From: qasama@banach.WPI.EDU (John Grossi)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.soviet
Subject: Re: languages in ex-Soviet Union
Date: 5 Oct 1992 19:54:50 GMT
Organization: Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Worcester, MA 01609-2280
Distribution: world
Reply-To: qasama@banach.WPI.EDU (John Grossi)
NNTP-Posting-Host: banach.wpi.edu
Keywords: Ukrainian, Byelorussian


In article <1akllvINN3rt@agate.berkeley.edu>, muh@physics1 (Yury M.
Mukharsky) writes:
|> Path:
[response appended at end article left for reference
|> 
|> In article <1992Oct3.085801.11372@hippo.ru.ac.za> piij@hippo.ru.ac.za
|> (Mr ID Jennings) writes:
|> >
|> >understand Belorussian.  Is it because they are ethnic Russians who
|> >never spoke it anyway, or is it because the language has suffered a
|> >similar fate to that of, say, Welsh in the UK, in that people
|> realized
|> 
|> I think that mostly because this language is more or less Soviet
|> invention,
|> before 1917 as far as I know there were no nominal Belarus language,
|> as well
|> as no substantial literature. So there was set of dialects diverging
|> from 
|> Russian toward Polish/Lithuanian... At least that is what some
|> Belorussians
|> told me. To some lesser extent same is true for Ukrainian. 
|> 
|> BTW , can anybody write how how Belaja Rus' formed historically?
Well the history of the region as I know it.
Early on it was included in the Polish Kingdom of Miesko I c. AD 1000.
When the Polish kingdom of the Piast fell to regionalism a hundred years
later
the area that is currently covered by Belorussia was covered by three
principalites, the Paist Duchy of Sandomierz c. 1146 and the principalites 
of Volhynia and Halciz Ruthenia under Rurikian princes.
By the time of the Mongol Invasion. Sandomeirz had been co-opted back to 
Malopolska and was under the sway of Henryk II Pious of Silesia and the 
principalites of Halciz Ruthenia and Volyhnia were ruled by one man named 
Daniel. During the Mongol incursions Daniel was formed an alliance with the
OgaKhan Batu and for the next hundred years the area was under the sway of 
the Mongolian Horseman of the Golden Horde. During this time the Polish 
Duke of Mazovia Konrad II in his battle of sucession with the Senior Line of 
Piasts allowed the German Tuetonic Knights into the Area around Chelmno.
During the century after 1241 Poland and Prussia (a name the knights took from
the extinct pruthenian tribes(a case of genocide)) as well as a new Lithuanian 
Kingdom expanded into the vacuum left in the area of the Pripet Marshes and 
eventually push the Golden Horde far back into Russia. With the death of
the last Piast Casimir III titled the great. A solution to this growing 
international crises was sought. Eventually the house of Anjou, (the closest
to the Polish Line and still exceptable to the great Magnates) was united
with the Jagiellonian Dynasty of Lithuanian when Wladyslaw Jagiello married
Jadwiga of Anjou. The thrones united the area which was now a part of the Polish
Lithuanian Commonwealth. It remained in this state until the first partition of
Poland in 1772 when most of it passed to Catherine II's Russia. After this
things stabilised until the first world war and it's aftermath.
	After the War Marshal Josef Pilsudski's new Polish State fought a war in
1920-1921 to push Poland's borders out to the there 1772 limit. Most of the 
country remained in Soviet hands but large tracks in what is now Belorussia were
inside the second polish republic. After the war Stalin pushed Poland west and
in exchange for accepting the Curzon Line which Pilsudski flaunted with the 
Russo-Polish War, gave poland Silesia (something it had not held since 1313.
	Hopefully this is some help. It is very general admittedly and is in 
no means comprehensive.
	I assume the ancient Ruthenia are the current Belorussians but as I have
posted earlier I am not sure.
--
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