Narody, kultury i sotsial’nye protsessy na pogranich’e: materialy Mezhdunarodnoi nauchno-prakticheskoi konferentsii (Grodno, 22-23 February 2010) (2010). Ed. E. M. Babosov [et al.]. Grodno: Yanka Kupala Grodno State University, 417 pp.

Review prepared by Andrei Tsikhamirau.

A distinctive feature of the development of post-Soviet scholarship in Belarusian regional universities is not only the elaboration of specific research topics, but also the organization of academic conferences with a fairly broad thematic scope. As a rule, these are events with a relatively large number of participants, organized to present research results and create opportunities for professional dialogue.

At the same time, these are also rather ritualized and imitative events, where the broad thematic range does not allow for an in-depth discussion of the stated problem, and the texts presented are sometimes simply incompatible with one another.

The result of such conferences is published collections of articles and abstracts, most often very short abstracts. Limited funds for publication affect the tiny print runs of such collections, significant cuts in the texts (as a rule, abbreviated names of institutions are not expanded, authors’ initials are given, and sometimes it is impossible to understand from the surname alone whether the author is male or female; lists of literature and sources are very limited), and the insufficiently thought-through structure of the publication.

As a result, such collections are rather difficult for readers to access even in other regions of Belarus, unless one of the authors brings a copy home to a local library. They show the general state of academic culture and, at least, certain tendencies in research topics. As for dissemination, if such collections are made freely available in electronic form on the relevant university resources, there is a chance that researchers from other countries will be able to read and use the texts.

Grodno University quite often organizes large interdisciplinary conferences in the humanities, whose main theme is the Borderland as a historical, cultural, and social phenomenon. A certain tradition of such events began in the 1990s and, with varying degrees of success, continues to this day. On 22-23 February 2010, the conference “Peoples, Cultures, and Social Processes in the Borderland” took place, with researchers from Belarus, Poland, Lithuania, and Ukraine participating.

The resulting collection published 124 texts, most of them abstracts of presentations and only a small part full-fledged articles. The overall level of the publication is very uneven: despite the division into nine sections, each section contains texts that differ greatly in topic; a significant number of texts lack proper references to sources and literature, which substantially lowers their quality and their further usability for other studies; some texts are highly theoretical and are not supported by any empirical data. Most of the texts in the collection are in Russian and Belarusian, a small number are in Polish, and only one is in English.

Analyzing all 124 texts is rather difficult, so it is worth doing this more generally, by section.

The collection opens with seven plenary papers, which concern the analysis of different concepts of the Borderland phenomenon and, accordingly, examples of various border territories of Eastern and Central Europe. Among the authors are Yauhen Babosau, Ihar Katliarou, Rustis Kamuntavičius, Yauhen Miranovich, and Mikalai Bespamiatnykh. Most of the plenary-session texts are full-fledged articles with the appropriate scholarly apparatus, except for the text by Ya. Babosau.

The first section, “Sociocultural Processes in the Contemporary World”, contains 14 texts. A significant part of them has no bibliography at all, which is at least disappointing. Several texts contain valuable empirical material, primarily from sociological studies, but also without proper references to sources.

Most texts of a philosophical nature refer to Russian authors, who are quoted very often, and a certain intellectual dependence on them is visible. A representative example may be the text by M. Melnik (pp. 83-85), which first considers the problem of the “national idea” in Russia and only then, proceeding from this, applies it to the example of Belarus. Some of the texts are a kind of set of rather limited sociological, political-science, and other humanities terms that, taken together, do not fully correspond even to the declared title.

The second section, “Historical and Theoretical-Methodological Problems in the Study of the Borderland”, contains 16 texts, which can be divided into two parts: methodological problems and historical examples of the functioning of border regions. It seems that it would have been more logical to divide this section into two separate ones.

Among the texts, it is worth highlighting Eduard Mazko’s article on the problems of sociological study of the borderland, including examples of questionnaires (pp. 110-116), Siarhei Donskikh’s article on contemporary Belarusian studies of the Borderland (pp. 102-105), and Volha and Aleh Breskikh’s text on the concept of the Borderland (pp. 92-94). Another example is the text by E. Ladysh (Jerzy Ładysz) on the contemporary Polish-German borderland (pp. 107-110).

Among the texts on historical topics are an article by Irena Matus on the incorporation of Uniates into Orthodoxy in the Białystok region in 1836-1839 (pp. 136-143), Vital Harmatny’s text on agriculture in the interwar Polesie Voivodeship (pp. 133-136), and A. Saukou’s article on the concept of the early twentieth-century Russian historian Nikolai Rozhkov concerning Belarusian and Lithuanian lands (pp. 129-133).

The third section, “The Specificity of Social and Economic Development of Border Regions”, contains 17 texts, whose topics concern various aspects of economic life mainly in the western regions of Belarus, but also, for example, in the Homiel region. Among the issues are the prospects for cross-border cooperation, raiding, small business, logistics, the labor market, and even the prospects for pilgrimage tourism, using the preserved heritage of Belarusian Jews as an example.

The fourth section, “National Identity and Ethnoconfessional Processes in the Borderland”, consists of 14 articles. The main terms around which most of the studies are built are “tolerance”, “identity”, “globalization”, and “mentality”.

Among the texts, one should single out the interesting and substantive articles by Siarhei Tokts on microhistorical studies of the Bershty Forest region (pp. 223-228) and by Ina Sorkina on the structure of a nineteenth- and early twentieth-century small town, using Kapyl as an example (pp. 229-235). A. Hanchar’s article on the “identification” of Catholicism and Polishness in the Belarusian lands in the nineteenth century contains too many generalizations and rather paradoxical conclusions (pp. 214-217). Two articles that are interesting and useful in connection with the materials published in them concern the identity of Belarusian Poles; one should also mention L. Navumenka’s article on ethnic autostereotypes among Belarusians (pp. 243-245).

The fifth section, “Sociocultural Interactions of the Peoples of the Borderland”, consists of eight texts with a fairly broad chronological and problem-oriented scope: small towns as a factor in Belarusian-Polish cooperation, everyday culture of the Jewish population, folkloric images of foreigners in Belarusian culture, and musical culture of the Grodno region in the nineteenth century.

The article by Jakub Koralewski is devoted to the problems of Polish-German cross-border cooperation (pp. 251-255); Tatsiana Bogush’s text addresses the adaptation of Armenians in Belarus, although, unfortunately, the absence of references and literature reduces the value of this text (pp. 260-264); and Volha Pratsenka’s text concerns the Polish book in the Belarusian lands in the nineteenth century (pp. 256-260).

The sixth section, “Sociolinguistic and Anthropological Studies in the Borderland”, contains 10 texts, most of them essentially abstracts about language or languages in various Belarusian borderlands, including those with Russia and Ukraine. There are only two actual articles: Halina Mazko’s text on the Latin language in the Belarusian lands in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (pp. 286-290) and Volha Sabaleuskaya’s article on memoirs of Jewish women in the second half of the nineteenth century (pp. 293-297). The collection’s only English-language text, by M. Loika, on methods of teaching English, is also placed here (pp. 285-286).

The seventh section, “Social and Demographic Processes in Border Regions” (nine texts), publishes texts that differ in chronological scope: from historical demography, for example, Iryna Charniakevich’s text on the prospects of Polesian youth in the interwar period (pp. 314-317), to contemporary sociological studies, the problem of gender imbalance in contemporary Belarus, and changes in the demography of Lower Silesia after 1989, the second text by Ya. Ladysh in this collection (pp. 317-320). A number of useful texts presenting the results of sociological studies should be highlighted: on the specifics of adaptation and axiological priorities of youth, and on regional features of Belarusians’ social self-perception.

The eighth section, “Education and Innovative Activity in the Borderland: Methods and Technologies” (13 texts), contains very different materials concerning educational activity, but also economic transfers, the specificity of relations between doctor and patient, and the formation of entrepreneurship. It is worth noting that some texts have been “wandering” from one “Grodno collection” to another for several years with minor changes in title and content.

The ninth section, “Studies by Young Scholars” (16 texts), conceals very diverse materials. In most cases they concern contemporary social problems, as well as such theoretical issues as the study of everyday life, gender, national identity, Border Studies, local history, tourism, and sociological models of leadership. Among the texts on historical problems, attention should be paid to A. Nosava’s article on the organization of the reception of repatriates in the BSSR after the Second World War (pp. 388-391).

In addition to the problematic points of this type of collection already listed above, one should note a major structural shortcoming. The editors divided the publication according to thematic principles, which is quite logical and understandable; however, it seems that within the sections themselves it would have been worth dividing the texts according to a chronological principle. Conventionally, events before 1991 would belong to historical problems, and after that year to the broadly understood present. This would have significantly simplified readers’ perception of the texts and would have given some logical support to the chosen structure of the publication.

To a certain extent, large conferences with a very broad thematic scope, and the corresponding collections of materials, have become one of the indicative elements of the post-Soviet academic space, a certain indicator of research problems, as well as of systemic illnesses, including those of regional scholarly life. The Grodno collection is no exception.