Contribution in an anthology

Authors list: Siebert, Diana; Bohn, Thomas M.

Appeared in: Analysing conflict settings. Case studies from Eastern Europe with a focus on Ukraine

Editor list: Gawrich, Andrea; Haslinger, Peter; Wingender, Monika

Publication year: 2022

Pages: 261-278

ISBN: 978-3-447-11771-5

eISBN: 978-3-447-39232-7

DOI Link: https://doi.org/10.13173/9783447117715

Title of series: Interdisziplinäre Studien zum östlichen Europa

Number in series: 10

Abstract: 

In the historical sciences, territorialization denotes both the construction and penetration of territories by rulers and the state and their rescaling and redistribution. Under this premise, the experiments in Belarusian statehood conducted at the end of the First World War, as well as the establishment of a Belarusian Soviet Socialist Republic (BSSR), with its external and internal borders, call for critical analysis. Here, in a region which in 1917 was still without clear contours and barely defined, the Bolsheviks established an entity under international law in 1920/21 which, following significant expansion in 1924, 1926 and 1939, developed into an ethnically-legitimated Soviet republic. What were the particular decisions arrived at by political actors in the Soviet Union, and what were the effect of these on the titular nation and ethnic minorities? Whilst the signatory states of the 1921 Treaty of Riga ignored linguistic and ethnic criteria in drawing up boundaries, in 1939 the Soviet Union explicitly pursued a territorial policy based on an ethnic argumentation in their annexation of the eastern regions of the Second Polish Republic as part of the Molotov-Ribbentrop-Pact. This geographism ought to be seen as a complementary ideology to culturalism and biologism; it does not represent a nationalism spelled out irredentistically, but is governed rather by the assumption that cultural landscapes or areas of settlement are enduring entities. Geographism constitutes an artificial intervention in established structures which, through the manifestation of new hierarchies and the redistribution of resources, leads to new conflicts.

Harvard Citation style: Siebert, D. and Bohn, T. (2022) Border Demarcations, Territority and the Potential for Conflict in the Belarusian Socialist Soviet Republic: Theses on Territorialization between 1918 and 1941, in Gawrich, A., Haslinger, P. and Wingender, M. (eds.) Analysing conflict settings. Case studies from Eastern Europe with a focus on Ukraine. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, pp. 261-278. https://doi.org/10.13173/9783447117715

APA Citation style: Siebert, D., & Bohn, T. (2022). Border Demarcations, Territority and the Potential for Conflict in the Belarusian Socialist Soviet Republic: Theses on Territorialization between 1918 and 1941. In Gawrich, A., Haslinger, P., & Wingender, M. (Eds.), Analysing conflict settings. Case studies from Eastern Europe with a focus on Ukraine (pp. 261-278). Harrassowitz. https://doi.org/10.13173/9783447117715