ABSTRACT
Occupational legislation could hardly be other than an application in particular of the law in general, just as professional ethics can only be a special form of common morality. To be sure, there will always be all the various forms of economic activity of individuals, which involve such overall regulation, and this cannot be the task of any group in particular. In formulating Frantsishak Bahushevich's Belarusian vision, Bahushevich could not escape the existing stereotypes of Belarusianness as a socioeconomic category. Early pioneers of Belarusian literature such as Bahushevich, Ianka Kupala and Iakub Kolas emphasized the people's peasant origins, in effect reproducing colonial stereotypes whilst also inverting them: they vaunted the beauty of the countryside and the humanity of the Belarusian peasant, and castigated the Polish gentry, thereby retaining the division into Polish gentry and Belarusian folk. The discrepancy between the characters of Ianka and Mikita problematizes the emergence of emancipationist thought in Belarus.
