The Orthodox Church and Byelorussian people

Mironowicz Antoni

Reations Between Poland and Byelorussians

Indications of early Polish national consciousness leading up to estab­lishment of the future Polish state could be found in the Gniezno town area. Simultaneously signs of Byelorussian national identity appeared in the vicinities of two main towns Polotsk and Vitsebsk — both on Dzvina River. In medieval documents that area was described as Alba Russia which means White Russia or Byelorussia.

Polotsk town became the dominant center of political, economical and cultu­ral life for the surrounding area. In the area ruled by duke Yaroslav the Wise, beside Polotsk town there existed two other principal national centers — Kiev and Novgorod. Gradually around those three famous central towns in the East — three European nations were created: Byelorussia, The Ukraine and Russia. Polotsk town was considered by Byelorussians to be a symbol of their national identity.

Similarly Gniezno and Crakow were recognized by Poles as their national centres, Kiev by Ukrainians and Novgorod by Russians. The influece of the powerful town of Polotsk covered approximately one third of the total area in­habited by all Russians. In the 10th and llth centuries Byelorussian territories belonged officially to Kiev's Russia.

In the 12th century Russia and Poland were governed in accordance with a feudal system — a typical system used during the Middle Ages in Europe. The feudal system made the local sovereigns more powerful — meanwhile the dig­nity and power of the state as a whole was reduced. Therefore in the 12th and 13th centuries Byelorussia, because of its weakness as a state, was invaded by its neighbours: Lithuanians, Teutonic Knights and Tatars. For the same reason numerous local battles took place inside the country. In the middle of 13th cen­tury Tatars destroyed a substantial part of Russia's territory and the south of Po­land.

In the year 988 the Eastern denomination of Christianity i.e. Orthodoxy spread its influece over the land belonging to Kiev's Russia. Gradually over the following centuries Orthodox Christianity became a predominant religion of the knight's courts and of the people. At the same time Poland was dominated by a Latin culture. Poles and Czechs however were both Slavonic nations — they adopted Latin as an official and religious language in their countries. In Byelo­russia the Old Slavic language was used for the official purposes and in relig­ious services the Church Slavonic language was used. The Church Slavonic lan­guage was comprehensible to Slavonic people of that time. It helped to develop the national consciousness of the Russians much earlier than that of the Poles. The above assertion can be easly proved by the existence of Russian chronicles which are much older than those written by Polish chronicle writers in 15th and 16th centuries. In Poland the national Polish language came to be used in offi­cial life only in the Renaissance period. Two outstanding Polish writers of that time were Nicolas Rey and John Cokhanovsky. It is known that the Old Russian language was in common use in the Polish king's and in the Lithuanian duke's courts. Both the Polish and Latin language had a less practical importance at that time. In 1696 the Russian language was replaced by Polish as the official language in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.

In the 13th century Lithuania gradually took over most of the Byelorussian territories. In 1262 the throne of the duke of Polotsk already belonged to Lithuania under the name of Taucivil. In the reign of the king Mendog almost all Russian duchies were conquered by Lithuania. However it must be admitted that the Grand Dukes of Lithuania did not eradicate Russian law and culture. On the influence of that culture numerous Lithuanian dukes abandoned paganism and were baptized in the Eastern Orthodox Church.

While two well known Lithuanian dukes, Olgerd and Keystut, were build­ing up the power of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, two Polish kings, Ladislaus I the Elbow-High (Vladyslav Lokietek) and Casimir the Great, reunited the dismembered Polish country into one state. The last Polish kings of the Piast dynasty paid special attention to their eastern neighbours. They wanted their successors to include the eastern neighbours into the creation of the mighty Polish state. The milestone in the his­tory of both the Byelorussian and Polish nations was the Krevo's Union. Ac­cording to that agreement Byelorussia, as a region belonging to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, was united with the Kingdom of Poland. By a personal union in 1386 and in 1559 it was established as a real union of both countries.

In the newly established United Kingdom of Both Nations the previous pre­vailing position of Russian culture was gradually being diminished by Polish newcomers arriving from central Poland i.e. regions of Mazovia and Polonia Minor (Malopolska). The Yahyellonian dynasty after coming to the Polish throne was baptized Roman Catholic. Since that time the Roman Catholic Church has prevailed over the Orthodox Church in the country. Besides religion nationalistic problems started to play an important role at that time. The Lithuanian and Russian mag­nates were defending their independence against the domination of the Polish lords. Therefore during the 15th century the union treaty had to be renewed sev­eral times. The Yahyellonian dynasty was bicultural which was advantageous for the national relations whithin the Kingdom of Poland. For instance many Rus­sians lived in Wawel Castle — the Polish Kings residence in Cracow. Vladyslav Yahaylo hired Russian artists to paint the pictures in one of the Wawel Castle chapels and also in the Lublin Castle chapel. Meanwhile the russified Li­thuanian dukes founded a large number of Roman Catholic churches. The Li­thuanian dukes' and the Polish kings' court was bilingual and bicultural. Byelo­russians played the leading role there — in the latter half of the 15th century the numerous wealthy and politycally active Byelorussian magnates' lines became famous. Amongst others the following families were well known: Sapeha, Slutsky, Khaletsky, Khodkevich, Olelkovich, Sanhushko, Vollovich, Khreptovich, Tryzna, Hulevich, Zaslavsky, Hlebovich, Massalsky, Pats, Hlebovich, Meleshko and Tyshkevich. Cracow and Vilnyus became the Byelorussian educational cen­ters. Francisk Skoryna from Polotsk, considered to be a creator of Byelorussian renaissance, was educated in the Academy of Cracow in Poland and afterwards in Padva in Italy. The case of Fancisk Skoryna can be recognized as a good example of the existing conditions of cultural life in the Polish Kingdom of both nations. However Skoryna, a Roman Catholic, translated the Bible into Old Byelorussian language. Then the translated Bible was used by the Orthodox Church believers.

Due to the expected lack of a Yahyellonian dynasty successor to the Polish throne and because of the consolidation of the Polish Kingdom lands the terms of the existing union treaty had to be modified. That modification was carried out despite the objections of Lithuanian and Russian landlords. The merging of the Kiev province, Volyn and Podlachia with the Polish Crown reduced the Grand Duchy area to the Byelorussian and Lithuanian lands. The Union treaty signed in Brest was of significant meaning for the national and religious relations in Byelorussia. Signing the document of the Church unity was preceded by intensive activity of the Jesuits. The Jesuits were considered to be the counter- -reformation avant-garde. Their activity resulted in the restriction of the Protestant Church and subsequently in the limitation of cultural variety. The Union treaty signed in Brest accelerated the processes of polonization and conversion into Catholicism of a part of the Byelorussian community. Followers of the Uniate Church were treated as second rate Catholics. Therefore the Union was never considered to be a national religion of Byelorussians. In the 17th and 18th centuries when the struggle between the Orthodox and the Uniate Churches was carried out, the Roman Catholic Church intensified its efforts to increase its influence in Byelorus­sia. At that time Catholicism was foreign to the original Byelorussian culture. The cultural polonization was a result of the adoption of Roman Catholicism by some of the Byelorussian magnates' Houses. Identification of Poles with Roman Catho­lics was a natural consequence of a number of wars involving Poland and Ortho­dox Russia, Protestant Sweden and Mulsim Turkey. From the middle of the 17th century several battles and civil wars broke out between different nationalities liv­ing in Byelorussia. The uprising under the leadership of Bohdan Khmelnytsky broke out at that time. In 1654 the Pereiaslav agreement was signed. Since that time Russia started to annex the Lithuanian territories. Orthodox Church affairs were protected by the Russian Tsar and Roman Catholic Church affairs were defended by the Polish King. Matters concerning the population of the border-line region located between Smolensk and Grodno were solved by two major neigh­bours i.e. Poland and Russia. Religious separation was followed by a social one. The Roman Catholic Church gathered support from the nobility and the upper middle-class living in towns. Meanwhile the Orthodox Church believers were mostly from the peasantry. The Byelorussian culture could be divided into two separate types. The polonized elite did not practise its native customs and culture any more. For instance the polonized noblemen erected and decorated their re­naissance and baroque palaces to resemble those existing in Poland. The lower middle-class and the peasantry developed their own culture which originated from their Byelorussian roots.

In the second half of the 18th century, when the partitions of Poland took place, significant historical changes were expected by both nations. Byelorus­sians had been absorbed by the Great-Russian power as a result of the partition of Poland. Just before the first partition of Poland the Constitution of 3rd May 1791 tried to cancel the existing dualism of the Lithuanian and the Polish Crown. It could have led to the creation of the amalgamated country of four dif­ferent nationalities: Byelorussian, Lithuanian, Polish and Ukrainian. In the Rus­sian Empire the Byelorussian customs were treated by the Tsar's authorities the same way as Polish ones. Even the local tradition in the Orthodox Church was eliminated. For that reason Byelorussians participated in Polish uprisings in the19th century (Kastus Kalinovsky).

The Polish struggle for national inde­pendence generated the Byelorussians movement towards emphasizing their na­tional separation from other inhabitants of Byelorussia's land. On the eastern borderland the national Polish and Byelorussian movements emerged as an op­position to Russian cultural domination. Polish expectations expressed at the be­ginning of 20th century assumed the future incorporation and future inde­pendence for Byelorussia. Polish promises of political and cultural autonomy were very weak. In 1884 Byelorussian actvists of "National Will" struggled for actual authonomy and the independence of Byelorussia. Their successors very clearly demanded the establishment of an independent Byelorussian state. A new generation of writers and activists living in Vilnyus at the beginning of 20th century supported the idea of independence. Revolutions in the years 1905 and 1917 caused changes in the national consciousness of the rural population. New Soviet authorities made Byelorussian the official language. The former spoken language became a language of literature and of official use in Byelorussian Soviet Republic in 1919 the trial of forming the independent Byelorussian state was carried out in Mensk. Unfortunately the newly created Byelorussian National Republic was soon abolished.

The western Byelorussian lands here incorporated into the 2nd Polish Re­public territory. Polish politicians considered the Byelorussian population, esti­mated as 2 million people, a subject for future polonization. The Polish auth­orities took into account in their policy, the necessity of the consolidation of the eastern borderland of the country. Any evidence of Byelorussian national move­ments were opposed, particularly by the Polish left wing organizations. Such political parties as the Communist Party of Western Byelorussia, the Byelorussian Revolutionary Organization, the Byelorussian Worker's and Peas­ant's Hramada and the Byelorussian Christian Democratic Party helped to raise the national consciousness of Byelorussians.

In the 1930s the national movements became more radical and left wing. Such a transition had been accepted neither by Polish rulers nor Soviet autorities after 17th September 1939. The fate of Bronislav Tarashkevich, a member of the Pol­ish parliament, imprisoned by Polish goverment and executed in Mensk by the So­viets as a Byelorussian nationalist, shows how aspirations of the Byelorussian na­tional independence were strange to Warsaw and Moscow.

The German occupation of Polish and Byelorussian land renewed antagon­isms between the two nations but on the other hand it revealed the necessity of a joint fight for independece. Heavy losses in men amongst Poles and Byelorussians and the destruction of their country during the 2nd World War demonstrated how deeply they were involved in the struggle against German oc­cupation.

According to the Yalta treaty Byelorussian territories were to be incorpor­ated into the Soviet Union and to be named the Byelorussian Soviet Republic. The remaining Byelorussian population living in Poland mostly in Bialystok re­gion was estimated at about 250,000 peope. After the 2nd World War Byelorussians were either russified by Moscow or polonized by Warsaw. The goverment of the Byelorussian Soviet Republic was assigned by Kreml which was not interested in defending or solving the national Byelorussian problems.

The Declaration of Independece by Byelorussia in 1990 and the taking con­trol of Poland by Solidarity raised hopes for new Polish-Byelorussian relations. For the past two years contrary to the expected improvement of international re-ations, the former hostility was renewed. The Polish eastern policy includes some invasive tendencies. The Roman Catholic Church in Byelorussia is domi­nated by foreign Polish priests. Their activity is aimed mostly at maintaining the Polish national influence in Byelorussia instead of at preaching the Gospel. Byelorussia is still considered by many politicians in Warsaw to be an eastern borderland of Poland. Similary some of Moscow's politicians think of Byelorus­sia as a western province. Time will show whether the new Byelorussian state will be able to keep its own independece and to protect the Byelorussians living in the Bialystok region in Poland from losing their national character.