Alena Markava. On the question of national identity in textbooks of BSSR in the 1920 s. School basis to raise national self-consciousness

The analysis of textbooks done by researchers provides a glimpse of a new model of national identity that was shaping in BSSR within the 20s of XX century. There is one central idea lying at the root of it, idea of internal unity and pronounced cultural identity of Belarusian people as well as durable independent historical development. At the same time a significant constituent of the 20s national identity formation is a contradistinction to others, in the given case to the Russians, personified in the image of Muscovites (the period of Middle ages and early New Time is being analyzed). All the authors relate Polatsk and in the first place Belarusian-Lithuanian as ‘golden’ periods of Belarusian history and concur that the Grand Duchy period was in actual fact of Belarusian nature. In the question of history and ethnogenesis as well as in other historical periods internal unity (common parentage, language, ethnographical components) of Belarusian tribe or nation is pointed out. The researchers also emphasize its closeness to European tendencies (Magdeburg rights, shops, Reformation, book-printing etc.). These specific moments are meaningly either opposed or compared to a different eastern Muscovy tradition. At the same time, a durable self-consistent Muscovy-independent historical development of Belarusian lands and their dissimilitude (cultural, legal, language, ethnographic and other) from eastern regions of Muscovy is accentuated.