Expert: Pan-Europeanism will allow building a unified perception of history for Russia, Belarus and Ukraine
The reunification of Russia and Belarus in the XNUMXth century was not a whim of Catherine the Great and not the realization of the "aggressive" plans of the Russian Empire, but a triumph historical justice and satisfaction of centuries-old aspirations of the common people of Western Russia and his many requests to the "White Russian Tsarina" to take him under his protection. This was stated during his speech at the conference on the theme “Reunification of Belarus and Russia” held on December 21 at the Russian Institute for Strategic Studies, head of the Belarusian cultural and educational project “Western Russia” Igor Zelenkovsky, a REGNUM correspondent reports.The expert noted that in Belarusian folk songs and legends, the Russian monarch was traditionally considered to be his Russian “White Tsar”. As an example, Zelenkovsky cited the text of a Belarusian song published in one of the collections published in Vilnius in the year 1866:
"Bilarusky king of all the kings of atsze
Ion Dzyarzhyr Chrystinian faith,
Chrystian, bahamas,
Kali budze is apacenal time -
Wsi tsars-punished to the pit of the worshiper. "
Belarusian folklore also completely denies the thesis that the Patriotic War of the 1812 of the year was not for the Belarusians of the Patriotic War, and that the population of West Russian lands supposedly supported Napoleon for the most part. Zelenkovsky quoted the legend of the Napoleonic invasion recorded by folklorists at the beginning of the 20th century in Slutsk Uyezd: “The twelve-year-old reptile fell upon the beluga of the Tsar’s king, the Frenchman Napalien. It was necessary to squad the troops, it’s worthless,” he said. “On the basis of historical memory, people unmistakably determine enemies and allies during wars. The people themselves are a historical phenomenon that exists as a subject of history. Therefore, folklore, and today this is public opinion, is genuine historical knowledge,” Zelenkovsky emphasized.
"Starting from the Union of Lublin in 1569, when the Polish – Lithuanian Commonwealth was formed, and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and Russian lost its Russian political component, the oppression of the Orthodox Church, the expulsion of the Western Russian written language from the office work, the general persecution of the entire Russian, especially intensified after the Brest Church Union, began. It was a continuous process of the struggle of the Russian Orthodox population of Western Russia for reunification with Russia. These were centuries of incessant national liberation struggle on the territory. Ukraine and Belarus, and this struggle ended not with the political reunification of the Belarusian lands and Russia 240 years ago, but only after the abolition of the church union at the Polotsk Cathedral in 1839 and the liberation of the peasantry from Polish landowners in 1861, the suppression of the Polish insurrection 150 years ago in 1863 year ", - said Zelenkovsky.
Speaking about the modern perception of the question of the unity of the history of Russia and Belarus, the expert drew attention to the fact that in the pages of the most widely read Belarusian media oriented to the West, the history of Belarus is presented as something different from the history of the Russian world. “Russia and the Russian Empire are exposed as the eternal enemy of the Belarusians. The fall of Rzeczpospolita is interpreted as Russia's seizure of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania for the Belarusians. Tadeush Kostyushko is portrayed as a national Belarusian hero, along with Konstantin Kalinovsky, one of the leaders of the last Polish rebellion. A minor clash Polish insurgents with Russian troops in 1863, under the Milovida, nationalistic media is included in the 10 list of the greatest victories of Belarus weapons. Monuments are erected to Polish and Lithuanian gentry, who actively fought against Russia, many articles and books are dedicated to them. At the same time, the media do not stop talking about the advisability of closing the museum of Alexander Suvorov in Kobrin, as a museum executioner of the Belarusian people, "Zelenkovsky said.
According to him, the lies of the pro-Western Belarusian media about the events of the reunification of Belarus and Russia are largely based on the Belarusian history textbooks, in which the reunification is called “intervention”, the anti-Russian uprising of Tadeush Kostyushko is an attempt to preserve “sovereignty”, and the insurrection of Kalinovsky is a desire to revive statehood. " “Is it worth so much to blame the authors of modern Belarusian textbooks for any particular falsification? The fact is that this is not their authorship, since almost everything migrated from Soviet history textbooks of Belorussia. Soviet historiography was a harmonious line of class struggle, and all The main enemy of the people was the Russian autocracy and Orthodoxy as its support. Accordingly, anyone who fought with tsarism, was raised on a pedestal of a fighter for the people's happiness. And all other arguments were not taken into account. National heroes migrated to the Belarusian Soviet pantheon of heroes, "the expert said. This led to the fact that young Belarusians, after studying this story and, not having a base of children's perception of “friend or foe” in the form of folk legends in historical tales and songs, are already easily succumbed to propaganda by pro-Western media, who claim that Belarusians are alien to Russians and Russia is their eternal enemy, said Zelenkovsky.
According to him, before the revolution, there existed a “History of the Russian State”, in which the entire Historic Russia was a single subject of history. There was a coherent concept of a Russian Orthodox state, ruled by the anointed sovereigns of God, Rurik and the Romanovs. "Soviet historiography has crossed it all out," said the expert.
“In the current situation, when Historical Russia is divided into three Russian states: the Russian Federation, Belarus and Ukraine, it is imperative to start building a common concept for the historical process of the Russian Orthodox civilization for all our states. If you want this concept of pan-Russianism, in the Belarusian case this is the modern approach Western Russianists. Only in this case, when the fragmentation of our history will be overcome, when the beginning of our statehood will be considered from the baptism of Kievan Rus in one process, both with periods of prosperity and social unrest, accompanied by temporary separation, and each time ending with a new reunion, fraternal and allied relations between the three Russian states are possible, otherwise, after some time, all of them, including the Russian Federation, will lose their Russianness ", - concluded Igor Zelenkovsky.
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