‘The Chaos Of Antiquity’ Forever Haunts a Disputed Borderland

The written or recorded history of Belarus gets stranger with modern interpretation, especially with the nationalistic pride that marginalizes its inhabitants. My mother and her parents have never identified as Belarusian, they consider themselves ethnic Russians who were born in Belarus. They all were born and lived so close to the Russian border that my maternal grandmother carried my infant mother into Russia to baptize her.

Belarus literally translates as White Rus, and had for years been called White Russia, a name considered derisive by Belarusian nationalists, but still widely used in many languages and countries. Rus is not short for Russia. Kievan Rus was a powerful East Slavic state dominated by the city of Kiev, which is the modern day capital of Ukraine. Rus dates back to the 9th century and is traditionally viewed as the beginning of Russia and the ancestor of Belarus and Ukraine, though this theory is often disputed. Kiev is regarded as the original Holy Russian Empire, because Vladimir the Great, the pagan Slavic ruler of Kievan Rus, in 988 converted the state to Orthodox Christianity.

Some cite Slavic lore that claims Vladimir chose Orthodox Christianity over the teaching of Muslim missionaries because his people liked to drink wine, a practice prohibited by the Muslim faith. His motive was unlikely a spiritual one, at any level. Vladimir married the Byzantine emperor’s wife and viewed the establishment of a church as essential to development of a powerful state. Kiev traded fur, animal hides, burlap, hemp and hops in exchange for Byzantine wine, silk, steel blades, religious art and horses. Byzantine imperial ideals clearly influenced Russian political life. Kievan Rus was effectively eliminated in 1237, when Batu Khan, a grandson of Genghis Khan, invaded and over three years the Mongols (or Tatars) destroyed all of the major cities of Kievan Rus except Novgorod and Pskov. The regional princes were not deposed, but were beholden to the Tatar state, which became known as the Empire of the Golden Horde. Both the Swedes (in 1240) and the Livonian Brothers of the Sword, a regional branch of the Teutonic Knights, (in 1242), pounced but failed to defeat “Russia” or Rus.

At the time of the Tatar invasion, modern-day Moscow was an insignificant trading outpost, but its remote, forested location buffered it from attack and occupation, and its rivers provided access to the Baltic and Black seas and to the Caucasus region. It was the rule of ambitious princes that gave rise to the state of Muscovy: Daniil Aleksandrovich secured the principality for his branch of the Rurik Dynasty, which was founded by Varangian (Viking) prince Rurik and ruled Kievan Rus after 862. His son, Ivan I, was given the title "Grand Prince of Vladimir" from his Mongol overlords, and he cooperated closely with the Mongols to gain control over Muscovy's chief rival, the northern city of Tver. In 1327 the Orthodox metropolitan transferred his residency from Kiev to Moscow, shifting spiritual power from Kievan Rus to Moscow, even as the Tatars presided over the political state until 1480. While Eurasianism is still emerging in the study of Russian history, the Asian influence and identity have been dominant since the rise of the tsars. A third of Russian nobles had Tatar names and Ivan the Terrible descended, on his mother’s side, from Genghis Khan.

Rather than delve deeper into this part of history, I want only to suggest that while the Vikings may have their roots in my mother’s birthplace -- archaeologists in September 2012 found Viking artifacts from the 10^th and 11^th centuries in Vitebsk Oblast – her national identity may be built on Tatar ideology and bloodlines. This makes the term “White Russia” that much more contested. My maternal grandmother had blue eyes and translucent light skin that had to be shielded from direct sunlight. My maternal grandfather had dark eyes and hair and an olive complexion. My mother has blue eyes and an olive complexion that tans quickly and never burns. My mother knows very little about her father’s parents, other than they were born “somewhere in Russia.” However, a Tatar heritage might explain why my maternal grandfather left the Soviet Army, why so many members of his family were brutally killed by the Belarusians, why he, his wife and children were targets of the Belarusian Partisans, as well as Stalin and the Nazis. It would also explain his loyalty to the Holy Russian Empire, even its seat in Moscow.

In “The History of Peter the Great, Emperor of Russia,” Voltaire states: “It is not my business in this place to inquire, why the countries from Smolensk, to the other side of Moscow, were called White Russia, or why (German geographer Johann) Hubner gives it the name of Black, nor for what reason the government of Kiev should be named Red Russia.”  It's important to note that Voltaire wanted to "make myself Russian," and created an alter-ego using the persona of a Russian diplomat, Ivan Alethof, as the “author” of his 1760 poem "The Russian in Paris.” 

“It is very likely that Madies the Scythian, who made an irruption into Asia, near seven hundred years before our vulgar era, might have carried his arms into these regions, as Gengis-Khan (sic) and Tamerlane did afterwards, and as probably others had done long before Madies. Every part of antiquity is not deserving of our inquiries; that of the Chinese, the Indians, the Persians, and the Egyptians, is ascertained from illustrious and interesting monuments; but these monuments suppose others of a far more ancient date, since it required many ages to teach men the art of transmitting their thoughts by permanent signs, and no less time was required to form a regular language; and yet we have no such monuments even in this polite part of Europe. The art of writing was a long time unknown to all the North: the patriarch Constantine, who wrote the history of Kiev in the Russian language, acknowledges, that the use of writing was not known in these countries in the fifth century.”

“Let others examine whether the Huns, the Slavs, and the Tartars, formerly led their wandering and famished tribes towards the source of the Boristhenes (the antiquated term for the Dniepr River and its eponymous river god); my design is to show what czar Peter created, and not to engage in a useless attempt, to clear up the chaos of antiquity. We should always keep in mind, that no family upon earth knows its first founder, and consequently, that no nation knows its first origin.”

 
Many have, since Voltaire’s account from 1857, made exhaustive efforts “to clear up the chaos of antiquity,” generally to rewrite a history that lends to rabid nationalism. But as new genetic data emerges this misguided pride is called into question.

Belarusians together with Ukrainians and Russians represent the East Slavic linguistic group, largest both in numbers and territory, inhabiting East Europe alongside Baltic-, Finno-Permic- and Turkic-speaking people. There have been until very recently only few genetic studies performed on this population.

A June 2013 research article, “Uniparental Genetic Heritage of Belarusians: Encounter of Rare Middle Eastern Matrilineages with a Central European Mitochondrial DNA Pool,” published in PLOS ONE, found that 80% of the paternal Belarusian gene pool is composed of R1a, I2a and N1c Y-chromosome haplogroups, a profile very similar to Ukrainians and Russians.

The Y-chromosome reflects movements of people in central-east Europe, as early as the start of the Holocene (beginning at the end of the last Ice Age about 11,000 years ago and characterized by the development of human civilization.)  The matrilineal legacy of Belarusians retains two rare mitochondrial DNA haplogroups, N1a3 and N3, both of Middle Eastern origin.

As Eurasian studies begin to displace Slavic studies at major universities and more DNA analysis becomes available to scholars, the ethnic identity of Belarusians, or at least the people born there, may help us correct the complicated history of a population that has withstood a perpetual warpath. My own desire to understand why so many members of my mother’s family have been brutalized and killed drives my interest in the science as well as the social history and historical sociology that has yet to gain any wide spread recognition. My own scholarly experience has been colored by either national identity (no matter how subtle) of my professors, as well as myriad incarnations of Slavophilism adopted often by non-Slavs. Much of what I was taught is at odds with what I see when I look at photographs of my mother’s father and grandfather.

Sole Surviving Sibling: The First Four Years

My mother’s mother, Alexandra Dimitrievna (Dimitrieva) Grishaev, was born March 3, 1913, in Dubrovka, a village in Vitebsk Oblast. My mother’s father, Grigori Ustinovich Grishaev, was born Nov. 18, 1907, in Lagi, also Vitebsk Oblast. Both villages are located near the Russian border, and my maternal grandmother would walk to Russia's Smolensk Oblast to attend services at the closest Russian Orthodox church. The oblast (which means administrative region) borders Russia, Latvia and Lithuania, and is a major railway center with stations for lines between Russia and Ukraine, Russia and Poland, and Russia and Lithuania.

Her maternal grandparents were Dimitri and Matrona, and her paternal grandparents were Ustin (Justin) and Natalia. She only recalls that they were born “in Russia someplace.”

My mother was the oldest sibling, the only girl and the only survivor. Her brothers all died as infants, and are still remembered as such in daily prayers. She doesn’t recall exactly when or where her brothers were born.

In her words: “One of my brothers was born a year or so later than me. His name was Pyotr, which is Peter in English. And my mother had twins; they were probably like two or three years younger than me. One of them was Michael (Mikhail) and one was Ivan, which is John. And actually one of them didn’t live that long. And I, for some reason at that time, liked the name John better. And when they were lying on a bed or something I used to switch them because I thought my mother and father wouldn’t know the difference. [laughter] (My parents)  said something that one of them was weaker, and probably wouldn’t live too long, but they knew (I was switching the babies).” 

All the boys shared names with tsars from the House of Romanov: Michael I, ruled from July 26, 1613, to July 14, 1645; Ivan V (jointly with Peter I) ruled from June 2, 1682, to February 8, 1696; Peter (I) the Great ruled from June 2, 1682, to November 2, 1721. My babushka (mother’s mother) had predicted that Mother Russia would rise again, and would be ruled by a Tsar Michael, the first tsar. My mother told us this after my husband Mike and I named our son Michael Alexander. In the 18th and 19th centuries, three Alexanders ruled Russia as emperors. Grand Duke Michael Alexandrovich Romanov (married to Natalia Brasova) was the youngest son of Emperor Alexander III of Russia, and at the time of his birth, his paternal grandfather (Alexander I) was emperor of “All the Russias.” Michael was fourth in line to the throne following his father and older brothers Nicholas and George. After his grandfather was assassinated in 1881, he became third in line. When his father died in 1894, he became second, and then the heir to the throne when George died in 1899. The birth of Nicholas's son Alexei in 1904 would have edged back Michael one spot, but Alexei was a hemophiliac and was expected to die. When Nicholas abdicated on March 15, 1917, Michael was named as his father’s successor, but he refused the throne until ratification by an elected assembly. He was never confirmed as emperor, and he was sent to prison and murdered following the Russian Revolution of 1917.

I’m not a historian and have no authority here, but people in general have very strong opinions about the Russian royals and often present passing and erroneous comments as fact. An older woman (with no trace of a foreign accent) I’d encountered in a Manhattan elevator informed me that my son “has a regal name.” “You know,” she said. “Alexander was tsar of Russia.” I smiled and said, “Yes, and Michael was the first tsar of Russia.” She grimaced, bowed her head, and informed me, “No, dear. I don’t think so.”
 
The births and deaths of the tsars are widely, if not always accurately or consistently, documented. Any evidence beyond memory of my mother’s brothers may exist only in their unmarked graves, which may or may not remain today.

Says my mother: “I don’t know how my brother Peter died. I don’t know anything about that. He was an infant. And John died when the war was almost to start, it was like 19 … I don’t know … when the Second World War was starting. And John died soon after that. And Michael … we did not have any, hardly any food, to eat, and he got very sick. There were no doctors. He had pneumonia. And he was 2 ½ when he died.” 

My mother says her brothers were buried in the tiny of village of Lemnitsa in Vitebsk Oblast, some 158 miles northeast of Minsk. There is nothing online but serial maps of Lemnitsa, searching in English or in Russian. It’s as if it exists only as a tiny pinprick on the massive expanse of a geographic region and only in the memory of the few survivors like my mother.

For my mother, Lemnitsa serves literally and figuratively as a giant grave, where nearly all members of her family perished along with all its other inhabitants. “That's where also my father's mother and sister were harshly killed, and his sister was 16 at that time,” my mother says. “That's where they are buried, too.” 

When asked for earliest childhood memory, my mother bites her lip as tears trickle down her cheeks, chin and neck. She’s able to compose herself enough to reveal this rare moment when she was about three years old. 

“Afterwards, when we moved into this house that was built, and I was very little, we didn’t really have that much food, usually, always, you know. And the people across the street, they had these … they made them for me… it was like hamburger meat or  meatballs. Just a little bit of meat and potatoes. And they gave me some. I thought that was the best thing I ever had.”

“And the other thing that I remember myself -- I really don’t remember too much of my childhood at all -- I do remember someone giving me candy one time, and ironically, I must've really wanted the candy for some reason, but I really don’t think I remember much of my childhood except a horrible war. And when the war sort of ended, but it wasn't ended yet, the Germans were still there and had let open some churches, and my brother Michael was still alive at that time, and that's when he was baptized in the church when it opened.” 

She doesn’t recall the name of the church or the priest, but she speaks of a mystical experience, which punctuates her lifelong passion for Russian Orthodoxy and guilt, even now, over her tardiness to liturgy, even when she’s ill. The girlhood hunger for faith was as intense as the need for food to survive. My mother still thinks this way. It’s an inescapable passion. 

“Oh, it was beautiful, big church,” she boasts, the tears drying, her eyes glistening with delight and a smile spreading quickly across her face. “And I think, in my opinion, I saw angels singing on top of the church, but when I was telling someone they said I probably just heard people singing, and because there were probably paintings (of angels), so it was like a very large church. Yeah, to me it looked very good.” 

She doesn’t remember anything about the cupolas, or onion domes, whether they were wooden or gilded. “I don’t remember the outside. I just remember the inside of it. And, oh yes, there were a lot of people!” Most were strangers, bonded only by faith in Orthodoxy or at least a transfixion with the church itself, finally erected, open and serving a safe place to seek refuge for the soul or body. “I was too little. I didn’t really know anyone there. The church was full.” 

My mother’s memory shifts suddenly to retrieve another visceral early childhood experience, one she’d likely repressed. 

“And then I do remember something which I'm very upset about. When my little brother was sick, Michael, I was a little bit older, and well, actually, before he got sick, the reason he got sick is because there was this one room where four or five families of us lived because we all lost our houses and everything. But it was not where I was born or where I lived, it was somewhere farther. (Possibly closer to what is now the Polish border.) And what happened is, my mother, she was in quarantine because she had typhoid fever, and my little brother was still breast-fed at that time, and because she wasn’t with us and the two of us were left there, and this one woman that had a cat in there, and it was a cold, a very, very cold autumn day. It was very cold outside. And of course, he wasn't dressed, he only had a shirt. Like a T-shirt, some kind of an undershirt on, and she threw him outside, and I wasn’t able to pick him up or anything because I was too small yet, too. And then that's when he got very sick. And he had to leave late in the night. I don’t know if it was like a crib or something like that, for a long time he was very sick, and there was another girl that was my age that lived in that house, and we were playing cards with her, and my little brother would cry, and I would get very angry at him because he was disturbing me, and so that actually to this day tortures me. That I did that.” 

I hate too push my mother when she tells this story, but I am compelled. If I don’t ask now, I know it will be forever lost, existing only as the pain she felt compounded by all the other pain that she endures every second of every day. I ask her about the woman with the cat.

“The woman with the cat, she was actually in the other room, but she was Polish, and her daughter had affairs with the German soldiers, so they had everything. We didn’t have anything.” 

I push mother more, even though I can sense from her curt response that it isn’t something she wants to elaborate. I ask her about the daughter, her age, her name. 

“Well, I don’t know. She was a woman at that time because she did have a daughter, I think. She was not a young girl. She was probably in her twenties. No. No, I don’t remember that woman's name. And then at the same time, when my little brother Michael died, that's when my grandmother, my father's mother, and his sister were very brutally killed.”

Michael died in “either October or November. I don’t know. I don’t know what year it was. Maybe 1944, probably 44. And the thing is, we were actually living at that time where the German soldiers were, but my grandmother, my father's mother and his sister that were killed, they were in a killed (by the Partisans) in a place that in the daytime, the Germans would be there at night. The Partisans were there, or vice versa, I don’t remember. But anyway, somehow, I remember, I do sort of remember going to the cemetery, and they were all, as far as I know, all killed and just buried in one grave. And but it was the cemetery, where we lived before the war started.” 

My mother says they were killed by the Belarusian Partisans, resistance fighters who fought the Nazis and collaborationism during World War II. 

“My aunt, at that time, was in school in Russia where they had to learn German. The German soldiers took her and another 16-year old, and they were asking who is living in this house and this house, and they had a list of people who they were told to burn down the houses. She was 16, so of course, she's going to say whose house it was. She was lucky because her father was also a Partisan, and of course he wasn't there at that time, but he was in their party. And my father was against the Bolsheviks and everything else, and he was in a German zone. And so when the Partisans came after them they told him whose house it was, they came to get my aunt, they wanted just her. My grandmother, she ran after her daughter. And then they would go and take them a few miles away from there, but they had to cross some kind of a river, and they were going to be interrogated there by the Partisans, where their headquarters were. But what happened, it became close to nighttime, and they had to get out of that region because I guess that's when the Germans were coming or something, so the Partisans said that we know what's going to happen with them, so they didn’t want to waste the bullets, I guess.” 

At this point, we pause during an emotional discussion so my mother can collect her thoughts. 

“And so they used the other part of the gun (rifle), the wooden part, and they beat their heads open. That's how they were killed, and when my father saw that, it really affected his mental state for the rest of his life. And so – [sobbing] then we had to just, I guess, put them in ground and we had to leave there because the fighting between the Germans and Russians would start. And then when we got back to the place where we lived, and the second day or I don’t know maybe it was the same day, I don’t really remember, I was outside. And I saw my brother who was all in white, that's not the way he was buried. I guess I don’t know what he was buried in, that I don’t remember, but I saw him outside and to me he had represented an angel. That, I think, I just made up. No one was able to tell me that. I think that I remember myself.” 

My mother pauses again. 

“I think I do remember, I saw when the fighting was going on between the Germans and Russians -- I'm not sure if it was Partisans or the or the, Russian Army. I don’t know, I never asked my parents what army it was. But I know at that point I just saw the Germans afterwards because they're the ones that took us as prisoners after, so I really didn’t see any Russian soldiers after that. And there was a wagon full of stuff and we were walking on one side, and this other girl, about my age, was walking on the other side, and the grenade was thrown, and she was very close to me, and she got killed, and I didn’t. And of course there were other people that were killed but I remember her because she was a friend of mine, you know? And that was very, very tragic.” 

Perhaps a combination of the survivor’s guilt and the desire to block out such a traumatic childhood memory made my mother forget the girl’s name. 

“And then, after that, Germans were moving us from one place to the other. And I remember we lived in Poland for almost like nine months. In Lublin, which was going back from the Russians to Poland.”