ETHNIC IDENTIFICATION OF BELARUSIANS AND LITHUANIANS BASED ON THE "SPEECH SAMPLES" COLLECTED BY P.I. KÖPPEN IN 1827

The article examines one of the first attempts at statistical accounting of the "non-Russian" population of the European part of the Russian Empire, when P.I. Köppen in 1827 tried to determine the approximate number and bound-aries of settlement of the "Lithuanian peoples". The main problem that the researcher initially had to face when determining ethnic boundaries in the north-western provinces of the Russian Empire was the distinction between "real" Lithuanians and neighboring Belarusians, who had not only a similar culture and traditions, but also a common external name "Lithuania" / "Lithuanians". Therefore, to resolve this problem, the researcher, with the help of priests from the Viĺnia, Koŭna, Minsk and Kurliand provinces, organized a large-scale collection of data on the spoken language of local residents as a specific marker of their ethnic identity. The linguistic principle of ethnic identification and differentiation of Belarusians and Lithuanians, initially used by Z. Daliénha-Chadakóŭski and later developed by P.I. Köppen, was significantly ahead of its time, since the ethnic composition of the population of the provinces of the Russian Empire up until the 1860s was determined primarily on the basis of religious criteria. It was the linguistic distinctiveness of these peoples that became the main "key" to solving the problem of drawing a "line" between them as two separate ethnic groups.