Victory Square in Minsk, where thousands of Belarusians will gather on May 9th. Photo by diasUndKompott via Flickr.

On the 9^th of May, thousands of people will flock to the city centre of Minsk, Belarus to celebrate the day that Nazi forces surrendered to the Soviet Army in 1945. Although Victory Day continues to be actively commemorated in a number of post-socialist states, the celebrations in Belarus’s capital hold particular significance in this Eastern European state. The day’s mass gathering stands in stark contrast to the everyday norms of public life in Belarus, where public assembly is restricted by laws. But perhaps more interesting is the connection of Victory Day to Belarus’s Soviet past—a history that has been mobilised by the Belarusian regime to marginalise nationalist consciousness in the country.

Belarus is a country of almost ten million people, dubbed in the West as “Europe’s last dictatorship”. The country’s authoritarian president, Aleksandr Lukashenka, who has made international news in recent years for his notorious ban on public hand clapping and his quip that it’s “better to be a dictator than gay” in response to criticisms by Germany’s foreign minister, is perhaps the most obvious impediment to Belarus’s development. However, behind the eccentricities of its president is a country amidst a crisis of national identity: 60% of the country’s citizens prefer to use Russian over the native Belarusian in daily life, and almost half of Belarusians are unconcerned about their country’s potential loss of traditions and distinctiveness, according to data from the Belarus State University and the Eurasian Monitor. Though Belarusians scorn the West’s tendency to subsume Belarus under the umbrella of Russia, the Russification of their country reveals a nation lacking a strong conviction in self-determination. In this way, Belarus has diverged from other CIS states, calling into question the country’s ability to forge an independent future for itself in the post-Soviet era.

President Lukashenka speaking at the Slavianski Bazaar in Vitebsk, Belarus, a festival devoted to Slavic music. Photo by Socialism Expo. via Flickr.

Soviet nostalgia and nationalist extremism

As early as perestroika and the 1990s, when many Eastern European Soviet satellites were vying for European integration, Belarusian leadership showed little desire to secure independence from Russia. This lack of nationalist fervor evolved into an active campaign of Russification with the 1994 election of Lukashenka, a small-town collective farm manager from the north of the country. Lukashenka became a staunch promoter of Russian tradition, repressing nationalists and casting them as internal enemies of the state. In 2005, political parties were prohibited from using the words “Belarusian” and “National” in their names, causing one of the main opposition parties, the Belarusian Popular Front, to change its name to the BPF Party. Two factory workers executed last year for carrying out a deadly bombing in a Minsk subway station in April 2011 were accused of being “nationalist extremists”. (Some believe that the bombing was orchestrated by the regime to detract attention from the political crisis that followed the 2010 presidential election.)

The issue of language has become highly politicised as well. Unable to speak Belarusian himself, Lukashenka has granted preferential treatment to the Russian language and has accused Belarusian speakers of fascist tendencies. Individuals overheard speaking Belarusian on the streets of Minsk are looked upon with suspicion, and oppositionist groups actively choose to speak Belarusian, equating the language with democratic values.

Lukashenka frequently invokes the Soviet era when describing the historical development of the Belarusian state. Early in his reign, he initiated referenda to restore the Belarusian flag from red and white to the red-green hallmark of the Belarusian Soviet Republic, and to change the country’s coat of arms to an emblem reminiscent of the Soviet era. World War II, in which Belarus suffered tragically heavy losses, has gained prominence as a symbol of national greatness; under Lukashenka’s guidance, streets have been renamed and monuments erected in honour of the war. By deploying the narrative of Belarus’s Soviet history - emphasising the Soviet themes of victory in World War II, economic progress and cooperation with Russia - the Lukashenka regime has perpetuated a national nostalgia for the Soviet era.

A nation without a capital

Lukashenka’s programme of Russification might make sense in the context of the close economic ties that continue to unite Russia and Belarus. Since 1996, the two countries have maintained a trade union that grants Belarus unlimited access to Russian markets. The Kremlin keeps a large portion of Belarus’s state-owned enterprises financially afloat, and supplies Belarus with cheap oil and gas. Recent tensions between Belarus and the European Union, as well as Belarus’s floundering economy, which experienced an inflation rate of 108% last year, have left Belarus more dependent on Russia than ever before.

However, blaming Lukashenka’s politics for his country’s feeble national identity obscures a long history of weak national development. Belarusian nationalists have to look all the way back to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (from the 12th to 16th centuries) when invoking the historical legacy of the contemporary Belarusian state. Stretching across a large portion of northeastern Europe, and ruled largely by Belarusian speaking elites, the Duchy was one of the largest and most powerful states in medieval central Europe. Its collapse in the 16th century and the subsequent establishment of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth led to the Polonisation of the region’s nobility. At the end of the 18th century, the Russian empire conquered much of present-day Belarus and established a programme of Russification in the region, banning the Greek Catholic Belarusian Church and prohibiting the use of Belarusian as a written language.

Despite low rates of urbanisation and modernisation, a Belarusian Democratic Republic was formed in 1918, only to be divided between Poland and the Soviet Union in 1921. Historians place much emphasis on the fact that Minsk only became the capital of Belarus in 1918 and that the majority of Belarusians had not developed a salient national identity by the 19th century, understanding themselves more as locals (tutashni) than as any particular nationality.

Academics disagree as to whether Belarus has been historically constituted as a country embodying a creole nationalism - incorporating elements of Belarusian, Russian, Polish and Ukrainian - or whether the Lukashenka regime has actively prevented the organic development of a single Belarusian identity. While this debate remains unresolved, it is certain that Lukashenka’s brand of governance based on fear-mongering instead of nation building will continue to stymie the development of the Belarusian state.