Culture Wars, Geopolitics, and Belarusian Identity

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Culture Wars, Geopolitics, and Belarusian
Identity
The West has eventually recognized its
helplessness vis-à-vis the Minsk riddle.
Belorussky Rynok 2001
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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

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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?

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Crux of Belarus specificity as I see it

• Delayed urbanization
• Delayed nation-building

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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

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Yuri Shevtsovs 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

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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

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A split identity disorder?

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

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

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Could There Be Three National Projects?

• Even two projects are one too many
• Arche Numerous references to Nativist/European,
  Muscovite Liberal, and Creole projects

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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 Russias colonial domain
• Time to undo Russias oppressive impact
• From switching to Belarusian to clear-cut
  identity and then to democratization

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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

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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 Welles newscasts for Belarus as a
  culture war

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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 cant be
  assigned to they similar ambiguity typifies
  their attitude to things Belarusian
• Valer Bulgakau Lukashenka is the president of
  Creoles

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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)

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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

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Did Alyaxander Lukashenka Read Samuel Huntington?

• Belarus straddles a civilizational fault line
• Left Huntingtons original map Right
  Eberhardts map

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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

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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 Lukashenkas
  ill-will pertains to Belarusian society
• Ten days from now, Lukashenkas victory looks
  certain

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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 wont
• 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