The literary movements at the end of the 19^th and beginning of the 20^th century are a transnational phenomenon. Emerging as an interliterary chain reaction they changed considerably in subsequent links. Belarusian literature, which is the youngest among the Slavonic literatures, is no exception, but its "young movement" did not fully develop. In the period of "Naša Niva" (at the beginning of the 20^th century) this might be explained by the need of consolidation, by the formation of symbolic capital and by the generation of a mass reader (which is hardly to reconcile with the modernism of "young movements"). And in the 1920s, when there takes place a separation between new and old literature and poetry is drawn to avant-garde, the movement didn’t take a full shape rather due to ideological reasons, namely the imposing of a dichotomy (proletarian/reactionary). Nevertheless, the tendency to form this movement says a lot about the interaction of 'small' literatures both with neighboring (Belarusian/Russian/Polish) and European literary discourses.