Гістарычны шлях нацыі і дзяржавы
Радзім Гарэцкі, Міхась Біч, Уладзімір Конан
Выдавец: Беларускі кнігазбор
Памер: 348с.
Мінск 2001
The glorious victory at Gruenwald in 1410 finally ended the cross-bearers’ assault on our Motherland. The union army of the GDL with Grand Duke Vitaut at its head and that of the Polish Kingdom under the leadership of King Yahaila took part in the battle of Gruenwald. The army of Order of Teutonic knights, the strongest in Europe at that time, was completely smashed. As a result, no more armed German was seen on the Belarusian lands for five centuries.
But in the late XVth century a new danger approached our lands from the East. It was the danger of war from Muscovy. Muscovy, finally released from the Mongol-Tatar yoke in 1480, began its attempts to advance west by invading the Belarusian lands. The Grand Duke of Muscovy Ivan the Third intended to play the role of a consolidator of every Orthodox land in Eastern Europe, and the policy of his successors was the same.
The first war between the GDL and Muscovy broke out in 1492-1494. As a result of it, the Viazemskaye principality and the lands in the upper reachers of the Oka were lost. It was at the time of another war with Muscovy in 1500-1503, when our lands of Smalensk, Orsha, Mstsislau, Polatsk, Vitsebsk were ravaged. The GDL lost 29 towns and 70 regions. Some eastern, southern, and central parts of the GDL were largely destroyed during the Muscovite expansion in 1507-1508.
The next war with Muscovy in 1512-1522 brought new enormous losses, and in 1514 Smalensk was invaded. But in the same 1514 this chain of loss and suffering from the East was broken at least for some time by the glorious victory of the Grand Ducal Supreme Hetman (Commander-in-chief) Kanstantsin Astrozhski. The 30 thousand army of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania defeated the 80 thousand troops of the Muscovites at the town of Orsha.
The years 1534-1537 brought new advances of Muscovite troops. Turau, Mazyr, Brahin, and some other towns were burnt down. In 1562 the military forces of Ivan IV Grozny
(Ivan the Terrible) ravaged the Mstsislau lands as well as the territories around Shklou, Orsha, Vitsebsk, Mahiliou. A year later the Tsar himself with a 60 thousand army invaded Polatsk. Thus, the Muscovites occupied almost the whole territory of Nothern Belarus. The lands were completely wasted, and their inhabitants were taken to Muscovy as captives. The only light during this war was seen on 26th January, 1564 when the army of the GDL took revenge over Muscovite invaders in the battle at the Ula River.
It was mainly aggression from the East, that caused the union of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania with the Polish Kingdom. This way the Polish Commonwealth (Rzecz Pospolita) was founded in 1569 after Liublinskaya Unia (Union of Liublin) had been signed. Unfortunately, for the GDL it resulted in loss of the territories of Padliasha, Valyn, Padolye, Kieushchyna in the favour of Poland.
In 1596 Bierastsieiskaya Unia (Union of Bierastsie) was signed to open the way to religious unity. It was basically done for religious and, therefore, political peace in the state. At the decision of the Bierastsie synod, Orthodoxy and Catholicism were united to create a single Uniate or Greek-Catholic church. One should admit that the first steps of the new religion were taken with great difficulty. But by the end of the XVIIIth century about 75% of people already defined themselves as Uniates. And such prevalence of the Greek-Catholic religion might be mainly explained from the fact, that Belarusian, the mother tongue of the nation, was used in divine service. The Russian governors abrogated Unia (the Union) in 1839. Nowadays the Uniate church has been revived, and this confession is able to take its place in Belarus.
The Commonwealth of the GDL and Poland strengthened military resistance of both states. And in June 1579 the joint army of the Grand Duke of Lithuania and the King of Poland Stephan Batory freed Polatsk occupied earlier by Muscovy. A year later the whole territory of Nothern Belarus was free. A new war with Muscovy in 1609-1618 ended in returning of Smalensk to the GDL and Charnihau and Nauharod-Sieverski lands to Poland.
In the beginning of the XVIIth century the Commonwealth (Rzecz Pospolita) was waging a series of wars with Sweden. On 27th September, 1605 the 4 thousand troops of the GDL, led by Yan Khadkievich, took revenge over the three times bigger army of the Swedes in the Kirkhgolmskaya battle at Riga.
In 1632-1634 during the so-called ‘Smalensk war’ Muscovy did its best to invade Smalensk land once more, but, nevertheless, it remained a part of the GDL.
In the difficult years 1648-1651 Rzecz Pospolita was forced to wage a series of minor wars againts the uprising of Ukrainian cossack troops on its southern borders. Those troops attempted to invade the South-East Belarusian lands with much support from Muscovy.
During the military aggression of the Tsar of Muscovy Aleksei Mikhailovich in 16541667 the Belarusian people once more had to suffer great hardship. For a period of thirteen years Belarusian towns, fortresses, castles, palaces, country settlements, and people were simply wiped out. About 53% of the Belarusian population was destroyed because of war, famine, cold, and epidemics. None of the neighbouring countries ever suffered a similar demographic catastrophe. A note, made by defenders of our Motherland, was found: “It appears nothing is left for us, but to die defending our Motherland.”
In 1700-1721 during the Northern war Belarus became the arena of military operations between Russia and Sweden. As long as Russian Emperor Peter I was in a military alliance with Rzecz Pospolita, he could make any military experiments on the Belarusian territory. And thus, he explored a new tactic of burning the land in front of the advancing enemy in Belarus. As a result, every third Belarusian was killed. Our marvelous Polatsk St Sophia Cathedral was burnt by the Russian ‘allies’ in that war.
War collapse was not the only danger for the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. In the PolandLithuania commonwealth the GDL was not an independent state any more. On the contrary, the Polish traditions and way of life were increasing in influence to the point of becoming dominant. The nobility and the upper circles of the Belarusian society, the majority of
whom became Roman Catholic, were the first to accept the Polish influence. The fact, that Belarusian elite was religiously, and later completely, separated from the Belarusian common people, played a dramatic role in the further history of the nation. Losing the most educated people weakened the life potential of the nation. Polish superseded the Belarusian language in state documents. In 1696 the Confederation Soim of Rzecz Pospolita finally decreed that state documents of the GDL should be in Polish.
A series of endless wars, economic collapse, the destroyed equality of both states, contradictory political interests of the Duchy and the Kingdom — all that led to the weakness of the Commonwealth. As a result of three divisions of Rzecz Pospolita in 1772, 1793, and 1795 between stronger neighbouring empires — Russia, Prussia, and Austria — the Belarusian lands were incorporated into the Russian Empire. Thus, for the first time the state independence of the Belarusians was completely lost. And it was lost for more than two centuries.
The best sons of the Belarusian people fought for the independence of their Motherland, but all uprisings were severely suppressed by the Russian governors. In 1794 the ‘educated’ Russian Emperess Ekaterina II with the help of her general military leader A. Suvorov ended in blood the national-liberation uprising headed by Tadeusz Kosciuszko.
After the liberation movement of 1830-1831 was suppressed, a strong Russian influence began spreading. Thus, the Belarusian lands became a Central European colony of Russia known as the ‘North-Western Region’. The officials, sent from the inner regions of Russia, took senior positions in the local administration. The Russian Orthodox Church, that was supreme in the Russian Empire, started to persecute and drive out other religious communities. In the educational sphere it was the same policy of russification. These policies forced the Belarusians to consider their oppressed position in ‘fraternal Russia’ as a proper and almost desirable status.
The Russian-Napoleonic war of 1812 caused the death of every fourth citizen of Belarus. The war of 1812 could not be considered patriotic for Belarus. The best sons of our country were dreaming of renewing the Grand Duchy of Lithuania by means of the French Emperor. About 25 thousand of our countrymen fought on Napoleon’s side against Russia. But the hope of living in an independent state did not come true.
Among the brutal actions of Emperor Aleksandr II and his General Muravyov (named ‘the Hangman’ for his extraordinary cruelty) was the bloody suppression of the liberation uprising headed by Kastus Kalinouski in 1863-1864. Kornilov, being a Russian chauvinistic highranking clerk responsible for education in the Vilnya Region, once made a horrible prediction that Russian schools and education would finally succeed where bayonets and bullets had failed. And it nearly became true.
It was the beginning of economic hardship, when our lands were made to serve the economical interests of Russia. Russian Tsars generously gave Belarusian estates together with their inhabitants to numerous Russian generals and clerks. Thus, some 500,000 Belarusian peasants were given as a present by Ekaterina II and her son Pavel I to their landowners. It should be mentioned that most of the peasants were free previously. The palaces and households of the Belarusian nobility, unwilling to serve the Russians, were confiscated. The Russian tax system, introduced on the Belarusian territory, was much harder, and suppressed the economy.
As a result of such severe policies the growth of economics was replaced by decay. Our lands suffered the problems of the Russian economics of the XIXth century, like the decay of the feudal economy, the Russian variant of capitalism, economic crises, and overall destitution at the end. The Belarusian territory was turned to a distant province of the Tsarist Empire. No wonder, our countrymen were forced to leave the Motherland looking for some proper work and life abroad. In the late XIXth century about 500,000 Belarusian peasants moved to Siberia, and even now one can find entire Belarusian settlements there. It should be mentioned that our people suffered greatly from both cultural and political
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