Belarus

Abstract

The first noteworthy period of Belarusian history was in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries – a period that relates to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Ruthenia, and Samogitia. This is also known as the Golden Age of Lithuanian and Old Belarusian culture. The Old Belarusian dialect not only served as the official language of the state, it was also the language of culture and education. Trade relations with the West brought the Lithuanian-Belarusian Grand Duchy into closer contact with the European humanist tradition of education. Following the division of the Polish-Lithuanian-Belarusian Republic in 1772–1795, the territory of Belarus fell under the power of the Russian Empire for the next 150 years. During this time, both the Belarusian language and culture (as was the case with Polish and Lithuanian) were prohibited. Nevertheless, in the course of the nineteenth century, a noteworthy class of intelligentsia emerged. In the wake of the October Revolution of 1917, the country attained its own state structures for the first time in its history. However, in 1918, the newly proclaimed People’s Republic of Belarus was rapidly integrated into the Soviet Union. In the 1920s, the country experienced a short phase of relative cultural independence: in terms of education, the school system was extended and compulsory schooling introduced. Universities and theater with a national focus were established and the first literary journals appeared. However, during the Stalinist terrors (1930–1950), a large proportion of the Belarusian intelligentsia was liquidated. Following the Nazi-German attacks on the Soviet Union in June 1941, Belarus became part of the Reichskommissariat Ostland, an administrative unit of the Greater German Empire. More than two million Belarusians fell as part of a systematic policy of killings or as a result of direct war activities. The reconstruction of the education system that had suffered severely in World War II was followed by a phase of renewed expansion in education. At the same time, the education system was Russified. During this period, the school system was based on the Soviet model of the single type of school and was obliged to follow Marxist-Leninist ideology which formed the basis for the whole education process and was embedded in a centralized system of education organized by Moscow. At the same time, Belarus took part in the process aimed at modernizing the Soviet Union: at the end of the nineteenth century, 26 % of the population in the territory of the present-day Belarus could read and write; by the 1930s, illiteracy had by and large been eradicated (Zaprudnik 1998, p. 103).