznevsky) concepts according to which the ethnic territory of the Belarusians was considered as primordially Polish or primordially Great Russian, respectively, the argument for which was the absence of a separate language among the Belarusians. Meanwhile, at the beginning of the 20th century, Evfim Karsky, in his fundamental work “Belarusians,” proved the independence of the Belarusian dialect from both the Polish language and the Great Russian dialect of the Russian language, thereby refuting the main argument of the supporters of these concepts.
1.2. "Tribal" concepts
At the beginning of the 20th century, a concept was formed among the Belarusian national intelligentsia, according to which Belarusians descended from the chronicled Krivichi tribe. By "Krivichi" concept was Vaclav Lastovsky. Even earlier, similar ideas, conventionally called the “tribal” concept, were voiced by Nikolai Kostomarov and Mikhail Pogodin. The concept was not widely adopted, but served as the ideological basis for the formation of the so-called "Krivichi-Dregovichi-Radimich" concepts. Its authors were famous historians and linguists Evfim Karsky, Moses Grinblat, Mitrofan Dovnar-Zapolsky and Vladimir Picheta. The concept is based on the idea of the formation of the Belarusian ethnic group as a result of the ethnic consolidation of the tribes inhabiting the ethnic territory of the Belarusians. The popularity of this concept is quite high, although it does not take into account the chronological gap between the disappearance of the chronicled tribes in the middle of the 12th century and the formation of the all-Belarusian ethnic complex.
1.3. "Old Russian" concept
After World War II, the dominant role in Soviet science was taken by "Old Russian" the concept according to which Belarusians, along with Ukrainians and Russians, were formed as a result of the collapse of a single ancient Russian nation in XII-XIII centuries. Theoretically, this concept was substantiated by S. Tokarev, and archaeologists Pavel Tretyakov and Boris Rybakov also took part in its development. Certain provisions of the Old Russian concept were seriously criticized by archaeologists Valentin Sedov and Eduard Zagorulsky. Archaeologist Georgy Shtykhov actively opposes the hypothesis of a single Old Russian nationality as such, as a result of which the largest textbooks ever created on the history of Belarus included a subsection “On the problem of Old Russian nationality,” containing criticism of this concept. Despite the existence of very serious scientific criticism, the “Old Russian” concept remains the most widespread at the beginning of the 21st century.
1.4. "Baltic" concept
In the 1960s - early 70s of the 20th century, Moscow archaeologist Valentin Sedov formed a new concept that did not fundamentally reject the hypothesis of the existence of a single ancient Russian nation. According to this concept, called "Baltic", the Belarusian ethnos was formed as a result of the mixing and mutual assimilation of local Balts with the alien Slavs, while the Balts played the role of a substrate (substratum) in the ethnogenesis of the Belarusians. The concept is based on the attribution archaeological cultures of the late Iron Age on the territory of Belarus to the Baltic, which is now practically not disputed by anyone. During numerous excavations, Valentin Sedov found a whole series jewelry, tools, weapons, which were characteristic of the Baltic culture and did not belong to the Slavs. In his opinion, the migration of the Slavs to these territories began in the middle of the 1st millennium AD, and during this period the Slavs settled only the territories south of Pripyat. The settlement of the main part of the territory of Belarus by the Slavs, according to Sedov, dates back only to the 8th-10th centuries. As an argument in favor of the “Baltic” concept, the fact of the presence of Baltic roots in many elements of the language and culture of the Belarusians is also cited, for example, the worship of snakes and stones in the traditional religion of the Belarusians, straight-woven bast shoes, housing construction techniques, a number of sounds of Belarusian phonetics (hard “ r", "akanie"). Despite the fact that most modern researchers generally accept the “Baltic” concept, such a significant influence of the Balts on the formation of the Belarusian people, their culture, and language is often questioned. Also, the hypothesis is sometimes blamed on the desire to tear Belarusians away from Russians and Ukrainians. According to ethnologist Mikhail Pilipenko, the Balts acted as a substrate not for the formation of Belarusians directly, but for the Slavic communities of Krivichi, Dregovich and Radimichi as the basis. However, according to Nosevich, the “new concept” of Mikhail Pilipenko is essentially an attempt to smooth out the contradictions between the “Balstka”, “Krivichi-Dregovich-Radimich” and “Old Russian” concepts and in itself does not bring anything new.
1.5. "Finnish" concept
There is also "Finnish" a concept put forward by writer Ivan Laskov. According to it, the ancestors of the Belarusians were the Finno-Ugrians. The concept was formed on the basis of the presence of a significant number of ancient Finno-Ugric hydronyms on the territory of Belarus (for example, Dvina, Svir). Nowadays, however, it is believed that the Finno-Ugrians were the substrate not of the Belarusians, but of the Balts.
1.6. Other opinions
According to the candidate of historical sciences Vyacheslav Nosevich, not one of the concepts corresponds to the entire sum of the facts. He believes that the ethnogenesis of the Belarusians consists of such elements as the substratum population of the Iron Age, several waves of Slavic colonization, the influence of the Principality of Polotsk and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and he attributes the formation of the Belarusian ethnic group to the era of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.
2. Genome research
The results of the study of the genome of Belarusians, which was carried out in 2005-2010 at the Institute of Genetics and Cytology of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus, do not confirm the hypothesis about the origin of Belarusians as a result of Slavic-Baltic or Slavic-Ugric genetic synthesis. The ancestors of modern Belarusians, who settled the modern territory of Belarus VI-VIII thousand years ago, according to their genome belong to the Indo-European genetic type, to its genetic group, interpreted as Slavic.
Y chromosome research
According to this study, according to genetic markers of the Y chromosome (passed from the father to male descendants), Belarusians show high similarity with the Eastern Slavs and the majority Western Slavs, but genetically far from the Balts. Moreover, the distance from the Balts is equally great for both northern and southern Belarusians. Conclusions are drawn that Belarusians are closest in genotype to Western Russians and Ukrainians. According to the same study, “Belarusians are included in the genetic space of the Russian gene pool, which is close to the gene pool of all Eastern Slavs. Moreover, Belarusian populations are located closer to the Russian average than many Russian populations (especially in the north and east of the Russian range). In general, the Russian gene pool most fully represents the gene pool of all Eastern Slavs, and the Belarusian gene pool represents a small part of its variability.”
Mitochondrial DNA Research
A study of mitochondrial DNA transmitted from the mother to offspring of both sexes showed that there are “significant differences between southern and northern Belarusians. It is achieved due to the pronounced originality of the northern Belarusians, which is not associated with the Baltic substrate in the maternal lines of inheritance - the northern Belarusians are equally genetically distant from the Balts, and from the Western Slavs (including the Poles), and from the Finno-Ugrians, and from almost all populations of the Eastern Slavs." In particular, one of the factors that allows us to talk about noticeable differences between northern and southern Belarusians is the close relationship of the latter with Russians: “The similarity of southern Belarusians with southern and western Russian populations is very great: southern Belarusians are 3-5 times genetically closer to them than to the northern Belarusians."
However, these studies, as well as the conclusions their authors reach, often face serious criticism. Doctor of Biological Sciences, anthropologist and geneticist Alexey Mikulich, in his work published in 1992 (even before the spread of DNA research methods), speaks, based on morphological characteristics, the prevalence of certain blood groups, about the unity racial type Belarusians, Aukstaits, Latgalians, inhabitants of the Chernigov region, Smolensk region, Bryansk region, the so-called New Mazovia and the ascent of this type back to the Neolithic population of Eastern Europe.
References:
1. History of Belarus (among all the world's civilizations). Vuchebn. dapamozhnik / V. I. Galubovich, Z. V. Shybeka, D. M. Charkasau i insh.; Pad rad. V.I. Galubovich and Yu. M. Bokhan. - Mn.: Ekaperspectiva, 2005. - P. 136.
Historical stagesformation of the Belarusian
ethnic group
1. Formation of the Belarusian nation.
2. Nation-building processes in Belarusian
lands at the end of the 18th – beginning of the 20th centuries. Nationality
form of language,
territorial,
economic and cultural
community of people that is being created
historically as a result
consolidation of tribes and
precedes
nation building Factors that influenced the process
formation of the Belarusian nation:
political
social
economic
confessional Political factors:
stimulating
restraining
creation of ON;
saving local
organization of a single
autonomy
state
individual lands;
management;
presence
introduction of a single
separatist
legislation
trends Economic forces:
stimulating
restraining
further development
agriculture;
improvement
crafts;
introduction of a single
monetary system; development of commodity-money relations
conservation
regional markets;
availability
local
metrological units Social factors:
stimulating
restraining
formation
four estates aggravation of social
gentry, clergy,
conflicts as a result
peasantry, philistinism;
recesses
establishing more
social
broad connections
differentiation
between them
society Confessional factors:
stimulating
restraining
belonging
for the most part
population to
Orthodoxy
active offensive
Catholicism after
Krevo Union;
start
confessional
confrontation
in society Signs of nationality:
common ethnic territory
relative commonality of language
a kind of material and
spiritual culture
ethnic identity
self-name Ethnic territory
territory
compact settlement
people with whom it is connected
its formation
and development
The core of the ethnic territory of the Belarusian
nationality corresponded in basic features
settlement areas of its ancients
ancestors – Krivichi, Dregovich, Radimichi Features
Old Belarusian language:
phonetic
lexical
hard “r”,
“dzekanye” and
"tsking"
“akanye” and “yakanye”,
added sounds
at the beginning of a word
has three main
historical layers:
common Slavic,
common East Slavic,
proper Belarusian Features
cultural complex:
material
culture
spiritual
culture
new types of settlements,
production
change of layout
main types
villages, folding
and genres
set of tools
Belarusian folklore,
and auxiliary
structures, approval of the development of theater
art,
characteristic types
musical creativity
clothes Ethnic identity
people's awareness
belonging to one's people,
its distinctiveness
For a long time, the population of the Belarusian territory
The Grand Duchy of Lithuania called itself Russian and its language Russian.
This was due to the fact that the population
of our lands in the overwhelming majority
adhered to Orthodoxy, or the “Russian faith.”
Therefore, self-awareness and self-name among Belarusians
formed later than other ethnic characteristics
Nation (from Latin patio - tribe, people) is a historical community of people, which is characterized by stable economic and territorial
Nation (from Lat. patio - tribe,people) – historical
community of people who
characterized by stable
economically and
territorial connections,
common language, culture,
character, life, traditions,
customs, self-awareness.
Nations arise during
the formation of a capitalist couple in Novogrudok
Chinese production method
attire The main territory of residence of Belarusians in
beginning of the 19th century entered the borders of 5 western
provinces of the Russian Empire: Vitebsk,
Mogilev, Minsk, Grodno and
Vilenskaya. Ethnic boundaries did not coincide with
administrative-territorial Belarusian. Artist I. Repin
According to the 1897 census,
territories of 5 western provinces
5 million 408 thousand Belarusians lived,
about 3.1 million Russians, Poles,
Ukrainians, Jews, Lithuanians, Latvians.
The vast majority of Belarusians lived in rural areas
(more than 90%). The share of those Belarusian citizens who spoke their native language
language was about 14.5%.
Features of Belarusians as an ethnic group
there was a section on confessional
based on Orthodox and Catholics. Orthodox Church And
the Catholic Church was not recognized
existence of the Belarusian ethnic group.
In 1897, Orthodox Christians among
Belarusians made up 81.2% Belarusians at the end of the 19th – beginning of the 20th centuries. didn't have
social class structure adequate
bourgeois society. Belarusian National
The bourgeoisie consisted almost entirely of
wealthy peasants and people from small
gentry. The weakness of the national bourgeoisie
slowed down the process of consolidation of the Belarusian
nation, because she couldn't act as a leader
national movement and indifferently, sometimes
was hostile towards him. Far from
completion was also the process of formation
national proletariat.
In the 19th century. it was among the gentry that it was formed
Belarusian national intelligentsia,
who acted as an ideologist
national movement Woman in winter clothes
In the first half of the 19th century. started
new Belarusian
literary language. He couldn't
develop on the basis
Old Belarusian language, which from
XVIII century actually became dead.
Belarusian literary language
developed primarily as a language
fiction and
partly journalism.
A significant obstacle to his
there was a lack of development
normative grammar.
Central Belarusian dialects
formed the basis of the Belarusian
literary language. Generally
the process of its formation towards the end
XIX century didn't finish Due to poor development
professional art home
sphere of spiritual culture of Belarusian
nations constituted folk forms
arts (folklore, folk
theater arts, music, dance),
traditional rituals and customs.
The uniqueness of the Belarusian ethnic group
reflected in folk
fine and decorative arts.
Traditional (folk) culture
concentrated in the village.
The Belarusian nation was formed
as peasant at its core
Man in a holiday scroll Gradually the formation of a national
self-awareness of Belarusians. At the end of the 19th – beginning of the 20th centuries.
the term “Belarus” and the name “Belarusians” were assigned to
the entire ethnic territory of Belarusians. Census 1897
confirmed that the majority of residents of Belarus have already
learned the name “Belarusians” and stuck to it.
The formation of the Belarusian national idea was underway and
Belarusian movement. From the national-cultural it
began to develop into a national-political one. IN
1880s Belarusian populists (group “Gomon”)
first announced the existence of the Belarusian
nation, about the need to fight against Russification and
Polonization of the Belarusian people and proclaimed the right
Belarusian people to national
independence. At the turn of the 19th – 20th centuries. in the environment
Belarusian youth came up with the idea of developing
Belarusian national question Thus, the formation of the Belarusian
ethnicity has come a long way.
Most researchers believe that
the formation of the Belarusian nationality took place in
XIV - XVI centuries, and from the end of the XVIII century. started
the process of formation of the Belarusian nation,
which continued in the second half
XIX - early XX centuries. By the beginning of the twentieth century.
folding is not completely completed
national literary language and
formation of national
self-awareness of Belarusians. These processes
continued in the following decades of the twentieth
