Astapenko A. Ethnic factors in the formation of the Belarusian people and nation.

A comprehensive study of the ethnic history of Belarus from the origins of the Belarusian ethnos to the present days is carried out in the dissertation. The author's model of the study of Belarusian ethnogenesis and nationogenesis is built using the problem-chronological method. The historiography of the concepts of Belarusian ethnogenesis is generalized and the contribution of Belarusian and foreign researchers of the ethnic history of Belarus is personified. The author revised outdated attitudes, revealed the main shortcomings inherent works of previous periods; introduced little-known, factual, statistical and analytical material into scientific circulation; analyzed little-known historiographic and factual sources of Belarusian and foreign origin; identified, analyzed and refuted a number of analytical and factual divergences and perversions that relate to the ethnic history of Belarusians; substantiated the author's concept of the stages of development of the Belarusian people and nation and the essence of the Belarusian national idea. The author criticizes the concept of the Old Russian nationality, recognizes the role of the Baltic factor and the participation of the Lithuanian tribe, which underwent Slavization, in the process of ethnogenesis of Belarusians.