The territory inhabited by the White Russians, that in which about 90 per cent of the farming population are White Russians, lies along the northern part of Eastern Poland. Its inhabitants are, for the most part, poor and often landless peasantry, a fact which has a bearing upon their favorable attitude towards the collective farming initiated by the Soviet Union after 1930. Their cultural history is naturally very scant. Some steps were made after the beginning of the nineteenth century to develop a local literature free from Polish influence. Books began to appear, for the firs time, in the White Russian language, one of the m being a translation of the Aeneid. After the Polish insurrection against Russia in 1963, however, the Russian Government suppressed not only all Polish literature but that of the White Russians as well because they were employing the Polish alphabet in the printing of their books. It was not until after the revolution of 1905 that another period of development of White Russian literature began, and simultaneously there was a new movement toward autonomy.
White Russia was nominally independent for only a short time after the first World War. When the territory was freed from German occupation, in December, 1918, the movement for White Russian independence developed to such a point that a delegation purporting to represent Democratic White Russia was sent to the Paris Peace Conference. As early as January, 1919, a special manifesto of the revolutionary Soviet Government declared that White Russia was �independent,� belonging to the Soviet Republics of Russia.1 Even at the Peace Conference the political movement of the White Russians showed the divided opinions of a border people. There was a recognition of the fact that it was premature to talk of a White Russian state with full independence, because the White Russians themselves inclined toward federation with their neighbors, either with the Poles, the Lithuanians, or the Russians, as the case might be.
First, there was a request for an alliance with Poland, made by �The White Ruthenian Territorial Congress,� and transmitted to the Paris Peace
Conference in May, 1919.2 This Congress was an illegal body which met in the last week of January, 1919, when White Russia was under
Bolshevik occupation. It is impossible to evaluate the extent to which the Congress was representative of White Russia, as such, but its pro-Polish tendency was clearly shown by its statement that the existence of an independent White Russian State was impossible and that therefore it should be absorbed by Poland. Nevertheless, the statement went on to outline the conditions under which this annexation should take place, namely, �that within its ethnographical limits, White Ruthenia shall be closely bound to the Polish Republic for the purpose of guaranteeing it economic and cultural development, while at the same time preserving a White Ruthenian national constitution.�3 This declaration was signed by Zwirko-Goditsky, president of the national Territorial Council of White Ruthenia (Bialarusskaya Kraievaya Narodnaya Rada).
At the same time another wing of the White Russian movement developed a more intransigent approach toward complete independence; this was expressed in a protest which was sent to the Paris Peace Conference, May 8, 1919, signed by the �Democratic Republic of White Ruthenia.� This self-styled government was established after the withdrawal of the Germans, in December, 1918. It . . .4 was equally opposed to Bolsheviks and Poles.
As far back as December, 1918, a Bolshevist Moscow, with the active participation of Stalin himself, decided to create a White Russian Soviet Republic, but the project could not be carried out in the atmosphere of the Russian civil war and the Polish invasion of White Russia, which at the beginning was very successful. In August, 1919, the Red Army was beaten by the Polish Army which captured the capital, Minsk. Soviet [?] White Russia was finally established only after the liberation [?] of the White Russian territory in August, 1920.* It was in this hectic, transitional period prior to August, 1920 when the ephemeral White Russian bourgeois [?] state tried to
establish a kind of political independence. But with the victory of Poland over the US.S.R. the White Russian [soviet] Government disappeared, and White Russia was divided by the Treaty of Riga, in 1921, between Poland and Soviet Russia. On December 30, 1922, together with the Russian Federative Soviet Republic, the Ukrainian Soviet Republic, and the Transcaucasian Federative Soviet Republic, Soviet White Russia became one of the four �founding� states of the Great Soviet Federation.
There is no doubt that, in the years which followed, the improvement in literacy of Soviet white Russia, the development in science and in a national art and music, of its folklore and of its press, influenced the White Russians of Poland—deprived of any such traces of national cultural autonomy—and inclined them toward union with Soviet Russia.
Comment : a telling example of how some quite credible American authors could be �taken in� by the Bolshevist propaganda.
Deprived of �traces of national cultural autonomy� were not only the White Ruthenes but every people who had found themselves under the wave of imperialism spawned by Peter of Muscovy.
For example : If anything, there have been Polish authors who had helped with establishment of a distinct White-Ruthenian literature (please cf. Wincenty Lutosławski). That, during the times of the common suffering under the tsarist yoke.
Any literacy that was or could later be �owed� the soviet-imposed rulers would primarily be meant to carry the Bolshevik propaganda. Hardly a merit, to teach people to read in order to fool them with disinformation — any other reasons being secondary. — (WPT).
Unlike the Poles and the Ukrainians, the White Russians have no press organs of their own in the United States and Canada [1945], and therefore in public opinion their emigrés have found no expression. The Ukrainian-American press did, from time to time, mention the White Russian issue but always as though it were identical with the Ukrainian. As for the white Russians in Soviet Russia proper, their approach [1945] . . . coincides with the Soviet attitude.
Comment : it seems that the Bolshevik corruption was somewhat more pronounced in Byelorus than in some other places, this due to, as it appears, the land-question and the illiteracy during the tsarist era. This might (but needs not) be to an extent present in the legacy which the Ulyanov/Dzhugashvilli �Russians� had left in Byelorus and might need some special consideration. — (WPT)
1 The Policy of Soviet Power Concerning the Nationalities Problem (Russian, Moscow, 1920), pp. 23-25; Gorbunov, �Lenin and Stalin in their Struggle for the Independence of the White Russian People,� The Historical Journal (Russian, 1944, No. 2-3).
2 David Hunter Miller�s Diary, Volume XVIII, contains the files of the Bulletin of the American Commission to Negotiate Peace, as a continuation and completion of these bulletins commented on in Volume XVII. The files were collected by Miller. Bulletin No. 270 (May 14, 1919) contains: (i) White Ruthenian Request for Annexation to Poland, transmitted by the Polish Delegation, (ii) Telegram from the Walloons and Dinant, Belgium.
3 Op. cit., XVII, 230-232.
4 Ibid., XVIII, 381-385. Efforts were made to form a joint Lithuanian and White Russian Republic.