Academic Emigration of Belarusians from Western Belarus to Czechoslovakia in the 1920s

Abstract

In the 1920s–1930s, Czechoslovakia implemented an unprecedented state program aimed at assisting emigrants from the former Russian Empire. The predominant share of the funding under this program was directed toward providing higher education at Czechoslovak universities for emigrant youth who, in the view of Czechoslovak President T. G. Masaryk, were expected to play a decisive role in the future revival of a democratic, federal, and pro-Czechoslovak post-Bolshevik Russia. Activists of the Belarusian national movement employed the “Russian Aid Action” to pursue a different objective: the training of Belarusian intellectual cadres at Czechoslovak institutions of higher learning, primarily to counter the assimilation policies of the Polish authorities in Western Belarus (under the  Riga Peace Treaty of 1921, the territories of Western Belarus were incorporated into Poland). The aim of the study is to trace the process by which Czechoslovakia emerged in the 1920s as the principal Belarusian academic center located outside the ethnic territory of the Belarusian people. The research examines the role of Belarusian national movement representatives in securing scholarships for Belarusians under the Czechoslovak government’s “Russian Aid Action”; describes the  selection campaign among Western Belarusian youth for study in Czechoslovak universities; and identifies the principal routes by which Belarusians from Western Belarus reached Czechoslovakia. The findings demonstrate that Czechoslovak universities in the 1920s became an alternative platform for obtaining higher education for graduates of Western Belarusian gymnasiums, whose access to higher education was restricted by the Polish authorities.