"Poland flourishes in Latin, Lithuania flourishes in Ruthenian". A patriotic masterpiece of the 17th century turned out to be a Russian forgery of the 19th century.
The work, which begins with these lines, has long been considered a praise of the Old Belarusian language and one of the oldest examples of national patriotic lyric poetry. However, new research shows that the textbook poem may be a falsification authored by a Russian official.
The first lines of the famous poem from the pages of the Slutsk copy of the Statute of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania of 1529, attributed to Jan Kazimierz Paszkiewicz. Photo: pravo.by / Russian State Library
In the history of Belarusian literature, the name of Jan Kazimierz Paszkiewicz is firmly linked to his only known work — the poem "Poland flourishes in Latin, Lithuania flourishes in Ruthenian...". The text is dated August 22, 1621, and is preserved as a handwritten addendum on the blank pages of the Slutsk copy of the Statute of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania of 1529. The work is written in proper trochaic tetrameter, making it perhaps the first example of syllabic-tonic versification in our lands, and contains a clear patriotic message: a nation and a state exist as long as their language lives ("Ruthenian" then referred to Old Belarusian and Old Ukrainian languages, unlike the "Muscovite" language).
However, researcher Iryna Bahdanovich in her work for the publication Studia Białorutenistyczne casts serious doubt on the authenticity of the work.
Textual and historical analysis reveals a number of inconsistencies that make the poem absolutely anachronistic for the realities of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in the early 17th century.
Page of the Slutsk copy of the Statute of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania of 1529 with the poem. Photo: pravo.by / Russian State Library
The first anomaly is linguo-poetic. As early as the 1970s, researcher Mikola Hrynchyk pointed out that the use of trochaic tetrameter in 1621 seems extremely unnatural. At that time, both Polish and Belarusian versification were totally dominated by the 13-syllable line. Other scholars also noted a certain primitivism of the poem, calling it "schoolish," as its form more closely resembles a diligently performed student's homework than an organic work of the Baroque era with a complex system of metaphors.
The second anomaly is ideological. For the Lithuanians (Litvins) and Ruthenians of the 17th century, the problem of "survival" of their own language and linking it to worldwide fame ("It has already reached the whole world") was not so acute.
The Old Belarusian language had the status of a state language, the Statutes were written in it, and it simply fulfilled its communicative function, not requiring apologetics in the style of 19th-century national romanticism.
Instead, the content of the poem perfectly aligns with the ideology of "Pan-Russianism" of the Russian Empire in the 1840s. The authorities needed to historically justify their rights to the lands annexed after the partitions of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and imperial officials identified the "Russian" language of Belarusians with the "Russky yazyk" (Russian language) of the empire.
The third anomaly is structural. The modern textbook version of the poem, introduced by Maksim Haretski in the 1920s, consists of ten lines. However, in the first two publications of this work, made in Vilnius in 1842 and 1843, there were only eight lines. The passage: "Without the former in Poland you will not survive, / Without the latter in Lithuania you will be a fool" was completely absent. These lines appeared only later. A logical question: if the authentic poem was physically written in the manuscript of the Statute, where did two lines disappear during the first publications? This may indicate that the text was refined and edited "on the fly" already in the 19th century.
The first page of the Slutsk copy of the Statute of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania of 1529. Photo: pravo.by / Russian State Library
In 1823, the poem did not yet exist
The most precarious point is the history of the Statute's manuscript itself. In 1823, Professor Ignat Danilovich of Vilnius University published a detailed bibliographic description of the Slutsk copy of the First Lithuanian Statute in the journal "Dziennik Wileński". Danilovich personally worked with the document and meticulously documented not only the main text but also all marginal notes on the blank sheets.
The professor mentions that the manuscript belonged to a certain Jan Kazimierz Paszkiewicz, who left his notes on the blank pages after each chapter. Danilovich calls them "concepts" and uses the rather disdainful Polish word "zabazgrał" (scribbled). The researcher dates these inscriptions approximately to before 1654, based on the fact that the markings of the next owner of the book, Ludwik Damaradski, are dated to that year.
Danilovich, who meticulously recorded every detail, does not mention the patriotic poem about language by a single word. He also does not specify the exact date "August 22, 1621," which allegedly appeared before the text of the work. The probability that an experienced professor would not notice such a vivid poetic text and err in dates by thirty years is practically zero.
The conclusion is obvious: in 1823, the poem simply did not yet exist on the pages of the manuscript.
The physical condition of the document itself further confirms the fact of forgery. The researcher points out strange manipulations with page numbering and handwriting. Some modern literary scholars, for example, Ivan Saverychanka, claim that the poem is located on the 13th leaf. However, in the fundamental academic publication "The First Lithuanian Statute: Paleographical and Textual Analysis of Copies" (Vilnius, 1983), it is precisely indicated that the work is on page 25/27.
Spread of the Slutsk copy of the Statute of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania of 1529. On one page, six genuine autographs of Jan Kazimierz Paszkiewicz are placed, and on the adjacent page, their copies with the date and the poem. Photo: pravo.by / Russian State Library
On page 24, there are six genuine autographs of Jan Kazimierz Paszkiewicz, whose authenticity is beyond doubt. And on the adjacent 25th page, two of these autographs suddenly reappear, but now with the addition of the date "22.VIII.1621" and the poem's text itself.
Lithuanian historians Stanislovas Lazaūtka and Edvardas Gudavičius, who conducted a paleographical analysis of the manuscript, noted that the handwriting on page 25 differs from Paszkiewicz's genuine autographs — it is executed in a "stylized, flowing manner."
Here it is worth making a remark about the figures of the researchers themselves. Their views on the history of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania were directly opposite. While Stanislovas Lazaūtka was known for his sympathies towards Belarusian heritage and consistently used the term "Old Belarusian language," Edvardas Gudavičius advocated positions of strict Lithuanian ethnocentrism, denied the state-forming role of East Slavs, and called the language of the Statutes an "interdialect" devoid of national basis.
Who benefited from the poem?
If the poem did not exist in 1823, where did it come from, and who benefited from this mystification? All traces lead to the Vilnius governor Alexei Vasilievich Semyonov.
Alexei Semyonov, then still Minsk vice-governor, in the album "The Thirties". Photo: Wikimedia Commons
Semyonov was a participant in the War of 1812 and a former Decembrist, a member of the "Union of Prosperity". After the 1825 uprising, he was arrested, but Nicholas I released Semyonov with an exculpatory certificate. In the following decade, Semyonov's career took off; first, in 1834, he was appointed Minsk vice-governor, and in October 1840, he took the position of Vilnius civil governor.
In Vilnius, the governor became interested in local archives. He took the same Slutsk copy of the Statute from the library of the Catholic Theological Academy from Bishop Klangewicz and did not return it for a long time, despite numerous reminders and demands. The bishop died in 1841, never receiving the book back.
In the same year, 1841, Semyonov reported to the Minister of Internal Affairs in St. Petersburg about an "outstanding find" — a 17th-century Russian-language poem discovered on the pages of the Statute.
In his report, the governor reveals the ideological importance of the discovery: the poem allegedly proves that the "Russian" language (which imperial officials consciously identified with Old Belarusian) in the 17th century was not only a court language in Lithuania but also a spoken language, dominant for all inhabitants, regardless of their confession.
To make the discovery even more attractive to St. Petersburg, Semyonov resorts to trickery. In the report, he writes that the poem was created on August 22, 1622 (although the text itself states 1621). And although the official most likely simply made a mistake with the year, he banks on the magic of other numbers — the day and the month.
Semyonov emphasizes that the text was written specifically on August 22 — the very day when the coronation of the reigning Emperor Nicholas I took place (August 22, 1826). The governor presented the poem to the tsar as a "prediction of Russia's future glory," made more than 200 years before this event. This was a brilliant ideological move, for which Semyonov later received monarchical favor and the Order of Saint Anna, 1st class.
Technically, carrying out the forgery was not difficult. The governor had unlimited access to the document with blank pages and time. Using the lithography technology available then, the falsifiers were able to copy the general style of Paszkiewicz's genuine inscriptions and insert the desired patriotic text next to them (which explained the change in handwriting later recorded by Lithuanian historians).
To hide traces of interference, Semyonov began to confuse the origin of the manuscript in his publications, presenting the Slutsk copy as some separate "Vilnius" one. The book itself, after all the manipulations, never returned to Vilnius but settled in St. Petersburg.
Thus, the textbook poem "Poland flourishes in Latin..." is, with high probability, the result of a literary mystification of the 1840s, created by a Russian official who thereby hoped to legitimize the annexation of the lands of the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania to the Russian Empire.