Belarusian Smolensk Region

Instrumental Musical Tradition and Ethnic Self-Identification: The Belarusian Phenomenon

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I. V. Matsiyevsky

Instrumentalism (musical instruments, their structure, musical genres and forms, characteristics of vocal and instrumental articulation, timbre, performance style) retains its specificity throughout many historical epochs while adhering to the conditions of functioning and is a crucial indicator of ethnic tradition, sometimes more stable and conservative than national consciousness and language.

The article examines the ethnorepresentative features of instrumentalism in the context of various antinomies related to political, state, cultural-ideological, and confessional factors in the main territories of the population’s settlement, in diasporas, and among marginal ethnic groups (characterized by their dual vector of integration – towards state and ethnic metropolises).

The focus is on the musical tradition of indigenous Eastern and Western Belarusian ethnic groups on both sides of Belarus’s state borders, as well as in compact diasporas. The conducted analysis shows that the instrumentalism of these ethnogroups is connected with the entire Belarusian culture and its ethnic traditions, while also preserving elements of Baltic and Finno-Ugric substrata of its ethnic history.

Our research appeal to the border and marginal arrays of the traditional musical culture of Belarusians was largely conditioned by long-term contacts with V. E. Gusev, who led the scientific work of the Leningrad Institute of Theatre, Music, and Cinematography as its vice-rector in the 1970s and 1980s. Having devoted many years of research and pedagogical activity to the Southern Urals, Professor of the Chelyabinsk Pedagogical Institute (now a university), Doctor of Historical Sciences Viktor Evgenyevich Gusev constantly emphasized in his conversations the importance of studying the folklore of border and so-called liminal (transitional) zones and the corresponding ethnographic groups to identify common (perhaps, fundamental, reflecting a single origin?) and specific features of the traditional culture of Eastern Slavic peoples.

Particular attention was paid to the borders between Belarus and Ukraine and Belarus and Russia. It was precisely thanks to his persistent advice and efforts that my first ethnomusicological expeditions took place in Eastern Polesia – the Mozyr and Kalinkovichi districts of the Gomel region of the Republic of Belarus in the 1980s. It seems that a certain nostalgia of Viktor Evgenyevich for this land also contributed to this. V. E. Gusev was brilliantly fluent in the Belarusian language, using it repeatedly in his speeches at scientific conferences held in Minsk.

Gomel region – the places of his childhood and youth. In Gomel, he graduated from school and a music college (as a pianist). There, his thinking, interest in artistic culture, folklore, and understanding of the important place of music in the overall cultural-historical image of ethnic culture were largely formed[1].

I did not discover any actual liminal zones then or later, neither in Eastern nor in Western Polesia, nor in other border areas (perhaps with the exception of a few villages of the gmina/volost Narievka in Bialystok region/Poland).

Rather, it could be a matter of interspersed settlement of certain territories by ethnic Belarusians and Ukrainians, significant discrepancies between ethnic borders and state borders, as well as mutations among the residents of the corresponding ethnographic groups under the influence of certain historical and political factors of national consciousness while preserving the language of communication and norms of traditional culture. But even a negative answer is an important factor in the scientific cognition of the phenomenon being studied!..

My constant attention to V. E. Gusev’s works of ethnocultural orientation – it was reflected in his last introductory article to the book “Games and Harmonies” [8] – I believe I owed not only to my proficiency in languages (alongside Russian – Ukrainian, Belarusian, and Polish), which allowed for a more objective interpretation of border verbal and intonational phenomena, but also to the special role of instrumental music in ethnogenesis, as well as in the preservation and historical development of ethnic culture.

Indeed. Musical instruments, their structure, method of manufacture, playing techniques, musical genres and forms can retain their specificity over entire historical epochs while preserving the conditions of functioning. Closely linked to traditional activities and the mentality of the people formed over centuries, music has become a powerful identification factor of ethnic culture, sometimes more stable and conservative than ethnic self-consciousness and even everyday speech.

The concept of “Western Russia” – the further we go, the more decisively it is interpreted as the western outskirts of Russian ethnic territories [see: 25; 29; 32]. In such a representation, the mutation of the historical term “Western Rus,” which referred to the entire territory of the distribution of Belarusian dialects and which is clearly related to the entire Belarusian ethnicity and its ancient state and confessional formations (among them the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Black and White Rus, etc.) is evident.

Western Russian (as well as Belarusian) dialects were referred to at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries as the speech of the local population by the compilers of maps of “the distribution of the Russian language in Europe,” understanding the latter as a certain East Slavic language as a whole, while its separate national manifestations or, in modern understanding, languages (including Great Russian) were considered merely as dialects. Let us recall their classifications: Great Russian, Little Russian (South Russian, Ukrainian), Belarusian (Western Russian) [40].

The cultural-historical current of the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, Western Russianism, which saw prospects in coordinating national and common East Slavic vectors of Belarus’s development [39], also contributed significantly to the aforementioned.

This concept – already in a narrower sense – is historically related to the northern region of the eastern outskirts (the so-called kresy wschodnie) of the 1st Commonwealth, which, starting from the detachment of Smolensk from it at the end of the 17th century and as a result of several of its partitions in the 18th century, and a number of (both in imperial Russia and in the Soviet Union) changes in administrative borders, ended up as part of the Russian Federation. The larger, northeastern part of these lands – that is, the southern districts of the modern Pskov region (Nevelsky, Usvyatsky, Sebezhsky, Kuninsky: until the 1920s – part of the Vitebsk province, previously – Polotsk principality), the western districts of Tver, a significant – western part of Smolensk (along with Smolensk itself), the northwest of Bryansk region (as well as the northeast of Chernihiv region – part of Ukraine) – according to linguistic studies and ethnographic maps (including those conducted by the State Commission of the Russian Empire) up to the October Revolution, without any doubts and reservations, was designated as the area of the Belarusian language [10; 26; 30; 40].

Historical dialectology – based on the coordination of linguistic and historical-political factors – refers local speeches to Smolensk-Polotsk [6, p. 71], while the Belarusian ethnocultural identification of Polotsk and Vitebsk lands was not subject to discussion. Moreover, Mogilev region for many centuries not only in ethnocultural but also in political-economic terms constituted a single whole with Smolensk region, was part of the Smolensk principality, and later the Smolensk voivodeship of the Commonwealth. It is no coincidence that Smolensk became the first capital of the Belarusian Soviet Republic; in 1924, the issue of returning Belarusian ethnic territories to its composition was raised again in the government (Central Executive Committee) of the USSR [6, p. 38]; until the mid-1930s, Belarusian language was taught in general education schools in these lands, Belarusian educational organizations, circles, clubs, and theaters were functioning.

During the war, the Smolensk-Bryansk diocese (with an ordained bishop) was part of the Belarusian autocephalous Orthodox Church [1, p. 203; 12, pp. 76–78; 11; 36]. The cadre units of the Belarusian regional army, composed of local residents, served as a kind of shield between the German occupiers and partisans, whose actions saved many peaceful residents of Bryansk and Smolensk from repression [12, pp. 67–75].

However, the powerful imperial pressure inherited from tsarism and revived in the Stalin era, the gradual displacement, assimilation, destruction of the Belarusian national intelligentsia as a subject of cultural initiative, the special emphasis of state cultural policy in this area on fostering Great Russian patriotism, significant support only for Russian-speaking writers, the liquidation of already rather weak Belarusian organizations, schools, circles, clubs – against the natural historical predominance in the marginal northeastern Belarusian ethnocultural community (as well as in other similar ethnogroups) of local (Nevelsky, Velizhsky, Smolensk, etc.) identity over national – all this gradually led to the establishment of Russian national consciousness as fundamental in these lands.

Moreover, the development of modern myths and historical legends [7], according to which Smolensk region throughout its history has been the western outpost of the country and the entire Russian people, contributed to the fact that the scale of patriotism here was even stronger than in other ethnically Russian regions of Russia.

For marginal ethnographic groups, the coexistence of at least two opposing vectors of their integration contacts and aspirations is characteristic: 1) towards the centers of the state metropolis (for northeastern Belarusian ethnogroups – Moscow, Russia; for Belarusians of northeastern Bialystok – Warsaw, Poland; for Vilnius region – Vilnius, Lithuania; for Latgale-Dvina region – Riga, Latvia, etc.); 2) towards the centers of ethnic metropolis (respectively – Minsk, and the nearest local ones – Mogilev, Vitebsk, Grodno).

An important factor for preserving the ethnocultural vector is the state of the borders. For ethnic Belarusians of Nevel and western Smolensk region during Soviet times, the border was quite conditional – Nevel residents more often contacted (large markets, studying in universities and technical schools) with nearby Vitebsk than with distant Pskov; crossing it did not become too complicated even in modern times. The same was true in Dvina and Vilnius regions (today, the situation in this regard has worsened: customs, passports for foreign trips, visas). The Belarusian-Polish borders were open for a decade and a half, and today crossing them has again become complicated.

The experience of cultural orientation that developed over a certain period and was related to ethnoconfessional problems is significant. Many ethnic Belarusian Catholics in marginal ethnocultural territories (sometimes, today – also in the composition of metropolises, but having been in a marginal position during a certain historical period, or outside their national state formation: Grodno region, western Vitebsk region in the Kingdom of Poland, interwar Poland, etc.) studied in Polish schools, mastered (especially in cities and towns) the corresponding language, listened to Warsaw radio, obtained magazines, gradually acquiring Polish national consciousness, and sometimes became leaders of movements for the Polish revival of these lands (Vilnius region, Western Belarus, etc.).

Polishness, reliance on Polish spirit and culture, often served as a banner for various anti-imperial struggles. Among Orthodox Christians (especially in the dioceses of the Moscow Patriarchate) – assimilation processes towards Russification are evident. In this regard, the Greek-Catholic confession (established according to the Brest Church Union of 1596) took into account the national factor more than others in the Eastern Slavic lands: Belarusian and Ukrainian languages were used in its services and parish schools.

However, after its violent liquidation in the 1930s in the lands that, after the partition of the Commonwealth, fell under the Russian Empire, the tendencies towards the Russification of the indigenous population sharply intensified.

What has been said is particularly evident when comparing these lands with Galicia, which at the corresponding times fell under the Austro-Hungarian Empire. There, Greek Catholics were not subjected to persecution until the Stalinist repressions of the late 1940s, and the degree of preservation of the national language, culture, and self-consciousness was significantly higher not only among the rural but also urban population. Caution in considering the confessional factor when determining the ethnic affiliation of a particular population group was urged by collectors as early as the mid-19th century [3].

Of course, state language and cultural policies, mass media, and the education system with their orientation towards the state-forming ethnicity are significant. Their impact is more strongly felt in ethnogroups whose dialects are lexically closer to the state language. In this regard, Belarusians naturally represent a more pliable material for Polonization and Russification than Lithuanians or Latvians, although the scale of Germanization of Hungarians, Swedishization of Finns is known in the past, and traces of Magyarization are still strong today in Slovakia, Romanian Transylvania, and Transcarpathian Ukraine.

Moreover, recognizing the proximity, almost identity of folklore and everyday speech of the rural population of Western Smolensk and Mogilev regions, Vitebsk and Nevel regions, against the backdrop of the so-called equality of two state languages, powerful Russification of cities and towns in Belarus itself, up to the “speech” of the president of this country, – today Mogilev and Vitebsk regions demonstrate many initiatives for the development of Russian self-consciousness… even on the lands of the Republic of Belarus. The lexical similarity of the Russian and Belarusian languages, the designation of the latter – grammatically – as a kind of variant of the former (Russian – Belarusian) provides a sort of basis to speak of the natural “tendency” of these lands towards Moscow, the historical “Russianness” of their population, allegedly Polonized during the era of Lithuania and the Commonwealth and therefore – “Belarusianized” [1, pp. 218–219].

The correlation of the mentioned vectors is determined both by the nature of the national policy of state metropolises and by the scale of cultural and educational activities of the local intelligentsia in marginal lands, their support from the centers of ethnic metropolises. In this regard, the possibilities of Belarusian initiatives in Lithuania, Latvia, Poland (national cultural centers, press, radio and television programs, clubs, language courses and schools, folklore festivals, and other forums of ethnic culture are functioning) are preferable to those in Russia (Belarusian activities in Smolensk, Tver, Bryansk have not revived).

But even here, not everything is simple. Not long ago, for example, the Lithuanian government banned the broadcasting of Belarusian television programs on the territory of Lithuania (and, accordingly, in Belarusian-ethnic Vilnius region) based on its disagreement with the nature of the elections in Belarus [2, pp. 6–8]!?

What has been said is also reflected in science – ethnography, folklore studies, ethnomusicology. The linguistic factor – the living speech of the indigenous rural population – has been practically ignored, especially due to the almost legal position of Yu. Bromley, according to which not language and culture, but the self-consciousness of a person is the fundamental factor in determining national (including ethnic) identity [4].

And today, Belarusian ethnic marginalia, i.e., not a diaspora, but historically formed groups living in their indigenous ethnic territories outside their national state [19; 20] (in this case, the Republic of Belarus), are already widely noted, at best, as a special western ethnographic group of the Russian people [24; 25; 29] or as representatives of western Eastern Slavic traditions [25, p. 178].

Accordingly, their folklore genres are interpreted as part of the common Russian cultural heritage, texts in song collections are published in Russian transliteration, often with significant deformation of their phonetics [24; 35; 29]. In some cases, however, they point to the so-called Belarusian influence, specifying how certain words, endings, consonants, vowels should actually be pronounced (”… it should be remembered that in Smolensk region all unstressed ‘o’ are sung as ‘a’, and unstressed ‘e’ as ‘ya’, hard verb endings are softened” [24, p. 3]), noting the similarity of the sound “g” in local dialects with… Ukrainian, etc. The preface to the collection of Smolensk songs by V. I. Kharkov [37] appears more delicate in this regard and – for its time – bold.

How significantly such publications yield to the works of their predecessors and those few contemporaries who objectively, without ideological correction or linguistic “mishearing,” convey the subtlest shades of traditional speech and melody [9; 21; 43]!.. The efforts of Polish institutions, directing their expeditions to Latgale and Vilnius region to search for Polish folkloric archaics, are equally purposeful.

The intensified research in the last 15–20 years on the instrumentation and music of Belarusian marginalia of Smolensk, western Tver, southern Pskov [27; 28], northeastern Bialystok [14; 18], Vilnius region [33] has created a powerful barrier to the indicated tendencies, especially since instrumental music, to a significantly lesser extent than arts related to the word, is subject to ideological influences and can preserve the most ancient layers of ethnic culture amid mutations of national consciousness and even amid a certain destruction of the system of verbal communication [16; 18].

And this is understandable. As long as there is a need for the performance of signaling, mimicking (imitating animal sounds to attract them) or ritual melodies by hunters and shepherds (and the system of their signals, as well as the material – grass, bark, tree trunks from which instruments are made – pipes, flutes, whistles, horns, etc. – remain stable until the very nature surrounding them changes fundamentally, and the structure, rhythm, melody of musical-communicative messages and mimicking imitations related to bird singing, animal cries in nearby forests are conditioned by it), the sound world of traditional labor and ritual instrumentalism remains autonomous, independent of any integrations or adaptations [16].

To a certain extent, dance music is less dependent on the word, language, ideology even compared to traditional song; although there is ample room for new forms, fashionable trends, borrowings, etc., the latter, however, while expanding the circle of musical realities, do not destroy the already existing ones. Brought to Belarus during the era of active Western European interactions of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Commonwealth by Jews and Roma (the latter actively made music not only in the democratic environment around small towns and villages [23, p. 56] but even served as court musicians for major magnates – the Sapegas and Radziwills [1, p. 230]), cymbals not only did not displace traditional pastoral sound instruments, which did not disappear even under the pressure of later influences, but moreover became an ethnorepresentative phenomenon of Belarusian culture.

If the surrounding nature, acoustic environment, and tradition of music existence remain stable, its most important spheres retain their ethnic uniqueness. What do we observe in the northeastern marginalia, does traditional instrumentalism correspond with the interpretation of these lands as western Russian outskirts? The instrumentation, genres, and forms of music – both the most ancient, archaic, and those that emerged over the last few centuries – are clearly connected with Belarusian culture, existing in a unified space of northern and northeastern Belarusian ethnic traditions [27, p. 3; 28]. At the same time, they significantly differ from traditional Russian instrumentalism even in nearby neighboring lands: to the east – Smolensk region, to the north – Pskov region.

Among the pastoral instruments of the Nevel-Sebezh region is the long embouchure trumpet, characteristic of all historical Belarus, having Lithuanian and Ukrainian analogues (trembita, Polesian surma, daudite), but differing from its shorter varieties in Great Russian territories. At the same time, the typical pastoral horn (zhaleyka) of Western Tver with a P-shaped tongue cut on the instrument’s body and three finger holes covered by the fingers of both hands is widespread in all Belarusian regions [22], as well as among many other peoples, in the ethnogenesis of which, alongside Baltic, a significant place belongs to the Finno-Ugric substrate (including Lithuanians, Latvians, Russians, not to mention Karelians, Vepsians, and other Baltic Finns) [16].

Here too are the characteristic eastern Belarusian paired flutes with unjoined tubes – double flutes, whistles, etc., the territory of distribution of which does not extend further than Smolensk region. Similarly, as a trace of the Baltic substrate in the ethnic history of Belarusians, improvisations on several natural embouchure tubes of different sizes and, accordingly, heights of the fundamental tone are recorded among the Belarusians of northeastern Bialystok. We find parallels to them in Lithuanian Aukštaitija [46, pp. 36–70], but in Ukrainian and Polish traditions of southeastern and western Bialystok, such a phenomenon does not occur [14; 44].

Hand-held small cymbals (a kind of national symbol of Belarusian musical tradition) are widely spread in the Nevel-Smolensk lands, the northeastern limit of their distribution clearly coincides with the borders of the 1st Commonwealth. The nature of the disappearance of the violin in folk tradition – gradual, as it moves north-east into Pskov region, and sudden – to the east of Dorogobuzh and Bryansk – corresponds to the smooth transition of Belarusian dialects into Great Russian ones to the north and east of Nevel and Sebezh to Velikiye Luki and Pskov and the sharp boundary between the zones of the mentioned dialects, separating Western and Eastern Smolensk region [10; 15, pp. 312, 317; 41; 45].

Modern expeditionary research in the field of music is well coordinated with the documentation of songs produced in Smolensk in the late 19th century by V. Dobrovolsky and L. Kuba, defined by scholars as characteristically Belarusian songs [9; 13; 32; 34; 38; 43]. L. Kuba, who excellently knew and directly studied the music of many other Slavic peoples (Czech, Ukrainian, Sorbian, etc.), while notating the Smolensk material, meticulously recorded characteristic Belarusian phonemes, and interpreted the entire song tradition of Western Smolensk in the inter-Slavic musical-ethnographic context as a typically Belarusian phenomenon.

A genre widespread in the northern Belarusian ethnic tradition, associated with the ritual of gifting the young – nadzelyany nadzel – a farewell gift, is characterized by linear polyphony of freely articulated wedding lament – usually of tirade structure – against the backdrop of a rhythmically clear instrumental composition with a typical dance or march meter. Here too, the well-preserved ritual songs played by men during Easter rounds are found. The volochebnye songs as a special musical genre (a legacy of the spring New Year) generally represent a significant phenomenon of Belarusian culture. Moreover, in the northeastern Belarusian marginalia, volochebnye are normatively performed under heterophonic accompaniment of instruments – violin, harmonica. And even – in a purely instrumental version.

In the marginal lands (including in northeastern Bialystok), as before throughout Belarus and… never in Russian ritual practice, both winter carols and songs of participants in summer round processions (in the circle of harvest songs) were performed to instrumental melodies. Vocal-instrumental and purely instrumental versions of traditional ritual, wedding songs are a phenomenon typical both for the mentioned marginal and metropolitan traditions of Belarus and further – to the west and south: Ukraine, Poland, Lithuania, but not at all in Russia, where analogous genres of folklore, if they do exist – for example, carols and wedding (harvest songs are known only in Smolensk region) – are fundamentally acapella.

Typical Belarusian (except perhaps alongside Ukrainian, Lithuanian, Polish, but not at all with Russian) are the compositions of capellas with the main instruments: violin, cymbals, drum (or large drum with cymbals) with the most diverse additions (pipe or piccolo flute, harmonica, bayan, accordion, clarinet, trumpet, mandolin, balalaika, etc.). Such is also the clear functional subdivision of ensemble parts: 1) leading (melody and leading form); 2) auxiliary (echoing, virtuoso-decorative, harmonic or heterophonic variant); 3) bass-metric – hence the designation of such ensembles as “trio music” (i.e., tripled music) – regardless of the absolute number of musicians playing in the capella (from 2 to 10 or more) [17].

It is precisely with the western neighbors that Belarusians (in marginal lands and in the metropolis) are united by the dominant position of the polka among dance genres. It also has the largest number of intra-genre variants. A typically Belarusian phenomenon here is also “Ljavonikha” (or “Kamarinskaya”) – a dance instrumental (sometimes together with refrains) composition with a double six-beat [(1+1+1+1+1+1)х2]. The boundaries of its distribution to the west and east are quite expressive (“Kamarinskaya” by M. Glinka – quite in this circle: the first orientations towards the music of Western Smolensk, its traditional rural capellas, participation in the work of serf orchestras precisely in this region and the corresponding impressions of the composer about the music of his small homeland are evident).

The musical tradition unites into one common ethnocultural circle – the northern Belarusian ethnic tradition – the northeastern Belarusian marginalia not only with their immediate western and southern neighbors in Vitebsk and Mogilev regions of the Republic of Belarus but also with the northwestern Belarusian ethnic territories across the Belarusian-Lithuanian, Belarusian-Polish, Belarusian-Latvian borders – in Dvina-Latgale, Vilnius, Bialystok.

Of course, at different borders, local ethnic culture at certain times undoubtedly experienced and experiences various intercultural influences from its neighbors, as well as those coming from the centers of state metropolises, which manifested both in the borrowing of individual genres, instruments, performance techniques, and in the stylistic specificity of the corresponding musical innovations.

They are naturally diverse in different marginal groups. Just as in northeastern Bialystok and Vilnius region (as well as in Grodno region and Western Vitebsk region), alongside the pine flute, violin, cymbals (known even today among Belarusians of Latgale), trio music, volochebnye, ljavonikha, polka, etc., it is not difficult to encounter the very popular oberek in traditional environments, as well as in the marginalia of southern Pskov region and Western Smolensk (as well as Mogilev region, Eastern Vitebsk region, or even throughout Belarus) – with various chastushki (including “barynya” = “Russian”). The same applies to the harmonica.

According to the observation of ethnoinstrumentalist V. Kh. Berberov, in the Belarusian northeastern region more closely economically linked with St. Petersburg, during the corresponding period, the harmonica-petrogradka (also known as St. Petersburg minor) of the Russian tuning spread widely. It was here that the chromatic harmonica and bayan followed it. In the western regions, more oriented towards Warsaw, the harmonica-vienka of German tuning took the central place. The bayan did not take root in the traditional environment here.

But what is very important is that here and there, everyone plays, articulates in a Belarusian way. Even when singers do not adapt the corresponding song texts and sing in Polish or Russian, the clearly expressed Belarusian accent in their pronunciation (with characteristic “sh,” “zh,” “ts,” “dz,” “ya” instead of “s,” “z,” “t,” “d,” “e,” characteristic akanye, fricative “g,” etc.) reveals the ethnic origin of the performers. We observe similar phenomena in other Belarusian ethnic territories beyond the metropolis – as already mentioned above, as well as in central-western Bryansk region (Russia) and northeastern Chernihiv region (Ukraine), although the instrumental tradition of the latter still has yet to fully present itself before the eyes of future researchers.

Clear ethno-historical identification manifests itself in the traditional musical culture of Catholics of Bialystok region with Polish self-consciousness, and those who have preserved their speech and songs in their native language (in its northeastern region), and entirely in linguistic terms, are Polonized, representing on the ethnographic map the so-called Polish Western Bialystok. The instrumentation, genres, and forms of instrumental music in its northern region are in a unified context of the entire northern Bialystok region and broader – Belarusian ethnic culture [18].

The relatively late time of Polonization of the indigenous population of Western Bialystok is also confirmed by its quite distinct, eloquent local opposition to Mazurian, the presence of bilingual versions of a number of ritual songs, in particular, harvest and volochebnye (moreover, Polish texts are presented in literary, not dialectal form), and finally, quite clear memories of the oldest generation about their childhood when they still spoke “simply,” and at school, teachers corrected: “You should say not ‘try,’ but ‘trzy,’ not ‘treba,’ but ‘trzeba,’ etc.” [18, p. 347].

A somewhat different situation arises in compact diasporas. In their instrumentalism, phenomena of later origin are often better preserved than artifacts of the oldest art, especially when they are closely related to the surrounding nature and traditional forms of its functioning. This applies to both diasporas in multinational states and small ethnographic groups living within their country but found outside their historical territory.

And what about self-consciousness, national self-identification, ethnic identity? An interesting fact is that many groups of migrants living today in diaspora conditions (especially compact ones) even better than their counterparts in the marginalia and sometimes even in actively assimilating metropolises preserve (or revive) their ethnic self-consciousness, as well as traditions and culture.

Sometimes they manifest separately. From representatives of the older generation of Smolensk emigrants in St. Petersburg and Karelia, one often hears today: “I am from Belarus, from Smolensk region,” but they remember only individual words, expressions, proverbs, folk tales as manifestations of the half-forgotten speech of their native places. And in Mogilev region, when they believe that a new family will be happy if the wedding ceremony goes according to all the rules, “as it was once,” they invite traditional singers and musicians from neighboring Smolensk villages: local customs, archaic ritual songs and music of Belarusian weddings have been better preserved there.

There is also a combination of the mentioned factors of ethnic identity. Those who left due to hunger in the 1920s – early 1930s and settled on the Black Sea coast of Kherson region (Southern Ukraine) – groups of emigrants from Eastern Belarus (including Mogilev region) and even 2–3 generations of their children and grandchildren, born already in the new lands, know well and emphasize to everyone around that they are from Belarus, remember and perform traditional songs, dances, melodies of their historical homeland [31] and, as a resident of the village of Novorossiysk in the Alekseevsky district of Kherson region, Arina Mikitovna Alekseenko told us during an expedition in the summer of 1990, “they never forget their speech.”

The presence of ethnodifferentiating facts of traditional culture often prompts representatives of assimilated populations to reflect. Catholics, as well as Orthodox Christians of northeastern Bialystok, if they do not realize, then quite feel that they differ from ethnic Poles and would like their children to be taught in school not only in Polish but also “simply,” i.e., in their native language [18, p. 347]. The ethnic self-consciousness of Catholics in Grodno and Vilnius regions is being revived, many of them are activating the desire of their children to learn the Belarusian language (the Belarusian gymnasium is again operating in Vilnius).

Ethnic revival through traditional, fundamentally original, local culture, alas, faces radically opposite and destructive aspirations for integration, unfortunately, also present in the activities of national cultural and political organizations. The active dissemination in different ethnographic collectives of some common (and essentially originating from another region or specially created by professional or amateur authors without regard to local tradition) songs for the purpose of their joint performance at numerous festivals and celebrations often distorts the local specificity of both the folklore group itself and the creative environment that produces it, developing, including accepting all new according to its immanent laws.

Whether the socialization of traditional culture in modern society will restore its ethnic identification or whether the mutation of the latter will destroy the ethnic culture itself will be shown by the future. However, research data are called to objectively and accurately establish their historical past, contributing to a more substantiated scientific interpretation.

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[1] By the way, Viktor Evgenyevich never severed his direct ties with music, approaching the piano, maintaining excellent pianistic form until the end of his life, attending concerts, and keeping track of all the novelties in compositional and performance art.