In the era of the First Commonwealth (the state collapsed at the end of the 18th century, partitioned by Russia, Prussia and Austria, the borderline between Belarussians and Russians, which at the same time divided the states, was also the border between two civilizations - the western and the eastern one: 'these were - as the Belarussian historian Hienadź Sahanowicz writes - two different worlds, two different societies'1. Belarus was becoming, gradually and visibly, a part of the Polish Commonwealth within the frame of the Grand Lithuanian Dukedom - mainly through its westernized elites and political system whose member it was - a component of the West. The process was abruptly reversed with the fall of the Commonwealth and coming into power of the Russian culture in Belarus after the 1830 and 1863 uprisings.

Such reorientation was taking place on several levels:

THE LANGUAGE

Through a remarkable part of the 19th century the vision of the nation held by the gentry elites of Belarus - gente Lithuani (Rutheni), natione Poloni - was dominated by the political, post-gentry model of the nation whose communal reach did not necessarily cover ethnic mappings. These elites, with the exception of a remarkable part of impoverished Belarussian gentry, were most often communicating in Polish, considering the former Polish state as their own, and the Polish language as the guarantee of gentry liberties. The role of the language underwent more rapid changes within the last decades of the partition, alongside intelligentsia coming into action and overtaking the cultural and nation-building function - the class which, contrary to the gentry basing its political distinctness on class and political rights - concentrated on its distinguishing ethno-cultural characteristics, especially the language. The rise of the Belarussian national movement after 1905 was accompanied by the increasing awareness of the separateness of the two languages, by the fact that both languages became major factors in constituting both nations, by the decreasing influence of the Polish language on the Belarussian society (with the exception of the inter-war period in the Belarussian territory of the Second Commonwealth), and, gradually, its radical limitation at the period of the Soviet Belarus. Contrary to the 19th century, especially before the fall of the First Commonwealth, the Polish language has become now a marker of national ideology stressing separateness from the local Belarussian people. Two hundred years back, both Polish and Belarussian side could not foresee the possibility of such divisions arising.

The Russian language was introduced in Belarus, as it was perceived by the local society and especially its elites, two centuries ago as the language of strangers, administratively imposed. It symbolized cultural, national and state foreignness. Gradually adopted by the Orthodox Catholic elites of the country, its content had necessarily little in common with the local values, evolved within the Belarussian society. This is the reason why the 19th century Belarussian literature was created almost solely by the Polish-language, meaning Catholic, gentry. After several centuries of its presence in the Grand Lithuanian Dukedom, Mickiewicz's Polish language, as well as that of Wincenty Dunin-Marcinkiewicz, who used it as his first language, developed a rich idiom and character frequently unknown in Warsaw.

The situation of the Russian language started to change towards the end of the 19th century, together with the process of putting down roots in the local society by immigrants from Russia. The change was also brought by the increasing importance of the influence of the Russian culture on the lower classes, especially on the Orthodox, but locally developed elites educated in the Russian imperial schools. The Belarussian language a chance to compete with the Russian in the 20s of the 20th century. However, the rapidly developing process of creating the Belarussian nation in the BSRR was soon equally rapidly withdrawn terminated through a range of administrative actions, including extermination of the Belarussian national elites. It turned out that the Polish language of the former elites of the gente Lithuani (Rutheni), natione Poloni, was completely substituted by the Russian which has now a different function in Belarus from not only the Polish language formerly, but the Belarussian today. What is more, the language has got a different function from that common in many other societies in Central and Eastern Europe. Most often, it does not constitute the nation, neither does it distinguish it from other nations. Typically, the Belarussian countryside speaks its own language (Belarussian dialects), and the city another language (Russian). Up to a certain degree the language denotes a different set of values.

According to the census of 1999, the Belarussian language was declared the mother tongue by 85.6% of the Belarussians. At the same time, though, only 41.3% of Belarussians acknowledged speaking Belarussian on the daily basis. Russian is spoken at home by 58,6% of Belarussians2. For city dwellers the attitude towards the Belarussian language derived from the awareness of the Belarussian ethnic origins, rooting in the Belarussian language, and, sometimes, it stemmed from referring to the Belarussian as the childhood language. Most frequently, however, it was not the language of the everyday. 31% of the republic's citizens lives in the countryside, and within this number the proportion of Belarussians is larger than ethnic proportions of the republic's population. These data allow to approximate the demographic situation of the country which in 1999 was inhabited by 81.2% of Belarussians and 11.4% of Russians3.

The language confrontation between the countryside dialect and the Russian of the city is - slightly simplifying - a clash of two attitudes. One is that of a passive, self-isolating familiarity, another that of openness, activism and social advancement. Both the Belarussian of the countryside and the Russian of the city are not perceived in national categories (swapping one for the other is not, then, perceived as the betrayal of national cause). These languages are carriers of cultural, regional and class, rather than national, identity. They have a different status, but this is the status of different social, not national positions. An empirical research carried out in 1995 by Marek Śliwiński and Valerius Cekmonas points out that "the constant use of Russian brings people nearer to Russia and the Russians, while the use of the Belarussian, especially its 'simple' dialects, results in a friendly attitude towards Poland and the Poles, as well as to all other minority groups living in Belarus"4.

The peasant Belarussianness is a sovietized - thus modernized - ethnicity. Peasant's little motherland (uniting people through custom bonds) comes down to the nearest Belarussian-language environment; the "middle-sized" motherland, which can be called regional, is the Belarussian-language Belarus, distinguished by its provincial specificity from within the larger frame of the grand, ideological motherland, once constituted by the Soviet Union, and now by the three Eastern-Slavonic republics of the former empire. All of the three motherlands are perceived in non-national categories. The similar attitude is held by city dwellers (however, their little motherland is Russian-language and thus less distinctly perceived).

The Russian language, despite the attempts undertaken in the first half of the 90s to stop the process of its expansion, is still broadening the scope of its influence on the Belarussian society, especially the young people. The major factor in this process are the increasingly popular Russian mass media. The allures of the consumer society, once identified with the west, are now invading the Belarussian society from the east, from Moscow and Petersburg, in the commonly understood Russian language. Groups of Belarussian young people start to speak the slang of Moscow radio stations, getting rid in the process of the "trasianka" (the mixture of Russian and the Belarussian dialect); the local accent is substituted by the Russian of commercial mass media of the eastern neighbour. This is not yet a common phenomenon, but it is already noticeable.

The process of the language russification of Belarus coincided, which is very important, with the period of the ultimate demise of the postfeudal structures in the countryside, the urbanization of the country, the developing tendency to substitute the bonds of custom by much more capacious, ideological ones5. In the BSRR, the place of the national ideology reinforced by the literary Belarussian was taken up by class ideology whose emblem was the administratively privileged Russian language. The Soviet ideology began to expand its influence on Belarussians in the period of their mass migrations to urban areas, when so-far isolated local communities started opening up. The Soviet identity did not develop beside national ideology - as it was the case of many other countries of real socialism - but as its succession. The Belarussians entered the modern, urbanized and literate world (they passed on from ethnicity to sovietness, skipping the national stage) mostly through the soviet identity. Thanks to the soviet identity (modernizing their social environment, which was performed in other countries by the national ideology) they became a modern - albeit specific - society, different from most of the European nations. The society was not based on the Belarussian language. The Belarussian was degraded to the level of the folklore, an ethnographic phenomenon, and other local contexts contained within the larger frame of general sovietness, filling in the social space emerged after the dissolution of traditional bonds.

The Russian language was received as the carrier of the ideology disseminating supra- and international slogans, infused by the elements of the Soviet-Russian messianism, as a means of common social communication. Thus, the Belarussians were russified culturally and not nationally. The Russian language was associated with the social rise, higher level of culture, urbanization and industrialization of the country, as well as with the institutions of the state power which were always highly revered by Belarussian peasantry. It was valuable because it introduced the Belarussians into the larger world of the empire, into rich Russian culture and literature. It was received not as the language of national dissent, but as the existential and political correctness, as an inter-ethnic communication, as the language of materialist (civilizational) aspirations - urban-cultural rather than ethno-national. In this language you can take in Belarus rather than give. Spreading in the time-span of several generations, the Russian language promotes the values which are not set in the Belarussian culture as deep as they are in the Russian. This is explained by the fact that the principle of their reception is different, non-national.

Usually, the set of values carried with a language is internalized much deeper if they are treated by the nation as its own. They gain then a strong emotional colouring and appeal. They are capable of carrying, apart from nationalisms, a creative non-conformity; they are the force activating culture and society. We could think that the Russian culture is received by the Belarussians on some levels of its symbolism rather superficially. It is not a value in itself; it does not constitute a national value as it does to the Russians. It is, rather, a means of introducing the Belarussians into the contemporary world. At the same time, a certain sphere of deeper feelings, known only to the Russians, is closed off for the Belarussians. The Russian language cuts off Belarussians from their long history reaching back to the Grand Lithuanian Dukedom and the Commonwealth; it reinforces the perception of Belarus in the category of regionalism and provincialism. It is a "better" language, because it is "urban" - a language of social refinement and of "higher" culture of the leading nation of the former Empire. It is at the moment a "familiar/native" language, just as the Russians are "familiar/native" (not considering themselves a minority in Belarus and not treated as such by an average Belarussian), in contrast to the "foreign" Polish and "foreign" Poles. In this sense the Russian language has got a vital role in surrendering Belarus to Russia. The Belarussian-language Belarussian People's Front is the only relatively large, distinctly anti-communist and anti-Soviet movement in Belarus at the moment. Russian is the language of impoverished and sovietized masses nurturing a nostalgia for the perished socialist equality, social security, relative "wealth" and simplicity of the political system, lifting the burden of responsibility for the country's lot off the individual.

It means, then, that the identity of Russian-speaking urban masses in Belarus is manifested in treating the Russianness as linking Belarussians with Russians and Ukrainians into one Eastern-Slavonic cultural community, up until recently political - but not national. Belarussians do not regard themselves as Russians, although they do not perceive their difference in national terms either. Their sense of a distinctly developed provincialism (regionalism) has got a historical, cultural, and linguistic rooting, as well as political and republican, as a heritage of the seven decades of the BSRR. The Russian language is perceived by the Russian-speaking population in Belarus as a means of communication, but also as a certain content: on the level of political (Soviet) values, as cultural superiority in relation to the Belarussian language, and an ability to move beyond local confines. For an urban Belarussian the countryside Belarussian is the language he does not speak and does not want to speak, treating it solely in ethnographic terms. He realizes, at the same time, that the very existence of this language distinguishes him from Russians.

The literary Belarussian language, in turn, is now spoken only by scant national elites, by a part of political opposition concentrated especially around the Belarussian People's Front; it is a language of struggle for Belarussian national rebirth, the language of cultural and social non-conformity, of the idea of the need to move closer to the west and the necessity to carry out socio-economic reforms (which does not mean that the Russian-language opposition and the Russian-language environment of reformers - especially inspired by Moscow - does not exist). The current nostalgia for the Soviet wealth is a major cause of resentment to the Belarussian as the language popularized after the gaining of independence. The very process is perceived by a large portion of the society as performed rather forcefully, since the language carries national values rather oppositional to sovietness. The literary Belarussian is today the carrier of national values, it provides the sense of national dignity, subjectivity, independence from Russia (from the dependence from the "big Russian elder brother"). This is the reason why it is not supported by the authorities. Not infrequently it is identified with - both by the authorities and the people - with nationalism, so severely anathematized in the USSR.

It is interesting that despite of the remarkable level of the russification of the country, what is the most precious in literature written in Belarus is created almost exclusively in the Belarussian. This is because for writers and intellectuals the Belarussian language is the source of their national expression, tradition, their country's past, and their cultural uniqueness. The Belarussian language - as Jan Maksymiuk writes - hardly knows the concept of mass literature, provided for the need of the commercial market by third- and fourth-grade apprentices of the pen. This type of demand is satisfied by the Russian language6. The phenomenon can be explained by the fact that the initiators of the rebirth of Belarussian are narrow circles of intellectuals, naturally as if acting in the style of social, cultural, and political non-conformity, through the attempts to build up the nation, to adopt central- and western-European patterns, and thus in opposition to sovietness, so close to wide masses of Belarussians, and, ultimately, in opposition to Russia's vested interests.

The literary Belarussian as the language of the everyday communication for the part of Belarussian elites has usually got a pronounced national dimension. It also carries values cherished by other European nations: an aspiration to a clear self-definition on the basis of culture, long historical past, own autonomous language as a factor constitutive for the communal bonds, the need to turn Belarussians into subjects by granting the concept of the Belarussian motherland an unambiguously primary status, stating and abiding the Belarussian national interest (which is the concept practically non-existing beyond the environment of nationalists). It is accompanied by social activism, the stance of non-conformity, individualism, the rejection of political communal bonding of the Soviet type for the sake of the national bonding developed on the basis of ethno-linguistic criteria.

Looking for analogies between the linguistic situation of Belarus and that of Ireland, Switzerland or Belgium is basically ungrounded. This was not the language that constituted the nations in the west of Europe, but, most often, the state and political values7. The contemporary fully nationally aware Irish are distinguished from the English (British) by a strongly felt religious separateness, an historical awareness (which the Belarussians lack in confrontation with Russians), and a rich national literature in the English language, solidly rooted in history and culture of the country. The British are, then, a political nation, not necessarily considering each English-speaking community as nationally British.

To what degree are the languages in Belarus able to - using Benedict Anderson's words - generate the imagined communities, to build a particular solidarity? 8. Certainly, such potential force is stored in the literary Belarussian (and not in the dialects). The Russian language, for the time being, has not manifested such a "particular solidarity" - which would help distinguish Belarus from Russia. The identity of the vast majority of Belarussians is premised on the distance from the Latin West and the sense of belonging to the Orthodox Eastern-Slavonic community, terminologically Russian. The Russian language has got the primary status, uniting onto a high symbolical level of culture the regional fragments of thus conceived community (containing within its range its dialectically Belarussian part). Russian culture - in opposition to Polish, Lithuanian or Western-Ukrainian - does not promote values mobilizing the eastern Slavs to developing a national awareness and identity (thus to a pronounced manifestation of their uniqueness) in opposition to it. Belarussians in Moscow usually remain on the level of their regional Belarussianness - Russianness, while, in Warsaw or Lublin, they are starting to perceive their distinctiveness in the national sense, close to the value system held by Poles. Their identity gains expression.

We can state that the national dimension of the language is rather weakly felt by the Belarussians - especially in comparison to the Central-European societies. The situation is caused, among others, by the scarcity of their national awareness (the overall weakness of the identity arena in general). The proximity of languages and cultures (the Russian and Belarussian, and once Polish), as well as in historical heritage: the lack of linguistic stability of the Belarussian elites within last several centuries, switching every two or three generations from one language to another (three languages were in use: Belarussian, Polish and Russian). The Belarussian identity was likewise determined by their religious changeability - they would pass on from the Orthodox Church to Greek Catholicism and then back to the Orthodox faith in a different, Russian cultural framing, alongside periodically widening and narrowing range of influence of Roman Catholicism.

SOCIAL STRUCTURES

The class structure of the Belarussian society undoubtedly influenced the formation process of the Belarussian culture, and had a vital role in determining its content. "The lack of the economically privileged Belarussian classes - as Eugeniusz Mironowicz writes - of the landed gentry, bourgeoisie, and the intellectual elite, whose existence is usually an essential condition for the development of national culture and ideology - caused the faintness of Belarussian demands set against the background of ardently clashing Polish and Russian influences. Petite bourgeoisie - commonly the most significant champion of nationalism - in the case of Belarussians coming from small towns and close in its character to peasantry - did not constitute that dynamic force which revolutionized the nations in the stage of building of their national awareness. The plebeian character of this community was the reason why these were social problems - not national - which determined its awareness"9. Such a situation had many reasons. Class ideology was effectively imposed by Russian elites on the whole domain of the Eastern Orthodoxy. It did not destroy the idea of the Russian nation - although it deformed its contents - but it inhibited a distinct emergence of nations: the Belarussian and Ukrainian (within the areas under the Russian dominance for a longer period of time).

Intelligentsia was the constitutive social layer in the Eastern and Central Europe for the creation of culture and the nation. In Belarus, the influence that the groups aspiring to such status held over the society was weaker than in Poland not only because they were simply smaller in number. We can suppose that the main causes were, among others, in a specific relation between intelligentsia and the people in Russia, transferred partly onto the Orthodox Belarussian territory. In Poland, in the situation of the lack of state structures up until 1918, the peasant gained his national subjectivity by receiving the values of national culture from intelligentsia (with its post-gentry ethos), while in Russia, where the westernizing intelligentsia - culturally much more distant from the people than it was in Poland, and developing sense of guilt for that reason - was acutely criticized by the state apparatus, and even ridiculed (the czarist apparatus praised the people, distancing itself from intelligentsia). The influence on the peasants and their mentality was to a considerable degree held by the czarist - and later the Soviet - power. It reinforced among the people the lifestyle of passivity on the daily basis and occasional mobilization on order from the authorities; thinking according to the norms of the community concentrated around the authorities, rather than the grass-roots ability to ideological constructs which would oppose the will of the political centre, or even separatist in relation to it. The influences of the eastern neighbour were the major reason why the dominant relation of the Belarussian people to the authority was not a rebellion against power - close to the Polish model - but the cult of power. It was not the intelligentsia ethos of independence, mobilizing people to national activity in Poland, but class-oriented activism of the new bureaucratic-clerical class.

The Russian managed quite successfully to impose on the Belarussians the opinion that the 19th century insurrections (of 1831 and 1863) were "Polish rebellions" in which "Polish aristocrats" fought against the czarist power, while the interests of the Belarussian people were not taken into consideration in the least (especially during the 1831 insurrection). An exception to this model is provided by Konstanty Kalinowski, a leader of the January (1963) insurrection in historical Lithuania, who is frequently referred to by the Belarussian historiographers underlining almost solely his aversion - or even hatred - to the aristocrats (identified with Poles) and his allegedly pro-Belarussian stance. Up till today old Belarussians often associate Poles with miatieżniki (insurrectionists).

The gentry founders of the 19th century literary Belarussian language granted on it a plebeian character (Belarussian was spoken in their works by the peasants, while Polish by landowners). Some weak attempts to go beyond such an attitude, undertaken in the "naszinowski" period (1906 - 1915), were abruptly terminated after the Bolshevik revolution. The Russian elites of the czarist Russia were eliminated for class reasons, the Polish ones - apart from the class motives - could not be accepted by the Russians as nationally competitive in relation to the Russian power. Hence in the USSR, the Belarussian society was limited to the status of the "people", and cut off from the prior strata together with their elitist and activist ethos, and from their history (adding the lack in the collective memory of the Belarussians of such figures as Bohdan Chmielnicki or such a social phenomenon as the Cossack community). It was one of the reasons why the socially advancing Belarussians adopted the Russian culture (and, prior to that, Polish) equipped in values and cultural patterns characterizing the traditional elites and thus attractive to the people. Thus comprehended Belarussianness, relying on folklore, peasant passivity and humbleness, and, if rising to a rebellion, then only within the class terms, had little chance to endure as an autonomous social and cultural unit in this part of Europe. The new beaurocratic-clerkish class, a product of social advancement (different from the prior, Polish and Russian one, originating from the impoverished gentry), was susceptible to the new ideology, more inclined to possessing rather than to being, less inclined, then, to act for the sake of the more generally conceived society rather than for its own interests. This social group was immersed in contemporaneity and unwilling to refer to the past or the future (with the exception of the 2nd World War), which would be characteristic of nationally-oriented mentality. The values and stances which somewhere else - including the Western Europe - were considered as national, passed in the Soviet Belarus for nationalism - and this term carried a much heavier load of negative connotations than in the west.

The tendency to dichotomous perception of the society according to the "us" and "them" categories, distinctly stronger in Russia than in the West, was grafted onto the Belarussian society. While in the west such divisions lost their acuteness when the social structure gained a gradational character, especially through the development of the middle class, in the USSR an attempt was made to solve the problem radically by adopting the principle of the general social equality. As it is known not only to sociologists, egalitarianism inhibits social initiative on the level of the individual; it breeds indifference, and destroys creative non-conformity. In an egalitarian society people think rather how to preserve their social status than how to raise it in relation to others. In the period of economic transformation, a large part of people's effort goes into preventing the process of social differentiation. The lack of acceptance for the processes of social differentiation not only impedes the social and economic development of the contemporary Belarus, but also results in the fact that new wealthy groups stem partly from the environments existing beyond the law.

The Belarussian society of the lower class and Soviet roots manifests a tendency to distance itself from activist and non-conformist individuals, from people representing any elitist positions and behaviour (including the sings of belonging to the higher class). Such rooting is also a major cause of materialism dominating within the Belarussian society.

While in Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary we can speak of the emergence of the middle class, in Belarus the process is hardly socially sensed. In the west it is the largest part of the society, constituting majority in the wealthy societies. It is independent of the state, interested in the democratic political structure, stability of the law and respect for ownership. It is characterized by the "stance of activity, symptoms of individualism, anti-traditionalism, anti-egalitarian tendencies, economic liberalism and overall tolerance"10.

The tradition of destroying independent groups emerging in-between the power apparatus and the people is long in Russia. An example of this in Belarus can be the process of the gradual destruction of small gentry by the czarist administration in the 19th century, and turning it into "jednodworce" - a social group economically close to peasantry. In Russia these were not so much independent social forces which decided on the shape of the state, government, political conditions, but the power which created the society and divisions existing within it. The shape of social structure built in the USSR (and the value system that supported this structure) does not stimulate social and economic development. It does not promote a model of the "self-made man". In Belarus, neither the beaurocratized groups of clerical staff, nor relatively small business groups create the middle class, and because of the simple reason that these are the groups strongly subordinated to the state because they either remain on the state payroll, or, indirectly, through the system of licensing and formal and informal connections making their economic existence dependent on the authority, its arbitrary decisions, feeble law system and its instrumental manipulation. In this sense the results of these connections differ from those in the west.

Russia has developed a strong tradition of authoritative reforming of the country on the basis of its own upper social layers - once gentry, later intelligentsia - and, most of all, in reliance on the elites of its own state apparatus. Belarus does not possess any of such modernizing factors, because its relationship with Russia did not equip her in adequate tools; quite reversely, it devoided her of the grass-root, mass social self-organization. The lack of its own native elitist traditions (of the competent, especially economically, elites knowing the west, which distinguishes Belarus from Russia and Poland), impinges on the democratic address to the people. Belarus became Russia's province to a much larger degree (and with much deeper social consequences) than it was the province of the Commonwealth as a part of the Grand Lithuanian Dukedom. Decisions once made in Vilnius (or Warsaw) were in time taken over by Petersburg, and later by Moscow. Hence in the time of crisis the mechanism enabling an independent getting out of it proves to be inefficient, and in consequence of this situation there emerges a tendency to rely back on the politico-economic and cultural centre of the former state. It explains a comparable - as to the ability of getting out of the crisis - situation of Belarus and Ukraine, disadvantageous in relation to Russia (so far better off in the period of transformation), as well as to the countries of the Vysehrad group.

In Belarus, according to Moscow's will, all structures existing in-between the state and the family, necessary for the functioning of the modern state, developed almost solely from the inspiration of the state and often were an expression of its political and ideological control over the citizens. At the time of the state's dissolution and the demise of its political system these structures underwent an abrupt dissipation. Similarly to Poland of the 80s, but much more fiercely, Belarus experienced a phenomenon of the so-called sociological void, created by the weakness of the middle level bonds. However, in contrast to Poland, the Belarussian society makes only faint references to the structures of the highest reach: the nation and the Orthodox Church (neither is its own state a highly priced value). The condition of the main element of social microstructure - the family - seems to be equally frail. In this situation Belarus has got real trouble in finding the footing for social reliance, a lever which would push it up on the way of social modernization. Russia, referring in the process of transformation to its own past from before the USSR, excised from the awareness of Belarussian society these elements of tradition which would reach deep into the past centuries, as they did not connect Russians and Belarussians, and in fact often represented both nations as oppositional.

RELIGION - THE NATION

The connection of the two terms included in the title of this paragraph - religion and nation - is not coincidental. Catholicism and the Orthodox Church, not so much through the sacred as the profane sphere, has a remarkable influence on the development of nation-creating processes among its believers. The nation-creating power of each of the two denominations was different, as well as the values that were their part. It is interesting that the territory between Poland (Poles) and Russia (Russians) the only fully nationalized communities were Catholic or Protestant: Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians and Galician Ukrainians. They were also able to oppose the processes of polonization and germanization (and russification). Belarussian Catholics were also gaining a national awareness quicker than those of the Orthodox denomination: getting polonized (which affected most of them) or creating the beginnings of the Belarussian national movement. The Orthodox part of Belarussian and Ukrainian population still in its bulk perceives itself in ethnographic rather than national terms11: as a modified ethnicity. Its rather scarce national awareness gets stronger where the Latin (Polish) influences lasted longer. It is also observable in Belarus when its eastern part is compared to the western (it is interesting, for example, to trace the geography of voting in the 1994 elections of the republic's president). The causes of this state of affairs are numerous and complex.

In the Orthodox denomination an individual was very deeply immersed in the rich world of ethnic culture, in the sphere of folklore much more developed than in the Roman Catholicism, in the oral culture and custom bonds. Catholicism clearly limited the abundance of folk culture (not infrequently of pre-Christian origins), created conditions inviting the quicker process of the opening up of local (peasant) communities, increased their readiness to adopt more ideological bonds, especially national ones. The Orthodox priests arriving to Belarus from Russia in 19th century, usually much poorer and not so well educated as the Roman Catholic ones, contributed to the spreading of the idea of class divisions, dysfunctional for the nation-forming processes, by inhibiting the development of national solidarity. The Orthodox Church, preserving the ethnic awareness of the people and slowing down the process of the opening of peasant communities, did not stimulate the grass-root nation-forming processes. They were most often initiated from the top, by state power and the elites. The people underwent the process of gaining national awareness relatively late.

The czar administration, dissolving the Union in 1839 and introducing the Orthodoxy in its place, had a major part in assigning a label to each of the denominations: respectively the "Russian faith" (Orthodoxy) and the "Polish faith" (Catholicism). The outcome of this situation was that the Unite denomination which could have passed for the native, "peasant", "Belarussian" one, ceased to exist. It led to russification of the country and - to a much lesser degree - to its polonization (mainly within the belt area of Belarussian-Lithuanian borderland). Russian authorities, abolishing the Uniate Church, cut off the Belarussian peasantry from its links with the western culture. This fact vitally influenced cultural and civilizational reorientation of the Belarussian society. A new religious structure resulting from an unmediated clash on the Belarussian territory of two large cultural domains proved to be inhibiting for the process of Belarussian nation-forming.

Włodzimierz Pawluczuk points out that "the tendency to pantheistic or pantheicizing perspectives, antidiscursivism, intuitions, opposition against the western individualism and personalism have been present in culture shaped within the domain of the Orthodox Church for centuries"12. Many critics state that "Orthodoxy influenced mentality of the Belarussian people less than Catholicism"13. Personalism, whose values are firmly rooted in the Latin culture, played an important role in strengthening the sense of personal identity of an individual in the Catholic and, even more, Protestant communities in Europe, undergoing the process of nationalization and modernization. This phenomenon became a significant factor in developing civic societies, enabling the grass-root formation of nations with the simultaneous development of the collective identity of an individual in its national, thus ideological, character. We can suppose that in the Orthodox communities the development of the individual sense of collective identity decidedly dominated its sense of the self, that is why the processes of autonomization of an individual took much longer than in Catholicism, which in itself had remarkable consequences for national formation.

The feudal peasant collectivism was not destroyed in the Eastern-Slavonic societies, as it was the case in the west of Europe, but became gradually modified and limited in its spontaneity: it got somehow "nationalized": formalized and centrally controlled. The Orthodox Church was in relation to the Catholic and Protestant Churches - especially if understood as an autonomous institution and not as an intermediary between the state and the people - more passive in its influence on the believers, both within the sphere of ethics and in shaping up subjectivities, or stimulating the social being of individuals. It mobilized the members of the Orthodox Church on the individual level in the religious sense, limiting the concept of human freedom to the sphere of spirituality and inner feelings, thus granting on it a psychic rather than social significance. In the social arena its actions rather depended on the decisions of the political centre.

While in Poland (and in the rest of Latin Europe) the Church, usually independent from the state, supported the development of autonomous social structures and communities, including the nation, the Orthodox Church in Russia - and this was transferred onto Belarus - was not only a mediary between the state and the people, but, to a remarkable degree, it was even an agent of the state authority. It did not approve of - or it scarcely did - the formation of the sphere of social self-organization, or of individual and group activism so characteristic for the western societies, undoubtedly facilitating mobilization of the society in the situation of crisis and transformation, and also enabling the grass-root nation-forming initiatives. The Orthodox Church, subordinated to the state authority, by assumption had a Russian national character. It was inherently unable to initiate separatisms from the state and national centres. That is why it was not possible to evoke Belarussian or Ukrainian separatism within its frame. In contrast, it worked many times in the Catholic Church (of which the Lithuanians are an example). The situating of the Church in relation to the state was different hence the sphere of the profane also differed.

In simple terms, we could say that through the system of values contained within their culture, Poles indirectly incited nation-forming processes separatist in relation to their own nation among those who remained within the domain of the Polish culture, at the same time directly fighting against these processes as competitive to their own interests. Belarussian Catholics - in contrast to Lithuanians and Galician Ukrainians - lacked sufficient social energy necessary for national differentiation. It was not big enough to oppose simultaneously Russians and Poles. Russians, in turn, hindered the process of nationalization of the low classes, promoting instead the idea of the class, competitive in relation to the idea of the nation, thus closing off these communities within the conceptual confines of provincialism, ethnography, folklore - russifying them in consequence. The Orthodox denomination in its Russian version - starkly distinct in its social and cultural framing from that it had in Grand Lithuanian Dukedom - transferred from the east onto the Belarussian territory the language, partly mentality, the structure of political values, and, broadly speaking - civilizational values, as well as the mechanisms of social development. The elements of the Russian culture that the Belarussians adapted were not so much assimilated to their own culture as they were substituting it.

CULTURE

Despite the fact that the set of values characterizing contemporary Belarussian culture is decidedly closer to the Russian than Polish culture, and it usually stems from the former, (that is why I rest in my commentary on the Belarussian-Russian relations), it does not mean that it is a simple copy of these features which characterize the Russian society. The differences are in the level of their intensity, the lack of some values vital for the Russians, and the visible remnants of some elements of the old culture of the Belarussian society. In may aspects the Belarussian culture is closer to Polish than Russian. We need to underline here that my analysis concerns the masses of the Belarussian society, and not its relatively small national elites. We need to remember also that the remarkable degradation of the Polish culture after the 2nd World War (in terms of class structure and distinction), and partly similar social conditions of the years of raising socialism in Poland and Belarus resulted - beside other reasons - in the fact that the remarkable part of features associated with Belarussians characterizes the Poles, although they usually have a different intensity and colouring. Nevertheless, in the last decade of the previous century Poland was been gaining a distance from the east, while Belarus from the mid-90s has been turning again almost solely to Russia. A strong barrier defending the Polish society as well as the Baltic nations from an easy internalization of values incoming for last several generations from the east was created by a distinct sense of national self-identity.

It seems that, just like their eastern neighbours, Belarussians care much more for the "good", "just", strong and efficiently governing power than for its legal accountability. In the socio-political system of the Russian state, generally at least authoritarian, the personal freedom was not expressed in the public sphere through the realization of individual rights, but, rather, through an address to the spiritual sphere. The law was most frequently the tool of the state power. Such treatment of power and the law is still a burden for the contemporary Belarussian society.

The plebeian communities of Central and Eastern Europe could not rely on their own states in the process of nation-forming, because they did not have any. That is why they cherished their cultural uniqueness in language and history (most often in its strongly mythicized form). We can say that the communities of the Western Europe do know their history, although they refer to it with an increasing emotional distance. Most of the nations of Central and Eastern Europe, by contrast, have a strongly emotional attitude to their history and still cannot shake off its influence on the present (although some changes to the reverse can be noted in the last decade). The Belarussians, in turn, with the exception of narrow national elites - do not have a strong sense of possessing history in the first place. Russian history did not become for Belarussians their national past; their own is faintly perceived. The Belarussians hold on to the present, both in difficult situations - in order to prevail, and in the cases of success - to cease the day. The society, immersed in the present, refers all the time in case of the older generations to the 2nd World War not only as the most significant event of their lives, but also as to the set of emotionally experienced facts whose ideological framing determined their value system, their place in the social reality, and granted sense on their biographies. History is for most of the Belarussians a mythicized, closed set of events, today rather faintly perceived. It stores a collective and individual memory about the victory over the Nazi enemy and a collective oblivion about millions of victims of the Soviet regime (Kuropaty can be an example here). The cognitive role of history is then scarcely recognized.

The time in the collectivist east passes more slowly than in the Latin one, especially the Protestant in its individualist and bourgeois character. This is why people of the east are more inclined to introspection. The Orthodox denomination is also more set in orality which reinforces tradition by recreating it on the daily basis. The culture of the West exposes means of transfer - writing is its main medium - more visibly; it is more self-critical in relation to tradition, but reaches deeper into history. It is less mythicizing and sacral14. Distant history is less significant for the Russians, and, under their influence, it is so to a larger degree for Belarussians. This state is reinforced by the periodical changes in the interpretation of the past. History in the East was created by the power: the state, the czar, or the Party's chancellor general. The people filled in history as its object not subject for a longer period of time than it was in the West and to a larger degree at that. Historians are perceived in Belarus as a group of elitist escapists. Survival is still the most important objective. People hold on to their strong sense of generational history. An individual experience constitutes a set of facts of an immense emotional appeal. A more distant past is blurred. Hardships of the daily life weigh so heavily on the present that the balance, characteristic for the modern sense of time, between the past, present and future has been shaken.

It seems that in the West the relation between the past and the future is more balanced; rationalization of time and one's activities is stronger. A remarkable portion of the Polish society also yielded to the rhythm of capitalism within the last decade. People are - according to the American pattern - more inclined to planning their life than they were before (time is money has indeed become a revered proverb). The cease the day principle so widely spread in Belarus, accompanied by the scarce economic competence of the elites, limits the possibilities of undertaking long-term programmes of economic improvement.

The Belarussians perceive sense of egalitarianism, deeply rooted in their mentality, more as an approval of the actual equality of social being than equality of opportunities in the race for the sought for, but limited goods. In this respect they are closer to Russians than Poles, also, which is important, in their attitude towards property, although the latter also sometimes adhere to the radically egalitarian programmes. Russia has reinforced in the Belarussian society the stance of humility, plebeian passivity, and collectivism, not passing on activism of its elites.

The Belarussian society is susceptible to the processes of social uniformization in all possible forms. It is evident in the weak opposition against processes of leveling down heterogeneity of the social sphere, an example of which are the processes of homogenizing Belarussian cities according the Soviet tendency by pulling down historical districts and more valuable monuments of historical interest, more ancient and separate from the history of the "elder brother' (which hardly took place in Lithuania and the former Eastern Galicia). Belarus rests on what Josif Brodski ascribed to the east: the "tradition of obedience" and "aptitude for adaptation"15.

Ihnat Abdzirałowicz (Kanczeuski), a Belarussian poet and publicist, wrote at the beginning of the 20s of the last century that Belarussians fall for the "eastern" indirectness, sincerity and naturalness, and, at the same time, activism and a "more humane behaviour"16, ascribed to the west. This opinion probably expressed to a degree cultural preferences of the author of the famous work, reissued in independent Belarus. Many times the west appeared to the Belarussians as the world of materialism, individualism, rationalism, interpersonal distance, stand-offishness and, in consequence, meanness, and even betrayal. At the same time, the Western European was seen as well-behaved, and even genteel in his manners17.

Belarussians are distinguished from Russians by the lack in their culture of the elements characteristic for the latter, such as the sense of mission or even national messianism (which can be linked to the weakness - in comparison to Russians - of the metaphysical sphere in their culture), and of what is described as the depth of Russian spirituality, shaped through many centuries, in difficult historical moments for Russia18. As Ihnat Abdzirałowicz writes19, it seems that susceptibility to all kinds of extremes and inability to compromise, characteristic for the people of the east (Russians), differentiates them from Belarussians. The latter are also characterized by the lack in their culture of the set of values instigating imperialist positions, so often ascribed to Russians20, as well as the absence of distinctly formed nationalist stances, apart from very narrow groups. The Belarussians are positively different from Russians in their work ethos, the lower number of pathological families, and a weaker social anomie. The attitude towards property, work, religion, social security system, and the state situates the Belarussians within the domain unambiguously ascribed to the left. In the situation of total economic decline, the stance of egalitarianism and etatism, plus social expectations of security from the state do not facilitate getting out of the crisis. A Polish writer Andrzej Szczypiorski makes a salutary statement that "the Polish tradition was national, Catholic, anti-Russian, as well as anti-state and anarchic, in the terms of custom it was of the gentry or peasant, but not of working class21. These words do not fit much the Belarussian society making up together with Poles one common state.

***

We can discern in the Russian culture a belief that man can be freely shaped according to the vision and resemblance of the secular masters of the world. It was manifested in practice and got implemented in the 20th century in the political mechanism of the Soviet state. In comparison to other post-Soviet republics, Belarus can be an example of a high efficiency of initiatives stemming from this belief. Peasants, leaving their villages behind believed in the world of ideas imposed on them - also with a measure of enforcement - to such a degree that gradually their world started to resemble these ideas, albeit in a deformed shape. In the situation of the weak development of their own nation-state awareness, the lack of elitist tradition and of rich literature instilling national knowledge coloured with emotions, Belarussianness has been commonly perceived in ethnographic (folkloric) terms, on the layer of orality ad visuality. Perceiving one's environment within the categories of provincialism blunts the experience of the cultural sphere, and, in this respect, of oneself. Such social structure is programmed for survival rather than development and social dynamism.

The Belarussians as a bulk do not have a sense of national identity - an important element of being a European. An internalized national ideology, emotionally evocative, was in the post-feudal Europe a source of social activism and played a broadly conceived modernizing role. The fate of Belarus, devoid of the national dimension and of the activist ethos of the higher classes (or of the middle class for that matter), objectified rather than subjectified in its communal form, depends largely on external conditions. We can suppose that Belarus, undergoing the process of national formation, would necessarily become a pro-eastern Belarus, and not only in appealing to its occidental historical and cultural rooting, but also in objectively changing relation between Belarus and Russia.

Translated from the Polisch by Dorota Kołodziejczyk

Рэзюмэ

Аўтар аналізуе драматычныя беларускія пытаньні – нізкай нацыянальнай сьведамасьці, паўсюднага пачуцьця горшасьці ў кантактах з Палякамі і Расейцамі, дамінацыі псыхалёгіі вёскі і мужыка, моўнай чужароднасьці горада, адсутнасьці традыцыяў незалежніцтва ў масавым адчуваньні. Задумоўваецца над пэрспэктывамі сялянскай нацыі паміж духоўна арыстакратычнымі Польшчай і Расеяй.

Ryszard Radzik - university in Lublin (Poland). Sociology; dr.

Рышард Радзік – люблінскі ўніверсітэт (Польшча). Доктар сацыялёгіі.



1 Генадь Саганович, „Русский вопрос” с точки зрэния белоруса, „Народная газета”, 30.04.1993, с.14; zob. also: П. Терешкович, Русские в Беларуси: Постинтернационалистская рефлексия, „Нёман” 1992, no 6.

2 W. Zinowskij, Czislennost' i osnownyje socyalno-diemograficzeskije charaktieristiki nasielenija Riespubliki Biełaruś po dannym pieriepisi nasielenija 1999 goda, "Socyołogija" 1999, no 4, p. 12.

3Ibid, p. 3, 11.

4 "We can infer further - as M. Śliwiński and V. Cekmonas write - that the Belarussian and <>-language speakers consider themselves a minority, and this positive attitude expresses something like minority solidarity.": M. Śliwiński, V. Cekmonas, Świadomość narodowa mieszkańców Litwy i Białorusi, "Przegląd Wschodni", vol. IV, 3 (15), 1997, p. 572. ["National awareness of the inhabitants of Lithuania and Belarus"]

5 Stanisław Ossowski associates "custom bonds" (linking e.g. local peasant communities) with the "private motherland" (i.e. with small motherland), and "ideological bonds" (uniting, e.g., nations) with the concept of "ideological motherland: S. Ossowski, Dzieła, vol.III, Warszawa 1967, p.210 n. [Works]

6 J. Maksymiuk, Rzeczywistości równoległe Ihara Babkowa, "Kartki" no 3 (16), 1997. p. 53. [Parallel realities of Ihar Babkow]

7 I think that the Belarussian language is - referring to Jerzy J. Smolicz's concept - the "indigenous value" of Belarussians' culture, creating an "(...) <>, around which identification develops and the whole social system gets organized. Getting rid of such <> by imposed <> or assimilation to the dominant group would lead to destruction of the whole group. Hence the concept of <> culture, limited to fragmentary or coincidental elements by eradicating the original <> and substituting it with values taken from dominant or majority, colonial groups. (...) The loss of indigenous values by a given group leads to its disintegration as an authentic and creative community able to survive and transfer its values to the next generations": J.J. Smolicz, Język jako wartość rdzenna, in: Oblicza polskości. Ed. by A. Kłoskowska, Warszawa 1990, p. 211. [The language as an indigenous value, in Kłoskowska: Facets of Polishness..]

8 B. Anderson, Wspólnoty wyobrażone. Rozważania o źródłach i rozprzestrzenianiu się nacjonalizmu. Tłum. S. Amsterdamski, Kraków 1997, p. 134. [Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities…, London, Verso, 1983]

9 E. Mironowicz, Białorusini w Polsce 1944-1949, Warszawa 1993, p. 18. [Belarussians in Poland 1944?49]

10 H. Domański, Społeczeństwa klasy średniej, Warszawa 1994, p.263. [Middle-class societies]

11 "More red, middle and eastern <> - as Wolodymyr Pawliw, the journalist of the Lvovian newspaper <> writes - tends towards ethnographism (on the territories where the Ukrainian art. And literature is at all present), while in the western Ukraine is dominated by the historical trend.": W. Pawliw, Obraz wroga, "Polityka" no 16, 22 IV 1995, p. 18. [Picture of the enemy]

12 W. Pawluczuk, Światopogląd jednostki w warunkach rozpadu społeczności tradycyjnej, Warszawa 1972, p. 47. [Individual's world-view in the situation of the dissolution of the traditional community]

13 F. Sielicki, Z dziejów wsi Mikulino i okolic byłej gminy Dołhinów powiatu wilejskiego (do końca XVIII w.), in: "Slavica Wratislaviensia", z. XXV, 1983, p. 78; also W. Pawluczuk, Światopogląd..., p. 63.

14 Joanna Rapacka describes the phenomenon on the example of Serbs and Croats: J. Rapacka, Kulturowo-historyczne zaplecze konfliktu serbsko-chorwackiego, "Obóz" 1922, no 22. [Cultural and historical background of the Serb-Croat conflict]

15 Qtd, from: I. Grudzińska-Gross, Piętno rewolucji. Custine, Tocqueville i wyobraźnia romantyczna. Warszawa 1995, p. 88. [Stigma of revolution. Custine, Tocqueville and the Romantic imagination]

16 Ігнат Абдзіраловіч, Адвечным шляхам. Дасьледзіны беларускага сьветагляду, Менск 1993 (1921), p. 15.

17 Ibid.

18 Which causes that on the level of individuals - especially the members of national elite - Belarussians get westernized more easily and deeply than Russians.

19 Абдзіраловіч, op. cit., p. 12-13

20 "Because the Russian state - Richard Pipes writes - almost from its very beginnings had the form of an empire rather than nation-state - in the Russian mentality the idea of the state is permanently and tightly connected with the idea of the empire. As a matter of fact the whole Russian history proves that Russians subordinated their national identity to the imperial status. The fall of the Soviet empire was, then, a powerful blow both for their sense of ethnic belonging as well as their self-confidence. Differently than the French and the British who, forced to surrender their colonies never doubted in who they were, the Russians, going through similar experiences found themselves in a situation causing their unease, if not - uncertainty around the same issue - their own identity.": R. Pipes, Rosyjska racja stanu, "Polityka" no 17, 29.04.1995, p.11.

(What is interesting, nomadic Mongols raiding the Muscovite Russia identified the idea of the state with the people more than a defined territory. Russians' national identity does not have such a straightforwardly territorial character, as it is the case with the nations of the Western and Central Europe. This fact also determines Russians' attitude to Belarussians.).

21 A. Szczypiorski, Pruskie dzieci Lenina, "Gazeta Wyborcza", no 60, 11-12.03.1995, p.8. [Lenin's Prussian children]