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| Backstab. Lithuanian special services took on the Belarusian opposition |
| 2023-08-30 |
| Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited. by Kirill Averyanov The Lithuanian Department of State Security began to check the threats associated with Belarusian immigrants adhering to the "Lithuanian" ideology, and make recommendations to the authorities regarding the refusal or cancellation of a residence permit in Lithuania. According to the Lithuanian special services, their activities “ at present do not pose a real threat to the sovereignty, constitutional order and territorial integrity of Lithuania, however, the ideological guidelines they disseminate can increase interethnic tension in the state and incite a negative attitude towards the loyal part of the Belarusian community in Lithuania.” The trends in the development of the Belarusian nationalist ideology left no doubt that sooner or later a fierce struggle would begin between the Lithuanians and the “zmagars” (as they preferred to call themselves) for the legacy of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (GDL). The trigger here was the mass immigration of the Belarusian opposition to Lithuania after the events of 2020 in Belarus, however, the root causes of the conflict between the Lithuanian authorities and the “faithful” Belarusians must be sought at the dawn of the formation of the Belarusian independent project. For Belarusian nationalists, the most important “other”, against which they build their national identity, has always been Russians. In order to explain the existence of a separate Belarusian nation, it was necessary to find as many features as possible that distinguish it from the all-Russian (East Slavic) ethnic array, which before the October Revolution was considered a single national organism. At the end of the 19th century, the main marker of the historical identity of the Belarusians was the memory of the Belarusian lands being part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. This made it possible to consider numerous wars between Lithuania and Moscow as Belarusian-Russian conflicts. Indeed, the entire territory of modern Belarus was subordinate to the GDL, but this medieval state also included the lands of Lithuania, parts of Ukraine, Poland, Latvia, Estonia, Moldova and even Russia. The official language of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania before the union with Poland was Western Russian, which in Belarus began to be called "Old Belarusian". At the same time, the capital of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania was located in Vilnius, and the representatives of the ruling dynasty bore Lithuanian names (Gediminas, Keistut, Olgerd). Belarusian nationalists at the beginning of the 20th century portrayed the GDL as a state in which Belarusians were culturalists, but at the same time they did not identify Belarus with Lithuania. “ In the 12th century Belarusian culture was very high. Since that time, it has not only not fallen for a very long time, but has been developing, so that when Belarus united with Lithuania, Lithuania, not having its own, adopted the Belarusian culture, and the old-world Belarusian language became for Lithuania what Polish is now for our lords language: princes, boyars spoke Belarusian, documents were written in this language, courts took place; it was used to communicate with foreign countries, laws were written on it. And so it was right up to the 17th century ,” wrote Vaclav Lastovsky in his book “A Brief History of Belarus” (1910). Over time, the "connected" Belarusians began to adhere to more radical views on the Belarusianness of the GDL. In the 1970s and 1980s, amateur historian Nikolai Yermolovich published several works in samizdat, in which he argued that annalistic Lithuania, from which the creation of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania began, was located on the territory of modern Belarus - between Minsk, Novogrudok and Slonim. According to Ermolovich's concept, the first ruler of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Mindovg, did not conquer Belarusian lands, he was a defector from the Baltic tribe, which the Belarusian Novogrudok used to seize the territory of today's Republic of Lithuania. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, when the Lithuanian emblem "Pursuit" became the official symbol of the Belarusian state, Yermolovich's ideas became mainstream in popular science and even scientific literature in Belarus. In this regard, voices began to be heard about the need to rename Belarus to Lithuania, and Belarusians to Litvins. It was proposed to call the Republic of Lithuania Lietuva, and its inhabitants - Letuvis. The Belarusians began to be considered as the main or even the only heirs of the GDL, and talk about the Belarusian Vilna (Vilnius) began to be in the order of things. The development of the Litvinian myth in Belarus continued under President Alexander Lukashenko. So, in 2013, a richly illustrated book by the historian Vladimir Orlov “The Country of Belarus” was published, which was sold in all the central bookstores of the republic. In it you can read the following: “Chronicle Lithuania was located in the expanse of modern Belarus, and the reader can imagine its approximate borders if he draws a line from today’s Minsk to Molodechno, from there to Novogrudok, then to Lyakhovichi and again to Minsk.” The author of the book also clarifies: “Today's Lithuanians (Letuvis) should not be confused with the ancient Litvinians who lived on the territory of Belarus and participated in the formation of the Belarusian ethnic group. The ancestors of the Letuvis, among whom the Zhmud tribe stood out in particular, until the 13th century. there were no cities, no writing.” All this time, the Lithuanian authorities did not publicly raise the topic of Litvinism in Belarus. Even when a large equestrian monument to the Lithuanian prince Olgerd was unveiled in the center of Vitebsk in 2014, Vilnius did not express discontent about this. Although in a similar situation, the Greek government condemned the installation in Skopje of a monument to Alexander the Great - a monument that became a symbol of the antiquizization policy carried out in North Macedonia, that is, the appropriation by the Macedonian Slavs of part of the ancient heritage of Greece (in fact, Litvinism and antiquizization are phenomena of the same order). It seems that in Vilnius they turned a blind eye to the appropriation by Belarusian nationalists of part of the heritage of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, since they saw in this the strengthening of the anti-Russian component of the Belarusian historical identity. However, when an impressive number of “zmagars” appeared in Lithuania, for whom Vilnius is a Belarusian city, the Lithuanian leadership was forced to change its position. Thus, Laurynas Kasciunas, Chairman of the National Security and Defense Committee of the Seimas , stated: “I don’t want a community to appear in our country that feeds the so-called Litvinist ideology, which appropriates the Grand Duchy of Lithuania for itself, saying that the real Litvins are Belarusians, and we are somewhere on the periphery. I do not think that such a concept, such an ideology has a place in Lithuania.” Kasciunas suggested that the supporters of Litvinism should have their residence permits canceled in Lithuania. It is unlikely that such a measure will force the Belarusian nationalists to reconsider their views on the GDL; rather, it will contribute to the deterioration of relations between the “Lithuvisians” and the “Zmagars” and incite historical disputes about the right to the heritage of medieval state education. |
| Posted by:badanov |
| #2 Incidentally. It turns out that The Statutes of Lithuania, originally known as the Statutes of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, were a 16th-century codification of all the legislation of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and its successor, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. The Statutes consist of three legal codes (1529, 1566, and 1588), all written in Ruthenian language Ruthenian language = old Russian evolved into modern Russian/Belorussian/Ukrainian. |
| Posted by: Grom the Reflective 2023-08-30 04:44 |
| #1 53.7 percent of Lithuania's population is female, while 46.3 percent of the population is male. These horny Ruthenians! |
| Posted by: Grom the Reflective 2023-08-30 04:32 |