Originally posted by TheLotus
about Fluid Cultures, I find it extremely dodgy <to use a British-ism> that White Russian would be the "first" state culture of Lithuania. The Lithuanian magnates/boyars/nobles who ran most of Lithuania were not Russian-ized, and the illiterate peasants of Lithuania were most certainly not. It is obvious that Lithuanian and White Russian cultures influenced each other, but I cannot see the White Russian culture as dominant <besides the use of Old Slavonic as a language of state>.
I'd have to debate you on that. Kinder and Hilgemann in the "Atlas Zur Weltgeschichte", Vol I Anchor Edition, state on p.201 that "the Russian Orthodox population predominated in the Lithuanian state; they were culturally superior to the pagan Lithuanians". That's perhaps a bit harsh, but there can be no doubt that the Lithuanian elite quickly adopted White Russian culture. As Filipe Fernandez-Armesto, professor of History at Oxford, puts it in "The Times Guide to the Peoples of Europe", "from it's beginnings the Grand Duchy of Lithuania was ethnically slavonic rather than Lithuanian in character..." (p.324).
The Lithuanian ruling class didn't even show any real interest in their own national tongue, which they likely spoke as a second language--everything they published, they did so in Belorussian or Ruthenian. After noting with irony that it was Germans, rather than Lithuanians, who showed the first interest in publishing books in the Lithuanian tongue, Fernandez-Armesto goes on to note that "in Lithuania itself the language was seen as essentially a means of communication for peasants..." (p.284).
Once the G-D was joined with Poland, the Lithuanian character of the Lithuanian elites disappeared completely: "The assimilation of the Lithuanian and Ruthenian nobilities into Polish culture provided the core of the marchland Poles." (Fernandez-Armesto, p.319). The Bloomsbury Dictionary of Languages describes P-L as "... a double Polish-Lithuanian state in which Polish became the ruling language (until very recently Polish was the majority language of the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius)." Again, a case of the sophisticated townsfolk speaking the prestige language (Polish by the 16th century) and the peasantry speaking the national tongue.
I think the problem we have in getting our heads around the Lithuanian government and ruling classes adopting Belarus culture is that this would never happen today. In the age of nation states, it is impossible to imagine one nation conquering another and then adopting the culture of the conquered. Imagine, for example the Nazis taking over Poland and then changing the state language to Polish! Ridiculuous! In the Middle Ages, however, people did not tie up culture and ethnicity/nationality so strongly and conquerers adopting the culture of the conquered was commonplace. The Mongols, for example, did it with almost every culture they subjugated (and ruled directly). In the Middle Ages, there was nothing at all unusual about Lithuanians being dominant politically and White Russians being dominant culturally. Slightly before the EU period begins, a similar situation existed in many of the Slavic countries (and to some extent in Scandinavia, particularly Denmark) with German culture.
) it was old slavonic just in transition to russian. Of course it was lanuage of Orthodox Church too. And yes, Lithuanian dukes tried to take over control of Orthodox Church, but unsuccesfully.
