Franciszek Skoryna i inni drukarze z Wielkiego Księstwa Litewskiego i Korony Polskiej na łamach wileńskiej prasy białoruskojęzycznej w latach 1909-1918. Przyczynek do dziejów kształtowania białoruskich stereotypów narodowych

ENAt the beginning of the 20th century, publications devoted to the publishers of the first books in the Church Slavonic and Old West-Russian languages in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Kingdom of Poland began to appear in the Vilna (Vilnius) Belorussian language press. In the articles authored by a well-known publicist Vaclaŭ Lastoŭski, at first it was affirmed that the founder of Belorussian printing was the Cracow printing house Szwajpolt Fiol. Then the role of the first publisher of Belorussian books was attributed to the native of Polack, Francysk Skaryna. Since that time, Skaryna in the minds of Belarusians has been entrenched as a Belorussian printer, although in his epoch (XVI century) the Belorussian nation did not yet exist and Skaryna considered himself Old West-Russian, that is, a representative of a broader community that included the ancestors of Belorussians and Ukrainians, and also inhabitants of the Grand Duchy of Moscow. Thus, Belorussian publicists successfully used Skaryna’s personality to create an idea of the existence of Belorussian culture and language in the 16th century and their high level of development. This was an important stage in the process of forming the Belorussian national idea in the early 20th century.