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The article examines the political and cultural processes of nation-building over thirty years of independence in Belarus. It argues that in becoming a nation-state Belarus has faced challenges similar to the other post-Soviet nations but has proved an exception in the choice of strategies it used to address them. The paper examines how, on the eve of independence, the nationalist elites devised policies aimed at consolidating statehood around the national revival in opposition to the Soviet past. It explores the role played by linguistic policy and historical memory as the two main arenas for implementing their visions of Belarusian identity. The paper then maps a shift in this trajectory from Lukashenka's rise to power to a national project based on reappropriation of Soviet legacy. Up until 2020, the state effectively navigated a geopolitical environment and adjusted its sociocultural parameters to preempt the society's shifting expectations. Finally, the paper reflects on how protests in 2020 demonstrated both the lack of support for Lukashenka and his reliance on the violent repression and external support for remaining in power. The war in Ukraine revealed limits of Belarus's sovereignty, while the society's ability to consolidate for its defense has been seriously undermined by the repression. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent protests against the dictatorship in Belarus and the subsequent political conflict simultaneously polarised the Belarusian nation and unified various groups of protesters with the help of new national imagery. These opposing but connected processes instrumentalise the Belarusian Soviet past. Heritage as a way of past-in-present existence becomes a tool in this struggle. In this paper, I focus on the music band 'Pesniary' that represents the Soviet music heritage in Belarus. The manifoldness of Pesniary creativity and the peculiarities of the band's cultural origins allows different agents to articulate its meaning as Soviet and national heritage at the same time. Using the critical heritage studies approach to heritage as a constantly antagonistic process of meaning-making of the past, I explain how popular music heritage functions in the field of political dissent as a means of assimilation of contested past. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the challenges and difficulties faced in using a peasant model to create a national matrix for Belarus. The sense of belonging to a nation generated by the 'community of the soil' [Foucher, M. (2007). L'obsession des frontières [Obsession of the Frontiers]. Paris: Perrin] has a special significance for 'community of destiny' [Weber, M. (1995). Économie et société: tome 2 [Economy and Society: vol. 2]. Paris: Plon] for the Belarusian nation in that Belarus is a peasant nation. 'The peasantry is the most authentic expression of the relationship between a nation and its land; peasant customs become ethnic symbols and referents' [Thiesse, A.-M. (1999). La création des identités nationales: Europe XVIIIe-XXe siècles [The Creation of National Identities. Europe XVIIIth-XXth centuries]. Paris: Seuil, 159]. By studying the origin of the sense of belief in a community, Weber (1995) notes that it may originate from the similarities of the exterior habitus [Bourdieu, P. (1964). Le déracinement [Uprooting]. Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit] adaptation to external conditions, and imitation of a neighboring group. These assumptions are of significant importance for the study of Belarusian identity, an understanding of which cannot be reached without taking into account the fundamental role played by the peasantry in the history of Belarus. Historical analysis indeed bears out the importance of the peasant stratum in the Belarusian socio-political and identity structure. Many scholars insist on the fact that identity-building process are inherently territorial Foucher (2007), relating to the 'soil' of the nation [Balibar, E. (2005). Europe. Constitution. Frontière [Europe. Constitution. Frontier]. Paris: Editions du Passant], which is particularly important for peasant nations, as Belarusians. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This article uses a comparison with Ukraine to investigate why protests against Lukashenka in 2020 failed to oust the Belarusian dictator. First, in contrast to his counterparts in Ukraine, Lukashenka successfully built new authoritarian economic and coercive institutions in the 1990s that raised the costs of opposition activity and reduced challengers' access to business support. Second, Belarus has lacked a strong national identity that was critical to opposition success in Ukraine. In Ukraine, relatively powerful anti-Russian nationalism repeatedly motivated a core group of anti-incumbent activists and facilitated the opposition's control over local power structures that supported protest activities at critical moments. In Belarus, weak national identity and consequent dearth of committed activists in national government institutions in the 1990s hampered efforts to challenge Lukashenka's consolidation of authoritarian power. In addition, weaker national identity undermined the capacity of opposition forces to control local power structures that might have aided opposition protest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The many recent crises in Belarus are often seen through the prism of democratization, post-communist transition, and nation- and identity-building. As a rule, it is put into the context of the 1989 democratization in Central and Eastern Europe and compared with similar societal mobilization in Georgia (2003), Ukraine (2004; 2014), and Kyrgyzstan (2005). This article, however, argues that while these theoretical approaches provide an important explanatory potential, they nevertheless fail to account for informal, hidden, and unstable processes presently unfolding in the Belarusian society, leading to profound change. We argue that, in the vulnerable, unpredictable, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) world of today, our knowledge and ability to plan and achieve desirable outcomes are limited in contrast to a largely positivist or interpretivist epistemology of the mainstream theories, which conceive of the world as a closed system. In this article, we offer an alternative explanation of the many crises in Belarus by drawing on the insights of complexity-thinking to suggest that (hidden) transformative change in the country is now irreversible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the anti-Lukashenka protest movement in Belarus by comparing it to the Solidarity movement in Poland. We organize our analysis around the concept of four stages identifiable in the development of social movements: emergence, coalescence, bureaucratization, and decline. We argue that protests in Belarus reached the bureaucratization stage, but their transformation into a more durable movement was slowed down by the brutal repressions unleashed by the Lukashenka regime propped up by Putin's Russia. However, the spectacular changes in people's conceptions of national identity built around symbols different from those associated with the officialdom may sustain emotional mobilization necessary for formation of higher levels of organizations in the oppressive context of today's Belarus. The contours of this process are brought into sharp relief when compared with the long, cumulative trajectory of the 1956-89 anti-authoritarian Polish revolts. This opens the way for cautious prognostication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How does the role of ordinary citizens change in the interpretation and production of national identity under an authoritarian political system? Exploring the discursive role of authoritarian political stability on perceptions of national identity, this study examines how categories of "national" are appropriated and internalized in identity talks among Belarusians. It offers a bottom-up perspective on national identification, drawing on analysis of six focus group discussions with Belarusian citizens. The main objective was to observe everyday language and how people construct symbolic significance for certain practices as "national" and what are the meanings invested in replicating and re-enacting different identity markers, given the contingencies of everyday life in an authoritarian political context. I evaluate cross-group and intergroup discursive variations in responses and repertoires of volunteer participants in terms of agreement and disagreement. Public conformity with regime ideational practices does not appear to equate with political allegiance to the current regime. Even when identity repertoires echo the identity discourses of official state ideology, people attach their own meanings and interpretations to these identity markers. However, I find that the authoritarian context affects how identity repertoires are enacted and talked about. Integrating performative aspects of identity talks into the analysis, I note how participants consciously reflect on the sensitivity of political topics, and prioritize politically neutral narratives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rise of Belarus to political independence has required it to delineate its cultural boundaries in-between two ‘Others’—Poland and Russia. This essay explores a range of portrayals of Poland in Belarusian cultural artefacts, including television programmes, film, novels, and theatre performances—from the image of an ‘Other’ that threatens Belarusian identity, to the main ally supporting the European choice of Belarusians. Examples from Belarusian cultural texts analysed in the essay show how representations of Poland are grounded in selective and ideologically driven interpretations of Belarus’s own past, while their coexistence reveals the contested nature of the geopolitics of Belarusian identity. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Many modern European nations can trace their heritage back to one of the large multinational empires that once encompassed much of the European landscape, and nationalising elites often refer back to their place in these empires for the materials upon which their nation was purportedly built. In this article we examine some Belarusian nationalising elites and their references to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in order to demonstrate a recent trend in East European small-state national identity construction, which we refer to as 'small state imperialism.' Small state imperialism exhibits realist characteristics and paints the small nation's place in empires of the past as privileged and aggressive, and in this way deviates from the oppressed but morally superior image one typically expects of a small nation. This interpretation is not limited to Belarus; in a number of East European states a similar imperialist turn has taken root in nationalist discourses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]