Encyclopedia of Russian History
Page 41
Though not a main center of heavy industry, Belarus shared in the Russian Empire’s social and economic development in the nineteenth century and had many small enterprises.
Belarusian national consciousness developed relatively late. Polish and Polish-language intellectuals promoted the idea of a separate, non-Russian, Belarusian (or White Ruthenian) folk. After Belaru-sians did not support Poles in the 1863-1864 uprising, interested Russians became more sympathetic to the notion of Belarusians as a distinct provincial group and started to collect local folklore. Genuine Belarusian-language literature started only in the 1880s. Circles of Belarusian students and intellectuals in St. Petersburg, Moscow, Dor-pat, and other university cities sprung up in the
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1890s. Only after the Revolution of 1905 was publication in Belarusian legalized. Hramada, the socialist and largest Belarusian political organization, could not compete with the more developed Russian, Polish, and Jewish parties or elect a delegate to any of the four Dumas.
The German advances and defeat in World War I and the Russian Revolution and Civil War stimulated a dozen competing projects for reorganizing Belarus, including a restoration of a federated prepartition Lithuania and/or Poland. The revived Poland and Communist Russia divided Belarus in 1921, the eastern portion becoming the Belarusian Soviet Socialist Republic (BSSR) of the USSR in 1923-1924. In western Belarus, Polish authorities favored polonization, suppressing a variety of national and autonomist strivings. The BSSR authorities, including Russians there, at first promoted belarusianization of domestic life, and national, cultural, and educational institutions grew apace, including a university and academy of sciences in the capital Minsk. However, the rhythms of inter-war Soviet development-New Economic Policy, collectivization, five-year plans, bloody purges, and reorientation to a Russian-language-dominated all-union patriotism-affected the BSSR.
The Soviet-German Pact of 1939 and World War II brought a quick unification of an expanded BSSR, a harsh Nazi occupation and requisition of labor, the extermination of most Belarusian Jews, widespread partisan activity, and the total death of maybe a million inhabitants-about one eighth of the population. Allied diplomacy resulted in the BSSR (and the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic) acquiring a separate seat in the United Nations General Assembly in 1945.
The BSSR also followed the rhythm of postwar Soviet developments, becoming heavily industrialized with its own specialty tractors and heavy-duty trucks, as well as a variety of other basic goods. The country achieved virtual universal literacy, but the Russian language and culture predominated in the cities and in higher education. Due to prevailing winds, Belarus suffered heavily from the Chernobyl explosion in 1986.
The BSSR played a secondary role in reform and national movements leading to the end of the USSR and an independent Belarus. Its first leader, Stanislav Shushkevich tried to balance between Russia and the West, but lost the 1994 presidential election to the Alexander Lukashenko, who proved adept in using referendum tactics and police measures to establish an authoritarian regime with a neo-Soviet orientation, and perpetuate his power. Dependence on Russian energy resources and markets have cemented close ties, but plans for a state union with Russia have faltered over Russian demands that Belarus liberalize its economy and Lukashenko’s insistence that Belarus be an equal partner. See also: CHERNOBYL; JEWS; LITHUANIA AND LITHUANIANS; NAZI-SOVIET PACT OF 1939; ORTHODOXY; POLAND; POLISH REBELLION OF 1863; UNIATE CHURCH; UNION OF SOVIET SOCIALIST REPUBLICS
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Marples, David R. (1999). Belarus. A Denationalized Nation. Amsterdam: Harwood Academic. Vakar, Jan. (1956). Belorussia. The Making of a Nation, a Case Study. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Zaprudnik, Jan. (1993). Belarus: At a Crossroads in History. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
DAVID M. GOLDFRANK
BELINSKY, VISSARION GRIGORIEVICH
(1811-1848), Russian literary critic whose framework of aesthetic judgment influenced Russian and Soviet critical standards for almost two centuries; he established a symbiotic relationship between the writer and the critic whose creative interaction he considered a tool of societal self-exploration.
Belinsky’s father was a navy physician, his mother a sailor’s daughter, making the future critic a raznochinets (person of mixed class background). He was born in the fortress of Sveaborg (today Suomenlinna, Finland) and spent his childhood in the town of Chembar (Penza region), where his father worked as a district doctor. Belinsky enrolled at Moscow University in 1829 but was expelled in 1832 due to frail health and a reputation as a troublemaker. Often on the verge of poverty and dependent on the support of devoted friends, Belinsky became a critic for Nikolai Ivanovich Nadezhdin’s journals, Telescope and Molva, in 1834. His extensive debut, Literaturnye mechtaniya: Elegiya v proze (Literary Daydreams: An Elegy in Prose), consisted of ten chapters. At this stage, Belinsky’s understanding of literature featured a lofty idealism inspired by Friedrich Schiller, as well as the notion of popular spirit (narodnost), which signified the necessity of the “idea of the people” in any work of art. This concept was adopted from the German
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Volkstuemlichkeit that was developed by Johann Gottfried Herder and Friedrich Wilhelm Schelling.
Belinsky’s participation, since 1833, in Nikolai Vladimirovich Stankevich’s Moscow Hegelian circle, as well as his close friendship with Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin, had by 1837 caused him to make a radical move toward an unconditional acceptance of all reality as reasonable. However, Be-linsky’s habitual tendency toward extremes turned his interpretation of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s dialectic rationalism into a passive acceptance of everything that exists, even serfdom and the tsarist system. Such fatalism became evident in Belinsky’s surveys and reviews for Andrei Alexan-drovich Kraevsky’s journal Otechestvennye zapiski (Notes of the fatherland), the criticism department of which he headed since 1839. Subsequently, in the early 1840s, a more balanced synthesis of utopian aspirations and realistic norms emerged in Belinsky’s views, as evidenced by his contributions for Nikolai Alexeyevich Nekrasov’s and Ivan Ivanovich Panaev’s Sovremennik (Contemporary), a journal that had hired him in 1846.
Belinsky met all leading Russian authors of his day, from Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin and Mikhail Yurievich Lermontov to Ivan Andreyevich Krylov and Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev, befriending and deeply influencing many of them. In 1846, he coined the critical term Natural School, thereby providing a group of writers with direction and a platform for self-identification. Even those who did not share his strong liberal persuasions were in awe of his personal integrity, honesty, and selflessness. Belinsky’s passionate, uncompromising nature caused clashes that gave rise to major intellectual debates. For example, in his famous letter to Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol, written on July 15, 1847, the critic took this once so admired writer to task for his mysticism and conservatism; the letter then circulated widely, in hundreds of illegal copies.
In his last years, Belinsky attempted to create a theory of literary genres and general philosophical definitions of the essence and function of art. After his early death from tuberculosis, his name became synonymous with dogmatism and anti-aesthetic utilitarianism. Yet this reputation is largely undeserved; for it resulted from the critic’s canonization by liberal and Marxist ideologues. Still, from his earliest works Belinsky did betray a certain disposition toward simplification and sys-tematization at any cost, often reducing complex entities to binary concepts (e.g., the classic opposition of form versus content). Indeed, Belinsky devoted little time to matters of literary language, rarely engaging in detailed textual analysis. However, his theories and their evolution, too, were simplified, both by his Soviet epigones and their Western antagonists.
Belinsky has undoubtedly shaped many views of Russian literature that remain prevalent, including a canon of authors and masterpieces. For example, it was he who defended Lermontov’s 1840 no
vel, Geroi nashego vremeni (Hero of Our Time), as a daringly innovative work and who recognized Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s supreme talent. (At the same time, he ranked Walter Scott and George Sand higher than Pushkin). Belinsky, the first major professional Russian literary critic, stood at the cradle of Russia’s literary-centric culture, with its supreme social and ethical demands. His ascetic persona and quest for martyrdom became archetypal for the Russian intelligentsia’s sense of mission. Lastly, Belinsky defined the ideal image of the Russian writer as secular prophet, whose duty is to respond to the people’s aspirations and point them toward a better future. See also: DOSTOYEVSKY, FYODOR MIKHAILOVICH; GOGOL, NIKOLAI VASILIEVICH; INTELLIGENTSIA; KRYLOV, IVAN ANDREYEVICH; LERMONTOV, MIKHAIL YURIEVICH; PUSHKIN, ALEXANDER SERGEYEVICH; TURGENEV, IVAN SERGEYEVICH
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bowman, Herbert. (1969). Vissarion Belinski: A Study in the Origins of Social Criticism in Russia. New York: Russell and Russell. Terras, Victor. (1974). Belinskij and Russian Literary Criticism: The Heritage of Organic Aesthetics. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
PETER ROLLBERG
BELOVEZH ACCORDS
This treaty, also known as the Minsk Agreement, brought about the end of the Soviet Union. It was concluded on December 8, 1991, by President Boris Yeltsin of Russia, President Leonid Kravchuk of Ukraine, and Chairman of the Supreme Soviet of Belarus Stanislav Shushkevich, who met secretly in a resort in Belovezhska Pushcha, just outside of Brest, Belarus. According to most reports, the three leaders had no common consensus on the future of the Soviet Union prior to the meeting, but, once
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they assembled, they decided to shelve plans to preserve some sort of reformed Soviet state, as preferred by Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, and instead pressed for its dissolution. In the days that followed, Gorbachev would try in vain to preserve the USSR, but there was little mass or elite support for its continued existence, at least in these three republics.
The treaty noted that “the USSR has ceased to exist as a subject of international law and a geopolitical reality” and stated that the activities of bodies of the former USSR would be henceforth discontinued. Its drafters asserted the authority to do this by noting that Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus were the three surviving original founders of the Soviet state in 1922. In its stead, these three republics agreed to form a new organization, the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), which was designed to foster a variety of forms of economic, political, social, and military cooperation. Specifically, the accords guaranteed equal rights and freedoms to all residing in those states, provided for the protection of ethnic and linguistic minorities, recognized each state’s borders, emphasized the need for arms control, preserved a united military command and common military-strategic space, and pledged cooperation on the Chernobyl disaster. Later that December, eight more former Soviet republics would join the CIS, and by December 25, 1991, the Soviet flag was at last removed from the top of the Kremlin.
No participant has produced a definitive and detailed account of the meeting in Belovezhska Pushcha, and the accords remain the subject of some controversy, particularly in Russia. At the time of its signing, the agreement was widely celebrated, with only five deputies in the Russian legislature voting against its ratification, and Ukraine adding twelve reservations to its ratification, directed toward weakening any sort of new union or commonwealth. However, over the course of time, many, especially in Russia and Belarus, have disputed the right of the three leaders to conclude this treaty and have lamented the lack of open debate and popular input into its conclusion. In March 1996, the Russian Duma voted overwhelmingly to annul it, and this action led many to fear possible Russian attempts to reestablish the Soviet Union or some other form of authority over other republics. Moreover, in the 1990s the accord began to lose popularity among the Russian population, which, public opinion polls repeatedly revealed, began to regret the breakup of the Soviet Union. See also: COMMONWEALTH OF INDEPENDENT STATES; UNION OF SOVIET SOCIALIST REPUBLICS
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Library of Congress. “The Minsk Agreement.” (n.d.) «http://memory.loc.gov/frd/cs/belarus/by_appnb .html». Norwegian Institute of International Affairs-Centre for Russian Studies. (n.d.). “Belovezh Agreement, Creating the CIS.” «http://www.nupi.no/cgi-win/ Russland/krono.exe?895». Norwegian Institute of International Affairs-Centre for Russian Studies. (n.d.). “Reactions to Creation of CIS.” «http://www.nupi.no/cgi-win/Russland/ krono.exe?2149». Olcott, Martha Brill. (1999). Getting It Wrong: Regional Cooperation and the Commonwealth of Independent States. Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
PAUL J. KUBICEK
BELY, ANDREI
(1880-1934), symbolist poet, novelist, essayist.
Andrei Bely was born Boris Nikolayevich Bugayev on October 26, 1880, in Moscow. His father, Nikolai Bugayev, was a professor of mathematics at Moscow University and a renowned scholar; his mother, Alexandra, was dedicated to music, poetry, and theater. This dichotomy was to influence and torment Boris throughout his life: He would resist both parents’ influences while continually seeking syntheses of disparate subjects.
At age fifteen, Boris met the intellectually gifted Soloviev family. Vladimir Soloviev was a philosopher, poet, theologian, and historian whose concept of the “Eternal Feminine” in the form of “Sophia, the Divine Wisdom” became central to Symbolist thought. Vladimir’s younger brother Mikhail took Boris under his wing, encouraging him as a writer and introducing him to Vladimir Soloviev’s metaphysical system.
From 1899 to 1906 Boris studied science, then philosophy at Moscow University. However, his absorption in his writing and independent research interfered with his formal studies. Restless and erratic, he took interest in all subjects and confined himself to none. His idiosyncratic writing style derives in part from his passionate, undisciplined approach to knowledge, a quality that would later
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be deemed decadent by socialist critics, including Leon Trotsky.
Mikhail Soloviev applauded Boris’s early literary endeavors and suggested the pseudonym Andrei Bely (“Andrew the White”). Bely’s four Symphonies (1902-1908) combine poetry, music, and prose. Bely’s first poetry collection, Gold in Azure (Zoloto v lazuri, 1904), uses rhythms of folk poetry and metrical innovations. Like Alexander Blok and other Symbolists, Bely saw himself as a herald of a new era. The poems of Gold in Azure are rapturous in mood and rich in magical, mythical imagery. Bely’s next poetry collections move into murkier territory: Ashes (Pepel, 1909) expresses disillusionment with the 1905 revolution, while Urn (Urna, 1909) reflects his affair with Blok’s wife, Lyubov, which caused hostility, even threats of duels, between the two poets.
Bely followed his first novel, The Silver Dove (Serebryany golub, 1909), with Petersburg (1916), which Vladimir Nabokov considered one of the four greatest novels of the twentieth century (Strong Opinions, 1973). It concerns a terrorist plot to be performed by Nikolai Apollonovich against his father, Senator Apollon Apollonovich Ableukhov. The novel’s nonsensical dialogue, ellipses, exclamations, and surprising twists of plot, while influenced by Nikolai Gogol and akin to the work of the Futurists, take Russian prose in an unprecedented direction. The novel’s main character is Petersburg itself, which “proclaims forcefully that it exists.”
While writing Petersburg, Bely found a new spiritual guide in Rudolf Steiner, whose theory of anthroposophy-the idea that each individual, through training, may access his subconscious knowledge of a spiritual realm-would inform Bely’s next novel, the autobiographical Kitten Letayev (Kotik Letayev, 1917-1918).
Like other Symbolists, Bely welcomed the October Revolution of 1917. He moved to Berlin in 1921, but returned in 1923 to a hostile literary climate. Bely tried to make room for himself in the new era by combining Marxism with anthroposo-phy, but to no avail.
A prolific and influential critic, Bely wrote more than three hu
ndred essays, four volumes of memoirs, and numerous critical works, including his famous Symbolism (1910), which paved the way for Formalism, and The Art of Gogol (Masterstvo Gogolya, 1934). He died of arterial sclerosis on August 1, 1934. See also: BLOK, ALEXANDER ALEXANDROVICH; SILVER AGE; SOLOVIEV, VLADIMIR SERGEYEVICH
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Alexandrov, Vladimir. (1985). Andrei Bely: The Major Symbolist Fiction. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Elsworth, J. D. (1983). Andrey Bely: A Critical Study of the Novels. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Maslenikov, Oleg A. (1952). The Frenzied Poets: Andrey Biely and the Russian Symbolists. Berkeley: University of California Press. Mochulsky, Konstantin. (1977). Andrei Bely: His Life and Works, tr. Nora Szalavitz. Ann Arbor, MI: Ardis.
DIANA SENECHAL
BERDYAYEV, NIKOLAI ALEXANDROVICH
(1874-1948), philosopher.
Nikolai Berdyayev, a scion of the landed gentry, was born on an estate near Kiev. The Russian philosopher best known in the West, he moved from Marxism to Kantian Idealism to a Christian existentialism meshed with leftist political views. A lifelong opponent of bourgeois society and bourgeois values, in emigration he called capitalism and communism equally unchristian.
As a leader in the religious and philosophical renaissance of the early twentieth century, he decried the atheism and dogmatism of the revolutionary intelligentsia, while also polemicizing against the otherworldliness and passivity enjoined by historical Christianity. He believed that a Third Testament would supersede the Old and the New Testaments.
Expelled from Russia by the Bolshevik government in late 1922, in 1924 he settled near Paris and played an active role in ?migr? and French intellectual and cultural life. His books were translated into many languages. His critique of the revolutionary intelligentsia and his articulation of the Russian idea had a profound impact on late Soviet and post-Soviet thought.