A fortnight-long logistical headache solved itself when we approached the taxi rank outside the hotel. Mir and Nyasvizh are both about 90 kilometres west of Minsk, and only about 27 kilometres from each other. Here's the fix: there isn't public transport between the two. Two weeks ago I started looking for tour agencies offering private excursions covering both castles. Some didn't reply, others offered prices which were too expensive for us (at least US$200). Mary agreed it was too much to pay, so we settled on visiting only one castle by public transport (Mir). Even then, the most convenient way to the bus station was by taxi. The driver we approached offered the exact arrangement I was searching for, at US$150. My limited bargaining skills (here Mary's prowess was shackled by her inability to speak even one word of Russian) brought it down to US$140. Still expensive I reckon, but a significant discount from what was previously on offer, and at a stroke solving our transport conundrum.
The two castles were once owned by the Radziwills, a once-powerful noble family in these parts. Mir looks more like your archetypal castle, built in the imposing Gothic style and cornered with four stout turrets. It currently houses a hotel, into which we were led by our (eventually thwarted) stomachs. Our nobler inclinations led us behind the castle into a red-brick church, to which crypt its attendant led us to. It contained the sarcophagi of some members of the Sviatopolk-Mirski family, who bought over the castle in 1895 only because of its nominal connection to the family name.
Nyasvizh, although it is ringed by both a fortified wall and moat, has been moulded by its baroque adornments to resemble a palace more. This we entered, lapping up the sumptuous interior under the intense scrutiny of a dedicated corp of stewards who seem to outnumber visitors. To be fair I only counted about six other visitors in our time there, compared to the on average two stewards per twelve or more rooms in the palace. The interior showed the usual trappings of aristocratic life - balls and hunts, mostly - with the trophy room containing a collection extensive enough to drive a WWF activist to arms.
The castles might be an aristocratic aberration in a state that is arguably still in a intimate embrace with its Soviet past. But they showed who were the kind of people in control before the seven-decade-long socialist interlude. History, ably demonstrated by Timothy Snyder, reveals that identity in these parts is incredibly fluid, a far cry from the Soviet emphasis on nationality when it came to organizing their diverse population. Belarus, like Latvia, is a pretty modern concept. In the past thousand years it was variously a part of Kievan Rus, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Russian empire and interwar Poland.
Take the Radziwill and Sviatopolk-Mirski families for instance. Radziwill is the Polonized name of a family that is Lithuanian in origins. The years have witnessed the splitting of the family into three different branches, with power bases in different parts of the old Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. They have also adhered to different persuasions within Christianity, with both Catholics and Calvinists amongst their ranks. The Sviatopolk-Mirski's are another case in point. They claim Ukrainian descent, but are recognized to be Polish by their historical association with Poland. Some members of the family converted to Orthodoxy in the nineteenth century, thus inaugurating a Russian branch of the family. Today their erstwhile palaces are in Belarus.
Nationality exists today by dint of how states are organized in the present world. But we shouldn't also let a focus on nationality and national history blind us to the richer, more diverse components of our past. Heritage shared doesn't diminish its value.
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