Published on and written by Cyril Jarnias
To tell the history of the country in Belarus is to traverse nearly the entire European narrative: from the first Paleolithic hunters to historians’ debates about the legacy of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, from villages swallowed by the Second World War to school textbooks rewritten under the presidency of Alexander Lukashenko. It also means constantly shifting from one register to another: that of archaeology, memory, geopolitics, language, and identity.
Historically, Belarus has defined itself as a crossroads territory between the Baltic and the Black Sea, rarely an imperial center but often a prize. Its modern identity is shaped by a successive legacy (Ruthenian principalities, Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Russian Empire, USSR) and by what it was denied from being. Its history is therefore a battle over narratives as much as a chronology of events.
From First Settlements to the Emergence of the Slavs
Long before the word “Belarus” existed, the space it designates today has been occupied by human groups for hundreds of thousands of years. Excavations near the village of Ogovo, in the current Brest region, have revealed a very ancient presence, on the order of 400,000 years, making it one of the major prehistoric sites in Eastern Europe. Further east, sites like Yurovichi (near Kalinkovitchi) or Berdych (near Chechersk) testify to occupations 23,000 to 26,000 years old.
Between 5000 and 2000 BC, the Linear Pottery culture (Bandkeramik) succeeded the Paleolithic hunter-gatherers. Then, during the Bronze and Iron Ages, cultures like Dniepr-Dravitsa, Lusatian, or Milograd developed. They were characterized by the mastery of metallurgy, the production of objects decorated with solar spirals and animal motifs, and the construction of funeral mounds called kurgans.
These successive cultures prepared the ground, both literally and figuratively, for a profound demographic change. From the 3rd century, Baltic tribes settled durably. Then, between the 5th and 7th centuries, a great wave of Slavic migrations transformed the demographic and cultural balance. Archaeologists observe a progressive assimilation of the local Baltic populations – notably the Yatvingians and the Dniepr Balts – by Eastern Slavic tribes.
For Roman geographers of the 1st-2nd centuries, such as Pliny or Tacitus, the Slavs are “Veneti”. Ptolemy mentions tribes named Stavanoi or Souobenoi, which some researchers link to the early Slavs. The original homeland of this Slavic world is still debated, with some placing it in east-central Europe, others in the Pripet Marshes area, in the heart of present-day Belarus.
Ancient authors and researchers
The protohistory of the region is not only of interest to archaeologists. The very fact that ancient cultures like Milograd or Dniepr-Donets left traces on this territory now feeds identity constructs: for some Belarusian historians, these pre-Slavic roots reinforce the idea of a local continuity long predating the appearance of Russia or Poland.
From the World of the Rus’ to the Belarusian Principalities
From the 9th century onward, most Eastern Slavic tribes entered the orbit of a new political entity: the Kievan Rus’. The space corresponding to present-day Belarus became integrated into this loose federation of principalities. Three centers shared influence: Kiev, Novgorod, and, most importantly for the Belarusian area, Polotsk.
Polotsk, mentioned as early as 862, was the heart of the first structured principality in the region. Its importance is underscored by the construction, between 1044 and 1066, of the Cathedral of Saint Sophia. By adopting this prestigious name, like Constantinople, Kiev, and Novgorod, it affirmed the dignity and autonomy of this northern center of the Rus’.
Around Polotsk revolved vassal territories, reaching as far as Baltic zones to the west. Further south, the Principality of Turaŭ (Turovskoe kniazhestvo), mentioned as early as 980, played a secondary but real role, particularly on the spiritual plane. Bishop Cyril of Turaŭ, in the 12th century, left homilies and theological writings that would lastingly mark the local Orthodox tradition.
It is also in Polotsk that a figure appears who would become one of the patron saints of Belarus, Euphrosyne of Polotsk. A member of the princely nobility, she founded monasteries, supported the copying of books, commissioned master Lazar Bohsha to create an ornate crucifix – the famous “Cross of Euphrosyne” – long considered a national treasure before disappearing during the Second World War.
The year of the Battle on the Niamiha, the first written mention of Minsk and the symbolic date of its foundation.
At the turn of the 12th-13th centuries, the Kievan Rus’ crumbled. The principalities became de facto independent. The Mongol invasion of 1240, which destroyed Kiev, brutally reshuffled the cards. Many Ruthenian cities were ravaged or became tributary to the Golden Horde. Yet, through a combination of geographical and military circumstances, a large part of the lands of present-day Belarus escaped the worst destruction and changed allegiance by another route: the expansion of the young Lithuanian power.
The Grand Duchy of Lithuania: Laboratory of a Belarusian State?
The history of the country in Belarus cannot be told without the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. From the 13th century onward, this entity born of the Baltic tribes of Aukštaitija began to absorb, through conquest or alliances, most of the former principalities of western Rus’. Under rulers like Mindaugas, and especially Gediminas, Algirdas, and Vytautas, the Grand Duchy expanded from the Baltic to the Black Sea, incorporating almost all the Ruthenian lands located between Smolensk, Kiev, and Podolia.
For the Eastern Slavic populations of what would become Belarus, this turn was major. On one hand, the ruling class remained ethnically Lithuanian, the dukes’ natural language was Baltic, and the dynasty confronted the Teutonic Order in pagan crusade wars. On the other hand, the demographic and cultural weight of the Ruthenians was such that the Grand Duchy’s administrative language quickly became an Eastern Slavic tongue: the famous “Ruthenian chancery language,” sometimes designated as “Old Belarusian” by national historiography.
The estimated proportion of Eastern Slavs, ancestors of Belarusians and Ukrainians, among the subjects of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania by the 16th century.
Today, two visions of this past coexist in Minsk. The so-called “official” historiography, inherited directly from the Soviet tradition, acknowledges the importance of the Grand Duchy in the formation of the Belarusian ethnicity, but insists on its multi-ethnic character and the role of “Russians” within it. In this narrative, one speaks rather of a “Lithuanian-Ruthenian,” or even “Russo-Lithuanian,” state, and it is recalled that the true Belarusian “nationality” would only have found a state with the Soviet republic after 1917.
Opposing this reading, an alternative historical school – marginalized but influential in independent intellectual circles – proposes a different narration. For its representatives, the Grand Duchy is “our state” in the proper sense. They see it as a construct where Belarusian lands – Polotsk, Vitebsk, Navahrudak, Turaŭ – played a structuring role, to the point of making the Duchy a quasi-medieval Belarusian state. The historian Mikola Yermalovitch, harassed by the Soviet KGB, was one of the main architects of this reinterpretation, claiming that the heart of the Grand Duchy was located in Navahrudak and not in Lithuania proper.
Around these theses crystallized what critics call “Litvinism”: the idea that the true heirs of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania are not present-day Lithuanians but Belarusians, descendants of the former “Litvins.” Some radical versions go so far as to deny any link between modern Lithuania and historical “Litva,” or to portray Belarusians as Slavicized Balts. These approaches are rejected by most academics but find an audience online and greatly irritate Vilnius.
The Grand Duchy of Lithuania profoundly marked Belarusian identity. Orthodoxy was long the majority faith there, although the Lithuanian core was Christianized in the Latin rite after 1386. The chancery language, Ruthenian (considered Old Belarusian), served as an official language until the 17th century. Present-day cities of Belarus (Polotsk, Vitebsk, etc.) were major political, economic, and cultural actors of the Duchy, and great Belarusian aristocratic families, like the Radziwiłłs, played a central role.
The Grand Duchy is also a political laboratory. Early 20th-century Belarusian authors, like Usevalad Ihnatouski, emphasized the relatively “contractual” nature of this system: the prince’s power limited by noble assemblies and urban veches, autonomy of local communities, advanced legal codification. In their view, this tradition strongly contrasts with the centralized, vertical autocracy of Muscovy. For modern nationalists, claiming the Grand Duchy as the matrix of the Belarusian state is thus also inscribing the country in a different political family than that of Russia.
The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth: Opening and Fracture
In 1569, the Union of Lublin sealed the merger of the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania into a federal republic: the Rzeczpospolita, or Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The Belarusian lands remained legally in the “Grand Duchy” part, but the political framework changed profoundly. The nobility, the famous szlachta, dominated public life, the election of the king became the rule, and the Diet (Sejm) turned into a powerful parliament but undermined by the individual veto right granted to each deputy.
For the Belarusian regions, the period of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth is ambivalent but marked by notable progress. On one hand, this state was one of the largest and relatively most tolerant of its time. The Act of the Warsaw Confederation (1573) guaranteed, on paper, freedom of worship, which was exceptional in a Europe torn by religious wars. Economically, cities benefited from Magdeburg rights, fairs multiplied, and trade towards the Baltic or Black Sea intensified. Culturally, the founding of Vilnius University in 1579, by King-Stephen Báthory and the Jesuits, made the region a major intellectual center.
But on the other hand, the local nobility – of Ruthenian origin – underwent a rapid process of Polonization. The Polish language established itself as the prestige idiom. The nobility adopted Latin Catholicism. In 1696, the old Ruthenian chancery language was officially ousted from administration in favor of Polish. The cultural and religious gulf widened between a Catholic and Polonized elite, and a peasantry that remained predominantly Orthodox and spoke Eastern Slavic dialects.
In 1595-1596, the Union of Brest created the Uniate Church (later Greek Catholic), with part of the Orthodox hierarchy recognizing the Pope’s authority while keeping the Eastern rite. This movement aimed to escape the Moscow Patriarchate and improve social status within the Commonwealth. However, this religious compromise provoked deep divisions and triggered popular uprisings to defend traditional Orthodoxy in towns like Slutsk, Mogilev, Vitebsk, and Polotsk.
Here again, modern interpretations diverge. The official historiography of post-Soviet Belarus apprehends the Union of Brest as a “catastrophe”, a bridge towards Polonization and a painful break with the “Russian world”. For alternative historians, on the contrary, Uniatism could have constituted a form of Belarusian national religion, reconciling Eastern tradition and independence from Moscow. They point out that by the end of the 18th century, a very large majority of the region’s inhabitants – around 75% according to some estimates – belonged to this Church, versus a minority Orthodox population. When the Russian Empire annexed the country and suppressed Uniatism in the 19th century, these authors see it as an act of violent Russification and one of the reasons for the subsequent weakness of Belarusian national sentiment.
The Commonwealth was subject to constant pressures: raids by the Crimean Tatars, wars with Muscovy for control of the lands of Rus’, and the Cossack revolt of Khmelnytsky which spread into Belarus. These conflicts, combined with famines and epidemics, caused massacres, population displacements, and could halve the local population.
The 18th century saw the structural weakening of the Commonwealth, undermined by parliamentary vetoes, noble corruption, and interference from St. Petersburg, Berlin, and Vienna. Reform attempts, notably the Constitution of May 3, 1791 – Europe’s first modern constitution – came too late. Three successive partitions, in 1772, 1793, and 1795, erased the Rzeczpospolita from the map. All Belarusian lands passed under the control of the Russian Empire.
Under the Russian Empire: Repression, Modernization, and the First Nationalists
The annexation of Belarusian lands by Imperial Russia opens a new sequence. Again, the narratives diverge. The Russian version and the version officially promoted in Minsk after 1994 present these events as a natural “return” of the Belarusian regions into the fold of a single East Slavic people. Alternative historians speak instead of occupation and the beginning of a long process of de-identification.
In fact, the noble elites initially retained some of their privileges. But the Polish uprisings of 1830-1831 and then 1863-1864 – in which many Belarusian nobles and intellectuals participated – led to a major hardening. The tsarist administration accelerated Russification. Figures like Konstanty (Kastuś) Kalinowski, a local leader of the 1863 uprising and author of the first political newspaper in modern Belarusian, *Mużyckaja prauda* (“The Peasants’ Truth”), were executed. In the vernacular language, Kalinowski defended the dignity of the “peasant people” against both tsarist oppression and Polonized nobles.
In the 1840s, the Russian authorities in St. Petersburg abolished local autonomy, banned the term “Belarus” in favor of “Northwestern Province” and “Western Russians,” prohibited the teaching and liturgical use of Belarusian, and closed Vilnius University. This policy aimed to erase ties with the Polish-Lithuanian past and prevent the emergence of an identity distinct from the Russian nation.
Yet, the 19th century was also a time of a discreet cultural awakening. Authors like Jan Czeczot, Władysław Syrokomla, or Vincent Dunin-Martsinkevitch began writing in local dialects or collecting Belarusian folklore. The ethnographer Pavel Shpilevski tried to publish a Belarusian grammar in 1846, but the Russian Academy of Sciences rejected his manuscript deemed insufficiently “scientific.” In 1870, Ivan Nasovič nevertheless managed to publish the first major Belarusian dictionary, an important milestone for linguistic recognition.
The 1897 census, the first reliable statistical base, recorded about 5.9 million speakers of “Little White Russian” (Belarusian). It revealed a paradox: in large cities like Minsk or Vilnius, Belarusian speakers were a minority, outnumbered by the Jewish (Yiddish), Polish, and Russian communities, making the language appear rural and “uneducated.” However, at the district level, the majority population was neither Polish nor Russian, which reinforced among some intellectuals the idea of a distinct people.
The late industrialization of the Empire and the development of railways in the late 19th century gradually changed the situation. Minsk, Vitebsk, Grodno, Gomel, and Pinsk became important industrial and railway hubs. Belarusian students founded the revolutionary organization Homan in St. Petersburg in the 1880s, a precursor to the first national political party, Hramada, created in 1903. The Belarusian-language press expanded, notably with the newspaper *Nasha Niva* at the beginning of the 20th century. Writers like Janka Kupala and Yakub Kolas then laid the foundations of modern literature.
This national awakening occurred against a backdrop of heightened tensions. By the end of the 19th century, Russian authorities encouraged a so-called “West-Russianist” current, embodied by intellectuals like Mikhail Koyalovitch, who defended the idea that Belarusians and Ukrainians were merely a regional branch of the Russian people. In opposition, figures like Francišak Bahuševič exhorted their compatriots not to abandon their language, under penalty “of disappearing as a people”.
World Wars, Revolutions, and State Creations
The First World War and the Russian revolutions of 1917 violently reshuffled the cards. The German-Russian front crossed Belarusian lands as early as 1915. Towns changed hands, hundreds of thousands of civilians fled into the Empire’s interior. In March 1917, the fall of the tsar and the provisional government’s rise to power in Petrograd opened a political breach. Belarusian forces gathered in Minsk, created a National Committee, demanded autonomy within a democratic Russia. They would not obtain it.
Proclaimed on March 25, 1918, in Minsk by Belarusian activists, the Belarusian People’s Republic (BNR) emerged in the context of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. This treaty, signed by the Bolsheviks in March 1918 to make peace with Germany, ceded vast western territories, including most Belarusian lands. In the vacuum left by the Russian withdrawal and the German advance, the BNR constituted itself as a national state aspiring to cover the entire Belarusian ethnic territory, although it enjoyed only limited support from a few powers.
Yet the BNR remained largely virtual. It depended on the goodwill of the German occupier, obtained only limited de facto recognition (from Ukraine, Lithuania, a few Central European states), and controlled neither a truly effective army nor administration. After Germany’s defeat in the autumn of 1918, the region became the prize in a three-way war: Soviet Russia, resurgent Poland, and local formations.
In early 1919, the Bolsheviks proclaimed the Socialist Soviet Republic of Belarus (SSRB), quickly merged with Lithuania to form Litbel, a short-lived entity. Simultaneously, Józef Piłsudski’s Poland advanced eastward, promoting a federation of “Intermarium” including Poland, Lithuania, Belarus, and Ukraine, but in reality aiming to durably control these territories. These territorial and ideological tensions crystallized during the Polish-Soviet War (1919–1921), whose main theaters of operations were the Belarusian and Ukrainian lands.
The Treaty of Riga, in March 1921, formalized a new partition: western Belarus (with Grodno, Brest, part of Minsk) went to Poland; the east, reduced to a few districts around Minsk, formed a Belarusian Soviet Socialist Republic recognized as such but under strict Moscow tutelage. The BNR, meanwhile, survived in exile, first in Kaunas, then in Prague, unable to assert itself on the ground.
Soviet Belarus: Framed Nation-Building and Tragedies
The 1920s in the Soviet part of Belarus were marked by a paradoxical policy. On one hand, the doctrine of “indigenization” (korenizatsia) promoted by Moscow encouraged the use of local languages, the promotion of Belarusian cadres, the creation of national scientific and educational institutions. This was the time of the Institute of Belarusian Culture, the first academies, the Belarusian State University, schools in the Belarusian language. Literature and the arts flourished. The standard grammar was fixed, the Cyrillic alphabet modernized, and the language officially became one of the four state languages of the republic, alongside Russian, Polish, and Yiddish.
On the other hand, this experience remained tightly subordinate to communist ideology. By the late 1920s, the wind shifted. Under Stalin, suspicion towards any “local” nationalism intensified. Forced collectivization, political purges, and the hunt for “national deviationists” hit the Belarusian elites hard. In the 1930s, a large part of the intelligentsia – writers, historians, linguists, party cadres – was arrested, executed, or sent to the Gulag. The site of Kurapaty, near Minsk, where mass graves of repression victims were uncovered in 1988, symbolizes this terror.
Linguistically, an orthographic reform in 1933 deliberately brought Belarusian closer to Russian, eliminated forms deemed “Polonized” or archaic, and tightened control over the norm. The stated goal was to “remove the artificial barriers between the two languages”. A less charitable reading sees it as an instrument of subtle Russification. From the 1950s-1960s onward, the trend intensified. In 1955–1956, about 95% of schools in the BSSR taught primarily in Russian. Cities became massively Russified; Belarusian retreated to the countryside.
Over 2.2 million people, about a quarter of the pre-war Belarusian population, perished during the Nazi occupation.
In this context, the partisan resistance becomes a central element of national memory. The Belarusian Soviet guerrilla units were among the most active in the USSR. They sabotaged railways, communication lines, and convoys, up to large coordinated operations like the “War of the Rails” in 1943. The episode of Brest, where the fortress heroically resisted the first German attacks, was elevated to the rank of a founding myth; the city received the rare Soviet title of “Hero-Fortress.” Minsk was declared a “Hero-City.” The official memory of the war – the “Great Patriotic War” – was durably articulated around massive sacrifice and resistance.
Percentage of buildings destroyed in Minsk and Vitebsk after Liberation in 1944.
This material success was accompanied by a hybrid identity: Soviet in ideology, but “Belarusianized” in certain symbols (recognition of the language, figures like Euphrosyne of Polotsk or Francysk Skaryna). It also rested on a compromise: acceptance of an advanced cultural Russification (language, historical references centered on Moscow) in exchange for socio-economic stability and recognition of the BSSR’s role as a “martyr republic” and “partisan republic.”
The end of the 1980s broke this balance. Perestroika allowed taboo subjects to be put back on the agenda: Stalinist repressions, Chernobyl (70% of whose fallout contaminated Belarusian territory), ecological degradation, the real place of the national language. The Belarusian Popular Front, founded in 1989, demanded transparency and increased sovereignty. In 1990, parliament adopted a declaration of sovereignty. After the failure of the Moscow coup in August 1991, Belarus proclaimed its full and complete independence on August 25. The official name changed from “Belarusian Soviet Socialist Republic” to “Republic of Belarus.”
The Battles for History Since Independence
Independence opened a delicate project: how to rewrite the history of the country in Belarus after decades of Soviet narrative? As early as 1986, the Ministry of Education embarked on a revision of curricula. Historians like Mikhas’ Bitch, Uladzimir Sidartsou, Vital’ Famina, or Pavel Loika were tasked with producing new textbooks for schools and universities, highlighting European roots, the role of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the experience of the 1918 People’s Republic, and resistance to Russian domination.
In these first textbooks of the 1990s, emphasis was placed on themes previously marginalized or distorted: wars between the Grand Duchy and Muscovy, the Union of Brest interpreted as an attempt at ecclesiastical independence, anti-tsarist insurrections, the BNR considered as the first attempt to create a modern Belarusian state. The white-red-white flag and the medieval coat of arms of the rider (Pahonia), borrowed from the Grand Duchy’s emblem, were adopted as national symbols.
The election of Alexander Lukashenko in 1994 marked a turning point. In 1995, a controversial referendum restored symbols of Soviet inspiration, gave the Russian language official status equal to Belarusian, and allowed a revision of school textbooks. A special commission was created to control educational literature, leading to the gradual elimination of works reflecting the spirit of the first independence.
Gradually, a new historiographic orthopraxy was imposed, largely inspired by the Soviet canon but adapted. The Grand Duchy of Lithuania is acknowledged as important, but emphasis is placed on its multi-ethnic character and the idea that Belarusians did not possess a true “national state” within it. The Belarusian People’s Republic is mentioned but often presented as a project under German tutelage. The Russian imperial period is rehabilitated for its supposedly protective role against Polonization, while references to the colonial or repressive nature of Russian rule are minimized. The guiding thread again becomes that of an uninterrupted Russo-Belarusian fraternity, from the baptism of Rus’ to the current Union with Moscow.
In the 2000s, the Belarusian authorities adopted a strategy of “soft Belarusianization” to dialogue with Europe. This translated into the renovation of historical castles from the Grand Duchy and Commonwealth eras, the erection of statues of figures shared with neighboring countries (like Tadeusz Kościuszko), and participation in UNESCO restoration programs. This timid reappropriation of national heritage, notably through language and certain symbols in public space, however, did not challenge the political primacy of the Russian language and the Soviet framework.
The events of 2020 – disputed elections, mass protests, repression – and the geopolitical crisis around Ukraine disrupted this unstable balance. The opposition, rallied around Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, reinvested the symbols of the Grand Duchy, the BNR, the 19th-century insurrections. The white-red-white flag and the medieval rider flourished in the streets of Minsk. Lithuania offered a platform and refuge to Belarusian exiles, positioning itself as the guardian of the common tradition of the Grand Duchy.
In reaction to Western influences, the Belarusian regime hardened its stance and promoted an exclusively Russo-Soviet historical narrative. It erased references to the heritage of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (such as statues of Grand Dukes Vytautas and Jogaila) and valorized figures conforming to this narration: heroes of the Great Patriotic War, partisans, and Soviet leaders. Concurrently, it repressed alternative historiographical currents, like Litvinism, through raids, dismissals, and legal proceedings, going so far as to ban journals and censor critical history books.
To understand how much the battle of narratives is structuring, one only has to look at how the two major schools of historians interpret a few key episodes:
| Period / Event | Official pro-Russian Reading | Alternative Nationalist Reading |
|---|---|---|
| Grand Duchy of Lithuania | Lithuanian state that became multi-ethnic, part of the Russian heritage | “Our” state, largely Belarusian, formative moment of the nation |
| Union of Lublin (1569) | Beginning of a tragic Polonization, loss of sovereignty | Forced union facing the Muscovite threat, institutional modernization |
| Union of Brest (1596) | Historical misfortune, instrument of religious Polonization | Aborted attempt to create a Belarusian national Church |
| Partitions of Poland (1772–1795) | Return to “Russian roots,” end of Polish oppression | Occupation, beginning of Belarusian de-identification |
| People’s Republic of 1918 (BNR) | Entity collaborating with Imperial Germany | First attempt at a Belarusian national state |
| USSR and BSSR | Apogee of development, “gift” of a state to the nation | Imperial project, modernization conditional on Russification |
This opposition unfolds not only in books but in classrooms, museums, official ceremonies, television series. The university discipline “History of the Belarusian State,” mandatory in higher education, is explicitly tasked with “forming a patriotic position” conforming to the values defined by the authorities. After 2020, the security dimension of this memory policy further strengthened, in close cooperation with Russian institutions like the “Historical Memory” Society.
Language, a Faithful Mirror of History
One cannot conclude an overview of the history of the country in Belarus without mentioning the singular trajectory of the Belarusian language, as it encapsulates the historical tensions of the territory. Originating, like Russian and Ukrainian, from the Old East Slavic of the Rus’ and its written variant, Ruthenian, it was long expressed mainly orally, written prestige belonging to Church Slavonic then Polish. Within the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the “Ruthenian chancery language” occupied for several centuries a quasi-official function, which some historians today claim as “Old Belarusian.”
The modern period saw its progressive marginalization: banned from administration in 1696, confined to the countryside under the Russian Empire, used marginally in schools run by the Basilians, it was long perceived as the language “of simple folk.” Its modern codification, at the end of the 19th century, took place in a context of acute conflict between Russian and Polish powers, who disputed control of the education system and the allegiance of elites. However, the grammars of Tarashkevich, the work of linguist Yefim Karskiy, the literature of Kupala and Kolas, the press of *Nasha Niva* and *Mużyckaja prauda*, gave Belarusian a solid foundation.
The proportion of children schooled in Belarusian in Minsk fell below this percentage after the 1995 referendum.
The 1999 and 2009 censuses reflect this identity tension. The majority of citizens still declare Belarusian as their native language (85.6% in 1999, 60.8% in 2009), but most admit to using Russian as their main language in daily life. UNESCO now classifies Belarusian as a “vulnerable” language, noting that a language used in daily life by less than 30% of the population is in a critical zone. In publishing, the situation is just as telling: in 2022, barely 1,067 titles out of 8,586 were published in Belarusian, for a total print run very much in the minority compared to Russian.
A part of the population, termed “conscious,” values Europeanness, the Belarusian language, the past of the Grand Duchy and the Belarusian People’s Republic (BNR), perceiving Russification as a colonial legacy. Another segment, labeled “Soviet,” identifies with the Russo-Soviet identity, celebrates the USSR as a golden age of stability and power, and sees rapprochement with Moscow as a guarantee.
In this context, every choice of toponymy, transliteration, or historical terminology becomes charged. The simple word “Belarus” – the traditional translation of Belorussia, literally “White Russia” – is the subject of debates, with some preferring “Bélarus,” deemed more neutral and more in line with the national language. The reform of official transliteration in 2023, which abandoned a Latin system based on historical Belarusian orthography for a scheme allowing transliteration from Russian, was thus perceived by many linguists as a new symptom of identity recentering towards Moscow.
A Past Weighing on the Present
In closing this journey, a constant appears: the history of the country in Belarus is less that of a straight line towards the “nation-state” than that of successive, superimposed, often contradictory layers that each generation reinterprets. Bronze Age tumuli coexist with ruins of 16th-century Gothic castles, Baroque domes of Uniate churches turned Orthodox, imposing factories of the Soviet era, and monuments of the Great Patriotic War.
Historical analysis must recognize the complexity of the Belarusian past: the part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the contributions and repression of the Soviet era, and the alternating influence of Warsaw and Moscow. It must also avoid ideological instrumentalization (Eurasianist or nationalist) to make way for objective research and nuance.
This task is all the more arduous as Belarusian historiography is today divided, even mutilated. Hundreds of historians have been dismissed in recent years, editorial projects closed, works classified as “extremist.” Simultaneously, Belarusian society fractures between exile and the interior, between Russian-speaking circles and defenders of the national language, between different family memories of the war, the USSR, independence.
Yet, the long duration offers a form of consolation: from the first flints of Ogovo to debates about the “true” nature of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, through the crosses of Euphrosyne, the trenches of war, the posters of the BNR, and the perestroika textbooks, the history of the country in Belarus has never ceased to be plural. Perhaps the key to a peaceful future for a territory that, for centuries, has not ceased to define itself between East and West lies in accepting this plurality – not in the search for a single narrative.
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