The article discusses the infl uence of the process of urbanization on the Belarusian nationality. Due to some historical conditions the Western cities-communes have not formed in Belarus. At the beginning of the New Ages the Belarusian city has had Magdeburgian law and the trading relations, it has been the centre of the political life, the residence of the State offi cials and the provinces. Through the social-economical backwardness of the Russian empire the peasants of Belarus could not

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... into the towns from the country. The towns and the cities in Belarus were not Belarusian but Jewish and Polish ones. Due to the World War II there have emerged the Polish Holocaust, repatriation and the Soviet industrialization which have made some auspicious condi tions for the overtaking modernization in Belarus. During only one generation the peasant Belarusian nation has become the urban one. Such overtaking process of the urbanization has been preventing the formation of the standards and the traditions of the Belarusian city. The basis of the social and cultural life of Belarusians has been forming the traditions of the Soviet culture. That is why we can come to the conclusion that the overtaking modernization is closely related to the radical changes of the national identity. The more overtaking is modernization of the cities and the whole State, the more dangerous is the deprivation of the national peculiarity. The nation whose spiritual life is not utterly formed can hardly successfully adapt itself to the social and economical changes, which are determined by the overta king modernization. These alterations do absolutely not correspond to its spiritual way of life. Countries, which are "overtaking modernization" in the anthropological and cultural dimensions, make the possibility to face the problems, which are unfamiliar to progressive countries of the Modern civilization. The processes of industrialization, commercialization, individualization and urbanization are universal for modernization, but in the former countries they are affected by a number of external reasons and take two different forms: