SUMMARY:

The article by Pavel Tereshkovich takes its point of departure from a series of paradoxical biographies of men of borderlands. It traces the paths of lived experience and the structure of identity choices made by Mikhał Bobrowski, Ignacy Danilowich, and the Iwanowski brothers, who played a crucial role as protagonists of early Byelorussian nationalism. The case of the Iwanowskis, who became, respectively, Polish, Belorusian, and Lithuanian national activists, underscores the main argument of the article about the nature of cultural boundaries and structure of identity in the context of borderlands. An inquiry into the life stories of men of borderlands is placed within the broad context of the multiplicity and fluctuations of collective identity in the East European borderland in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The author argues that smooth and adaptive identification was a typical social practice in the borderland environment of cultural hybridization and flexibility.