Culture Wars, Geopolitics, and Belarusian Identity

“The West has eventually recognized its helplessness vis-à-vis the Minsk riddle.” – Belorussky Rynok 2001

Little known and cliché-ridden • A virtual black hole in Europe• An anomaly in the region• A modern sultanate• Mass psychological marasmus (about

Lukashenka supporters) • An authoritarian cesspool• A bastard of Europe• An outpost of tyranny• The last dictatorship of Europe

Who would believe the last dictator of Europe!

• Lukashenka: many damaged areas are now safe

• 2005 Joint Report by IAEA, WHO, and UNDP: radiation level acceptable

• Belarus-watchers prior to 2005: Is Belarus’ economic growth a hoax or is it real?

• Belarus-watchers after 2005: Can Belarus’ economic growth be sustained?

Crux of Belarus’ specificity as I see it

• Delayed urbanization• Delayed nation-building

Svetlana Alexiyevich (2004)

• “Belarus is still a country with patriarchal peasant culture . . .I was asked why our own [Vaclav] Havel did not emerge in Belarus. I replied that we had Ales Adamovich, but we chose a different man. The point is not that we have no Havels, we do, but that they are not called for by society”

Yuri Shevtsov’s Perspective

• Belarusian identity is there to comprehend, not to manifest

• The region repeatedly ravaged by wars initiated by external powers

• Following each war, cultural self-identification of regional political class changed

• No cultural form had enough time to crystallize before being replaced

• Only under the Soviets did Belarusian identity begin to be embraced by local Slavs

Yury Shevtsov (cont.)

• During the 1940s, Jews and Poles vacated their social niches

• Gates of vertical mobility thrust open for many Belarusians

• Consequently, Belarusians had as much of a heyday in post-war Soviet Belarus as did Lithuanians, Latvians, and Estonians during their 1919-1940 independence

Belarusians are descendants of the Great Duchy of Lithuania and Rzeczpospolita, which waged numerous wars with despotic Russia

Belarusians are inseparable from Russians, and their greatest shared experience was the Great Patriotic War of 1941 – 1945

A split identity disorder?

Could There Be Three National Projects?

• Even two projects are one too many

• Arche: Numerous references to Nativist/European, Muscovite Liberal, and Creole projects

Project 1: Nativist/Pro-European

• Codified historic narrative (e.g.: Ten Centuries of Belarusian History by Uladzimer Arlou & Genadz’ Saganovich)

• Polatsk – Great Duchy – Rzeczpospolita• 1772 – 1991: Russia’s colonial domain• Time to undo Russia’s oppressive impact• From switching to Belarusian to clear-cut identity

and then to democratization

Project 2: Muscovite Liberal

• Aversion to linguistic radicalism• Reevaluation of ties with Russia• “Belarusian nationalism speaks Russian”

by Yury Drakakhrust• Beliefs of the nativist community called into

question• Formation of core constituency

Project 2: Muscovite Liberal

• Sharing some nativist beliefs but not anti-Russian sentiment

• Why not sign “Geneva Convention” on culture wars?

• August 2005 polemics about the language of the Deutsche Welle’s newscasts for Belarus’ as a culture war

Project 3: Creole

• Creoles speak a mixed language and are patriotic

• Creole is pre-national consciousness• Uladzimer Abushenka: For Creoles, things

Russian no longer belong in “we,” yet they can’t be assigned to “they;” similar ambiguity typifies their attitude to things Belarusian

• Valer Bulgakau: Lukashenka is the president of Creoles

Project 3: “State Ideology of the Republic of Belarus”

• Historic attachment to Russia• Role of the Great Patriotic War of 1941 – 1945• Communal ethos• Anti-nationalist sentiment directed squarely

against the nativists• Only in this context can one appreciate reference

to Lukashenka as “the main anti-Belarusian nationalist of Belarus” (Feduta 2005)

Lukashenka at Brest State University (09. 04)

• Belarus has never ever been part of Western culture and way of life

• To the Catholic-and-Protestant . . . civilization, Belarus and Belarusians, who are predominantly Orthodox and for centuries coexisted in the same political setting with Russia and Russians, are alien

• I am not afraid of saying this in Western Belarus

Did Alyaxander Lukashenka Read Samuel Huntington?

Belarus straddles a civilizational fault line[Left: Huntington’s original map; Right: Eberhardt’s map]

Trans-culturalism for Belarus?• Ihar Babkou: “Because Belarus straddles

a cultural divide, it can develop only as a consciously trans-cultural society”

• “Adam Mickiewicz is a native alien, and Alexander Lukashenka is an alien native”

• Synthesis of national projects under civic nationalism umbrella?

• Unless and until this synthesis is accomplished nation-building morass will linger

Concluding Remarks

• The assertion that “Belarusian identity is there to comprehend, not to manifest” gets demystified

• That identity would be manifested as any other, if only Belarusians knew exactly what to manifest

• Much of what is attributed to Lukashenka’s ill-will pertains to Belarusian society

• Ten days from now, Lukashenka’s victory looks certain

Concluding Remarks

• He would win between one-half and 2/3 of the vote even without rigging the election

• What worked elsewhere has not worked in Belarus and it won’t

• A more imaginative strategy is overdue as is an attempt to understand Belarus on its own terms instead of fitting it into an ideological template of our own making