The era of Catherine the Great in folk historical representations of Russians and Belarusians: the general and the special

   The author considers the attitude of Belarusian and Russian peoples to the era of Catherine the Great as expressed through collective traditional historical knowledge. The period of its reign is evaluated as a transition from mythological time to historical. In folk texts, Catherine II often acts as the destroyer of the old and creator of the new world. The foreign policy of Catherine II has found numerous responses in Russian historical songs and traditions. The Belarusians presented the struggle of the empress with the Commonwealth, the sections of the Polish-Lithuanian state and the entry of Belarusian lands into Russia in the form of toponymic traditions and a fabulous form. Belarusian tales reflected the cooperation of the Russian government with Magnat Karol Radziwill (Pan Kakhanka) and King Stanislav Ponyatovsky. The personal life of Catherine the Great attracted the attention of all Russian people, was surrounded by many rumors, who often reflected in folk art. Communication of the empress with immigrants from a common people often occurs in narratives due to equalizing their estate status: the queen and folk heroes enter into dialogue not according to the social vertical, but on equal terms. The domestic policy of Catherine II is ambiguously evaluated in folk historical ideas. Russian texts condemn the planting of serfdom, personify anti-consonant ideas in the form of a legend about Peter III- Deliverer, and at the same time keep the memory of the liberation of the monastery peasants, weakening the duties of the Ural Cossacks, soldier-wings about the death of the empress. The existence of legends among the Old Believers about the Empress’s desire to «correct» faith indicates that the relationship of the Old Believers with the authorities did not come down to protest and social struggle. The condemnation of serfdom is more associated with specific landowners than with the empress herself. The author considers it pointless to perceive recruitment songs as a condemnation of the Russian state, since here we are not dealing with a mechanical display of the situation, but with the result of understanding socio-historical realities that fit into a wider symbolic aspect. The positive consequences of the spread of recruitment to the Belarusian lands were also noted. In the Commonwealth, Belarusian peasants never had the status of defenders of the Fatherland, since the protection of the Motherland was the privilege of the gentry. Belarusian peasants who served in the imperial army returned to themselves in the village and, telling about the service, contributed to the formation of confidence in young people in the fact that fellow villagers are involved in the defense of the Fatherland, which in this case began to be noted as a local district, and great and «their own» state. The presence of a considerable body of toponymic legends, in which Catherine the Great plays the role of a «cultural hero», is evidenced. Parallels such as texts are found in Russian legends about the «traveling» of the Empress. Usually in these texts explains the origin of the name of a particular settlement, where Catherine was driving. Locking trees along the curb by order of the empress is considered by Russian and Belarusian peasants as involvement in an important state case. The author revealed some common patterns in the development of the people’s historical ideas of Russian and Belarusians, showed how the image of the empress served as the embodiment of those hopes, illusions and stereotypes that were characteristic of the traditional political culture of the Eastern Slavs.

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