Territorialisation in the Belarusian Soviet Socialist Republic. Shifts of borderlines and measures for area penetration from 1918 to 1941
Final Report Abstract
The DFG project „Territorialization in the Belarusian Soviet Socialist Republic. Shifts in border demarcations and land penetration measures from 1918 to 1941“ focuses not only on the administration of the country but also on the identity of its inhabitants. It thus sees itself as a contribution to solving the riddle of the "Belarusian question". In the absence of clear criteria for determining the country's borders and territory, Belarus was a special case in Europe after the First World War. There was no binding agreement on the geographical borders of this country before the borders were moved no less than five times within two decades. In the absence of reliable indicators such as historical, religious, linguistic, ethnic, agricultural constitutional, economic-geographical or natural borders, the legitimization of the affiliation of territories to a country called Belarus was based on a variety of arguments and factors, not least power politics. For this very reason, borders of all sizes could only be drawn arbitrarily. Representatives of the national movement, such as members of the Communist Party, were committed to a political entity Belarus where the majority of Belarusians lived. They were striving for a nation state or an ethnically defined Soviet republic. However, when imagining, mapping and creating a Belarusian entity, it was unclear from the outset who actually belonged to the Belarusian ethnic group. Only the Lithuanian and Latvian ethnic groups could be clearly distinguished on the basis of language. As the Belarusian territories could not be demarcated in terms of natural space, geography was also not suitable for creating containers. Instead, the Belarusian territory was created by an administrative act "from above": from then on, those who were represented by the BSSR were counted as Belarusians. Ultimately, the BSSR owed not only its existence but also its successive expansion to the fact that its neighbors had not taken a Belarusian entity seriously before the First World War. In fact, the actors of Belarusian politics in the age of imperialism did not have any irredentist goals. It was precisely this inconspicuousness, the "apolitical" nature of the Belarusian ethnic group, that contributed to its success, to the barely noticed establishment of a Belarusian territory and ultimately to the legally independent state.
Publications
-
Übersicht über verschiedene Transliterationen des Belarusischen von der kyrillischen Schrift in die Lateinische, 18.12.2020
Diana Siebert:
-
Border Demarcations, Territory and the Potential for Conflict in the Belarusian Socialist Soviet Republic: Theses on Territorialization between 1918 and 1941. In: Analysing conflict settings. Case studies from Eastern Europe with a focus on Ukraine. Ed. by Andrea Gawrich, Peter Haslinger and Monika Wingender. Wiesbaden 2022, S. 261-278
Diana Siebert & Thomas M. Bohn
-
Die Territorialisierung der Belarus als BSSR, 1918-1941. Politische Willkür, Geografismus oder Ethnizismus? 480 Seiten, angenommen vom Harrassowitz Verlag Wiesbaden für die Reihe „Historische Belarus-Studien”
Diana Siebert
