FROM WHITE RUSSIA TO BELARUS
Oleg Łatyszonek
„Fields there tend to be longer shrouded in snow than in other lands and to the onlooker everything seems white, which pertains even to the natural colouring of animals, for the wolves in this land take a white coat of fur and so do the bears, hares, foxes and other creatures, both these domesticated and those living in the forests, which, had they lived elsewhere, would have adopted a different colour.” In these words seventeenth century Polish scholar, Szymon Starowolski, attempted to explain the meaning of the name Belarus, i.e. White Russia. Even if the country itself was perceived by Starowolski as somewhat exotic1, he correctly determined its boundaries which almost coincided with those of today’s Belarus.
Over the years many new theories had been advanced to explain the origin and meaning of the country’s name. All the theories can be grouped into several thematic categories. Some scholars (Adam H. Kirkor and Evfim Karskii) hypothesized that Belarusians owed their name to their blond hair and blue eyes. It was Starowolski who helped to originate this theory when he wrote that the inhabitants of „White Russia” were characterised by pale complexions. The theory is at odds with anthropological evidence, since the above mentioned characteristics do not mark Belarusians off from their neighbours. According to another opinion white folk costumes could be responsible for the name (again Starowolski, Kirkor and Karskii). However, it had not remained unnoticed that the color of clothing worn by Belarusians is not markedly different from that worn by their neighbours (Kirkor, Alieksandr Potebnia, Dmitrii Anuchin).
The theories mentioned above belong to the earliest explanations proposed for the name „White Russia” and they are not treated seriously any more in modern historical literature, although they had become rooted in belles lettres, which is more than adequately demonstrated by the archetypal poetic expression „blue-eyed Belarus” („Belarus siniavokaia”).
According to some scholars white colour stood for freedom and independence. In the case of White Russia it could indicate independence from either Lithuania, or the Tartars (c.f. Mykhailo Dragomaniv, Matviei Liubawskii, A. Potebnia, Mitrafan Downar-Zapolski and others). To the same category of explanations belongs the opinion advanced by a Belarusian poet from the turn of the nineteenth century, Frantsishak Bahushevich, that Belarus is white because it is „clean: it had not oppressed or subjugated anyone, but had only defended itself”. This particular theory had been elevated to the status of a school handbook truth in the Belarusian Soviet Socialist Republic. Unfortunately, it does not explain at all why the name „White Russia” was used in the past in reference to territories very remote from modern Belarus.
In Turkish languages white colour represents the west. Thus, „White Russia” is Western Russia from the point of view of the Tartars (A. Trubachiev, A. Agieieva, I. Griekov). W. Maczak developed this theory, arguing that Tartars called the western part of Russia located within the borders of Grand Duchy of Lithuania „White Russia”, the southern part of Russia located within the borders of the Kingdom of Poland „Red Russia” and the northern Russian lands , i.e. Muscovy under the sway of the Golden Horde, „Black Russia”. West European authors were hypothesized to have subsequently borrowed this division from the Tartars. To the above theory Viacheslav Ivanov added the hypothesis that the three-colour division of Russia was rooted in Old Slavonic symbolism which was only later modified under the influence of the Eurasian traditions. The colour theory of the four parts of the world is highly speculative since there is absolutely no written evidence which could explain how west European authors adopted Tartar terminology and, furthermore, why Black Russia, which hypothetically should comprise the northernmost Russian provinces, ended up to the west of White Russia, hypothetically the westernmost part of Russian lands.
Relatively early on scholars pursued religious motivation for the presence of white colour in the name of west Russia. Vasilii Tatishchev claimed that the name „White Russia” was assigned to the lands surrounding Suzdal and Vladimir after Andrei Bogoliubskii had conquered Kyiv in 1169 and the former capital of Russia lost its „purity of orthodox faith”. The first Belarusian national historian, Vaclaw Lastowski, asserted that the name Belarus originated from the name of Bielboh, a god purportedly worshiped by the ancestors of Belarusians. Other Belarusian historians suggested quite an opposite claim: „White Russia” stood for that part of Russia which first adopted Christianity, while „Black Russia” for the part which, under the influence of pagan neighbours, Jatvings and Lithuanians, preserved for a somewhat longer period pagan traditions (c.f. Jazep Jukho, Kastus’ Tarasaw, Anatol Tsitaw). The advocates of this conception tend to forget that in the history of Slavonic nations the problem of obstinate paganism was mentioned only once in connection with „colour” terminology, and even on this single instance the symbolism was actually the reverse of that proposed by the outlined above theory: Constantine Porphyrogenitus wrote in circa 950 about unchristened „White Serbs” and unchristened „White Croatia”.
The survey presented above is anything but exhaustive2. It is, however, sufficient to substantiate the conclusion that there are enough theories explaining the origin of the name of „White Russia” to drive any scholars into deep pessimism as to the possibility of unravelling the mystery. Viachaslaw Nasievich claimed that „colour” names for parts of Russia already in the fourteenth and fifteenth century had a „purely conventional character”. Such pessimism about finding solid justification for „colour” names is perhaps justified since the meaning could have undergone different modifications depending on the changing historical circumstances. Nevertheless, it is quite possible and even necessary to investigate what, who and when was referred to by the names „White Russia” and „White Russians”, i.e. it would be most expedient to examine historical documents. The case for such research has been established in strongest possible terms by A. Solov’ev, who stated that it is necessary „to first verify what and when was referred to as Russia, and only then attempt to clarify why this was the case (although this last task is of secondary importance for a historian and lawyer)”3. It is most surprising how few historians investigating the origins of the term „White Russia” followed this path: Vladimir Lamanskii, Hienadz’ Sahanovich and Ales’ Biely.
V. Lamanskii established that the name „White Russia” appeared in historical documents for the first time in the fourteenth century. He also noticed that the term is treated from the very beginning as self-explanatory. In consequence, he concluded with exceptional perspicuity that the name must have originated at the end of the thirteenth century (or possibly in mid 13th century).4 (In our times this assumption was confirmed in the wake of Colker’s discovery of the so called Dublin Manuscript.) He furthermore expressed the opinion that „White Russia” was occasionally included in „Great Russia”, but under no circumstances was it preceded by the nam „Little Russia”.
A. Solov’ev dedicated two copious articles to the examination of the history of the term „White Russia” and its relationships to „Black Russia”, „Great Russia” and „Little Russia”. In the first of these he arrived at the following conclusions: colour terms have a political significance and certainly must have originated in the east. In Slavonic context the first to emerge is the opposition between White Croatia and Red Croatia, probably as an echo of originally Avar terminology. After a long break, already in the fourteenth century emerges under Tartar influence the opposition between „White Russia” and „Red Russia”. The name „White Russia” was used in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries in reference to the north-eastern provinces of Russia with local capitals in Pskov, Novgorod and Polatsk. In the fifteenth century the term was extended to whole „Great Russia”. In the sixteenth century it was used mainly in reference to Muscovy. By the seventeenth century the name „White Russia” gradually started to mean the eastern part of Lithuanian Russia. The western part of Lithuanian Russia was by then called „Black Russia”, which for a long time did not mean anything specific. This division remained largely intact throughout the eighteenth and much of nineteenth centuries. It was only as late as in mid nineteenth century that the political term „White Russia” became significant in an ethnographic sense, thereby replacing the name of „Black Russia” altogether.5 The conclusions stemming from the second article could be summarised thus: the notion of „Great Russia” emerged already in the twelfth century and it referred to all the Russian lands. The opposition between „Little Russia” and „Great Russia” developed in the fourteenth century in connection with the project to divide the Kiev orthodox metropolis into two archbishoprics (with capitals in Galicia and Vladimir on the Klazma) or even into three church provinces (including a Lithuanian orthodox archbishopric). In 1335 the term „Little Russia” became politically significant in Galicia, when it started appearing along with the politically significant „Greater and Lesser Poland”. In the fifteenth century the name „Great Russia” persists, used interchangeably with „White Russia”. By the end of the sixteenth century the names of „Great Russia” and „Little Russia” had become commonplace, and ever since 1654 they had been in regular use as political terms.6
In both articles Solov’ev emphasises that the names „White Russia” and „Black Russia” are synonymous with „Great Russia” and „Little Russia” respectively. As for „Red Russia”, he inclines toward the theory that this term refers to the southern provinces of Russia. It is notable that in the second article Solov’ev neglected the earliest, fourteenth century texts mentioning the specific location of White Russia, which he had clearly specified in the first article. Obviously, they did not fit his newer conception. This is tantamount to saying that Solov’ev failed to answer an important question: if the name „White Russia” had been borrowed from the Tartars, how could it have made an earlier appearance in German poems devoted to the forays of German crusaders into the Pskov province than in documents pertaining to Muscovy? Furthermore, Solov’ev also determined that the interchangeable usage of the terms „White Russia” and „Great Russia” in Polish and German texts produced at the beginning of the fifteenth century, pertained to the lands surrounding Pskov, Novgorod and Polatsk, and quite patently not to Moscow. It is quite possible that this change of accents was a consequence of the fact that the first of Solov’ev’s articles was written when he was still abroad, while the second one was published in Moscow7.
H. Sahanovich arrived at the following conclusions in his work: the name „White Russia”, attested in documents since the mid thirteenth century, was at first used exclusively in western documents written in Latin alphabet. Furthermore, the term „White Russia” was used at the exo-ethnonymic level, i.e. as a foreign term. Old Russian sources and most east European ones refrained from using this term during the next two or even three centuries. In time, by mid seventeenth century the name of „White Russia” attained a permanent ethnic and geographical significance: it was used in reference to the eastern, northern and part of central Belarus. In earlier periods, at least in the fifteenth century, the territory covered by the term also included lands to the north of contemporary Belarus, i.e. lands surrounding Pskov and possibly parts of the Novgorod province. Contrary to the opinions voiced by many historians, no entity named „White Russia” ever had any specified location within the borders of Muscovy. Historical documents merely indicate that the term had been politically exploited by grand dukes of Moscow at the turn of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. By the first half of the seventeenth century the population of a certain part of the territory of modern Belarus had already started using the ethnonymic form „beloruscy” („Belarusians”) as the proper expression of their ethnic identity8.
The author of the last work, which may be attributed to the tradition of investigating the history of the name „White Russia” on the basis of historical documents, is the Belarusian historian A. Biely. His „Chronicle of White Russia” is a work of impressive erudition. Since it is also the last word pronounced by historians on the discussed here topic, Biely’s conclusions may be presented here in greater detail.
According to Biely the historical term „White Russia” is not a purely Belarusian (in the modern sense of the word) phenomenon. During the centuries when it remained in use, the term „White Russia” was not associated with any geographical location but lived a life „of its own”. But even in its different guises adopted in Novgorod the Great, Muscovy, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, etc., it did not represent different notions rooted in absolutely distinct sources and only accidentally similar. It rather comprised different projections of the same geographical term. Its „career” is an excellent illustration of the developmental path of European geography in the Middle Ages and early modern times, which completed a transition from purely rational description of various, often fantastic, lands and peoples to a strictly defined academic discipline. The name „White Russia” is a unique product of the Latin culture of Europe. As such, it could be compared with the gothic cathedrals of Köln and Milano. Its origins are hidden from our sight in the gothic darkness, while the ultimate elucidation of its meaning is the product of modern times. Every century contributed something new to its interpretation. Profound understanding of the history of this term may alleviate somewhat the problem of Belarusian twentieth century patriotic activists: is it possible to continue using the name „White Russia” given the fact that it had been used and abused by „Great Russian” chauvinists to substantiate the claim about the „everlasting” unity of the east Slavs, under the inevitable rule of the „White Russian Czar”? However, it turns out that the name, even if imposed from abroad, may be interpreted in a different way as a testimony of the bonds linking the historical fates of Belarusian nation with the fate of European civilization.
The emergence of the term „Russia Alba” and its entrenchment in medieaval geographical nomenclature is primarily connected with erroneous convictions of scholastic scholars that Albania „borders in the east on the Caspian Sea and stretches along the coast of the Northern Ocean, spreading out to the lakes of Meotis and the most savage of deserts” (Bartholomew of England).
The oldest east Slavonic written documents which refer to „White Russia” are not spurious letters of the grand duke of Muscovy Ivan III to Popes Paul II and Sixtus IV. Such a document is „Slovo izbrannoie ot sviatykh pisanii iezhe na latyniu” probably written about 1460 by Pachomius Logophetus and possibly edited during the next decade of the fifteenth century. Ivan III (also his son Vasili III) never adopted the title of „grand duke of White Russia” and never used the term of „White Russia” for the Russian state. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the term remained totally unknown to most of the inhabitants of Moscow, with the exception of a small group of the most educated ones, who were acquainted with the writings of western authors. But the attribution of the name „Russia Alba” to Muscovy (which became common in the European tradition) really did take place during the reign of Ivan III. Such transfer of name was noticed only by foreigners – Italians (Gianbattista Volpe, Giacomo Maffei de Voltera, Ambroggio Contarini) and possibly by the Serb Pachomius Logophetus and others, and must have been the consequence of an event which took place in the years 1471-1478, the incorporation into the Grand Duchy of Moscow of the Republic of Novgorod, the only part of today’s Russia which had until tahat time close trade and cultural ties with the west and the north of the European continent. This is why „White Russia”, previously well known to the Europeans, became synonymous with little known Muscovy, an error later repeated by numerous scholars who took attributed this name to „Moscow-Novgorod Russia”.
What helped to further strengthen this association of „Russia Alba” with Muscovy was the frequent use of the word „white” in Russian panegyrical texts in reference to the ruling house of the Grand Duchy of Moscow, where it meant „great” or „noble”. This usage pertained exclusively to the monarch himself and never to the Moscow state. The erroneous confusion of these two notions by European visitors in the sixteenth century (Herberstein, Stryjkowski and Guagnini) was later reiterated by almost all scholars doing research on the ethymology of the term „White Russia”.
Since mid sixteenth century the name „White Russia” started to be used consistently in reference to a part of modern Belarus, the surroundings of Polatsk. Another change in the usage of this term was conditioned by the circumstances of the war in Livonia, and specifically the occupation of Polatsk by Muscovite troops in the years 1563-1578. The term may well have been used for a while to refer to the lands taken over at different times from the Grand Duchy of Lithuania by Muscovy.
The term „White Russia” was initially used in the sense of „Lithuanian Russia” by foreigners (Marcin Kromer, Alessandro Guagnini) and by the most enlightened social strata of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (Solomon Rysinski). The adoption of this term by „ordinary” East Slavs took place at the end of the seventeenth century. Almost immediately the term became known to the state officials in Moscow and the orthodox population of the Polish-Lithuanian state. The name „White Russia” gained ideological overtones: for the next several centuries it started to represent the idea of unification (and later continued existence) of all „Russian” lands under the rule of Moscow9.
HUNGARIAN ORIGINS
Biely’s conceptions were based on meticulous analysis of a large body of texts. Texts may, however, be interpreted in different ways. This is particularly so in the case of the earliest documents in which the name „White Russia” has been attested. Below I present my own interpretation of historical documents.
The name „White Russia” appeared for the first time in writing in the geography (Descriptiones terrarum), discovered and published by Marvin L. Colker10. The treatise under this title was written most probably between 1255 and 1260. The preserved part of the text, in initial design devoted to the Tartars, presents the geography of Europe. Well known European countries are mentioned only in passing. More attention is devoted to the geography of Northern Europe. The geography mentions the existence of islands to the north and west of Norway, one of which M. Colker identified as the North American continent. A second array of countries described in some precision by the anonymous author of the manuscript is spread out along the eastern coast of the Baltic Sea. It is populated by pagan peoples subject to christianisation. In this context the author offers the following description of Karelians:
„(24) The Karelians are a rough woodland people. When they see strangers, like merchants, coming, the Karelians enter the woods with their entire families. The visitors may then freely use, as guests, whatever they find in the houses of the Karelians, so long as nothing is removed. But if the returning Karelians discover especially that pelts have been taken away, thay attack the visitors as enemis.
(25) One of those who had visited, hearing my companion Vaislanus preaching in White Russia, urged him to go with him to the Karelians and said that Vaislanus would convert them and produce churches in their region”11
Attempts to determine what „White Russia (Alba Ruscia) is supposed to mean in this context have already led to a considerable number of publications. K. Górski and V. Chamiarytski interpret it as „West Russia”, the second of the two authors adding that in all probability the term refers to the eastern or central part of modern Belarus12. Z. Wojtkowiak searches for „White Russia” on the Karelian frontier, to the north of Novgorod the Great, since he believes that trying to convert orthodox Ruthenians to the western rite was not the real intention of the missionaries13. Finally, A. Biely identifies the territory of Novgorod the Great with „White Russia”. Biely justifies this claim by stating that the term „Alba Russia” originated in Scandinavia and Germany, primarily through the conflation of two notions, Albania and Russia, where the first one referred to the land of the Finnish Ves’ or Wepsans. As the literary source of this contamination Biely quotes „Gesta Ecclesiae Hammaburgensis” by Adam of Bremen. In his description of Russia (in Russiam) the German chronicler writes: „Ibi sunt etiam, qui dicuntur Alani vel Albani, qui lingua eorum Wizii dicuntur, crudelissimi ambrones, cum canite nascuntur: de quibus Solinus meminit”14. Hence, the term „Alba Russia” in the context of the treatise would mean „part of Russia, which used to be Albania”, i.e. the country of Albanians-Wepsans15.
The author of Descriptiones terrarum did not know, as it was established, the treatise of Adam of Bremen. In the geography, however, there is a mention of the trace of the author’s knowledge of the Hungarian tradition, while the Hungarian sources were referred to by the author of the first mention of „White Ruthenians”, an unknown Polish hagiographer who, in 1329, wrote „Vita s. Kyngae”. The Polish hagiographer called the uncle of the blessed Kynga Kalman a king of White Ruthenians (rex Ruthenorum Alborum). A Biely, even though he acknowledged „the Hungarian trait”, considered Kalman’s title to be a later addition, assuming a priori that Alba Ruscia was located in the North. Still A. Solov’ev was convinced that Rutheni Albi resulted as a contamination of the term Croati Albi. He failed to justify this opinion since he considered Kalman’s title as an example of the lack of consequence in the naming of various parts of Russia and did not connect it with later developments of the name „White Russia”.
Kalman’s title needs, however, to be considered in the context of historical facts. Kalman was crowned in 1215 as the king of Galicia (rex Galiciae). Later for some time he lost Galicia and returned to Hungary where he received the lands in Croatia. At the end of the 12th century a South Slavonic chronicler, Diocleates, told of the legendary king Budimir who divided Croatia into White and Red. Diocleates passed on a very old tradition, since Constantinus Porfirogenitus in his „De administrando imperii”, written in the middle of 10th century noted down that „White Croatians” and „White Serbs” lived once up in the North. Thus it is easy to imagine that court historians of Kalman connected the two Croatias, on the Adriatic and behind the Carpathians, particularly as this could have corresponded to the true situation. As in Kalman’s times Croats no longer existed in Galicia, the term „the Whites” (and perhaps also „the Reds”) could have been transferred to Ruthenians. Another possibility is taking over of the term „the Whites” from the literature devoted to the history of Hungarians, which has both White and Black Hungarians as well as White and Black Hungary. Kalman’s wife, Polish princess Salomea, after the death of her husband in the battle with Tartars at Mohi, returned to Poland and brought up Hungarian Princess Kynga (later Saint Kynga), married to the Cracow Prince Bolesaus the Bashful.
The author of the description in an unconventional way divides Europe into Western Church and Eastern Church, which is probably a trace of the so called Lyon Union of 1246. It was then that the Pope’s authority was acnowledged by Prince Daniel of Galicia and Lodomeria. This ruler was brought up at the Hungarian court and after assuming the trone of Galicia gradually became independent of Hungarians. In 1256 he received the royal crown „of Russia” from Pope Innocent IV and assumed it in Drohiczyn upon the Bug (in today’s North-Western Poland). Daniel established Roman missionary bishopric for the Christianisation of Jatvesyans. The „Description” clearly demonstrates that the missionary Vaislanus did not go to Karelia, but only met in „White Russia” someone who had been there – one of the mentioned „strangers, like merchants”.
Thus the land of „White Ruthenians” was originally Galicia, while „White Russia” was probably the state of Daniel Romanovich. The earliest mention of „White Russia” refers also to the Western lands of contemporary Belarus, since they had been a part of Daniel’s state.
In Hungarian literature „White Russians” re-appear again in the middle of 14th century. In Chronicon Dubnicenses we find a description of the 1352 siege by Louis d”Anjou of Wolhynian city of Belz which had been in the Lithuanian hands. Louis, wounded in the battle, started across „the lands of White Ruthenians” (per terram Alborum Rutenorum) upon Volodymir (Lodomeria) in Volhynia. The mention in „Chronicon Dubnicenses” comes probably from the second part of an unknown ur-source dating from the first years of the reign of Louis d’Anjou. Louis also claimed his rights to the land of Wolhynia and Galicia resulting from the crowning of Kalman in Galicia. Hence probably also the reappearance of the name „the land of White Ruthenians” to refer to the lands of Galicia and Lodomeria. After the death of Algierd, the Great Duke of Lithuania, the authority of Louis d’Anjou, now also the king of Poland, was recognized by many Ruthenian princes hostile towards Jagaila, the heir of Algierd.
The name „White Russia” emerges again in connection with wars between Lithuanian dukes in „The Polish Chronicle” written by Jan of Czarnkow. The Polish chronicler describes the imprisonment of Jagiello in 1382 by his uncle Kestutis „in a fastness in White Russia, which is called Polatsk” (in quodam castro Albae Russiae, Poloczk dicto)16.
This brief note written by Jan of Czarnkow is usually compared with the first mention of „White Russia” in two poems written in the second half of the fourteenth century by Peter Suchenwirt, who praised the accomplishments of Teutonic Knights engaged in raids on Pskov province17. „White Russia” in the poems is considerated as an expression of the Teutonic traditional name for the north-western Russian provinces, and particularly for the provinces of Pskov and Novgorod the Great. But Suchenwirt was a poet from Vienna, and in his first poem he chronicles the exploits of the Austrian Landsmeister Friedrich von Chriuzzpeck. After their return from Jerusalem Teutonic Knights settled at first in Hungary and it is quite likely that they borrowed the term from Hungarian tradition. In the case of Jan of Czarnków this possibility becomes certainty since he was the subject of the king of Hungary and Poland Louis d’Anjou.
German chronicler of Hungary, Heinrich of Mügeln, must have drawn from the same tradition. Heinrich was a renowned minnesinger from Meissen, who voyaged to the Czech, Austrian and Hungarian courts. He visited Vienna at the same time as Suchenwirt and spent the years 1346-1353 in Hungary. Here he familiarised himself with the ur-source of Hungarian chronicles and used it (or translated it) in his own works.
He first wrote a prose chronicle in German, later converted into a poetic text in Latin. Describing the raids of the Huns through Europe Mügeln wrote that the Huns „first passed through a country peopled by the Bessi, who are counted among pagans, and then through the lands of the Black Russians and White Russians”. The ancient name of the Bessi was assigned at the time to the Turkic ethnic group the Pechenegs. In the Latin version Mügeln calls them the „White Bessi”, while the Russians are left without any epithet. It seems that A. Biely was quite justified when he conjectured that „White Russians” in the German version of the chronicle were modeled on the „White Bessi” from the Latin version. „Black Russians” may have been named so in opposition to the „White Russians”18. It should be noted here that using black and white colour for different factions of the same ethnic group was a permanent Hungarian literary tradition: there were both „Black” and „White” Hungarians and Cumans. But if we only accept the assumption that Mügeln must have used a Hungarian ur-source, inspiration for such naming practices could be also found in the „White Russians” mentioned in the ur-source. Anyhow, Mügeln was the first to mention in writing „Black Russians”.
The fifteenth century witnessed a substantial increase in the number of west European notes mentioning „White Russia” and „White Russians”. Another set of such notes may be found in works devoted to the Council of Constance which mention the participation of delegates from the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (Ulrich Richental, Thomas Prisschut). These writers (and particularly Richental) located „White Russia” around Smolensk, associating it with the Smolensk duke Fedor Iurievich and Kyiv metropolitan Grigorii Camblak, who also at the time resided in Smolensk. However, the same Richental also mentions Smolensk twice as a town located in „Red Russia”. Richental mentions as many as three different types of Russians: „real Russians, red Russians and white Russians”. F. Piekosiski claims that Richental’s „real Russians” are the Russians from the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, i.e. the ancestors of today’s Belarusians. According to A. Biely, Richental refers in this manner to Catholic Russians, both those living in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and Poland, juxtaposed in this way with „false” Russians, i.e. orthodox Russians. In consequence, he identifies „White Russians” with the citizens of Novgorod the Great, while Smolensk and the other lands incorporated into Lithuania would be covered by the term of „Red Russia”. However, Richental in the same fragment places Novgorod beyond Russian lands populated by the three aforementioned types of Russians19. It seems that Richental himself wasn’t sure about the location of Smolensk and, consequently, „White” and „Red” Russia and the „red and white” Russians. It is perhaps much more significant that Richental comments make it possible to locate Smolensk both in „White” and „Red” Russia. Hence, his words were differently interpreted by different authors.
We do not know why Richental called some of the people of Russia „Red Russians”; he might well have coined the term in opposition to the „White Russians”. In any case, the term „Red Russia” appears for the first time in his text. Let us also note that for the first time distinction is drawn between three types of Russians, though not yet in terms of a colour triad. But in Mügeln’s influential works one could already find „Black Russians”, the third element of the colour triad. It did not need much time to put all the elements of this jigsaw puzzle together.
This was accomplished by Fra Mauro on his map drafted in the years 14571459. Location of White Russia on the map in the vicinity of Novgorod the Great, and equally fantastic placement of Black and Red Russia, is not particularly important. What is crucial here is that the whole „colour” triad appears for the first time in a complete form. For many years to come location of the elements of the triad will continue to remain largely in the fancy of the consecutive authors.
„WHITE RUSSIA” IN „EUROPEAN SARMATIA”
Thus in Polish literature of the 15th and 16th century a convinction was shaped that Poles as well as other nations of Eastern Europe take their beginnings from the ancient Sarmatians. The convinction is connected with the discovery, at the beginning of the 15h century, of the ancient geography of Claudius Ptolemeus. Hence Eastern Europe started to be called European Sarmatia. „White Russia found its place in this „Sarmatia”.
The terms of „White Russia” and „White Russians” were reintroduced into Polish literature around 1490 by the Italian Filippo Buonaccorsi, known as Callimach. In his address to pope Innocent VIII he mentioned Slavs, some of whom had moved in the direction of the Black Sea and settled in „Podolia and White Russia”20. Callimach, as an outstanding diplomat and preceptor of Alexander, the future king of Poland and grand duke of Lithuania, was certainly influential enough to impose the adoption of the term „White Russia” on Polish and Lithuanian diplomats. In the instruction for envoys of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania sent to Pope Alexander VI (1501-1502) and headed by Erazm Cioek (Vitelius), the Grand Duchy of Lithuania is described as a state „whose major part is spread along and across the plains of Scythia, part of which, from the borders of the Kingdom of Poland all the way to Persia and White Russia, has been overrun by the Tartars”. In another instruction, which accompanied Erazm Cioek in 1504 on his mission to Pope Julian II, it was stated that Poland „is capable of defying on the battlefield Turks and Tartars, and even White Russians among whom the Tartars live”. Among the enemies of Poland and Lithuania the instruction mentions the Crimean khan, the Volga horde and the „Moscow duke of White Russia”. While Callimach’s note is so general that his „White Russia” could stand for any Russian lands excepting Podolia, the diplomatic instructions leave no place for doubt: according to the actual west European style the term referred to Muscovy and the name „White Russians” to Muscovites.
In the second mission participated Bernard Wapowski, who later helped Marco Beneventano to prepare a map for the 1507 Roman edition of Ptolemy. On this map „White Russia, otherwise Muscovy” (Russia Alba sive Moskovia) lies on the west bank of the Dnieper near the confluence of this river with two others which could be identified as Pripyat and Berezina21. However, to the north of it is located the Duchy of Moscow (Ducatus Moscovie). So the authors of the map clearly did not equate the notions of Russia Alba and Moskovia. As A. Biely believes, „White Russia” was placed on the map by Wapowski, who could have thus indicated the passing of two duchies (Starodub and Novgorod Sievierskii) under Moscow’s rule in the years 1500-1503. The two duchies were to retain autonomous status within Muscovy for a while. The duchy of Starodub comprised the south-eastern lands of modern Belarus with the town of Homel. We may thus identify at least a part of modern Belarus with Beneventano’s and Wapowski’s „White Russia”22.
The primate of Poland, Jan aski, in his report, submitted in 1514 to the Fifth Lateran Council and entitled „De Ruthenorum nationibus earumque erroribus”, identified White Russians (Rutheni Albi) with Muscovites. Russians living under the rule of the king of Poland and grand duke of Lithuania were called in this document Red Russians (Rutheni Rubei).
Nevertheless, already in 1512 professor of the University of Cracow, Jan of Stobnica, in a treatise entitled „Introductio in Ptolemei Cosmographiam”, quite differently specified the territorial limits of „White Russia”. According to the Polish scholar, Russia could be divided into three parts: the first two comprised Russia which bordered from the east on Lesser Poland and Podolia and had its capital in Kamyenets; „the third part, which is called White Russia, stretches to the north all the way to the lands of the Livonians, and in the east to the River Don (Tanais) and the border between Europe and Asia. [...] This is where the splendid River Borysthenes begins, called by the local inhabitants Neper [Dnieper], on which lies a town called Smolensk, the seat of the metropolitan archbishop of the Russians. In the same land lies also a great city visited by merchants from the most remote countries, which they call Novgorod”. The principal part of the treatise is closely based on a work by Martin Waldseemueller entitled „Cosmografiae introductio” (published in 1507). The Polish geographer also made use of other texts which included works by Eneas Sylvius (Piccolomini) and Isidore of Seville23. He must have also known Callimach’s „Foreword”. On the issue discussed here, i.e. location of White Russia, Jan of Stobnica proved to have been an innovator. He used the term „White Russia” for all the Russian lands of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the former Republic of Novgorod, but not Muskovy. Thus, he included under the label of „White Russia” all the lands which make up modern Belarus.
Differences between Polish scholars and politicians, who sometimes call the subjects of Polish kings „Red Russians”, and sometimes „White Russians”, must certainly be a consequence of different interpretations of Richtental’s chronicle, which have been published in the end of fifteenth century. As it was emphasized above, this work is open to such alternative interpretations.
In 1516 Jan of Wilica in a poem entitled „The Prussian war” (Bellum prutenum) enumerated nations under the rule of Ladislaus Jagiello (Iahaila) and in this context mentioned „white Russians, famous for their courage” (albos belli celebres virtute Ruthenos). The name had a purely literary significance and it remained so for a long time on. Jan of Wilica mentioned also in passing „Russians of three types” without elucidating this term. Probably he had in mind the division of Russia into three parts suggested by Jan of Stobnica, or, once more, Richental’s three types of Russians.
The next step was made by Marcin Kromer in his work „On the origin and history of Poles” (De origine et rebus gestis Polonorum) published in Basel in 1555. Describing the territorial gains of Ivan III Kromer wrote: „Ivan, the duke of Muscovy, after subjugating to his rule Novgorod the Great, and seizing many castles and fortresses on the border with Russia, which is known as White and which is subject to the rule of the grand duke of the Lithuanians, became a serious threat to the rest of Russia and Lithuania”.
Writing further about the rebellion of duke Mikhal Glinski against king Alexander, Kromer noted that his treason is largely responsible for „the loss of a substantial part of White Russia” to Moscow. In 1512 Muscovy seized Smolensk, in the opinion of Jan of Stobnica the principal city of „White Russia”.
Ten years later the term „White Russia” was used in its ethnic sense by Jan Mczyski in his Latin-Polish dictionary24. In one of the dictionary entries he explained: „Rhoxolani, masc. qui hodie Rutheni vocantur, Populus in Sarmatia Europea Przi rzece Tanais, biaa ru y z wolicami [At the Tanais River, white russia and volhynians]”25. What specifically Mczyski meant by „white russia” is not quite clear. In another entry he wrote thus about Russians: „Ruteni, Ru, Rusacy, ssiedzi a bracia naszy. [Ruthenians, Russians, Russacks, neighbours and brothers of ours.] Ducatus est Regi Polonorum subditus”26. Again it is not clear whether the Russia referred to is within the borders of the Kingdom of Poland, whether the term „Ducatus” refers to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. On the title page of his work Mczyski enumerates 37 Slavonic ethnic groups which may find his dictionary useful in studying Latin, including Muscovites (Moschovitae), Lithuanians (Lithuani), Podolians (Podolii), Volhynians (Wolhinii), Lodomerians (Lodomerii) and Galicians (Gallicienses). Lodomerians were included in this register most probably because of the permanent combination „Galicia et Lodomeria”, so Przemysaw Zwoliski is certainly justified in identifying them with Volhynians27. It is difficult to agree with this author when he states that „under the name Lithuani we may understand Belarusians”. Mczyski, like so many authors before him, probably had in mind Lithuanians speaking some Slavonic language. It is, however, much easier to agree with Zwoliski’s opinion that Russi, Ruteni and Roxolani are synonymous and refer to the ancestors of today’s Ukrainians and Belarusians. Since biaa ru (white rus’) appears in Mczyski’s work in the context of Don River (Tanais), we may assume that the ethnic group so labeled lived to the east of the Volhynians.
Marcin Kromer described the territorial limits of „White Russia” much more precisely in his next work, „The description of Poland”, published for the first time in 157528. Kromer describes „Lithuania together with Samogitia and White Russia (Russia Alba), which belongs to it, and which in turn borders on Muscovy”. „White Russia” in Kromer’s view transcends the borders of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania: „Russia, by some called Red, in its western extremity adjoins Lesser Poland, in the north – White Russia and Volhynia, in the south – Hungary and the nation of Cekulans belonging to it, and in its part called Pokucie – Moldavia; while the rest of Moldavia, i.e, Vallachia, bordering also on Podolia, rather belongs to East Russia (Russia Orientalis)”. Through „White Russia” flow rivers Boh, Dnieper, Pripyat, Styr, Tur’ya, Sluch and Svislach. The image sketched by Kromer seems to be quite clear. Poland borders Podlachia (both Polish and Lithuanian), Volhynia, Red Russia. To the east of Red Russia there is also Podolia, which has long been a part of Poland. All the lands of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth to the east of these comprise „White Russia”. Kromer treats all these lands as either belonging to Poland or disputed between Poland and Lithuania. This is clearly a description of the situation predating the Lublin union between Poland and Lithuania.
Other European authors had followed Kromer placing „White Russia” on the frontier between the Commonwealth and Muscovy.
The terms „White Russia” and „White Russians” as names for the eastern regions of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and their inhabitants were popularized in Europe by the Italian Alessandro Guagnini, who in 1578 published in Cracow his work under the title „Sarmatiae Europae descriptio”. The book became widely known and was reprinted on a number of occasions in various European cities. One of its chapters was entitled „Methods of ploughing and sowing in White Russia which adjoins Moscow”. Guagnini also mentions „White Ruthenians and Muscovites” (Rutheni Albi Moschovitaeque). But he also uses the name „White Russia” in reference to Muscovy.
Guagnini most probably wasn’t the real author of „Description of European Sarmatia”. When he served as a captain of a cavalry unit in Vitsiebsk in White Russia he stole the manuscript of the work from his Polish subordinate, Maciej Stryjkowski. Stryjkowski protested violently and even appealed to the king for recognition of his authorship, presenting as his witnesses Stanislaw Pac and numerous Lithuanian noblemen. The king recognized Stryjkowski’s claim in a charter proclaimed on July 14th 1580. In spite of this, the work continued to be printed under Guagnini’s name and in 1611 its Polish translation was published in Cracow!
Stryjkowski himself obviously did not have a clear terminological conception and, depending on the sources he used, he would assign different interpretations to the name „White Russia” and its derivatives. When he wrote about White Russian monarchy he always had Moscow in mind, but he made use of the combination „White and Black Russia” in a somewhat different sense. The third chapter of his work was entitled: „On White and Black Russia, eastern, northern and southern ancient nations and their dukes [...]”. In the same chapter Stryjkowski also wrote that Vladimir the Great „brought under his power all Russia lying in the north, east and south, White and Black”29. Probably, in the combination „White and Black Russia” the term „White” refers to northern and eastern Russia, while „Black” to south-western Russia. Stryjkowski’s alter ego, Guagnini, follows in his footsteps writing explicitly that the capital of „Black Russia” was Lviv.
On the other hand, Stryjkowski uses rather consistently the term Bieorussacy (Belarusians). That „Belarusians” in Stryjkowski’s characterization could be divided into smaller national groups is indirectly demonstrated by the expressions „Moscow and all Belarusians” and „Muscovites, Lithuanian Belarusians, Bolgarians, Bosnovians, Serbs, etc.”30. In all probability the expression „all Belarusians” refered to the Ruthenian population of the eastern parts of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania before the conclusion of the Lublin union between Poland and Lithuania. Since Stryjkowski attempted to characterize the situation after the conclusion of the union, the expression „Lithuanian Belarusians” could pertain exclusively to the ancestors of today’s Belarusians.
„BOTH LITHUANIAN AND RUTHENIAN”
This is how during the sixteenth century Polish scholars gradually shaped the notion of „White Russia” and „White Russians”. Local population, i.e. the ancestors of modern Belarusians, not only had not used such terms earlier, but probably didn’t even know them. They called themselves „Rus’” (Rus) or „Rusiny” (Ruthenians) and their state Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Russia and Samogitia. The greates figure of Belarusian culture in the first half of 16th century was Francis Skaryna, a Renaissance scholar, at the time the only East Slavonic humanist. His conception of nationality does not differ from that prevailing in his Ruthenian environment. He loved his native province, „the famous town of Polatsk”, but his sphere of activity circumscribed all of Russia, probably inluding even Moscow. Skaryna enrolled at the University of Cracow as a Lithuanian (Lithuanus), though he later described himself as Ruthenian (Ruthenus) in Padua and Rus (Rus) in Prague. Because he was a Roman Catholic, the word „Ruthenian” must be treated as an ethnic term, while „Lithuanian” as a term marking citizenship. It is worthwhile to remark here that Skoryna studied at the University of Cracow at the same time when Jan of Stobnica lectured there. However, Skoryna doesn’t exhibit any interest in the geographical location of „White Russia”.
Grand Duchy of Lithuania was an ethnically dual, Lithuanian-Russian state. In different periods the equilibrium between the two ethnic factors would fluctuate, which found its expression in state ideology. At the time when the most important task of the ruling strata was consolidation of the Lithuanian-Russian lands within a single state, i.e. in the fifteenth century, chroniclers tried to remain even-handed in representing the role of both ethnic communities. Belarusian historian V. Chamiarytski proved that historical works written in mid fifteenth century, „Chronicle of the grand dukes of Lithuania” and „Chronicle” from 1446, promoted the conception of a dual, Lithuanian-Slavonic, genesis of the Grand Duchy. Unification of Lithuanian and Russian territories was presented as a voluntary act, caused by the external menace of the Teutonic Knights and Tartars. This is clearly visible in the „Chronicle” from 1446, particularly in the laudation „In praise of Vitawt” which was included in the chronicle. According to its author, it was Vitawt to whom belonged „the Great Duchy of Lithuania and Russia and of many other lands, or, in simple words, of all Russian lands”. In „Chronicle” from 1446 the Grand Duchy of Lithuania is presented as a Lithuanian-Russian state, whose history is a direct continuation of old Russia, while the emergence of the Grand Duchy is a historical inevitability. Most probably, both chronicles were written in Smolensk31.
Ideological appropriation of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania by Ruthenians must have been a source of apprehension for ethnic Lithuanians. In reaction to this danger, as well as, in connection with ideological disputes with the Poles, Lithuanians developed their own ethnogenetic legends, according to which they were descended from the Romans. The beginnings of the legend about the origins of the Lithuanian nation may be traced back to the fifties of the fifteenth century, while the establishment of „ancient family affinities”, which helped to further develop and inspire the legend, took place at the onset of the sixties. A fully developed form of this legend took shape in the latter half of the fifteenth century32.
„The Chronicle of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and Samogitia” was compiled at the beginning of the sixteenth century. It is notable that in the title of the chronicle the „Russian” part of the official name of the Grand Duchy was left out. The history of Lithuania begins here with the arrival of Romans in Samogitia. Russia is shown as the scene of Lithuanian activities. Ruthenians summon brave Lithuanian dukes, who defend them from the Tartars. Navahrudak, Hrodna, Barysaw and other towns were allegedly founded by Lithuanian dukes after the invasion of Russia by Tartar hordes under Batu-khan. Also at approximately that time temple dedicated to St. Sophia was erected in Polatsk. The dynasty of Polatsk dukes was derived from the dukes of Lithuania, without even mentioning Mindaugas. „The Chronicle of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and Samogitia” is a product of Lithuanian patriotism which, in order to raise its national stature, did not flinch from committing forgery.
Thus, both sides already at the beginning of the sixteenth century have unfurled the banners of conflicting national programmes, which testifies to the growing enmity between the two ethnic groups. Furthermore, orthodox population was vexed by the policy of king Alexander, who tried to implement within the borders of his state the resolutions of the religious union of Florence.. A clear sign of discontent is the 1507 rebellion of duke Mikhal Glinski. Glinski occupied Minsk, but was subsequently vanquished and fled to Moscow. According to the local tradition the rebellion stemmed from religious and ethnic conflict. The anonymous author of the „Chronicle of Bychowiec”, and later also Maciej Stryjkowski, attributed to Glinski the intention to reestablish Russian monarchy, which illustrates the moods prevailing at the time. In 1512 the Grand Duchy lost Smolensk, which passed into the hands of Moscow. The loss of Smolensk was a terrible blow to the Ruthenian community in the Grand Duchy. Smolensk had been its principal intellectual centre. It was here that the conceptions of the Ruthenian nature of the Grand Duchy were formulated. Smolensk had also been the centre of the newly emerging „White Russia”.
In mid sixteenth century the pattern of ethnic and religious tensions in Grand Duchy of Lithuania was undergoing wholescale modification due to the expansion of Protestantism.
Calvinism became the denomination of a large part of nobility. Around 1553 the most powerful nobleman and state official in Lithuania, chancellor and Vilnius voivode Mikolai Radziwill the Black, and his first cousin, Mikolai Radziwill the Red, the brother of Queen Barbara, converted to Calvinism. They were soon followed by numerous other noblemen, both originally of the Catholic and Orthodox persuasions, and by countless representatives of lower gentry.
In 1563 king Sigismundus Agustus passed a decree, whereby to all the offices „were to be elected and elevated not only those subject to the Church of Rome, but on an equal basis, all knights or nobles of Christian faith, both Lithuanian and Ruthenian”. In practice this decree pertained not only to the Catholics and Orthodox but also to Protestants.
Reformation territorially transcended the borders of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, since it encompassed all the lands of the Polish-Lithuanian dual monarchy. Specifically, the ideas of Reformation were preached in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania by activists from Poland. Protestantism undoubtedly speeded up the cultural polonization of the elites of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. On the other hand, only Protestants, and particularly the Arians Symon Budny and Vasil Tsiapinski, were concerned with preservation of the common Ruthenian language.
Ruthenian maintained its strong position in the secular sphere. The publisher of the new „Statute of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania”, which was published in Ruthenian in 1588, deputy chancellor Lew Sapieha, even though he converted from Greek Orthodoxy to Roman Catholicism, remained a staunch patriot of Ruthenian language. In the introduction to the „Statute” he proudly wrote: „And if shame falls on any nation for not knowing its laws, the more so should this concern us, who write laws not in some foreign but in our own language...” It would be difficult to escape the impression that the words quoted above are an implicit polemic with an earlier comment voiced by Michalon the Lithuanian (Lithuanus) that „Ruthenian language is foreign to us, Lithuanians”. The „Statute” of 1588 was a powerful expression of a new consolidation of the multiethnic and multireligious Grand Duchy in its new borders after it had sustained substantial territorial losses to Poland in the wake of the Lublin Union of 1569.
As for the terminology, the 1588 „Statute” resorts to old ethnic categories of Litva (Lithuania) and Rus’ (Russia). These two notions had in the sixteenth century a specific territorial significance, which was not coextensive with ethnic divisions. Essentially, Litva referred to the south-eastern parts of contemporary Lithuania and the northern provinces of today’s Belarus. The eastern parts of contemporary Belarus were known as Rus’ (Russia). The border between Litva and Rus’ ran east of Minsk.33.
THE FIRST BELARUSIAN
The term „White Russia” for the first time appeared in a local document as late as in 1585. This is the date of an adnotation in the inventory of a Franciscan monastery in Ashmiany concerning the appropriation (in 1407) by the voivode of Polatsk of the estate of Bortniki in „White Russia” (villa esse Borthniky in Russia Alba).
The first native who called himself „Belarusian” was Solomon Rysinski34. On December 2nd, 1586 he enrolled at the University of Altdorf as Salomon Pantherus Leucorussus. Two years later the same Rysinski, in a letter written to his German friend, Konrad Ritterhausen (later a well known poet, lawyer and town clerk of the Nürnberg town council) dated November 15th, 1588, called his fatherland Belarus (Leucorossia). What is remarkable here is that Rysinski used terminology reminiscent of contemporary Belarusian names: Leucorussus is Belarusian, i. e. „White-Rus” and not „White Ruthenian”, as it was customary to write at the time. It is not clear why Rysinski rendered „White” with Greek „Leuko-”. A. Biely associates this peculiar fact with Greek-Latin names used by Julius Pomponius Let and Roger Bacon. Julius Pomponius Let, in his lectures on Virgil, stated that the southern River Bug, or Hypanis, has its source in „the mud of White-Scythians” (in paludes Leucoscytharum), and one of the Scythian languages is Ruthenian. Bacon placed to the west of Great Russia the land of Leucovia, which comprised Estonia, Livonia, Semigalia and Courland, i.e. the territories of modern Estonia and Latvia. It seems that these cases are rather remote in time, but we cannot preclude the possiblity that these scholars exerted their influence on Rysinski. Enrolling at the University of Altdorf, Rysinski already had in his past an episode of studies in Leipzig, so he was an educated man. But the usage of a Greek term could also have been an attempt to display learning. Knowledge of Greek in the Renaissance period constituted proof of more profound learning than mere knowledge of Latin. What drew the two students together was their dedication to philological study of classical texts, and W. Korotyski (one of the first biographers of Rysinski, a Polish-Belarusian poet) evaluated Rysinski’s Latin as „appropriate, although occasionally somewhat stilted”35.
As for Rysinski’s proclamation of himself as a Belarusian, this decision may have been spurred by the works of Mczyski, Kromer and Stryjkowski/Guagnini. Since Rysinski thereby achieved something of an intellectual discovery, in order to specify what exactly he meant when he called his country Belarus and himself Belarusian we should take a closer look at him and the circumstances of his life.
Rysinski was born in what is now Belarus, though the exact place of his birth is not certain. As he wrote in his own epitaph, he was born „in richly endowed with forests and animals Russia which borders on frigid Muscovy”. On this basis it was assumed that his birthplace was the village of Rysin near Polatsk, and his father was a petty gentryman named Fedor. But Rysinski himself mentioned the village of Kobylniki as his birthplace when he enrolled at the Universities of Leipzig and Basel. This could be either Kobylniki (or Kobylnik, today named Naroch) in Ashmyany district or the feudal estate of Kobylniki in Vityebsk voivedeship. The difficulty of solving this puzzle is further bolstered by the fact that the first protectors of Rysinski, the Dorohostaiski family, have enormous estates both in the vicinity of Polatsk and Ashmyany. But given the fact that at approximately the same period Franciscan monks from Oshmyana called the region of Polatsk „White Russia”, the it is this last location which seems to be more likely as Rysinski’s birthplace. Rysinski’s status as gentryman is also dubious, although when he served the Radziwills he passed for a gentryman and used the coat of arms and seal of „Ostoja”.
Rysinski was a Protestant of the Calvinist persuasion. It is not clear where he received his education before he went abroad. He studied in Leipzig, Altdorf and Basel and travelled extensively in Western Europe. Having spent several years in Lesser Poland, Rysinski entered the service of Vilnius voivode and grand Lithuanian hetman (i.e. commander in chief of the Lithuanian armed forces) Krzysztof Radziwill the Thunderbolt as the preceptor of his younger son Krzysztof. Together with his pupil he resumed his travels in Europe. After the death of Krzysztof Radziwill the Thunderbolt Rysinski continued to serve the younger Krzysztof in the capacity of his advisor, especially in religious and cultural matters, and later as the tutor of his son Janusz. He actively participated in the works of the Calvinist Lithuanian Unity and published a reedited and enlarged Cracow hymn-book. He also represented Radziwill in his contacts with the Greek Orthodox fraternity of the Holy Spirit in Vilnius in connection with their complaints which Radziwill chose to support. His life’s work was a 1800 page collection of Polish proverbs published under the Latin title „Proverbiorum polonicorum [...] centurie decem et eco” (Lubcz 1618), which later had reprints under the Polish title „Przypowieci polskie” („Polish parables”). In his own words, he undertook this work encouraged by the wealth of „Sarmatian proverbs”, which is a living testimony of the wisdom and experience of generations, and by the handicapped circumstances of the Polish language, which, after all, is both exceptionally „efficacious” and „felicitous”, as is best exemplified by the linguistic abilities of the Poles. Rysinski collected the proverbs „not from books he had read, but from long cultivated custom and precise observation” apprehending them „by ear from people of diverse extraction, primarily from peasants”. The bulk of the proverbs thus found was collected in the vicinity of Liubcha on the Nioman River. W. Korotyski, who himself was born in Navahrudak district located on the Nioman, ascertained that most of the proverbs quoted in „Proverbiorum polonicum...” live on in the Belarusian language used on the banks of the Nioman, though many of the expressions found in the book are unknown in more remote parts of Belarus. Some of them „have been preserved in Belarusian expressions”. Thanks to the „Polish parables” Rysinski has earned the right to be called „the first Polish paremiologist”.
Rysinski identified himself as a „Belarusian” at a relatively early moment in life. It is, however, quite possible that his interest in folklore (and, more generally, in ethnicity) might have started also in that period. As he wrote, his stay in Leipzig provided him with the occasion to „see different nations and cities”, and collection of proverbs was his „long cultivated custom”. For Rysinski the term „Sarmatian” is equivalent with „Slavonic”. He was delighted to note that it is possible to communicate in „Sarmatian” language in the vast lands stretching from the Adriatic Sea all the way to the Caspian Sea. Thus, Rysinski considered himself a Slav (Sarmatian) and a Belarusian (Leucorussus). He considered Belarus (Leucorossia) his fatherland, though the state to which he owed his allegiance (patria) was the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. He did not, however, consider himself a Lithuanian in the ethnic sense, since he treated Lithuanians as a separate nation from the Belarusians. This is clearly visible in one of his letters to Ritterhausen, in which he comments on the usage of the patronymic forms: „Even now Muscovites, Belarusians and the majority of Lithuanians often continue to use them”36. He also traditionally called the place of his birth „Russia”. New notions, such as Belarusian and Belarus, were probably needed to characterize the new reality after the conclusion of the Lublin Union, since part of Russia was handed over under the provisions of this agreement to the Kingdom of Poland. His interest in folklore could have also led him to the conviction that Ruthenians in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and Ruthenians in the Kingdom of Poland (Ukraine) were by then two different ethnic groups which already spoke distinct languages. As a Protestant, he may have felt the urge to introduce a new ethnic term in order to circumvent the ethnoreligious stereotypes, whereby a Lithuanian was bound to be a Roman Catholic and Ruthenian Greek Orthodox. As it had already been mentioned, in the Russian context only Protestants were capable at the time of modern thought on national identity and national language.
In spite of all these reservations, Rysinski’s thinking on ethnicity is strikingly modern. A similar type of Polish-Belarusian literati fascinated with folklore would emerge much later in the nineteenth century. In that age of national rebirth, until the emergence of Belarusian nationalists at the beginning of the eighties, Belarusian national thinking focused on the issues originally defined much earlier by Rysinski: the value of peasant culture and the language of common people. Most of the representatives of national rebirth movement were linguists, folklorists or literati: Poles, Lithuanians and Belarusians simultaneously. Hence, Solomon Rysinski is their perfect archetype.
AGAINST THE BREST UNION – GREEK ORTHODOX „BELARUSIANS”
In the case of Greek Orthodoxy the role of Counter-Reformation was performed by The Brest Union of 1596. Even if the intentions of the Orthodox hierarchs who concluded this agreement with the Church of Rome could be interpreted in their favour, assuming that they wanted to preserve as much as possible of the Orthodox tradition in the context of a Catholic onslaught, thereby integrating the Ruthenian nation, the consequences of this move led to quite different developments. Within the Ruthenian ethnic community of the Polish-Lithuanian state, already weakened by the conversion of its elite to Protestantism and Catholicism, a long-term and destructive scission ensued.
Uniates and adherents of Greek Orthodoxy produced a vast polemic literature which pertained mainly to religious matters. National issues were also raised in these disputes, as well as, in the disputes with Roman Catholics. Ruthenians of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, even though they were separated from each other by the border between the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Kingdom of Poland, continued to represent one ethnos. Therefore, authors of polemical pamphlets and political declarations continued to address the whole Ruthenian nation.
At the time when the Brest Union was being concluded the term „White Russia” was already in circulation. Konstanty Ostrogski himself used this name in a letter to the participants of a Protestant council in Toru in August 1595, whom he urged to join the Greek Orthodoxy. The Kyiv voivode wrote: „not only myself and some of those living here in these our lands feel committed, but many others may be found in lands such as: Podolia, Kyiv, Volhynia, Podlachia, Lviv, Przemyl, in White Russia and Lithuania, our brothers, who in great trepidation (since at stake are not our bodies, possessions, health, but conscience and the salvation of our souls) feel committed not only to having our own congresses, but to consulting you gentlemen, to petitioning his Royal Highness and to strong protestations at sessions of regional councils”37. The letter was read to several hundred delegates who came from all parts of the country38. We may safely assume that when Ostrogski used the term „White Russia” he wrote about it as if it was something obvious and did not have to be explained to the delegates at the council. Since the text enumerates separately all the Ruthenian provinces of the Kingdom of Poland, and only then goes on to „White Russia and Lithuania, our brothers”, it may be assumed that White Russia and Lithuania are separate from the provinces of the Kingdom of Poland lands belonging to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Konstanty Ostrogski had used the name of „White Russia” also earlier in 1594 in a letter to Krzysztof Radziwill the Thunderbolt. Describing the military operations of the Cossack leader Semen Nalivayko he expressed his concern lest the Cossacks invaded „White Russia”39.
It is extremely interesting that the name „Belarusians” was used exclusively by adherents of Greek Orthodoxy. Among the Uniates only metropolitan archbishop Hipatius Potsiei mentioned in passing „White Russia” in a brief remark about Vyaz’ma near Smolensk. Other Uniate polemists used the terms „Russia” and „Ruthenians”. Perhaps, as representatives of a new religious trend, which nevertheless tried to appeal to the ancient tradition of ecclesiastical unity, they avoided innovations, in order not to be accused of forfeiting starina (ancient traditions). Not untill the end of the 17th century did the first Uniate „White Russian” (Ruthenus Albus) appear, Kyiv metropolitan Cyprian Zochowski40.
Those who maintained their allegiance to Greek Orthodoxy even more strongly perceived themselves as the guardians of starina, but they felt free to accept the new nomenclature. In the case of the name „Little Russia” it may be hypothesized that the very term implied an overall Orthodox community since it intimated the existence of a „Great Russia”. Also the name „White Russia”, apart from its purely geographical significance imposed on this term by the Poles, gained religious overtones.Stryjkowski’s „Belarusians” appear in this religious context: „But whither from Russians and other Russian nations got their names, they all use Slavonic language and they are all Christians, united in rites (for the most part Greek), as Muscovites, Lithuanian Belarusians, Bolgarians, Bosnovians, Serbs, etc.”41
For the first time (as it had already been mentioned above) the name „White Russia” appeared in Old Church Slavonic literature in an Orthodox polemical pamphlet „Slovo na latyniu” („Word on Latin”) dedicated to the Union of Florence of 1439, and written, according to most estimates, in 1461/1462 in Moscow by the Serb Pachomius Logophetus. The author of this text put in the mouth of the Bizantine emperor the following words: „Eastern lands are Russian more orthodox and higher Christianity of White Russia...” The sense of the sentence is far from clear and later copyists, also in Poland and Lithuania, simplified it in the following manner: „just as eastern lands are more orthodox, higher Christianity White Russia”42. It is not unlikely, that after the conclusion of the Union of Brest in 1596 „Slovo...” suggested the link between „White Russia” and Greek Orthodoxy.
The term „White Russia” gradually assumed the meaning of today’s Belarus. New reprints of Stryjkowski’s work and Polish translation of Guagnini’s „European Sarmatia” published in 1611 (to which the translator, Marcin Paszkowski, added the following fragment: „And there are three [Russias]: one is white, the second black, the third red [...] White is near Kyiv, Mazyr, Mstislawl, Vitsiebsk, Orsha, Polatsk, Smolensk and the Sieversk province , which have long belonged to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania”)43 as well as the publication of Kromer’s „Poland” in the same year, translated by Marcin Baewski (just like Paszkowski, an Orthodox gentryman from Galicia) must have had their effect.
Szymon Starowolski wrote in 1632: „Russia is divided into White Russia, which is part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and Red Russia, which calls itself Roxolania and belongs to Poland”. According to Starowolski, White Russia comprises the voivodeships of Polatsk, Mstislawl, Vitsiebsk, Smolensk, Navahrudak and Minsk, i.e. almost the whole territory of today’s Belarus. He did not include in White Russia Brest voivodeship which he considered as Polessia, and the vicinity of Hrodna and the lands to the north of Nioman, which he considered a part of Lithuania44.
At the turn of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries someone in Belarus produced a manuscript copy of Stryjkowski’s work in Ruthenian, thereby introducing for the first time the term „Belarusians” (beloruscy) into literature written in that language45. Furthermore, given the fact that the form beloruscy had never before appeared in Ruthenian writings, we may risk the hypothesis that it is just a translation of Stryjkowski’s Bieorussacy.
Another testimony, which proved that the term „Belarusians” had already won widespread recognition, was given by Moscow patriarch Filaret, who after his return from captivity in Poland said at the Moscow council in 1620: „When I was in the Polish and Lithuanian state, I witnessed much strife among Orthodox Christians, who call themselves there Belarusians”46.
Filaret used the Ruthenian word beloruscy. As he emphasized, this was how Orthodox Christians called themselves there, i.e. in the Polish-Lithuanian state, and not in Muscovy. This statement may put at rest any attempt to argue that it was Moscow which imposed this term on modern Belarusians.Also the term „White Russia” in the sense of modern Belarus was introduced in Moscow by foreigners. In 1621 a German agent of czar Mikhail Romanov, working under the assumed name of Yuri Rodionov in Riga, mentioned in his report rumours about a planned military expedition of Moscow troops on „Livonia, White Russia and Lithuania”47.
Hence, it was only after 1620 that Muscovites started using the term belorusec in reference to visitors from the eastern regions of Polish and Lithuanian state and the name „White Russia” for this whole territory, regardless whether it was under Lithuanian or Polish jurisdiction. Patriarch Filaret must have been particularly instrumental in spreading this usage since he had the authority to impose it (the patriarch was bestowed the title of gosudar’, otherwise reserved only for czars). This nomenclature was clearly at odds with the names Belarusians and Ukrainians had used to talk about themselves. In what is now the Ukraine the local population used the term „Little Russia” for the Russian provinces of the Polish-Lithuanian state, and with increasing frequency the name „Ukraine” for their own lands, particularly those located on the Dnieper River. Ukrainian scholar Pamva Berynda was the first who called Muskovites „Great Russians” (Vielikorossy) in his Triodia postnaia.
Local self image found excellent expression in the 1638 proclamation of Jack Ostranica, leader of a Cossack uprising. Ostranica announced that he decided to take action at the head of Zaporizhyan troops „in Littlerussian Ukraine to raise with God’s help you, our Orthodox nation, from the Polish yoke”. He addressed „our brothers of noble birth and all common people of Ruthenian blood, who live on both sides of the Dnieper”. He was ready to accept the services of all people who „wish well for their fallen fatherland of Littlerussia” and he mentioned letters which had been earlier dispatched „to the Littlerussian nation”48. Did Ostranica address only the Ukrainians or, when he wrote about „ people of Ruthenian blood, who live on both sides of the Dnieper”, did he also have in mind Belarusians? Krzysztof Zbaraski provided circumstantial evidence when he wrote in a letter to the king in 1623 that Cossacks had won „the open or hidden favour of almost whole Kyivan Ukraine and White Russia”49.
THEY STRUGGLED FOR BELARUS
Belarus lacked a strong centre of opposition to projects of religious union, unlike the Ukraine where opposition could form around the court of Konstanty Ostrogski and, at a later period, the Cossack stronghold of Sich in Zaporizhya. However, given the apostasy of the nobility, its role was partly taken by the burgers. Although Polatsk returned under Polish-Lithuanian rule in 1579 and Smolensk followed suite in 1618, the two towns did not regain their former status. Mahiliow on the Dnieper became the largest city in White Russia. The Orthodox bishop residing there was called (at that time still inofficially) „Belarusian bishop”. Mahiliow Orthodoxy was „reformed”, i.e. the secular element played leading role in the form of Orthodox fraternities which grouped mainly rich merchants. In the sixteenth century Orthodox reformation went so far in Mahiliow that priests were treated almost like hired labourers. The keys to churches were kept in the fraternities and they were handed out to the priests only for the duration of the services. No wonder Mahiliovians treated the Union of Brest, with its insistence on the strengthening the role of clergy along the lines suggested by the Catholic Council of Trent, as Counter-Reformation and infringement of their inviolable rights.
In 1654 Zaporizhian Army entered into a union with Moscow. Zaporizhian hetman Bohdan Khmelnytsky himself at the Pereieslav Council called his country, which was giving itself under the czar’s protection, „Little Russia”. After the Council czar Alieksiei Mikhailovich changed his earlier title of gosudar’ and samoderzhets vseia Rusi [the lord and authocrat of all Russia] into a new one: Vseia Velikaia i Malaja Rossii [All Great and Little Russia]. The second title referred to the entire Ruthenian lands of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth .This meant war.
The defenders of Belarusian Mahiliow were induced to capitulate by a local nobleman Konstantin Poklonski, who went into the Moscow side during the preparations for Muscovity’s invasion. Poklonski accepted the title of „Belarusian colonel” and began the organization of Belarusian regiment50. Poklonski’s ambitions were undoubtedly far-reaching, both for the territory and for the power. He attempted to create a center of his own political and military power, but he had to dodge between Muscovites and Zaporizhian Cossacks, as Khmelnytsky also wanted to execute his power over large, if not the entire, Russia within the borders of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Poklonski demanded from Alieksiei that the leader of the Zaporizhian Cossacks at White Russia, nakaznyi hetman Ivan Zolotarenko, did not take over the power on Mahiliovians, „as these are not Ukrainian, but your majesty’s subjects”51. Soon, however, Poklonski could not stand the Moscow rule and turned into Polish-Lithuanian side. In numerous letters sent to Mahiliovians, Cossacks, Moscow dignitaries and Ukrainian leaders he thus explained the reasons for his behaviour: „as I understood, this war was meant to liberate the enslaved Russia, that is accept consolation, as from a Christian ruler.” However, he wrote, what took place was „the pillage of God’s homes, as from Tartars” and he enumerated the misfortunes which fell upon the population. Poklonski decided to return to the bosom of „beloved and golden Fatherland”52. Great Lithuanian hetman Janusz Radziwill endowed him, already as Roman Catholic Vaclaw Konstantin Poklonski, with the authority of a „colonel over all Belarusian lands” and made him a commander of the troops at Biarezina and Druts’. Poklonski was, however, followed by few compatriots and was soon defeated by the Moscow forces. An Ukraininan Zolotarenko became a master of the situation at the Dniepr.
In 1655 the Kingdom of Poland and the Duchy of Lithuania was invaded by the Swedes, which meant an inevitable conflict with Moscow which continued the conquest of the Polish lands.
After the conquest of Vilnius in 1655 Alieksiei Mikhailovich edicted an order in which he called himself na Velikom Kniazhstve Litovskom i nad Beloiu Rossieeiu
i na Volyni i Podolii gosudar’ [the lord of the Great Duchy of Lithuania and White Russia and Volhynia and Podolia]. It is not clear what the czar understood in this case by „White Russia”. Probably this term referred to, as frequently before, both eastern Belarus and eastern Ukraine. Still, the same year the titles were clarified. Patriarch Nikon adopted the official title of „Moscow patriarch of Great, Little and White Russia”. Since then this division has become practically canonical.
A year later Khmelnytsky, who was considering at the time an alliance with Sweden, nominated a new Ukrainian commander of lands beyond the Dnieper, „Belarusian colonel” Ivan Nechay, who did everything he could to undermine Muscovite orders. Furthermore, a group of irregulars under the command of another self-styled „Belarusian colonel”, a local adventurer named Denis Murashka, initiated independent guerrilla activity in the districts of Minsk and Navahrudak. In 1557 Khmelnytsky concluded a treaty with Carolus Gustavus, the king of Sweden, and George Rakoczy, the duke of Transylvania. The Grand Duchy of Lithuania was to handed over to Rakoczy but Khmelnytsky intended to incorporate into the Ukraine Belarusian lands stretching beyond the Dnieper all the way to Smolensk in the north. Moscow, which had earlier signed a truce with the Polish-Lithuanian authorities in exchange for the election of czar Alieksiei to the Polish throne, sent its troops against the „Belarusian colonel” Nechay. However, the alliances were soon reversed. Polish bishops and papal nuncio refused to recognize the election of Alieksiei which meant further war. New Cossack hetman, Ivan Vyhovsky concluded a union with the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Nechay and Murashka went over to the Polish-Lithuanian side53.
The notions „Belarus” and „Belarusian” were used at the time not only by politicians and military commanders. They regularly appear in the works of the greatest Belarusian poet of the time, Simiaon Polatski, who was a graduate of the Kyiv-Mohylanian Academy and an Orthodox monk.
In 1656 Simiaon Polacki wrote, probably in collaboration with igumen (abbot of an Orthodox rite monastery) of Our Lord’s Revelation Ihnat Iewlevich and teacher at Orthodox fraternity school Filafiei Utchycki, „verses for the arrival at the native city of Polatsk” of czar Alieksiei Mikhailovich, „the sole ruler of all Great, Little and White Russia”. Moscow ruler is called „the most luminous czar from the east, shining on all Rossians”. The Belarusian monks appeal: „Rejoice Russia, for the orthodox czar has arrived”. They thank Christ for „looking from the heights at the truobled common folk and calling to Russia the czar from the East”. Alieksiei Mikhailovich is also hailed „the Belarussian adornment of fate, offered to us, the suppressed, from the highest throne. „The promised native city of Polatsk bows” before the czar, and so does „all of Russia, White and Little”. The authors go on to praise the czar: „You have saved us from enemy’s yoke, placed Belarussia in the light”54.
After several years of Muscovite rule and havoc wreaked by constant wars the tone of poems written by Simiaon Polatski was quite different: „April 27. The painting of the holiest Divine mother was taken from Polatsk to Moscow”. The poet was dismayed by the fact that the icon was again removed from Polatsk in 1663 and he pleaded to St. Euphrosinia of Polatsk for her intercession to God: „Oh Mother, stoop on our behalf to [the feet of]/ God Our Lord on behalf of our attendants/ for our holy icon to be returned to us and Belarussian land be illuminated”55.
The usage of names „Russia”, „Russian” and „Russia the White”, „Belarussia”, „Belarussian” by the Orthodox elite of Polatsk (and Simiaon Polatski in particular) does not leave any doubts about the meanings given to these terms. „Russia” stands for „Russian lands”: „Great, Little and White Russia”. However, „Russia” and „Russian people” are located within the borders of the Lithuanian-Polish state. One is left with the impression that the czar is for Russia and Russians an external factor. The „Russia” of the citizens of Polatsk is „Belarussia”, in the midst of which Polatsk itself is located. In Simiaon Polatski’s lamentations one may also discern the beginnings of the cult of St. Euphrosinia as the patron saint not only of Polatsk but of the whole „Belarussia”.
Adoption by the Moscow czars of the official title of „gosudar [lord] of Great, Little and White Russia” may be treated (and usually is treated) as the expression of Moscow’s expansionistic sentiments. However, also an Ukrainian idea of „Little Russia”, which included both Ukraine and Belarus, may be treated in the some way. In fact, there was no idea of the „triune” Russia before the year 1655. It is obvious, that Moscow authorities hesitated over how to call Russian provinces of the Polish-Lithuanian state. One possibility was to borrow from the Poles the term „White Russia”, another was to make use of the Ukrainian (originally Bizantine) name „Little Russia”. For a while the two names were used interchangeably. The natives, however, did not show any signs of such uncertainty. Ukrainians never called their country „White Russia”, it was always „Little Russia” or „Ukraine”. Belarusians never accepted the term „Little Russia” and instead opted for „White Russia” – „Belarussia”. Muscovites were pressed to recognize both names. The replacement in the official title of the czars of „all Russia” with a tripartite term meant that the czars had to acknowledge the fact that in European Sarmatia emerged three „Russian” nations.
Translated by Wojciech Kubiński
CONCLUSIONS
To sum up, we may state that the names of White Russia and White Russians were first used in reference to the territory and population of today’s Belarus by Polish scholars, who borrowed these terms from West European (initially Hungarian) literary tradition. We should not, however, talk about imposition of these terms on the natives of Belarus, but rather of borrowing them. At first these names referred to the eastern, Russian provinces of the Polish-Lithuanian state and its habitants, but after the political Union of Lublin the territory referred in this manner was soon limited to today’s Belarus. The first native who called himself a Belarusian was the writer and folklorist Solomon Rysinski, who did that in 1586. It is most likely that he interpreted this notion in the ethnic sense. Rysinski was a Protestant, but after the religious Union of Brest in 1596 Orthodox inhabitants of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania started to use the name of Belarusians. Hence, the name received both ethnic and religious overtones and continued to combine these two meanings for quite some time. For the Orthodox population of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania adoption of the terms „White Russia” and „White Russians” was on the one hand a way of marking separate identity from Muscovites („Great Russians”) and Ukrainians („Little Russians”), and on the other hand was an ideological act of divorcing oneself from the state traditions of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, increasingly Lithuanian and Roman Catholic. In a sense, Belarus – „White Russia” was becoming one of the successors of the Old „Kyivan” Russia.
The process of growing maturity of the new nation was suddenly arrested by the outbreak of war with Muscovy (1654-1667). Belarus lost half of its inhabitants. Cities were destroyed, the fortunes of burgers, the main adherents of Belarusian national ideas, were dissipated. The nobility converted to Roman Catholicism in droves and adopted both the Lithuanian national myth and the Polish culture. Belarus has become for a whole century a purely geographical notion.
ÐÝÇÞÌÝ
À¢òàð – Àëåã Ëàòûøîíàê – ìàëàäû áåëàðóñê³ ã³ñòîðûê çü Áåëàñòîêà, ó ñâà³ì àðòûêóëå êàíöýíòðóåööà íà àíàë³çå ¢çüí³êíåíüíÿ äû ðàñïà¢ñþäæàíüíÿ íàçîâó „Áåëàÿ Ðóñü“. Ïåðøûì³ àäíåñüë³ ÿãî äà òýðûòîðû³ ñó÷àñíàé Áåëàðóñ³ âó÷îíûÿ ç Ïîëüø÷û, ïåðàéìàþ÷û íàçî¢ „Áåëàÿ Ðóñü“ çü ë³òàðàòóðíàå òðàäûöû³ Çàõàäó. Àñàáë³âà ïàñüëÿ Ëþáë³íñêàé Óí³³, êàë³ êàí÷àòêîâà ¢ñòàëÿâàë³ñÿ ìåæû Âÿë³êàãà Êíÿñòâà ˳òî¢ñêàãà. À ïåðøûì ÷àëàâåêàì, ÿê³ íàçâࢠñÿáå Áåëàðóñàì áû¢ âûäàòíû ï³ñüìåíüí³ê ³ ôàëüêëÿðûñò Ñàëÿìîí Ðûñ³íñê³, øòî ìåëà ìåéñöà ¢ 1586 ãîäçå. Äàâîë³ õóòêàãà ïàøûðýíüíÿ íàáû¢ ãýòû íàçî¢ ó ïåðøóþ ÷àðãó ñÿðîä ïðàâàñëà¢íàãà íàñåëüí³öòâà – äçåëÿ àäðîçüíåíüíÿ àä Âÿë³êàðóñà¢-Ìàñêàâ³òࢠäû Ìàëàðóñà¢-Óêðà³íöà¢, à òàêñàìà äçåëÿ ³äýÿëÿã³÷íàé ñýïàðàöû³ àä óñ¸ áîëåé êàòàë³öêà-æìóäç³íñêàé äçÿðæà¢íàå òðàäûöû³ Âÿë³êàãà Êíÿñòâà ˳òî¢ñêàãà.
Ìàñêî¢ñêàÿ àãðýñ³ÿ ¢ ïàëîâå ñåìíàööàòàãà ñòàãîäçüäçÿ çàêîí÷ûëàñÿ äëÿ Áåëàðóñ³ òðàã³÷íà: çüí³ø÷àíà ýêàíîì³êó ³ áîëüø ïàëîâû íàñåëüí³öòâà, ïðàïàëà ìÿø÷àíñòâà ÿê ýòí³÷íàÿ àñíîâà íàöûÿñòâàðàëüíàãà ïðàöýñó, áàÿðñòâà ìàñàâà ïàéøëî ¢ øëÿõòó, ïåðàéìàþ÷û æìóäçêà-ë³òî¢ñê³ íàöûÿíàëüíû ì³ò äû ïîëüñêóþ êóëüòóðíàñüöü. Áåëàÿ Ðóñü äýãðàäàâàëà ¢ ãýàãðàô³÷íû ïàíÿòàê.
Oleg Łatyszonek – Ph. D. in history. Teaches at the Chair of Belarusian Culture at the University of Biaystok. His research interests concern the earliest elements of Belarusian identity and its evolution into full-fledged national consciousness. Author of books: „Biaoruskie formacje wojskowe 1917-1923” [Belarusian military units 1917-1923], Biaystok, 1995 and (with E. Mironowicz) „Historia Biaorusi od poowy XVIII do koca XX wieku” [The History of Belarus from the half 18th till the end of 20th century], Biaystok, 2002. E-mail: latyszon@poczta.onet.pl
1 Today the name of the city of Biaystok (literally White Brook) evokes similar associations in the minds of many Poles. The citizens of Biaystok are often asked if white polar bears can be found roaming the streets of their city.
2 For particularly important articles and literature see: I [Your Name is White Russia], Minsk 1991.
3 À. Ñîëîâüåâú [A. Solov’ev], Áåëàÿ è ×åðíàÿ Ðóñü. Îòòèñê èçú Ñáîðíèêà Pyccêaão Apxeoëîãè÷åñêàão Oáùåñòâà âú Kop. Þãîñëàâèè, vol. III, Belgrade 1940, p. 35.
4 Â. Ëàìàíñêèé, [V. Lamanskii] «Áåëàÿ Ðóñü» in Æèâàÿ ñòàðèíà, St. Petersburg 1891, No. III, p. 245-250.
5 À. Ñîëîâüåâú [A. Solov’ev], Áåëàÿ..., p. 65-66.
6 By the same author, Âåëèêàÿ, Ìàëàÿ è Áåëàÿ Ðóñü, Âîïðîñû èñòîðèè, No. 7 (1947), p. 24-38.
7 See also: A. V. Soloviev, Byzance et la formation de l’etat Russe, London, 1979.
8 Ã. Ñàãàíîâi÷ [H. Sahanovich], Äà ãiñòîðûi íàçâû „Áåëàÿ Ðóñü” in Ñòàðîíêi ãiñòîðûi Áåïàðóñi, Minsk, 1992, p. 66, 71.
9 A. Áåëû [A. Biely], Õðîíiêà Áåëàé Ðóñi. Chronicon Russiae Albae. Íàðûñ ãiñòîðûi àäíîé ãåàãðàôi÷íàé íàçâû, Minsk 2000, p. 183-189.
10 M. L. Colker, America rediscovered in the Thirteenth Centur?, Speculum, October 1979, 712-726.
11 M. L. Colker, op. cit., p. 716.
12 K. Górski, Descriptiones terrarum (Nowoodkryte źródło do dziejów Prus w XIII w.), Zapiski Historyczne 46 (1981), 1, p. 7-16; reviewed by G. Labuda, Studia Źródłoznawcze 28 (1983), p. 257-237; Àï³ñàííå çåìëÿ¢ (Ç Äóáë³íñêàãà ðóêàï³ñó XIII ñò.), Edited by Â. ×àìÿðûöê³ [V. Chamiarytski], À. Æëóòêà [A. Zhlutka], Ñïàä÷ûíà 6, 1993, p. 65.
13 Spotkanie dwóch światów. Stolica Apostolska a świat mongolski w połowie XIII wieku. Relacje powstałe w związku z misją Jana di Piano Carpiniego do Mongołów, Edited by Jerzy Strzelczyk, Poznań 1993, p. 300.
14 Magistri Adam Bremensis Gesta Hammaburgensis Ecclesiae Pontifi cum, P. 248 (Lib. IV, cap. XIX)
15 A. Áåëû [A. Bieły], p. 29-36.
16 Ioannis de Czarnkow. Chronicon Polonorum, Edited by J. Szlachtowski, in Monumenta Poloniae Historica, Edited by A. Bielowski, T. II, Lwow 1872, p. 719.
17 Peter Suchenwirt‘s werke aus dem vierzehnten Jahrhundert. Hrsg. von Alois Primisser, Wien 1827, p. 46, 59.
18 A. Áåëû [A. Bieły], p. 105-106.
19 Ulrichs von Richtental Chronik des Constanzer Concils 1414 bis 1418. Hrsg von M. R. Buch, Tübingen 1882.
20 Philippi Callimachi ad Innocentium VIII de Bello Turcis inferendo oratio, Varsoviae 1964, p. 84.
21 Katalog dawnych map Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej... , vol. 1, pp. 21-23, map 3; S. Alexandrowicz, Rozwój kartografii Wielkiego Księstwa Litewskiego od XV do połowy XVIII w. Mapy i plany, repr. 3, Poznań, 1989
22 A. Áåëû [A. Biely], p. 95; Ë. P. Koçëîâ [L. R. Kozlov], Êàðòîãðàôèÿ Áåëîðóññèè XVI-XVII in Êíèãà Áåëîðóccèè: êíèãîïå÷àòàíèå, èñòî÷íèêè, áèáëèîãðàôèÿ, Âûï. 2, Minsk, 1983, p. 75.
23 F. Bujak, Geografi a na Uniwersytecie Jagiellońskim do połowy XVI w. in Księga pamiątkowa uczniów Uniw. Jagiellońskiego, 1900.
24 Lexicon Latino Polonicum ex optimis Latinae lingue scriptoribus concinnatum. Ioanne Maczinsky equite Polono interpretate. Regimonti Borussae, 1564.
25 Ibid., f. 355 v.
26 Ibid., f. 362 r.
27 P. Zwoliński, Język białoruski a ukraiński w opiniach gramatyków XVI-XIX w. in P. Zwoliński, Szkice i studia z historii slawistyki, Ossolineum 1988, p. 245.
28 The first authorised edition: Polonia sive de situ, populis, moribus, magistratibus et republika regni Polonici libri duo, Köln, 1577. Last Polish edition: M. Kromer, Polska czyli o położeniu, ludności, obyczajach, urzędach i sprawach publicznych Królestwa Polskiego księgi dwie, Olsztyn, 1984
29 M. Stryjkowski, Kronika Polska, Litewska, Żmódzka i wszystkiej Rusi, Warszawa 1846, T. II, p. 108, 125.
30 Ibidem, T. I, p. 111.
31 See: Â. ×àìÿðûöê³, Áåëàðóñê³ÿ ëåòàï³ñû ÿê ïîìí³ê³ ë³òàðàòóðû (Óçí³êíåííå ³ ë³òàðàòóðíàÿ ã³ñòîðûÿ ïåðøûõ çâîäà¢), ̳nsê 1969.
32 See: J. Suchocki, Geneza litewskiej legendy etnogenetycznej. Aspekty polityczne i narodowe, Zapiski Historyczne, T. 52, 1987, p. 27-67.
33 See Â. Íàñåâ³÷, Ì. Ñï³ðûäîíà¢, „Ðóñü” ó ñêëàäçå Âÿë³êàãà êíÿñòâà ˳òî¢ñêàãà ¢ ÕVI ñò., Ç ãëûá³ âÿêî¢, Íàø Êðàé, 1, ̳nsê 1996, p. 4-27.
34 See: ß. È. Ïîðåöêèé [J. I. Porietsckii] , Ñîëîìîí Ðûñèíñêèé. Solomo Pantherus Leucorussus, êîíåö XVI – íà÷àëî XVII âåêà, Ìèíñê 1983; H. Lulewicz, Salomon Rysiński in Polski Słownik Biografi czny, T. XXXIII/4, Z. 139, p. 553-557.
35 W. Korotyński, Salomon Rysiński. Studium, Vilnius 1863, p. 14.
36 „Etiam Hamaxobys, Leucorussis, et potiori Lithuanorum parti illum frequentari”, Biblioteka Czartoryskich w Krakowie, rkp. 2834, Exerticiorum epistolicarum ad Ausonium virum consularem libri duo, Solomone Rysinio et Conrado Rittershusio actoribus, p. 273. The usage of the rare literary term Hamaxobi for Muscovites gives circumstantial evidence for the claim that Rysinski must have been familiar with Mczyski’s work, since the latter uses this term, I. Maczinsky, Lexicon...
37 M. Sipayłło, Akta synodów różnowierczych w Polsce], v. 3, Warsaw 1983, p. 599.
38 T. Kempa, Konstanty Wasyl Ostrogski (ok. 1524/1525-1608). Wojewoda kijowski i marszałek ziemi wołyńskiej, Toruń 1997, p. 141.
39 Ibid., p. 214. [K. Ostrogski to K. Radziwiłł Dec. 24, 1594],
40 Epistolae metropolitarum kioviensium catholicorum Cypriani Zochovskyj, Leonis Slubicz Zalenskyj, Georgii Vynnyckyj 1674-1713, Edited by P. Athanasius G. Welykyj OSBM, Romae 1958, Documenta biographica I.
41 M. Stryjkowski, Kronika... , p. 111.
42 À. Áåëû [A. Biely], p. 58-59.
43 A. Gwagnin, Kronika Sarmacyey Europskiey, Kraków, 1611, p. 14.
44 S. Starowolski, Polonia...
45 Õðýñòàìàòûÿ ïà ã³ñòîðû³ áåëàðóñêàé ìîâû, ÷. 1, ̳nsê 1961, ñ.396.
46 Èñòîðèÿ Ðóññêîé öåðêâè. Ìàêàðèÿ ìèòðîïîëèòà Ìîñêîâñêîãî, Ò. ÕI, St. Petersbourg, 1903, ñ. 30-31.
47 À. Áåëû [A. Biely], ñ. 162.
48 Ï. Êóëèø [P. Kulish], Çàïèñêè î Þæíîé Ðîññèè, Êèåâ, 1857, Ò. II, ñ. 301-306.
49 Ï. Êóëèø [P. Kulish], Ìàòåðèàëû äëÿ èñòîðèè âîññîåäèíåíèÿ Ðóñè, Ò.1. 1578-1650, Ìîskow, 1877.
50 Ã. Ñàãàíîâ³÷ [H. Sahanovich], Íåâÿäîìàÿ âàéíà 1654-1667, ̳nsê 1995, p. 20-22.
51 ². Ìàðçàëþê [I. Marzaliuk] , Ìàã³ë¸¢ ó Õ²²-ÕV²² ñòàãîääçÿõ, ̳nsê, 1998, p. 74.
52 Ã. Ñàãàíîâ³÷ [H. Sahanovich, p. 37.
53 See: Ã. Ñàãàíîâ³÷ [H. Sahanovich], Íåâÿäîìàÿ....
54 Ñèìåîí Ïîëîöêèé, âèðøè, Edited by Â. Ê. Áóëèíèíà, Ë. Ó. Çâîíàðåâà, Ìinsê, 1990, p. 27-33.
55 Ibidem, p. 62-64.
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