Ales’ Bely: Chronika Belaj Rusi. Imahalohija Belarusi (XII–XVIII stst.). Smalensk: Inbelkul’t, 2013. 468 S., Abb., Graph., Ktn. ISBN: 978-5-9904531-1-1

Ales’ Bely: Chronika Belaj Rusi. Imahalohija Belarusi (XII–XVIII stst.). Smalensk: Inbelkul’t, 2013. 468 S., Abb., Graph., Ktn. ISBN: 978-5-9904531-1-1.

Today we know where Belarus is. Where was it, however, before its establishment as a political entity with the formation of the Belarusian Soviet Socialist Republic and its successor, the state of Belarus, in the twentieth century? That is by no means an easy question to answer, as Ales’ Bely shows in the book under review, the second, expanded edition of a work originally published in 2000. Although the terms “Russia Alba”, “Belaia Rus’”, and “Biała Ruś” appeared with increasing frequency in written and cartographic sources from the end of the fourteenth century, as the evidence presented by Bely demonstrates in this exhaustive study, throughout the period under review no consensus emerged as to the nature of the entity to which these terms referred. That is not, perhaps, Bely’s intention, but it emerges from what is undoubtedly the most comprehensive examination of the matter currently in print, which surveys an impressive array of material. Bely bases his account on a few archival sources from – among others – the Hungarian National Library and the Herzog-August-Bibliothek, but the bulk of his material comes from printed works and cartographic and visual representations: the book is handsomely illustrated with a number of striking maps and images, although the production values are – alas – not high, and several of the maps are reproduced at a size that makes them all but impossible to read.

Bely subjects these sources and the scholarship based upon them to close critical analysis. He polemicises with many scholars whose views do not correspond closely with his own, including his one-time collaborator, Aleh Latyshonak (Oleg Łatyszonek), who himself has written extensively on the problem, and Henadz Sahanovich, who comes in for some sharp criticism. Yet the material presented by Bely himself suggests that there is no easy answer to the question of what was meant by the terms “Belaia Rus’” across this period. Early on he identifies no fewer than sixteen theories as to the meaning and derivation of what in English is probably best rendered as White Rus’ or White Ruthenia. Some argue that it denoted the light skins of the inhabitants; others that it meant free – in the sense of being free from Tatar and Lithuanian overlordship – a definition that became all but official in the Soviet period. The existence of the terms “Black Rus’” and “Red Rus’” suggests to some a more geographically-based explanation, in which “Black” meant western, and “White” meant eastern. Others argue that “White” was a synonym for Orthodox; still others that it meant “rich and flourishing”. Bely devotes considerable energy in the course of this study to arguing that the term derived from the identification of the ancient concept of “Albania” with Rus’ through a series of steps, not least through the work of Adam of Bremen. One of the strengths of the book is Bely’s bringing together of Slavic and West European sources, but this hypothesis is ultimately as unconvincing as the other theories he criticises.

The problem reveals the difficulties involved in such a broad source base. For there is not even the hint of a consensus among contemporary writers. On the maps, “White Rus’” veers alarmingly across the wide expanses of eastern Europe. As Bely demonstrates, sometimes it refers to Muscovy; sometimes Novgorod and Tver are included, sometimes they are not. Gradually, in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth the term began most frequently to be applied to the eastern portion of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania after the 1569 Union of Lublin, but authors and cartographers failed to reach any consensus over where exactly it was, or what it signified.

One cannot help drawing the conclusion from the wealth of material presented here that the author and other modern Belarusian scholars care far more about the provenance and meaning of the term than anybody did before the late nineteenth century. There is, of course, a pressing reason for the modern interest, as Belarusian intellectuals from the nineteenth century sought to write the history of the Belarusian nation, wedged in between Russia, Poland, Lithuania, and a Ukraine that had a much surer sense of its historic roots. For whereas Lithuanians, Poles, and Russians can draw on long traditions of statehood to nurture their national identities, and while Ukrainian historians in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries laid claim to the heritage of Kievan Rus’ and the early modern Cossack hetmanate to sustain theirs, the Belarusians lacked a clear historical tradition of statehood. The attempt by some to claim that the Grand Duchy of Lithuanian was partly or wholly a Belarusian state has needlessly upset the Lithuanians, and flies in the face of historical reality: the Grand Duchy was a composite polity that embraced and – to an extent – fused both Lithuanian and Ruthenian traditions and cultures.

Reading this book recalls Marc Bloch’s warnings about the idol of origins. Whatever else they thought about when using the terms “Alba Russia”, “Belaia Rus’” or “Biała Ruś” in the late medieval and early modern periods, it is clear that the concept was not important enough for anyone to bother defining it too closely or spending as much time as Bely does worrying where its borders lay. Contemporaries were far more likely to use the names of provinces, palatinates, or districts of the Grand Duchy when discussing geography. Whereas “Belaia Rus’” became a usefully vague expression to refer to the Grand Duchy’s eastern lands after 1569, nobody was using it to construct visions of a separate Belarusian nation or state before the nineteenth century. Whereas in the wake of the great Cossack rebellion of 1648 the term “Ukraina” did begin to serve such a purpose and was being applied in a new way in this period, “Belaia Rus’” was not.

To think otherwise is to read history backwards. The completely understandable need of all the successor nations of the Grand Duchy to construct their own national stories from the crooked timber of the human past is a perfectly legitimate one, but it nevertheless obscures much about the Grand Duchy’s history. Historians study the past of Belarus and of Ukraine; yet contemporaries for most of this period still thought in terms of Rus’ as a whole. There is a crying need for someone to write a detailed history of the changing concept of Rus’ following the formation of the Polish-Lithuanian union; this is a problem that Bely virtually ignores. His book is nevertheless a valuable one on account of its comprehensive nature, and the way it charts the gradual shift in the meaning of the term, and its geographical consolidation round the core areas of what constitutes the modern Belarusian state. This consolidation did provide Belarusian intellectuals in the later nineteenth century with a viable historic tradition which they could appropriate to serve their nation-building ends; its emergence is therefore of historical significance. Bely’s book provides much information about this process; it is a pity that its construction is a little repetitive and convoluted; built thematically, it darts back and forth across the centuries in a manner that will confuse the inattentive or the inexpert. Nevertheless, while one may not agree with all Bely’s conclusions, there is much to be learned from his account.

Robert Frost, Aberdeen