“WESTERNERS” VS “EASTERNERS”: SOVIET-POLISH BORDERLAND IN THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL DIMENSION OF BELARUSIAN HISTORY

This article deals with the phenomenon of the Soviet-Polish border in Belarus in 1921–1939 as a factor that influenced the regional identity construction and development of mutual stereotypes among the Belarusians who found themselves within the Polish state and within the Belarusian Soviet Socialist Republic (BSSR). Particular attention is paid to the analysis of oral history materials recorded in 2000–2010 in the area of the former Soviet-Polish borderland. The geopolitical rift of the ethnic territory and the low level of Belarusians’ national identity became the basis for new forms of identity of the population of Western and Eastern Belarus (“Westerners” and “Easterners”). During the functioning of the Soviet-Polish border, the mutual representations of “Westerners” and “Easterners” are vague and are shaped mainly by state ideology and propaganda, where the image of an external “enemy” prevails. A detailed filling of the images of “Westerners” and “Easterners” with social, economic, and ethnocultural characteristics occurs after the physical (1939) and actual (1944) elimination of the Soviet-Polish border. During the Nazi occupation (1941–1944), and especially in the post-war years, communication between the population of Western and Eastern Belarus became intense. The massive labour migration, as well as the flows of beggars from the devastated areas to the relatively prosperous Western region of the country in the early postwar years, also signified the formation of informational flows in both directions. According to the author, mutual stereotypical ideas of “Westerners” and “Easterners” were finally formed after the end of the Second World War. The core of these ideas is the antinomy of “prosperity–poverty”, as well as a set of related connotations: “individual farmer–collective farmer”, “hardworking–idler”, “believer–atheist”, “policeman–partisan", “individualist–collectivist” and “secretive–communicative”.