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17. Two Ideas of “Belarusianness”
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CHAPTER 17 Two Ideas of “Belarusianness” The underdeveloped character of the Belarusian nation and the weakness of the Belarusians’ national self-consciousness is perceived as the main reason for the defeat of the nationalist movement and for the failure of the country’s democratization. The linguistic Russification is considered to be a symptom of the progressing assimilation and dissolution of the Russianspeaking cultural universe. A hypothetic consent to a political union with Russia signifies a refusal of state independence. Each of these factors, however , has a flip side. The majority of Belarusians are in favor of integration with their eastern neighbor; but only 12 percent would want to create a single state with Russia. The linguistic Russification in practice does not lead to a political pro-Russianness; rather it is the Belarusian-speaking population that manifests a greater readiness to integrate with Russia. Russianspeaking people in Belarus still call the Belarusian language their native mother tongue. Belarusians do not always differentiate themselves from Russians in terms of cultural identity, but at the same time they manifest a high level of “the pride index” of their Belarusianness. Moreover, those members of society that comprises “the denationalized majority”—that is, the supporters of the current regime—demonstrate their Belarusian identity as an object of pride and as the main principle for their self-definition. In other words, the complicated layout of the political, cultural, and linguistic components of the Belarusians’ self-awareness does not fit the simplistic image of a weak and underdeveloped Belarusian identity. One of the ways to solve these paradoxes is to accept that there are two different ideas of “Belarusianness,” two conflicting concepts of Belarus, to which the Belarusian regime and political opposition appeal. It would mean to acknowledge that those who support the current regime are not nationless inhabitants, but rather the adherents of the Belarusian idea represented by the official discourse. At the same time, the concept of the alternative Belarusianness articulated by the Belarusian nationalist movement was constructed as a counter idea to the official Belarusianness and became groundwork for their political ideology. Both ideas came to being as a result of different approaches to the development of the Belarusians’ history. The idea of Belarusianness represented by the official discourse is built on the basis of continuity with the Soviet past and in some aspects it is connected with the ideas of the Belarusian revival of the early twentieth century (e.g., ideas of social equality as the ground for national unity). For the Belarusian nationalist movement of the 1990s, the national revival became the main source when articulating the concept of an alternative Belarusianness as opposed to the Soviet development of the nation. Both the official and the alternative discourses aspire to generalize and “globalize” their way of representation of Belarusianness , both of them are declared to be the only true “Belarusian idea.” And in both cases the Belarusian “Motherland” appears as an “indivisible ” ideological entity. To a certain extent, this can be seen as logical because, the national interest excludes particularity, because it implies the “wholeness” of the nation.1 In the developments taking place in the Belarusian political space one can discern numerous signs of the symbolic struggle for the right to represent the true Belarusianness. On the one hand, the Belarusian authorities mark the territory of their legitimization in terms of unity —Belarusian people, Belarusians. In fact, the manipulations in which the regime engages during presidential elections are required not to change the final outcome, but rather to modify the view of the Belarusian society’s political landscape. According to independent poll data, during the 2001 presidential election 49.8 percent of voters acknowledged that they supported Lukashenka, while 25.8 percent voted for the opposition’s candidate, Vladimir Goncharik.2 But according to the official data, these numbers were 75.65 percent for Lukashenka and 15.65 percent for Goncharik.3 In 2006 the picture looked similar: the official results announced by the Central Election Commission showed that 83 percent voted in favor of the current president, while 6.1 percent in favor of his opponent, Alaksandar Milinkevich.4 The Independent Institute of Socioeconomic and Political Studies opinion poll results showed that 58.2 per1 Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power, 221. 2 “Belarus’: Perspektivy w XXI viekie,” Novosti IISEPS Bulleten’, no. 4, December 2001, http://www.iiseps.org/bullet01-4.html. 3 “Vybory Prezidenta Respubliki Belarus’ 2001 god,” Tsentralnaia...