On August 9th, following the end of the voting for the new presidential election of Belarus (Республика Беларусь, Republic of Belarus), the current President Lukashenko won with 80.1% of the vote. He will be re-elected again and will start his sixth term. Protests in the Belarusian capital Minsk and other cities subsequently raised questions about the results of the presidential election. Leaders of Russia, the United States, France, Germany and other countries expressed intensively on the situation in Belarus. What kind of country is Belarus, which has triggered a multi-party struggle? What is the origin of its nation and country?
”Belarus” origin of the word
Belarus has a long history of human habitation. Archaeological evidence proves that as early as the mid-Paleolithic period between 100,000 and 40,000 BC, primitive settlements existed in the southeastern part of the territory of Baikal today. In the fifth century BC, the ancient Greek historian Herodotus wrote a written account of the residents living in the present-day white territory in his book “History”. In 862 AD, Polotsk Castle was built on Belarusian soil. From the 9th to the 12th century, the Polotsk Principality was formed around the castle. However, until the second half of the 13th century, the term “Belarus” (Russian Белая Русь, English White Rus) first appeared in the “Dublin Manuscript”.
From the middle of the 13th century to the end of the 18th century, the land in Belarus now belonged to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the United Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania. Over the centuries, the connotation of the term “Belarus” has been continuously enriched. Polish historian Krommel first used the term “Belarus” in his book “History of the Poles” published in 1555 to describe contemporary Belarusian land. In 1596, a joint religious conference of the Orthodox Church and the Catholic Church was held in Brest, which was part of the Republic of Poland at the time. It was called the “Conference of the Merger of the Brest Church” in history. After the merger of the Brest Church, some residents of the Orthodox Church in Vitebsk and Mogilev began to call themselves “Belarusians”. In the 17th century, the term “Belarus” became an official term. The expressions of “Belarusian Orthodox Diocese” and “Belarusian Bishop” began to appear in official documents at that time. The term “Belarus” was used in the documents of the Warsaw Conference in 1623, the King Jan Sobieski’s decree in 1675, and the “Permanent Peace” peace treaty signed between the United Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania and Russia in 1689.
From the 18th century, “Belarus” was merged into the Russian Empire, and until 1917, Belarus was under Russian rule. From the end of the 18th century to the beginning of the 19th century, “Belarus” officially obtained political and legal status. In 1796, Russian Tsar Ekaterina II merged Polotsk and Mogilev provinces, and called the merged province “Belarus Province”, which is also the only province in Russia with national identity. From the end of the 19th century to the beginning of the 20th century, the term “Belarus” geographically refers to the provinces of Vitebsk, Mogilev, Minsk, Grodno, and Vilnius, and has become a reference to this region and its residents. The fixed title.
Ancient Rus, or Kievan Rus, was a country established by Novgorod Prince Oleg after conquering Kiev and its surrounding areas in 882. Belarus is a Slavic ethnic group with the characteristics of the ancient Rus dialect. It is also a culturally and politically distant subject from the East Slavic ethnic group. It is a product of the combination of Slavic cultural traditions and Baltic tribal cultural traditions. In the name “Belarus”, “white” is synonymous with the words “freedom” and “independence”, indicating that the predecessor of Belarus, Polotsk, was one of the duchys that first became independent from the ancient Russian Empire, and most of its land Not under the rule of the Mongols. The Chinese translation of the names of
”Belarus” and ”
Belarus ” of Belarus has caused widespread discussion. The Belarusian Embassy in China stated in an official document in March 2018 that the Chinese country name of Belarus should be “Belarus”. Belarus claimed that the “white” in “Belarus” means white white; “Russia” is an adjective, and “Russia” is one of its meanings; and “Ros” is the ancient Balts, Finnish Ugos and Eastern Slavs. The name of the country on the land. From the perspective of language translation, the Chinese translation of Belarusian country names is actually a historical issue.
In 1223, the Mongolian army invaded Russia and established the Golden Horde, which included most of the territory of today’s Russia and Kiev, Ukraine. When the Mongolians came into contact with ancient Rus, they transliterated the Russian “Rus” into the Mongolian Oros. This is due to the Mongolian pronunciation habit. The Mongolians follow the pronunciation rule of the first syllable premise when encountering a foreign language beginning with the curling sound [r]. Therefore, Rose is translated into Oros (in the Yuan Dynasty in my country, the transliteration is Oruosi, Orus, etc.). During the Qianlong period of the Qing Dynasty, when the “Siku Quanshu” was officially revised, my country standardized the transliteration of place names, names of people and country names in foreign languages and minority languages, and unified the Chinese translation of Mongolian Oros as “Russia”. It has the title “Belarus” and it is still used today.
”Belarus” rheology countries
Although Belarus is considered to be the Duchy of Polotsk, Turov Duchy and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania’s successor, but has controlled power in Poland and Russia, until the early 20th century until the beginning of this nation on the basis of Try to build an independent country. The First World War changed the geopolitical pattern in Europe and made the issue of the status of the White country more urgent.
In June 1916, at the Third Congress of Central and Eastern European Nations held in Lausanne, Switzerland, for the first time, a Belarusian proposed that, as the “masters” of their own land, Belarusians should have political, historical and cultural rights. From December 5th to 8th, 1917, the First All-Belarusian Congress was held in Minsk. At the meeting, the idea of establishing a Belarusian state was put forward and discussed. On March 9, 1918, the Belarusian National Committee led by Anton Lutskevich announced the establishment of the Belarusian People’s Republic; on March 25, the Belarusian People’s Republic declared its independence.
During the First World War, the Soviet Russian government and the Allied Powers including the Second German Empire and the Austro-Hungarian Empire signed the Treaty of Brest on March 3, 1918. At the end of the same year, Germany was defeated and the treaty was abolished. The German army occupied Belarus until the end of 1918, and the Belarusian People’s Republic actually existed for less than a year. On January 1, 1919, the Belarusian Soviet Socialist Republic was proclaimed.
From February 2 to 3, 1919, the first All-Belarusian Soviet Congress was held. The resolution on the recognition of the independence of the Belarusian Soviet Socialist Republic made by the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of the Russian Soviet Federal Socialist Republic on January 31, 1919 was read out at the meeting. So far, Belarus has completed its first attempt to build an independent state on the basis of the Soviets. On December 30, 1922, Belarus, together with the Russian Federation, Transcaucasian Federation, and Ukraine, established the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (Soviet Union).
From the late 1980s to the early 1990s, under new historical conditions, Belarus began its second attempt to build an independent state. On July 27, 1990, the Belarusian Soviet Socialist Republic promulgated the Declaration of State Sovereignty. On August 25, 1991, the White Declaration of National Sovereignty was given constitutional status and declared independence from the Soviet Union. On September 19, the new country name, the Republic of Belarus, was approved.
Bai began to implement the presidential system in 1994. In July of the same year, Lukashenko was elected as the first president. In November 1996, Lukashenko passed a referendum, extending his presidency to 2001. In September 2001, Lukashenko was re-elected as President of White. In October 2004, Belarus held a referendum and parliamentary elections and abolished the Constitution’s stipulation that the term of office of the president shall not exceed two terms. Lukashenko was re-elected as president in March 2006, December 2010, and October 2015. Belarus under Lukashenko’s administration has become a country that preserves the order and values of the Soviet Union, and is a unique existence in European politics.
The formation and construction of nation-states is a complicated historical process. In the 20th century, Belarus went through two construction processes. In the first construction in the early 20th century, although Belarus formed a certain sense of national identity, it ultimately failed to form an independent state subject. In the second construction from the late 1980s to the early 1990s, the Belarusian nationalists failed to reconstruct the previous political tradition. Entering the 21st century, the world has once again entered an era of great changes, which has brought opportunities for the shaping of the Belarusian nation-state. In the future, how to integrate and rebuild Belarusian national concepts such as the concept of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the Belarusian Orthodox beliefs and the memory of the Soviet Union will be the top priority of the modern evolution of the Belarusian national concept, and it will also be the nation of Belarus in the new era. The key to nation building.
