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Belarus Culture
Belarusian culture is the product of a millennium of
development under the impact of a number of diverse
factors.
These include the physical environment; the ethnographic
background of Belarusians (the merger of Slavic newcomers
with
Baltic natives); the paganism of the early settlers and
their
hosts; Byzantine Christianity as a link to the Orthodox
religion
and its literary tradition; the country's lack of natural
borders; the flow of rivers toward both the Black Sea and
the
Baltic Sea; and the variety of religions in the region
(Catholicism, Orthodoxy, Judaism, and Islam).
An early Western influence on Belarusian culture was
Magdeburg Law--charters that granted municipal self-rule
and were
based on the laws of German cities. These charters were
granted
in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries by grand dukes
and
kings to a number of cities, including Brest, Hrodna,
Slutsk, and
Minsk. The tradition of self-government not only
facilitated
contacts with Western Europe but also nurtured
self-reliance,
entrepreneurship, and a sense of civic responsibility.
In 1517-19 Frantsishak Skaryna (ca. 1490-1552)
translated the
Bible into the vernacular (Old Belorussian). Under the
communist
regime, Skaryna's work was vastly undervalued, but in
independent
Belarus he became an inspiration for the emerging national
consciousness as much for his advocacy of the Belorussian
language as for his humanistic ideas.
From the fourteenth to the seventeenth centuries, when
the
ideas of humanism, the Renaissance, and the Reformation
were
alive in Western Europe, these ideas were debated in
Belorussia
as well because of trade relations there and because of
the
enrollment of noblemen's and burghers' sons in Western
universities. The Reformation and Counter-Reformation also
contributed greatly to the flourishing of polemical
writings as
well as to the spread of printing houses and schools.
During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when
Poland
and Russia were making deep political and cultural inroads
in
Belorussia by assimilating the nobility into their
respective
cultures, the rulers succeeded in associating
"Belorussian"
culture primarily with peasant ways, folklore, ethnic
dress, and
ethnic customs, with an overlay of Christianity. This was
the
point of departure for some national activists who
attempted to
attain statehood for their nation in the late nineteenth
and
early twentieth centuries.
The development of Belorussian literature, spreading
the idea
of nationhood for the Belorussians, was epitomized by the
literary works of Yanka Kupala (1882-1942) and Yakub Kolas
(1882-
1956). The works of these poets, along with several other
outstanding writers, became the classics of modern
Belorussian
literature by writing widely on rural themes (the
countryside was
where the writers heard the Belorussian language) and by
modernizing the Belorussian literary language, which had
been
little used since the sixteenth century. Postindependence
authors
in the 1990s continued to use rural themes widely.
Unlike literature's focus on rural life, other fields
of
culture--painting, sculpture, music, film, and
theater--centered
on urban reality, universal concerns, and universal
values.
Data as of June 1995
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