Belarusian national revival

The Belarusian national revival (Belarusian: Беларускае нацыянальнае адраджэнне) is a social, cultural and political movement that advocates the revival of Belarusian culture, language, customs, and the creation of the Belarusian statehood at the national foundation. Revival refers to the Belarusian nationalism and the modern Belarusian national consciousness represented by several waves starting from the 19th century.

In the early and mid 19th century, Jan Czeczot, Wladyslaw Syrokomla, Wincenty Dunin-Marcinkiewicz, Jan Barszczewski and several other writers, most of whom represented the local nobility, created the first literary works in modern Belarusian language. Their works were written in local rural dialects and ignored the traditions of the written Old Belarusian language from the period of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The greater part of the Belarusian regional elite at that time supported the movement to reestablish the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and took an active part in the uprisings of 1830-31 and 1863-64. In that situation a new trend for Belarusian national separatism was something completely new and unknown in regional policy. Konstanty Kalinowski, the leader of the 1863 Uprising on the lands of the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania, published his appeals to the Belarusian peasants in the Belarusian language, but his activity was part of the movement for independence of the "Polish" new Commonwealth of Poland and Lithuania (not to be confused with present-day Lithuania, which was historically one of many provinces and was less than 20% of the territory of Grand Duchy of Lithuania).

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