14 Nov 2008
Creating Awareness: Byelorussia, White Russia, Weißrussland, Witterutenia… or Belarus?!
One of the biggest problems of modern Belarus is the lack of national identity. And indeed, the first form that an identity takes is the name, and that is exactly the reason why dozens of stubborn Belarusians keep sending official emails and letters of clarification to foreign news agencies and newspapers, asking them to refer to our country as to “Belarus” and not Byelorussia, or Weissrussland or any other forms of White Russia, and to use adjective “Belarusian” instead of “B(y)elOrusSian”. If you came to this blog, you might know that Belarus is a separate country, but I met a frightening number of educated people abroad who asked me if Belarus is a region of Russia. At the end of the day, you don’t expect Belorussia be that different from Russia. But the truth is that it is!
To me as a person it is completely clear why some people can find it strange. After all in Belarusian we also translate the names of most of the countries. However, when many of the so called strong democracies speak of solidarity with troubled nations like Belarusians, it is natural to expect them to call us the way we find more appropriate, especially when there are strong political grounds for that. So, as the only acceptable excuse is that people just don’t know, I will try to clarify the background of this issue further in this posting.
One of the most widely acceptable historical views says that long before Belarus appeared as a separate ethnic group, it was a part of the East Slavic group. Eastern slavs had their own state which was called Rus’ (soft “s”) with the capital in Kyiv, from which three nations – Belarusians, Ukrainians and Russians (the East slavic ethnic group of Russia) – developed themselves. As a result of certain historic developments Rus fell apart into smaller principalities, but ethnically 3 regions – White Rus, Red Rus and Black Rus. Some ethnographers connect such color-based names of the parts of Rus with the old-Slavonic use of colors for the cardinal points on the compass. The ancient totem-god Svitovyd had four faces. The Northern face of this totem was white (hence Belarus), the Western face red (hence Chervona Rus’ – North West of Modern Ukraine), the Southern black and the Eastern green (hence Zelenyj klyn – in the East of Ukraine). This makes the placement of Black Ruthenia (Ruthenia is a latin name for Rus’) problematic. Some say it is at the territory of central Belarus, others say this could be around Novgorod in Russia.
The term Byelorussia, which vividly reflects the affiliation of Belarus to Russia, came into use when Belarus was occupied by Russia since the end of the 18th century. Russia was struggling for being recognized as a core East-Slavic nation and it was important to establish a vivid connection between it and the other slavic states. In the attempt to destroy the national identity at the occupied territories, even the name “Belarus” was forbidden later in the 19th century. People referred to Belarusian lands in official documents as to “North-West region”.
“Byelorussia” spread internationally during the Soviet Union times. After the collapse of the USSR, the republic reopened its history, re-established its national symbols from the Middle Ages, started to put more emphasis on the support of the national language at schools and in the state institutions. The declaration of independence which was adopted in 1990 proclaimed the independence of the Republic of Belarus (that is what our constitution says too). There was a chance and a wish to start a new state, which cherishes its culture and history, and is determined to walk the path towards democracy. It is a long story to tell why most of this things never happened, the symbols where changed back to the soviet ones, the history books rewritten again, and the Belarusian language lost any weight in the state. People who travel to Belarus – especially those from neighboring Russia and Ukraine – see it as an oasis of the Soviet past. No surprise with all these developments, it is more and more difficult for Belarusians to change their mentality towards something new, when the communist past just sticks to you (no matter who is responsible for that, I don’t want to be political now). But the Belarusian people still try to find its place between other nations.
Calling our country with an archaic name means showing the lack of knowledge about the difference between “Russia” and “Rus’” and not being politically correct towards a new state. The same is true for the translation of White Russia into other languages. More and more of German politicians and newspapers, for example, are getting used to applying a politically correct name “Belarus” instead of “Weissrussland” even though lot of awareness still has to be created. You will make a big favor for Belarusians, if you use a more acceptable for us name and explain it to other people who still use an old one.
November 20th, 2008 at 23:04
Interesting article. In many Scandinavian languages the country goes under the name of White Russia, thereby denoting a special relationship to Russia.
I saw a whole documentary on Youtube, A lesson of Belarusian, which shows some of the aspects which is mentioned in the article. It can be seen here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GV2PV99WnQI
I guess the struggle for a national identity will go on for many years to come.
If the whole world had just a little bit of Belarusian in each individual, there would probably be less civil wars based on nationalism. However, to little nationalism is probably one of the reasons, why the situation is like this in the country.
November 25th, 2008 at 10:42
Tanchen! Just saw the article!! Thanks a lot!! A face the same problem!! I usualy say – ok, u can call us [belarasha] but it just sounds illiterate)) E.g. some people are very careful with the word “gipsy” using instead “Roma people”. I think we have to be more persistent:) By the way in a post affice in Graz we couldn’t find the code of Weissrussland – there was Belarus))
November 25th, 2008 at 20:14
dear Tanya, I guess you neither call Spainiards Spainards nor their national language Spanish nor their country Spain. if you do so, then I will consider to support your intention to interfere in the use of common speech in languages used outside of Belarus respective in Belarusian.
Belarus is an independent state which is not a part of Russia, this is a fact which must be known, as well as Belarusian is a full-fledged language as Russian.
By time, the public gets used to such facts, e.g. Czech Republic has become common very quickly after the CSSR disappeared – and nowadays nobody will mention the term Czechoslovakian anymore.
you might be surprised probably, but all this happend without any overruling of the use of common language outside Czech Republic.
I wish your article would tackle ‘illiterate’ people only with facts instead of assuming the wrong use of a (common) term in a foreign language. (SlaDa will confirm, that she will find rather the term Spanien on the postcode list (in the post office in Graz) than the term, which you would suggest being the correct one: España.
About facts you should reconsider sentences like this: One of the (…) views says that long before Belarus appeared as a separate ethnic group …
note: when ‘bela-/white’ refers to a geographical site, than Belarusian cannot be the term of an ethnic group.
Despite my critics I am convinced, that the facts about Belarus, Belarusian and Belarusians must be known to the world much better. there is a nation, a language and a population to be supported actively in achieving much more than formal independence. I wish this will happen very very soon :))
November 25th, 2008 at 22:13
Many western people have no problem with switching from Bombay to Mumbai or from Peking to Beijing, or calling a country Côte d’Ivoire instead of Ivory Coast – but calling Belarus Belarus and not Byelorussia seems to be a problem, especially for German speakers.
But what do you want from them if even Russian speaking Lukashist Belarusians often write themselves as “Belorussian” :(
Still, Belarusians mostly want to be seen as an independent nation and not as “something-Russians” (or “something-Poles”, “something-Ukrainians” etc) and therefore often consider the word “Byelorussia” as derogatory.
Strangely, Belarusian bloggers are more active in fighting the word “Белоруссия” in Russian language, a word that is NOT derived from the Russian word for “Russia”, unlike words like Weissrussland, Bielorrusia, Hviterussland etc. :,)
May 18th, 2009 at 14:26
перестаньте загоняться
вы лично говорите
Молдова или Молдавия?
Черногория или Монтенегро?
Дойчланд или Германия?
Голладия или Нидерланды?
есть страна Беларусь
и это название употребляется в официальных документах
но особо обидчивые наши националисты не оставляют попыток научить весь мир как правильно…
энергии много видимо :)
May 20th, 2009 at 20:24
One thing I want to know how the people’s character of belarusians differ from russians (and ukrainians)? It’s very hard to get information in internet about this matter. Because it’s a own culture and language then there must be also some differences in characters.
December 22nd, 2010 at 19:46
Tim, I highly recommend you this article by Julia Chernyavskaya:
http://www.index.org.ru/journal/15/15-chern.html
Easy and interesting reading. The author explores the topic of belarussian identity – just what you asked for.
She also wrote a book “Белорусы: от “тутуэйших” к нации”. Check its short content here:
http://prastora.by/knihi/cierniavskaia-iuliia-bielorusy-ot-tutejsych-k-nacii
January 16th, 2011 at 14:12
“a rose by any other name would smell as sweet” (c) ;) согласен с Дмитрием. да, кто-то не такой образованный, как другие, и кому-то не посчастливилось родиться здесь, что ж поделать?
January 16th, 2011 at 20:24
If some registered in CS, you could enjoy global battle inspired by this article ) http://www.couchsurfing.org/group_read.html?gid=2575&post=7514642
Also there is an article on the same topic in belarusian http://generation.by/news3012.html