Regional models of urbanization and national identity development (case study of Belarus)

Abstract

The article discusses the influence of the process of urbanization on the Belarusian nationality. Due to some historical conditions the Western cities‐communes have not formed in Belarus. At the beginning of the New Ages the Belarusian city has had Magdeburgian law and the trading relations, it has been the centre of the political life, the residence of the State officials and the provinces. Through the social‐economical backwardness of the Russian empire the peasants of Belarus could not move into the towns from the country. The towns and the cities in Belarus were not Belarusian but Jewish and Polish ones. Due to the World War II there have emerged the Polish Holocaust, repatriation and the Soviet industrialization which have made some auspicious conditions for the overtaking modernization in Belarus. During only one generation the peasant Belarusian nation has become the urban one. Such overtaking process of the urbanization has been preventing the formation of the standards and the traditions of the Belarusian city. The basis of the social and cultural life of Belarusians has been forming the traditions of the Soviet culture. That is why we can come to the conclusion that the overtaking modernization is closely related to the radical changes of the national identity. The more overtaking is modernization of the cities and the whole State, the more dangerous is the deprivation of the national peculiarity. The nation whose spiritual life is not utterly formed can hardly successfully adapt itself to the social and economical changes, which are determined by the overtaking modernization. These alterations do absolutely not correspond to its spiritual way of life.