A weekend of memory in Belarus

The run up to the Belarusian presidential elections, to be held on December 19^th this year, has witnessed the intensification of the internal memory war in Belarus. The incumbent Alyaksandr Lukashenka, running for his fourth term in office after 16 years in power, has consistently promoted a vision of Belarusian nationhood which draws especially on Soviet mythology of the Great Patriotic War and “brotherhood” with Russia. The upcoming general release on November 4^th of the “first joint cinematic project of the Russian-Belarusian Union State”, Brest Fortress (Brestskaya Krepost’), should be seen as official Minsk’s newest salvo in this civil memory war. In opposition to the state’s version of history, a number of political parties and grassroots movements position themselves as guardians of a historical legacy descending from the Western European, democratic traditions of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Two widely-publicised opposition demonstrations were held over the weekend in Belarus to mourn the victims of Stalinist terror in 1937 and NKVD-led massacres during the Second World War.