The Revolt of the Tuteishy against the Nation

Yulia Cherniavskaya. Belarusians: From Tuteishy to a Nation. Minsk: FUAinform, 2010. 512 pp.

The review was prepared by Aliaksei Lastouski, researcher at the Political Sphere Institute and Candidate of Sociological Sciences.

The book by the well-known Belarusian cultural scholar Yulia Cherniavskaya is devoted to the Belarusian nation, the trajectory of its historical development and the specific features of the national mentality. This topic is lively and contested, and therefore almost automatically attracts readers’ attention. The publication of Belarusians: From Tuteishy to a Nation caused considerable resonance in the Belarusian information space, leaving behind a trail of interviews and reviews.

The book’s visibility was also helped by its appearance in the popular series “Unknown History,” associated with Anatol Taras and his revisionist version of Belarusian history. At the same time, the final result is a rather hybrid product: the original text was adapted for a mass reader. It is difficult to say whether this made the book more accessible, but it did not help the internal logic of the argument. The placement of the theoretical introduction at the end of the book, for example, makes normal reading difficult, at least for a prepared reader.

The “academic” character of the book can also be questioned. This is not so much a matter of the author’s individual shortcomings as of the particular features of cultural studies as a research field. Reading the book leaves many doubts about the relationship between evidence, interpretation and generalization. The author moves freely between historical narrative, cultural diagnosis and essayistic reflection, and this freedom is both the book’s strength and its weakness.

Cherniavskaya’s central theme is the transformation from the “tuteishy” condition, a local and situational form of belonging, toward the idea of a modern nation. The review stresses that this movement is not described as a linear success story. On the contrary, the book constantly reveals tensions, interruptions and unresolved contradictions in Belarusian national development.

For all its controversial aspects, the book is important because it brings the problem of Belarusian national identity into a broader public discussion. It invites disagreement, but it also forces readers to return to the question of how Belarusians have imagined themselves and how they may continue to do so.