Any Eastern European country can only relate to Russian power, to defend itself or to align itself with it. This is all the more true for Belarus, which is rooted in Moscow's identity and strategic system.
The news often imagines that the key to the repressive success of the Minsk regime against the contestation of the 2020 presidential elections is due only to an unscrupulous use of force and Russian support. Strength is certainly fundamental, but it does not explain a phenomenon, it underlines it. It was not just a political question that clashed in the square, the yes or no to the "re-elected" Lukashenko, but also two different visions of Belarusian history and therefore of identity clashed. In order for the latter, which has not yet been completed, to be defined, an agreement is needed on the meaning of the historical events experienced. Identity that cannot exist until there are collective myths and a shared historical memory.
Lukashenko, in order to save himself, rehabilitated the version that can be defined as neo-Soviet or pro-Russian, still a majority and most felt, even by those who oppose the regime, while on the contrary the version, which can be defined with a certain "Westernist forcing" ”, Has failed to create adherence to its interpretative hinges.
The question that must be asked is what the two versions consist of, only in this way will it be possible to understand the prevalence of one over the other. Above all, only in this way will it be understandable how both versions are limited from the inside, because they are looking for an autonomous historical legitimation, which has practically no foundation.
The biggest leap that Belarusians make in giving themselves a profile is recent, from the mid-800s, and is limited to the literary sphere, capable of rising from folklore to culture, but this does not mean that Belarusian, so ennobled, becomes a language. national. The prevailing russophony and the lack of identity solidity it indicates therefore relativize any debate about an alleged ethnic distinction of Belarusians.
Belorussian identity uncertainty is the daughter of a land, which is the crossroads of subjects more accomplished than her. In it we have seen the alternation and / or intersection of the domination of various geopolitical actors, Lithuanian, Polish-Lithuanian, Russian, etc. paradox, the most precise to define the people. However, it is not a real, geopolitical name. It speaks of space, not of men, it is the sign of an unfinished business, it says that none of the other names (white Ruthenians, polashuki, litviny ...) is sufficient to encompass everything, thereby indicating that something is suspected of being. Indicates an identity in search of itself.
Making peace over names means making peace over the domain stories these names carry. The name Belarus will indicate a solid identity the day it will bring with it a common vision, which can reconcile all the experiences of the peoples who have alternated in these places.
To have an identity, historical memory is needed and vice versa. Above all, a founding and accepted myth is needed. Apparently the two sides share it, identifying the Principality of Polock as the beginning of a Belarusian history. But immediately they separate, because if for the pro-Russians it was organic to Kievan Rus, for the Westernists it is instead a submission to it. If the divergence on the most ancient myth is above all academic, the one on modern myths is dramatic, because here the myth of one is felt as anti-myth from the other and vice versa.
First of all, the opposition concerns the beginning of the Belarusian statehood. According to the neo-Soviet version, the Bolshevik revolution of 1917 pushed the ethnic groups of Belarus to awaken, which would be confirmed by the recognition that Moscow on January 1, 1919 grants to the Congress of the Western section of the Bolshevik party, which met in Smolensk, that is, that of a semi-statehood. For Westernists, on the other hand, the first modern state body arose with the foundation of the Belarusian People's Republic on March 25, 1918, taking advantage of the victorious German war against the Russians on the eastern front. The flag of this entity is precisely the one that is found in the demonstrations against Lukaschenko, or in white, red and white horizontal stripes, but it was a republic never recognized or heard by the majority of local populations.
Whatever figure the awakening had, in the first post-war period it did not succeed in pacifying the different memberships, to homogenize which, the Stalinist purges in the 30s hit about three hundred writers and intellectuals among those most convinced of a Belarus other than the newborn Soviet history. Their assassination weakens the anti-Russian vision, to the point of being totally discredited when, shortly after, it is taken over by that part of the population, which decides to side with Nazism during the Second World War. This conflict, with its endless massacres in those lands, is recognized by the majority of the population as the most tragic moment in its history. The collaborators in fact decide, to legitimize themselves, to make the Westernist vision their own, thereby effectively crushing it on support for the Nazi occupation. The compromise therefore exists, and it will be the subsequent communist ideology that will pass Westernism and Nazism as synonyms. A condemnation which, however, finds fertile ground in the collective conscience of the vast majority of the population fighting in that war. To this day, the Westernist version unwittingly supports this accusation, because it tries to rehabilitate collaborationism, presenting it as a defense of Belarusian independence from Russian and colonialist Stalinism. 90% of Belarusians do not reject the idea that Stalinism was a brutal system, but believe that this does not change the meaning of history lived by Belarus in the USSR. This underlines that it is not scientific truths that create identity affiliations, but lived ones. The Westernist version still fails to intercept the real popular experiences.
A 2016 survey conducted by the Institute of History of the National Academy of Sciences, in establishing a hierarchy of the most significant events for the population of Belarus, found that 70% of those over 18 indicated the second war. world and recognized July 3, 1944, the date of the liberation of Minsk, as true founding myths (positively), while the second significant event (negatively) was considered the collapse of the USSR. This perception indicates that the majority of Belarusians continue to believe that the fundamental events of their collective life are linked to the Russian-Soviet world.
The Westernist lesson of the historical discourse fails to understand the enormous qualitative watershed of the Second World War, where the victory is not only against an invasion, but against an immense extermination, difficult to justify with any anti-Bolshevism / Russianism. Furthermore, with the victory, true social emancipation takes place. Before the Second World War the urban population was for the most part made up of Russians, Jews and Poles, who fill the ranks of the administration, closed to the peasant masses. The massacres free the bureaucratic ranks to the socially lowest element, to the most "Belarusian" masses. To this must be added the relative economic well-being, which the Soviet empire managed to guarantee after World War II. The Westernist version attempts to moderate the re-evaluation of collaborationism with the idea that the rejection of Nazism, while necessary, took place only by bartering it with the return of Stalinist colonialism, but thus confirming that this front fails to produce a paradigm corresponding to real life. . This is one of the great limitations of the Westernist historical discourse, because, as Valentin Akudovich underlines in the essay Without Us in 2001, this version certainly offers the local populations not a glorious idea of themselves, of liberators associated with the Russians, but rather the image of slaves in a colony, a condition perceived all the more false in the light of victory and well-being. It must be said, however, that when the Belarusian regime needs to move away from excessive Russian invasion, it is forced to rehabilitate symbols and events of the opposite version.
The strength of these symbols, however, should not be overestimated, it is not in fact a new adhesion of the majority of the population to the historical-Westernist version, but rather a "no", for now political, to an election and a regime now considered unacceptable. . Some "pro-Western" sectors seem partly aware of these limitations when, while affirming the idea that Belarus is Europe and not Russian (thereby arguing that Russia is not European), they immediately specify that they have no intention of bringing Belarus in the European Union or in NATO. After all, finding a bridge with the other version and disconnecting the discourse on historical memory from the political no to President Lukashenko still requires a strong civic maturation on the part of this faction, absent for now, but which has at least managed to introduce into the debate and in the conscience certain historical legacies and symbols linked to the Polish and Lithuanian worlds. However, without that bridge and that split, this vision still cannot attract the support of the majority of the population. If there were, this could instead slide over the very long term towards theses, which legitimize a current Belarus as an oriental geopolitical subject, yes, but only partially Russian. It is an exclusively identity shift which is actually taking place, but which remains extremely minority, very slow, with a path that is not taken for granted and painful, because to be fulfilled it must clash with the giant at its borders. Until that time, the Belarusians will continue to arise without becoming, to exist without being.
Photo: Kremlin
