The Belarusan Diaspora: Review

History

In different historical circumstances, the Belarusans’ emigration had economic, political and other reasons. Long ago, emigration was practiced by those who were not satisfied with the GDL upper class’s policy and who would thus leave the country. In the 16th-17th centuries, emigration was caused by aggrandizement of exploitation of peasants and national and religious oppression. In the 17th-18th centuries, during different wars, the Belarusan lands were the atrocious battles’ arena, and their population was taken in bulk to the Russian Empire’s depth. Rzeczpospolita’s three partitions and the development of the national liberation movement at the end of the 18th – 19th centuries were the main factors of political emigration. Thousands of participants of the rebellions under the leaderships of T.Kasciuska and K.Kalinouski, Belarusan gentry, as well as the GDL restoring adherents during Napoleon’s war against Russia, had to flee the country fearing the czarist government’s repressions. The Belarusans spread in the world, some of them became involved into the revolution and liberation movements in Europe and America and furthered the development of culture and science of the countries of residence.

The mass migration’s first wave was on the border of the 19th and 20th centuries. Before World War I, because of economic reasons, more than 700,000 people moved to Russia and 500,000 - 600,000 people settled in the USA, Canada, Brazil, Argentina and West Europe. World War I, February and October revolutions, German and Polish occupations of Belarus resulted in the Belarusans’ emigration to Russia’s East parts (246,000 refugees and evacuees never returned to Homeland), war prisoners’ taking out to Germany and exodus of more than 120,000 people to Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Czechoslovakia, Turkey and other countries. Labour emigration resulted in leaving for the USA and Europe (about 180,000 – 250,000 inhabitants of West Belarus). In 1926-1938, more than 600,000 people from Belarus settled in the USSR’s other parts (allocation of labour, deportations, political repressions, etc.).

As a result of World War II, almost 1,500,000 Belarusans were evacuated to the East and only one third of them returned to the BSSR; hundreds of thousands of the Belarusans happened to be abroad as Soviet war prisoners; 385,000 people were taken out to Germany. 520,000 Belarusans were repatriated to the USSR before 1946. After the war, Belarusan Diaspora grew inappreciably.

The end of the 1980s saw a regular current of migrants from Belarus to the western countries. In 1988-1999, about 143,000 people received the right to emigrate. In 1999, according to unofficial data, about 500,000 Belarusans lived in the USA, about 100,000 lived in Canada, tens of thousands lived in Argentina, Brazil, France, Belgium, Germany, as well as in Belarusan Diaspora’s new centres, i.e. the UK and Australia. Approximately 250,000-400,000 Belarusans of Bielastok (Bialystok) Region happened to be in Poland after the postwar state boundaries’ corrections. After the USSR disintegration, the majority of the Belarusans happened to be on its former territory; there are more than 1 million of the Belarusans in Russia, more than 400,000 in Ukraine, 110,000 in Kazakhstan, 100,000 in Latvia, 55,000 in Lithuania, 25,000 in Estonia, etc.

On the border of the 20th and 21st centuries, about 3,500,000 Belarusans live abroad. The national self-determination’s spiritual base and national originality’s and identity’s conspicuity became public, political, educational-cultural, scientific and religious organizations, arts associations, national mass media and institutions, cultural centres, museums and archives, art collectives and churches created and supported by many Belarusans abroad.

Emigration under World War II

World War II beginning stopped the Belarusans’ emigration to the American continent and changed drastically their number and situation in the European states. On the territories occupied by the Germans, there were well-established Belarusan areas with their national lives (in Prague, Paris, Warsaw, Lodz, etc.). Germany’s occupation of Poland and West Belarus joining to the BSSR made the political figures who did not trust the Soviet powers, leave for the West.

On the eve of the Soviet incorporation of Vilnia (Vilnius) Region and the Baltic countries, many Belarusans emigrated from these areas to Germany and its occupied territories. 70,000-80,000 Belarusans who fought as part of the Polish Army, were taken captive by the Germans, but then at the end of 1939 and during 1940 received the right to work as free people. Material support and cultural-educational work was organized by the following public societies: the Belarusan Self-Help Committee in Berlin (with its branches in Munchen, Leiptzig, Vienna, Prague, Lodz, Torun and other cities) and Belarusan Committee in General Gubernia in Warsaw (with its branches in Cracow and Biala-Podlaska).

Ambiguousness of the Germany’s position concerning the status of Belarus made some leaders of Belarusan emigration hope for support in re-building the independence of Belarus. In this connection, the Belarusan National Centre was created in 1941 in Berlin. The leaders of the Belarusan Nationalist Party created in 1940 in Warsaw, on the contrary, oriented to the Anti-Hitler Coalition’s West allies and thought that it was them who would win and settle the matters of the postwar construction of Europe, and then it would be possible to discuss the country’s independence problem on the international level.

Germany’s attack on the USSR and the lasting occupation of Belarus conditioned a mass, mainly enforced relocation of its population. Hundreds of thousands of the Belarusans became Soviet war prisoners abroad. About 385,000 people were taken by force from the occupied Belarus to Germany as cheap manpower. At the end of the war, camps of abducted children (6-12 y.o.) were created in Germany. About 5,000 young people from the Belarusan Youth Union went to work to Germany. They had difficult conditions for work and life, like the people taken by force did, but in distinction from the latter, carried out cultural-educational work. During the war years, there were the following mass media: newspapers Ranica (Morning) and Bielaruski rabotnik (Belarusan Worker), magazines Bielaruski student (Belarusan Student) and Malady zmahar (Young Fighter), 15-minute radio programme in Belarusan in Hamburg.

The German authorities isolated BPR President V.Zacharka who was in the occupied Prague and refused to act in support of the Germany’s policy. Before his death in 1943, he transferred his obligations to M.Abramcyk who was arrested by Gestapo and brought to Paris. The Soviet Army’s successful advance caused a considerable emigration wave from Belarus of those who were afraid of the Stalin regime’s return. Tens of thousands of Belarusans, including organizations, institutions, military formations created on the occupied territory (Belarusan Central Rada (Council), Belarusan Youth Union’s Headquarters, Belarusan Orthodox Church’s Bishop Council, Belarusan National Defence’s and Support Police’s detachments) and intelligentsia who worked in the educational system and cultural-educational organizations during the war, went abroad. This wave was mainly political – oppositional to the Soviet powers.

The Belarusan Central Rada (BCR) that first went to Konigsberg and then to Berlin, tried to make it government-in-exile and to come into contact with the Anti-Hitler Coalition’s West allies in order to create conditions for emigration’s further activities after the war. At the end of the war, the majority of the BCR members happened to be in the US and UK zones of occupation.

Belarusan military formations’ destiny was not easy as they were incorporated into the German Army during its backdown. The Belarusan National Defence’s battalions (up to 16,000 people) were sent to the West Front. Lots of these Belarusans happened to be on the territory of France in summer 1944 where they joined local partisans, while one battalion went to Switzerland. In autumn 1944, most of them joined the Army of Anders and fought against Germany. The best part of the Belarusans from Sigling’s division in France rendered themselves prisoners of war to the US-UK allies in autumn 1944. Thousands of Belarusans who worked in Germany and who absconded the prison camps, work brigades and death camps, carried on the Anti-Nazi fight on the territories of the occupied European countries. Also, there were the Belarusans fighting against the occupants in the divisions of the National Liberation Army of Yugoslavia.

Many Belarusan emigrants fought at World War II fronts in the armies of the Anti-Hitler coalition’s countries. In 1939, the authorities of France first called up more than 6,000 Belarusans for military service. Thousands of American Belarusans acted bravely in the battles against the German Army. In the British Army, there were not less than 30,000 Belarusans, more than 1,700 of whom were killed at the western fronts, including the famous battle at Monte-Casino (Italy).

During the course of war, in accordance with a decree of the Soviet of People’s Commissars of the USSR, the mandatory repatriation of the Soviet citizens was begun, and it left no chance of staying in emigration. Still, the Anti-Hitler Coalition’s West allies did not consider the people who lived before World War II in Poland (West Belarus) and the Baltic states, to be the persons who must be repatriated. Using it, many Belarusans changed their nationality and escaped the mandatory repatriation.

Present Times

Belarus’s obtainment of independence and consecutive strengthening of the processes of state and national-cultural revival (especially in the first part of the 1990s) conditioned the qualitatively new tendencies in the migration processes, Homeland’s attitude towards its foreign relatives and life of the Belarusan foreign community:

• The 1994 law that allowed the citizens of Belarus to go abroad and come back, conditioned the natural migration processes. In the Soviet times, the BSSR inhabitants were only allowed to go to other parts of the USSR, while emigration to the western countries was inessential because it was restrained by the powers in different ways (legislation, ideology, economy, etc.).
• The 1990s Belarusan foreign community’s character became its considerable quantitative cutback on the post-Soviet area and its gradual growth in the western countries. In 1992-2000 the Belarusans’ spontaneous migration from the post-Soviet area to Belarus was 200,000 people that was 46% of all those who came from there. During that time, about 70,000 Belarusans left Belarus for the new independent states. In 1992-2000 more than 75,000 inhabitants emigrated from Belarus to the western countries (Canada, USA, Israel, Germany, Poland, Australia, etc.), one third of them were the Belarusans.
• The 1990s are characterized by drastic changes in the Belarusan emigration nature:
- now there were citizens of independent Belarus in emigration (several tens of thousands);
- a new phenomenon, impossible in the Soviet times, appeared, i.e. provisional labour emigration. In 1994-2000, the Labour Ministry registered its contracts with more than 20,000 inhabitants of Belarus. The researchers think that the number of illegal emigrants is tens of thousands.
- there is a stable tendency of Diaspora’s growth (chiefly because of economic reasons) at the expense of able-minded, creative, promising and artistic people of Belarusan origin who live abroad temporarily or constantly. Disadvantageous tax and investment economic conditions extrude entrepreneurs and their capitals into other countries.
- Belarus was the first among the other post-Soviet republics to have political emigration. The authorities’ objicients were granted political asylum in the USA, Czech Republic, Poland, Belgium and the UK.
- In the 1990s, the important fact became the nationally organized activity in all the areas where there is Belarusan Diaspora (it did not exist at all in the other ethnic regions of the USSR from the 1930s to the middle of the 1980s).

• Cultural educational and social charity activities are carried out by Belarusan associations, societies, public organizations, scientific centres, publishing houses and libraries in the USA, Canada, UK, Poland, Australia, Russia, Lithuania, Ukraine, Moldova, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Estonia, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Armenia, etc.