Introduction
At the turn of 1943–4, when Belarus was occupied by the Nazis, people gathered all over the region on the orders of the local authorities to take part in demonstrations proclaiming Belarusian independence. One such gathering that took place in a tiny village in the Nowogródek district (now Grodno region) was described by Stanisław Sęndziak, a lieutenant colonel of the Polish Armed Forces, in his memoirs:
Representatives of the Belarusian and German authorities arrived for the proclamation of the Belarusian State, and elders and people from the surrounding villages chimed in. […] The Hauptmann spoke briefly and succinctly, and his speech was greeted with cheers at the end. So, he said, ‘in honour of Hitler the liberator, the Reich and the invincible German army’, to which the crowd responded with a loud ‘long live!’ (haj żywie) because the population understood what he meant. When the Hauptmann shouted the final slogan, ‘Long live a free and independent Belarus’, there was a fractious silence in the crowd. It was broken by one elderly villager, a delegate from a nearby village, who, attempting to remedy the unpleasant situation – called out loudly ‘long live, for now’ (haj żywie pakulszto).Footnote 1
In his narration of this event, Sędziak, who was a member of the anti-Nazi resistance movement the Polish Home Army (Armia Krajowa) in the Nowogródek region of Western Belarus, highlighted the deep rifts between the Belarusian intelligentsia – who actively collaborated with the Third Reich authorities in pursuit of Belarusian independence – and the broader local population, who often sabotaged their efforts. This episode openly challenges the widespread mythologies that exist across Eastern Europe, wherein the local intelligentsia have been presented as the guardians and arbiters of the interests and aspirations of the broader population.Footnote 2
This article aims to explore a specific aspect of the relationship between national intellectual elites and the broader population. It focuses on the discrepancy between the nationalising discourses promoted by the intelligentsia and the unresponsiveness of ordinary people, which I interpret as a form of conflict. The article examines the interactions between the intelligentsia on the one hand, who identified as Belarusian, and the broader population on the other. The intelligentsia regarded the broader population of Belarusian subalterns as their own nation, claiming to represent their interests and attempting to cultivate their national consciousness.Footnote 3 In focusing on the interactions between the two groups, the article offers an alternative understanding of the challenges associated with the process of nation-building in Eastern Europe in highlighting the often overlooked perspectives of the ordinary people who were at the centre of these intellectual endeavours.Footnote 4
This article examines these processes during the interwar period (1921–39) in the Polish part of the north-eastern Polish-Soviet frontier, known as Kresy Północno-Wschodnie, which is located in the present-day western portion of the Republic of Belarus.Footnote 5 The focus of this study is on relationships within communities of Belarusians. Accordingly, all references pertain to individuals who identified themselves as Belarusian, and I highlight when individuals hailed from a different ethnic background. However, as discussed in later sections, any attempt to separate out ethnic backgrounds in this region was largely futile due to its location at the intersection of various cultures and languages, as well as the underdevelopment of identity constructs that we would associate with modern national identity.
The theoretical foundation of this article rests upon the work of prominent scholars in the fields of nationalism studies.Footnote 6 Foundational texts, especially those exploring the relationship between the broader population and the state in numerous European borderland territories, were crucial in situating the dynamics of this specific case study within a broader context.Footnote 7 Additionally, numerous works in Belarusian studies have been instrumental in providing a deeper interpretation of local issues.Footnote 8 Given the nature of the study, scholarship that employs an anthropological methodology was also a significant influence.Footnote 9 Together, these academic contributions have provided the necessary framework for this article, which analyses the case of the interwar Polish-Soviet frontier within broader discourses on nationalism, identity and modernisation.
Given the focus of this article, it is essential to clearly define the core terminology, particularly the terms ‘intelligentsia’ and ‘broader population’. The term intelligentsia refers to a group of educated individuals primarily engaged in intellectual labour, such as clergy, teachers, journalists, veterinarians, engineers, scholars and others. These individuals can also be described as the intellectual elite. A clear professional portrait of the Belarusian intelligentsia was provided during the interwar period by Konstanty Srokowski, a Polish liberal-democratic activist and publicist of Ukrainian origin: ‘The secular intelligentsia [in the Polish-Soviet frontier] is predominantly comprised of teachers and lower officials of various categories from the tsarist era.’Footnote 10 To this characterisation, one should also add members of the clergy, who played a significant role in the development of the Belarusian national project. The ethno-social background of the intelligentsia was relatively diverse, but they were united by their self-identification as representatives of the Belarusian nation. The most active segment of this group were national activists, who not only passively self-identified with the idea of the Belarusian nation, but also promoted their own agenda among the broader population by conducting debates within mass media and socio-political organisations.
In contrast, the ‘broader population’, ‘subalterns’ or ‘ordinary people’ are terms used throughout the article to refer to the rural population, which was primarily composed of peasantry and employees of local industries. These groups formed the absolute majority of the local population; they were mostly illiterate and earned a living through hard physical labour. They did not participate in intellectual debates on the pages of newspapers and magazines; instead, their ideas were preserved only within the oral traditions of their descendants.
This article draws upon a rich combination of sources that offer both broad and personal perspectives. While bureaucratic documentation is useful for conceptualising the relationship between the intelligentsia and the broader population in a wider context, I draw upon this minimally to avoid overrepresenting institutional perspectives.Footnote 11 Instead, this article engages with oral testimonies, collected by both the author and other researchers.Footnote 12 In addition to this, the article examines ego-documents in the form of memoirs and personal correspondence, as well as the Belarusian interwar press.Footnote 13
Oral history interviews were primarily used to understand how ordinary people perceived – and continue to perceive – reality. Specifically, this article draws upon autobiographical interviews conducted over the past two decades with individuals born between the 1920s and 1940s in the region. These interviews were chosen based on the individual's reference to various interactions with representatives of the Belarusian intelligentsia and their interpretation of these relationships. Given the chronological distance between the present day and the interwar period, the analysis focuses on the memories of people who were children during the era in question.Footnote 14 However, alternative sources, such as memoirs, brief autobiographical sketches and personal correspondence, were used to critically verify the most important themes presented in the interviews. Throughout the study, significant effort was made to incorporate perspectives from individuals representing different areas of the region (for example, Polesie, Nowogródczyzna and Grodzieńszczyzna). What unites all interviewees, however, is their self-identification as members of the peasantry and working class, rather than the elites.
The collection of press materials that this article draws upon plays a crucial role in reconstructing the perspectives of the local Belarusian intelligentsia and some representatives of the broader population. This collection, primarily published in Wilno (Vilnius, Lithuania) during the interwar period (i.e. 1921–39), with only a few exceptions in Grodno, served as a significant source despite the geographical distance of these editorial offices from many of the areas under consideration. The newspapers were mainly aimed at the rural population of Western Belarus. Notably, the authors of these articles were often members of the intelligentsia from various provinces, not just the Wilno region. As a result, print media largely focused on issues of local importance, addressing concerns specific to individual villages or counties. This regional specificity in the press highlights the localised nature of national and cultural discourses during the interwar period in Western Belarus.Footnote 15 This persistent focus on the local was particularly evident in the letters to the editor section. Overall, press materials are an important source precisely because the press played a crucial role in the invention of the Belarusian nation, a role fully acknowledged even by the intelligentsia itself. As openly declared by the editorial office of the newspaper of the Belarusian Christian Democrats in 1926: ‘Belarusian identity is spread primarily through the printed word – newspapers’.Footnote 16
The Reality of the Region and Its Conflict with Modernity
After the end of the First World War and during in the interwar period, the process of nation building and the formation of nationalities intensified across the entire Polish-Soviet frontier, as well as throughout Central and Eastern Europe.Footnote 17 This was closely linked to the collapse of European empires before the war and the rise of new nation states, which sought to bring the ‘national question’ to the forefront of the political agenda. Due to their multi-ethnic character, the old empires were often severely restricted in their national policies, despite repeated attempts to unite their subjects into a single political nation at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.Footnote 18 For example, after every Polish uprising, the anti-Polish measures of the Russian imperial government were not directed against a group because of its ethnicity, but because of its lack of loyalty to the ruling dynasty. As a result, the struggle against Polish influence on the territory of present-day Belarus that intensified after the Polish uprising of 1863 had little impact on the situation of Poles on the eastern and southern fringes of the Russian Empire.Footnote 19 After the end of the First World War, the governments of new nation states relaxed imperial-era nationality policies and began to harness the rise of national consciousness, particularly among individuals from the titular nationality, for their own purposes.Footnote 20
Despite the changes on the political map after the end of the First World War, not all ethno-cultural groups in the region gained independence in the form expected by their elites, who often dreamed of great territorial gains for their own nation. The situation was further complicated by the fact that due to the newly drawn state borders, the representatives of the same ethno-linguistic community were divided or not given sovereignty because they were included in the composition of states with a different dominant ethnicity. For example, representatives of the Belarusian ethno-linguistic community (as well as their closest neighbours, Ukrainians, and, to some extent, Lithuanians) were divided into two halves by the newly established Polish-Soviet border. This territorial division of the region was the result of the Polish elites’ desire to restore Poland to the borders of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth before the partitions, on the one hand, and of the Bolshevik desire for world revolution on the other. The conflicting aspirations of both political entities led to the Polish-Soviet War (1919–21), which ended with the signing of the Treaty of Riga and the imposition of an entirely new frontier in a previously unified region.
The eastern part of the Belarusian region initially functioned as a formally independent state (1919/20–22), and after 30 December 1922, as one of the republics of the Soviet Union – Soviet Belarus. Meanwhile, the western part was integrated into the Second Polish Republic.Footnote 21 The Belarusian intelligentsia, most of whom did not accept the new territorial status quo or the division of their nation into two parts, reacted with incomprehension. While a relatively large segment of the intelligentsia with pronounced pro-Soviet sentiments rejoiced at the creation of Soviet Belarus, they also complained about the transfer of ethnically Belarusian lands to Poland. For example, as Arkadz’ Smolich, Belarusian national activist and politician, noted in 1922: ‘Such a political division of Belarus is not based on any geographical basis. The borders are drawn along the living body of Belarus’.Footnote 22 For those within the intelligentsia who were committed to creating a Belarusian nation state, the reaction was one of fierce denial regarding the right of two foreign states to decide the fate of their nation. Criticism of the Riga Treaty continued to appear in the Belarusian press years after it was signed. In 1925, an article in the revolutionary-democratic newspaper Belaruskaja niva claimed that ‘the greatest catastrophe for a conscious Belarusian patriot is that his fatherland, his nation, is divided into two halves by a foreign hand that is hostile to him’.Footnote 23
In addition to the political impact of the division of Belarus into two states, socio-economic conditions also had a considerable impact on the local population and their way of life. Western Belarus was a region characterised by enormous industrial and infrastructural underdevelopment, even within the context of Eastern Europe more broadly. In the interwar period, there were only a few sub-regions within the whole of Europe that had not yet been affected by broader processes of modernisation and industrialisation.Footnote 24 This feeling of being untouched by modernity was described by locals themselves, including interviewee Andrey Statsenya (b. 1911), who noted that: ‘[We] lived according to the old laws of our ancestors. In principle, the horizon of the locals did not extend further than the neighbouring village’.Footnote 25 Due to the nature of the area, which was characterised by a lack of significant inter-regional transport routes, industrial centres and larger urban settlements, local society was disproportionately underrepresented by the local intelligentsia, especially in comparison to neighbouring areas. Instead, the intelligentsia living within the region generally associated themselves with non-local national projects, specifically those focused on Poles and Russians.
The lack of direct participation in international markets, combined with one of the lowest literacy rates in Europe, the prevalence of rudimentary forms of agriculture, and lingering remnants of serfdom, meant that the region remained in a socio-economic reality more reminiscent of the Middle Ages than of modernity.Footnote 26 Even the compulsory school system, which had been introduced during the interwar period, remained weak as the peasantry could not afford to keep their children away from agricultural labour to attend lectures, nor could they pay school fees. The memory of this has passed through generations and appears in oral history interviews. For example, Anna Zaretskaya (b. 1931) noted: ‘Most of the people in our village were illiterate. My father didn't graduate from school at all’.Footnote 27
Despite this reality, things did begin to change in the interwar period, when rising literacy, an increase in the number of people employed in sectors other than agriculture, and other signs of modernisation became observable.Footnote 28 Consequently, older ways of life began to deteriorate as the region slowly but inevitably modernised through the economic policies of the Second Polish Republic.Footnote 29
Many of the changes in the region during this period can be linked to the processes of nation building that had begun earlier in other parts of Europe. The region, located at the frontier of various national projects, suddenly became a battleground for intellectual disputes between national activists representing different neighbouring communities (Polish, Ukrainian and Russian), who had already advanced further in developing ideas about nationhood that pertained to their own ethnolinguistic communities.Footnote 30 These activists explained that their nations’ strong ties to the region were based on historical, cultural and linguistic aspects, and consequently viewed the local population as an extension of their own ethnic groups, albeit heavily influenced by other cultures.Footnote 31 The political elites of Poland, while formally recognising the Belarusian nation as distinct, in practice pursued a policy of Polonisation, treating locals as people lacking a strong sense of national identity.Footnote 32 In contrast, representatives of the growing Belarusian intelligentsia sought to emphasise the distinctiveness of the region and its population, advocating the idea that the Belarusian nation was a completely separate entity.Footnote 33
Evidence of the struggle for the identity of the local population can be found in reports on political and cultural activities – such as organising local libraries, creating folk theatres, holding public rallies, and offering voluntary literacy training – which were prepared by the voivodeship (administrative) authorities during the interwar period. The short monthly reports of the state authorities on local activities were traditionally divided into a few sections representing the segregated national groups living within the region: Poles, Belarussians, Ukrainians, Jews, Russians and others. Despite the absolute predominance of ethnic Belarusians in the region, according to my calculations, for every activity initiated by the local Belarusian intelligentsia, there were more than two activities led by representatives of the other national groups.Footnote 34 However, even in the face of incessant external and internal influence of other national groups, the local population showed an unwavering commitment to maintaining their traditions of self-belonging and showed little inclination to participate in the process of modern nation building.
Misunderstandings within One Nation
As I explained in the previous section, the peculiarities of Western Belarus meant that intellectuals and the population had completely different perspectives and goals. Intellectuals were oriented towards an idealised vision of the future, for whom the creation of a modern Belarusian nation state was of paramount importance, while ordinary people were more concerned with routine and demanded adherence to the traditions of the past. This discrepancy inevitably led to misunderstandings between these two groups, which became even more pronounced over time.
The main misunderstandings between representatives of the broader population and the Belarusian intelligentsia at the grassroots level were threefold: ethnic, linguistic-cultural and political. In different combinations, these three issues in the interwar period led to a sense of mutual hostility between the two groups, which challenges their presentation as inseparable entities in Soviet sources.Footnote 35 Representatives of the intelligentsia expressed their deep dismay at the behaviour of the people they claimed to represent. This feeling can still be recognised in the collections of the Belarusian press from the interwar period as well as in private correspondence. The use of pejorative terms to describe ordinary people was ubiquitous, with terms such as ‘degenerates’ (vyrodki) and ‘rabble’ (ubliudki) being among the most common. The common denominator linking these terms is their semantic meaning, which refers to a perceived lack of ‘correct’ national consciousness. All the pejoratives referred to the inferiority of the broader population in the matter of national consciousness, which the intelligentsia attempted to remedy through targeting ordinary people's ethnic identification, cultural practices and language.
Significantly, the use of pejorative expressions was usually directed at individuals, often wealthy peasants who were formal or informal leaders of local communities. Insults published in the press almost always included personal details about the individuals targeted; there were virtually no cases where insults were used without specifying the addressee. A notable example is a quote from an anonymous letter sent to the Christian-Democratic newspaper Seljanskaja niva in 1926:
Our village is exclusively Belarusian; there is only one person who considers himself a foreigner. His name is Mr. Jazep Cytowicz. We know very well that his father, grandfather, great-grandfather, etc., lived in the village […] and they were Belarusians. But he is a kind of degenerate […] He considers himself a Pole.Footnote 36
This practice stood in stark contrast to the romantic notions of nationhood that were widespread among the Belarusian intelligentsia. These notions tended to be based solely on intellectual constructs such as the oft- repeated stereotypes of hard work, loyalty, peacefulness and tolerance as inseparable components of Belarusian national identity, and not on actual experiences of interacting with the broader population.
The reason for the dominance of romantic (and fictional) notions of nationhood within the intelligentsia is straightforward. The relationship between the intelligentsia and the broader population appeared to be relatively limited due to their social stratification: the former earned their living through physical labour, while the intelligentsia worked in intellectual pursuits. Additionally, the intelligentsia were typically concentrated in urban areas and its outskirts, whereas the majority of the population lived in the countryside.Footnote 37 The local, peasant-dominated society has existed since before the industrial revolution.Footnote 38 The outdated agricultural methods that continued to be used within the region required the frequent mass mobilisation of the rural inhabitants for farm labour, and this form of work formed communal ways of living and forged horizontal bonds in society.
Even after many years, the importance of field labour to the development of relationships remained significant for inhabitants of the region. For example, interview participant Olga Omelianuk (b. 1925) noted that: ‘The Poles treated us kindly. As always, they did not deny, did not swear, the Poles’ land was there, the Poles grazed their cows, and we grazed our cows’.Footnote 39 Maria Lyashuk (b. 1926) shared similar sentiments: ‘I never heard my parents complain about the Poles. In our village, the Poles were friendly, they even gave us food and sometimes allowed us to borrow farming tools for a while’.Footnote 40 The sense of community among representatives of different linguistic and religious beliefs was maintained and strengthened in everyday life, in which all participants had equal rights.
The reaction of representatives of the broader population, largely consisting of subalterns, is rarely found in the sources that are available today. However, considering the numerous parallel sources, it can be inferred that the most significant weapon of the subalterns in this struggle was their general abstention and non-participation in the nationally oriented activities promoted by the local Belarusian intelligentsia. This includes, for example, calls to boycott Polish businesses, political support exclusively for Belarusian politicians, and the widespread dissemination of narratives created by intellectual elites. Passivity and non-acceptance, attitudes characteristic of the phenomenon of national indifference, became the weapons of the weak.Footnote 41
In this context, the origin of the intelligentsia, which was often relatively distant from the local rural population, was also of great importance. Although many members of the intelligentsia were indeed rooted in Belarusian peasant families, a significant number came from other social backgrounds, such as the aristocracy, clergy, or tsarist bureaucrats, as well as different ethnic backgrounds, including Polish and Russian. This should not be surprising, taking into account the fact that Belarusian nationalism was largely a product of the intellectual and cultural activities of the multiethnic local aristocracy and urban dwellers, rather than the peasantry.Footnote 42
With the onset of the Second World War, the deepening divide between different social strata within the same ethnic community became a critical factor in the disintegration of the interwar Belarusian intelligentsia.Footnote 43 This group, already isolated due to its distinct social position, was unable to withstand the dual pressures of Soviet and German occupations.Footnote 44 As a result, the local grassroots intelligentsia was largely supplanted by a new generation, recruited from the poorer peasantry, who were thoroughly indoctrinated by the Soviet regime. This shift not only altered the composition of the intelligentsia but also significantly influenced the development of cultural and national identity in the region after the war.Footnote 45
Shifting Local Identity
The Belarusian intelligentsia's struggle to define the local identity of the region's inhabitants was underpinned by the absolute dominance of a traditional form of affiliation which was closely linked to place of residence. This type of identity is anchored in memory and culture as tutejszy (‘the person from here’).Footnote 46 Yanka Kupala, a Belarusian folk poet, presented this identity in his verse: ‘I am not a bureaucrat, not a count or a prince, / Besides, I am not a Turk or a Greek, / And not even a Pole, not a Muscovite, / I'm just a tutejszy man! [the Belarusian]’.Footnote 47 Interview participants from the region themselves describe this phenomenon in a slightly different way, but without changing the essence: ‘Nobody showed any national ambitions. People called themselves tutejsi [people from here]’.Footnote 48 However, the often-portrayed phenomenon of tutejszość and its opposition to the existing population groups in the region is a simplification that obscured a more complex reality.Footnote 49
This local type of affiliation was created by a complex system of cultural, religious and social belonging. For the local population, it represented a nuanced hierarchy of different affiliations, in which the combination of individual elements produced a logical result:
My great-grandmother was born into a poor Orthodox family. But then she married an officer [and converted to Catholicism]. By local standards, they were a rich family, so she was considered Polish and was even called pani [a respectful form of address]. […] Under Stalin they were then deported to Siberia.Footnote 50
The basis for any group identity was social and economic status, which was not fixed and could easily be changed. The ability of the local population to shift between national identities as described above led to strong internal conflicts, as the representatives of the new identity – the intelligentsia – could not accept the longstanding tradition of variable national affiliation that was widespread within local society.
The distribution of socio-ethnic roles in the region was traditionally simple. Poles and Russians (representing the culture of the elite) lived in the cities as army and police officers, bureaucrats, clerks and engineers; they were also present as landowners in the countryside. Additionally, Polish culture was historically associated with the local aristocracy. The noble families in the region traced their heritage back to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and maintained a strong spiritual connection with Poland through their identification with the Polish nation. The representatives of the East Slavic ethnic group, which today is associated with the Belarusians, Ukrainians and Poleshuks, were peasants and labourers, while Jews had a monopoly on trade, crafts and industry.
With the emergence of modern nation states, specific professions and cultures became associated with national division. However, even when using modern terminology, locals continued to regard national identity as something fluid that could be easily changed through social mobility. Numerous shifts in identification among the inhabitants from one national group to another deeply troubled the intelligentsia and served as the basis for their self-proclaimed right to represent the uneducated and primitive ‘masses’, who they perceived as completely ignorant. In an interwar Belarusian newspaper aimed at a peasant audience, the editors declared: ‘However, there are still corners of our Belarus where people haven't heard of Belarus, and even if they have, they don't understand what is happening [i.e. the awakening of the Belarusian nation]. Such people need to be enlightened [by our newspaper]’.Footnote 51 The text clearly conveys the intelligentsia's classification of the broader population as backward, as well as their broader desire to embark upon a civilising mission to correct this. This opinion was also shared by the local authorities, who tended to support the characterisation of fluid identification as troubling due to the interwar policy of Polonisation. The 1933 voivode report summarising the political activities in the southern part of the region from 1922 to 1933 states: ‘It should be noted that the rural population of Polesia is a mass that is completely ignorant and indifferent in terms of nationality; their language is the local dialect’.Footnote 52
During the interwar period, the potential for nation building stimulated the activity of various groups. In the Polish case, the support of the state authorities was channelled through various organisations close to the state.Footnote 53 In the Belarusian, Russian and Ukrainian cases, however, the focus was on cultural initiatives led by various public associations, which were often in direct conflict with the Polish state.Footnote 54 By founding libraries and village clubs, the members of these associations actively disseminated their own values among the peasants and tried to convince them that they belonged to a particular nationality.Footnote 55 In all cases, the local population was seen as the ideal target group for exerting influence, which could easily be persuaded to align itself with a particular nationality. All the groups seeking to influence the broader population gave different answers to the very basic question: ‘Who are the locals?’ However, what united all was their focus on the rigidity of national affiliation and the continuity of belonging to the nation even in the face of social mobility. This was entirely alien to the local tradition, within which individuals identified flexibly with different national groups depending on their social circumstances.Footnote 56
Not surprisingly, there are vivid descriptions from representatives of the intelligentsia about their efforts to awaken the broader population into seeing themselves as part of the Belarusian nation. One article published in 1926 provides a detailed account of the activities of the Belarusian intelligentsia in Pruzhany district (the north-western part of Polesie) aimed at cultivating national identity, along with a declaration of the undeniable belonging of the local population to the Belarusian nation.
Three years have passed since a new idea emerged in the Pruzhany district – the Belarusian [national] idea […] The Pruzhany district was the most ignorant in western Belarus. Until 1921, the peasants in our villages had not the slightest idea of the Belarusian [nation] […] In this district there were no people [the nationally conscious intelligentsia] who could influence this grey, rural mass that slept in silence […].Footnote 57
By describing the actions of the intelligentsia in the struggle for the national identity of local residents, the author accuses a section of the population of betraying the national interest. This was an additional explanation of the conflict between the intelligentsia and locals, which, according to national legends, should have no basis for existence, as national myths usually paint the picture of nationally conscious elites as the vanguard of the broader population.
Connections between Nation and Ethnicity
The question of the link between ethnicity and nationality is still the subject of debate in the twenty-first century, and the two most widespread debates query whether the nation is a political or ethnic construct.Footnote 58 Unsurprisingly, these debates raged during the interwar period.Footnote 59 According to the numerical sources currently available, the representatives of the intelligentsia saw the nation as fully overlapping with ethnicity, for example, as something that brought together a population group made up of people who share a common cultural and linguistic background. For them, there was no differences between the two types of affiliation: only because one (national) was based on the other (ethnic). Moreover, for the intelligentsia, both types of belonging were hereditary and therefore immutable. Considering the region and time period under consideration, this equivalence of nation with ethnicity can be considered the most modern formulation possible – simply because it follows the patterns that were widespread in other national projects.Footnote 60
However, this perception of the entanglement between nation and ethnicity was in direct conflict with local traditions and reality. Surprisingly, the approach of the broader population at that time was closer to the modern, politically orientated understanding of the nation, albeit with some nuances; the most important of which is the consistent dominance of social status instead of identification with the state. The numerous letters of the local intelligentsia to Belarusian periodicals, as well as the oral history interviews, clearly reflect this difference in opinion. The following fragment of a 1929 letter to the editors of Biełaruskaja Krynica, a Christian-Democratic newspaper for the peasantry, vividly illustrates this point of conflict. ‘But there is another moron called Adam [….] he's the only one who thinks he's Polish, but his father is a pure–blooded Belarusian and his mother is Lithuanian […] Everyone laughs at him, and only the police commander, the teacher, the local government employee and the Polish priest [all the offices mentioned were connected to the Poles in the interwar period] respect him’.Footnote 61 A fragment of the text appeared in a newspaper aimed at Belarusian Catholics and presented the intelligentsia's interpretation of the reality in the Belarusian-Lithuanian ethnic frontier, which was the northern part of the Grodno region.
This expression of frustration vividly illustrates the common deep lack of understanding between the representatives of the intelligentsia and the broader population, who perceived reality in two completely different ways. For the intelligentsia, the behaviour of ordinary people was completely inappropriate because nationality was something inherited and unchanging. According to this logic, a person born into a non-Polish family could not be Polish, simply because this implies full compatibility of the constructs of nationhood and ethnicity.
The Belarusian intelligentsia often interpreted the behaviour of local residents as the result of external influence. For example, statements from local residents about their Polish identity were viewed as a consequence of the Polonisation of the region. As stated in a daily newspaper with no obvious political affiliation – and thus representing a more neutral political position than others:
This [Polish] patriotism has taken on especially unnatural, wild forms here in the kresy, where there is an obvious minority of Poles belonging to the upper class, or rather, the once Polonised Belarusian nobility, whose native roots do not allow them to reach [the level of] Warsaw Polishness […] we have many such crusading patriots.Footnote 62
To emphasise their veracity, the representatives of the intelligentsia diligently stressed the contradictory nature of such statements and their extraordinary unnaturalness.
Members of local society, on the other hand, took a different view, based on the fact that any affiliation was seen as fluid and dependent on actual circumstances. This was at least partially articulated by a local woman who hailed from Pińsk:
If a clever person is born into a Belarusian family, then he [this person] becomes either Polish or Russian. This is what a smart person should do here. We have to work hard on the ground [manual labour] and not read magazines. It has always been like that – both under the Poles and under the Soviet Union.Footnote 63
The possibility of changing national affiliation based upon the current situation – in this case social mobility – is clearly declared to be fully acceptable. This attitude is most similar to the notion of the political nation, but this is a gross oversimplification. Nevertheless, much more important is the fact that at least part of the local population still professed to accept the separation of the two issues (ethnicity and nation) into two distinct matters. Today, this is a remnant of a former reality, but in the interwar period, this line of thinking was prevalent. This was the main reason why the ethnic changes in the region are so easy to observe based upon the results of censuses, for example.Footnote 64
Echoes of this sentiment can still be found outside the major cities of the region. For example, during an interview, a representative of the older generation said: ‘There was a German. He lived where the chemical factory is now. He built a house there. His surname was Etz; he was a dog hunter. The family was German, but they self-identified themselves as Polish’.Footnote 65 Even in retrospect, the indication of nationality is interpreted as a choice between several options.
In 1926, after staging a play based on Alexander Pushkin's ‘Ruslan and Lyudmila’ at the city theatre in Pinsk, an anonymous local intellectual wrote to the editorial office of Belaruskaja Niva:
What they [the organisers and the audience] lacked was a native spirit. If you look closely at the organisers […] you will see that these people are our folk – Belarusians, but in a different guise […] Do you not have a single corner in your memory where the image of your parents, brothers, friends, with their mother tongue and Belarusian songs, is preserved?Footnote 66
In these lines, a direct accusation was made against the theatre audience – composed of ethnic Belarusians – for betraying national interests. The author of an anonymous letter to the newspaper complained about the audience's lack of national consciousness because they did not boycott Russian culture. For the local population, however, attending the event was likely a way to affirm their social status, since Belarusian folk culture was not associated with high art.
The viewpoints presented above are extremely divergent. The intelligentsia's approach is rooted in a clear-cut interpretation of reality, which assumes that certain categories, such as national affiliation, are innate to each person. This perspective is also bolstered by a romantic belief that people should be prepared for selfless struggle in the name of national rebirth.Footnote 67 In contrast, among the representatives of the broader population, the pragmatism of the long-established local social roles based on cultural affiliation predominated. For them, the fluid nature of national identity, closely linked to current social status, was more appropriate. Given this disparity, the approach advocated by the intelligentsia was unlikely to receive support from the broader population.
Politics
In the interwar period, any form of local recognition of the Polish state was unacceptable to the Belarusian intelligentsia.Footnote 68 While there were a few individual exceptions, they did not constitute a significant trend.Footnote 69 Generally, within the intelligentsia, any demonstrations of acceptance of the region's status as part of the Polish state were viewed as a betrayal of national interests.Footnote 70 The most spectacular examples of this can be observed in the political sphere, particularly during instances in which the representatives of the local community became part of the administrative bodies or through the disinterest of the broader population in the national political agenda. In such situations, these ‘traitors’ became subjected to criticism, which manifested itself in print media.
A striking example of this can be found during election cycles, where the main candidates were assessed on the basis of their ethnicity and their declared commitment to the Belarusian cause. For the intelligentsia, people who came to power after the local elections but subsequently neglected the national question were seen as the most dangerous opponents.Footnote 71 For example, as stated in a newspaper with a democratic orientation in 1936: ‘Immediately after [winning] the election of the village headman, this Belarusian renounced his nation. […] He began to fraternise with Poles and go to the town. And for our peasant brother, he became an even worse bloodsucker than his predecessor, the Pole’.Footnote 72 Thus, any co-operation with the Poles, even in the context of local politics, was regarded by the Belarusian intelligentsia as a betrayal of national interests.
The relations between the local self-government representatives (primarily from the region) and the central authorities (mainly composed of Poles from the central and western parts of the country) are particularly intriguing in this context. The state security authorities in the region often received anonymous denunciations of anti-Polish activities from local officials and heads of villages.Footnote 73 However, the investigations led to a very similar outcome: on the basis of the (usually secret) investigations, Polish state policy concluded that the suspects were ardent supporters of the Polish state, and the accusations of anti-Polish activities prior to the Treaty of Riga were treated as difficult to define.Footnote 74 Thus, the Polish police apparatus painted a rather logical picture of the integration of grassroots representatives into the organs of power of the newly established Polish state.
When the broader population did not vote for the intelligentsia's favoured candidate or participate in anti-Polish events, the intelligentsia often labelled them as ‘dark’ and considered them incapable of leading an independent existence without the intelligentsia's support.
The dark Belarusians, cowering in their swamps, believe the PPS [Polish Socialist Party] and give it their votes in the elections […] They simply carry out their agitation […] They speak Polish or Russian. And if they speak either Polish or Russian, […] they have the power in the eyes of the people […] We have seen something similar before [during the previous elections] in other parts of Belarus with the Wyzwolenie [the Polish People's Party]. This party did not shy away from demagoguery and made so many promises that our peasants got dizzy.Footnote 75
The slogan ‘Don't vote for Poles in the elections’ – which often took up entire pages of Belarusian-language newspapers – was an important topic in the Belarusian press.Footnote 76 The results of the elections show how little influence this slogan – and the agenda proposed by the Belarusian intelligentsia – had upon the population.Footnote 77 As can be observed, even with the example of the above quote, populist programmes of the Polish politicians aroused much greater support among the local population than pro-Belarusian rhetoric. The statistics provide an even better understanding of the situation. In the 1922 elections the National Minorities Bloc (Blok Mniejszości Narodowych) – supported by Belarusian activists – received less than a quarter of the votes in the region, while the Polish left-wing parties received almost half of the votes.Footnote 78 In the 1928 elections, the last completely free elections in the Second Polish Republic, almost 80 per cent of the votes in the region went to either pro-state parties or radical leftists, while the parties supported by the Belarusian nationalists received less than 10 per cent.Footnote 79
The Belarusian intelligentsia likely claimed that peasants had voted for government candidates under coercion in order to compensate for their failure to convince peasants of the primacy of the national question over other issues. Non-Belarusian parties’ political campaigns typically focused on promises of social justice and land redistribution while neglecting national issues, at least according to the Belarusian press.Footnote 80 This focus on social and economic issues likely explains the enduring popularity of non-Belarusian populist parties in the region.Footnote 81
Oral history interviews also confirm the broader population's focus on social and economic – rather than national – issues.
In the village we have a Polish mayor, Mr Bankowicz, who was not a local Pole. He was a good guy and did so much for our community. He bought school books for me and my brother because we had no money for them. […] The chairmen of the kolkhoz [a collective farm from the Soviet era] were all Belarusians. Disgusting, disgusting people who could only revel in their power.Footnote 82
From the point of view of ordinary people, it was less about the declarative aspects of national revival and more about a genuine concern for the welfare of the people or – given the local reality – a declaration of loyalty to the institutions of central power and the associated guarantee of state support. The local population often referred to the existence of the structure of local self-government, which was destroyed after the beginning of the Soviet occupation. This is perceived as an expression of the Polish central authorities’ respect for local society, which served the purpose of improving local welfare. ‘Back then [in the interwar period] we had elections. Everyone could vote and elect the wojt [the head of the village] themselves. The wojt is like the chairman of a collective farm, except that the people elect him and he is obliged to look after the village and the villagers’.Footnote 83
Even decades later, when interpreting the events of their youth, people paid particular attention to the nature of relations between the population and government officials from the perspective of personal well-being: ‘There was [in the interwar period] a district with an executive officer, a secretary, an assistant. People were treated well’.Footnote 84 Interpretations of language policy or the Polonisation of the population, appear, if at all, as classic clichés from the propagandistic Soviet press among those who were either born in the region or moved there after the end of the Second World War. Such explanations are alien to the keepers of local memory, who remember the local traditional realities. However, this is not based on an idealisation of the Polish state. It is criticised like any other, including the Soviet Union or the Russian Empire. But it is based on a reference to a completely different range of interactions between ordinary people and the apparatus of power. In the interwar period (as earlier in the Russian Empire), the question of land and tax reform was much more pressing for local peasants than the national question.Footnote 85 Consequently, the claims about the oppressive nature of the Polish state, which aimed to assimilate the Belarusians and were frequently used in discourse by the Belarusian intelligentsia in the interwar period, were completely alien to the broader population.
In light of this, it is possible to pose some questions that will help us to better understand this situation.Footnote 86 Considering the narrative of the intelligentsia, what should the activity of a good representative of the nation in local self-government look like? Should it be aimed at exacerbating the conflict with the central organs of power, especially if it means furthering national pride, even when making life harder for the region's inhabitants? For the representatives of the broader population, the answers to these questions are obvious and far removed from the idealistic vision of the struggle for national pride. For them, reality and everyday pragmatism were the basis of their perception of the world.Footnote 87 For the representatives of the grassroots intelligentsia, idealised constructs became patterns of behaviour. On this issue, the conflict between idealism and reality became even more important than between modernity and traditions.Footnote 88
Language as an Expression of an Ethnic Group
Further evidence of the conflict between the intelligentsia and the broader population can be observed in the area of language, which erupted largely because the Belarusian intelligentsia saw language of communication and nationality as intertwined. This attitude is deeply rooted in the traditions of Central and Eastern Europe and was even supported by the institutions of power in the interwar period. During the census, often only the language of the respondents was taken into account, rather than their ethnic or even national affiliation. As the head of the Polish Statistic Committee suggested in 1926: ‘By replacing the question of nationality with the question of mother tongue […] the essential requirements of nationality statistics are […] satisfied’.Footnote 89 Nevertheless, representatives of the intellectual elites attempted to categorise the diverse linguistic reality in the region in the most modern terms.Footnote 90 Consequently, they denied native speakers the right to label their mother tongue themselves. Along with the effort to categorise the various local dialects simply as Polish or Belarusian, this led to difficulties in translating the idea of Belarusian as the native language of the local population into a social construct – meaning a category made real through convention or collective agreement.Footnote 91
The extent of the problem is evident in studies conducted before the outbreak of the First World War. During this period, descriptions of local dialects often involved assigning language distribution areas with a margin of distinction of up to 100 kilometres, each time with an explanation of the criteria used for linguistic separation. A vivid example of this is the interpretation of the Polesie region, where at least three different approaches existed: categorising the local dialects as Belarusian, Ukrainian or as a distinctive language altogether.Footnote 92 A similar situation occurred with the delineation of the border between Polish and Belarusian in the area north of Polesie, for example Podlasie in Grodno region.Footnote 93
As an integrated school system was created in the region only in the interwar period after Poland's independence, the linguistic situation was similar to that found in other countries before the implementation of a compulsory school system. According to Anna Pikuła:
the differences in language were even noticeable in neighbouring villages [in the Polesie region]. Even in Bialkow after the war, when the inhabitants of three or four villages came together, you could see the differences. Petelewo, Rogacze [both villages located in the eastern part of Prużana County, approximately 25 kilometres apart] … it was the nuances of how the sound ‘ł’ is pronounced, or the fact that for some a koń [horse] was simply a koń and for others a kun or a kiń.Footnote 94
There were hundreds of dialects that were specific to each sub-region. This even applied to native speakers who spoke languages with an established literary tradition.Footnote 95
This kind of reality, however, did not fit with the visions of the Belarusian intelligentsia. By accepting the construct of the ethnic nation that was completely alien to the traditions of local society, the intelligentsia insisted on the inseparable link between ethnicity and language. Combined with the desire to declare Belarusian supremacy in the region, this became the pretext for the statement that Belarusian is the mother tongue of the absolute majority of the population, apart from a handful of newcomers. If inhabitants did not speak Belarusian, they were declared to be backward, as one 1928 letter to the editor of Biełaruskaja Krynica read:
There are a lot of morons in our village who think they are Polish, but I wonder why these Poles can't speak Polish; at home and wherever they please, outside of it, only in Belarusian. One of these morons deserves to be known about him outside Lukaszewice [name of the village]. His name is most honoured sir Józef Wierzbicki.Footnote 96
According to the intelligentsia, the language question was a continuation of the national question. Consequently, any expression of a different kind of behaviour than the complete connection of a nation with an ethnic identity and a language offered by the intelligentsia was treated exclusively as a betrayal of the nation. Such people were ridiculed and condemned, just like Józef Wierzbicki and his villagers. The Belarusian intelligentsia made a special effort to encourage the rejection of the Polish language by the local population. There were campaigns in Belarusian newspapers in favour of the introduction of Belarusian schools and the use of the same language by civil servants.Footnote 97 Letters were written to newspaper editors on behalf of peasants (who were actually illiterate), describing the bitterness felt by the population because of the suppression of their mother tongue by the state.Footnote 98 This created the appearance of a massive conflict between speakers of different languages.
The above accusations of the intelligentsia are characteristic of any society in the process of forming a national identity, as language is often perceived as an important element of it. Even the use of Russian – the traditional language of the Orthodox liturgy – in churches provoked objections from the intelligentsia: ‘Our priest can speak Belarusian well when negotiating with the peasants about a wedding or a funeral [i.e. the payment for services], but he doesn't want to preach in this language’.Footnote 99
However, as in any other frontier, the image of linguistic conflict created by the intelligentsia had little to do with reality.Footnote 100 Communication between representatives of various ethno-linguistic groups was not a major problem, especially given the linguistic proximity of the Slavic languages. Additionally, because the dialects were generally compatible with several linguistic norms simultaneously, it was only possible to assign them to one language with limited accuracy. For the locals, there was apparently no language problem as such because language was perceived only as a means of communication and not as an explanation of its own reliability: ‘It should be noted that we almost never heard the Belarusian language in our […] country. We used Polish, Russian and the local dialect closest to Ukrainian’.Footnote 101 The ability of the local population to use several dialects and languages, or at least their ability to understand them passively, was part of the local reality. One person born in the late 1920s described it this way: ‘The Poles, like the Belarusians, worked in agriculture back then. There were no differences in clothing and everyday life. The Poles spoke to the Belarusians in the local language and to each other in Polish’.Footnote 102
For a woman who was born in the early 1930s and had spent her entire life in the region, the language situation was simple:
We speak to the local Poles in the simple language [the local dialect], and they speak to us in Polish. We communicated freely. I can still understand Polish. Not the Masurian dialect [one of the dialects of the Polish language], but Polish. Without any problem. They say pasza, we say karm. For them it's mleko, for us it's malako.Footnote 103
For some representatives of the community, things were even simpler. For them, the use of Polish meant a symbolically higher position within local society: ‘Speaking Polish fluently was a privilege. In this generation, children were also given Polish names, hence [the popularity of] Bolesław, Kazimierz, Jadwiga, Wacław’.Footnote 104 As can be seen from the quotations, which are quite typical for the region, language was thus perceived either as a means of communication or as a symbol of one's own status, but not as an instrument for demonstrating one's own political affiliation or even as a symbol of national consciousness.
In Lieu of a Conclusion
The conflict described within this article can be interpreted as a struggle between modernity and tradition. The invention of the Belarusian nation, like other national projects, introduced societal contradictions. The broader population sought to preserve their traditions, maintaining a delicate balance within the complicated local societies made up of different groups, while the intelligentsia pursued modernisation, aiming to disrupt the existing order, eliminate diversity and impose uniformity.
The observations presented in this article highlight a significant aspect of the interwar period: the region's inhabitants favoured long-established methods of group affiliation, characterised mostly by fluidity, over the new, more stable forms promoted by the intelligentsia. The local population's attitude toward the so-called national question can be described as indifferent, while the intelligentsia elevated the question of nationality to an absolute priority.Footnote 105 This situation created a dynamic between the intelligentsia and the broader population that, within the framework of this article, is interpreted as a conflict.Footnote 106
Concepts like the nation, which were newly invented by the intelligentsia, were not yet part of the local culture and could not bring any real benefits. Instead, they were a source of potential misunderstanding and conflict within one's own community.Footnote 107 This attitude was a characteristic feature of every traditional society – not only in the interwar Polish frontiers – in which the concept of the modern nation was detached from reality and extremely far from existing social practices.Footnote 108 A vivid example is provided by a man who was born in the Polesie region in 1929: ‘I believe that [in the interwar period] nationality did not play a role. If someone had land, they lived well and nationality didn't matter’.Footnote 109
In the local reality, the idea of identifying as part of the Belarusian nation was essentially a proposal to voluntarily accept being part of a particularly exploited group, with little hope for upward social mobility. This illustrates how local perceptions of group identity were mostly interpreted by social and economic factors rather than by strict membership in an ethno-cultural group.Footnote 110 The above also meant the ability to change one's affiliation, according to modern notions that threaten to be immutable, in circumstances such as social advancement. The Belarusian nationalists cannot therefore be the only ones to offer what made nationalism attractive in a number of other regions – a guarantee of social mobility regardless of class affiliation.
The intensification of change meant that conflicts took on a much more pronounced form in this region than in other parts of Europe due to the rapid development of complicated social processes. The local intelligentsia, aware of the nationalist discourse and the rise of national issues throughout Europe, eagerly tried to implement intellectual patterns similar to those in the core Polish, core German or core French regions. Every act of non-acceptance of the representatives of the community that the intelligentsia perceived as their own provoked accusations of betrayal. Meanwhile, the broader population, aware of the significant social and economic changes, sought to preserve the familiar order that had been known for generations. The resulting conflict between the drive for modernisation and the preservation of tradition contributed to increased tensions in the region, traces of which can be found in the variety of sources presented within this article.
As this research shows, the intelligentsia struggled to gain widespread support despite positioning themselves as the only representatives of the national interests. They remained distant from broader society, which viewed them as belonging to a different and often hostile class. The romantic ideals of the intelligentsia clashed with both local traditions and the practical realities of a society where national identities had not yet taken root. It was only after the Second World War, through Soviet reforms such as mass education and collectivisation, that the region's fluid social structures began to erode.Footnote 111
Acknowledgements
I would like to express my sincere gratitude to Prof. Börries Kuzmany and Prof. Slobodan G. Markovich for their invaluable feedback on the initial concept of this text during my stay at the Institute for Human Sciences (Vienna), as well as to the three anonymous reviewers, whose insightful comments were instrumental in further refining the work. I am especially grateful to Dr. Siobhán Hearne, the editor of the journal, whose thoughtful suggestions have played a key role in shaping the text into its final, polished form. Without the contributions of these individuals, this article would not have been possible.
Funding statement
This work was supported by the National Science Centre, Poland, under Miniatura-7 Grant nr 2023/07/X/HS3/01041; the International Visegrad Fund by scholarship nr 62310058; and the Polish National Agency for Academic Exchange under fellowships nr PPN/WYM/2018/1/00001 and PPN/WYM/2019/1/00182.
