Post the Introduction of Your Most Recent Paper

[Crumpets]

My last paper was a 72-page thesis with a 12-page introduction, so I'll just post the bit where I make my main argument:

    Given that the prospects of Belarusian-Russian integration have become increasingly unlikely in recent decades and the growing nationalist sentiments in other post-Soviet states, we would expect to find that political groups in Belarus would promote a Belarusian identity grounded in a Belarus which is fully independent for the foreseeable future. Instead, we find that both pro-government and opposition movements retain narratives based on a collective Soviet Belarusian identity and still portray further integration with Russia as an imminent possibility. Why?

    I argue that the outdated assumptions about Belarus’s relationship with Russia found in its political narratives are used by their promulgators to appeal to a populace with a shared traumatic memory of the Soviet collapse. To cope with this traumatic memory, there is an ongoing subconscious adherence to antiquated notions of Belarusian identity as a “Soviet¹” nation and Russia as a savior of the Belarusian people, albeit one which has had its legitimacy largely corrupted due to its abandonment of truly “Soviet” principles in the wake of the collapse. This process of identity construction is reflected in an implicit adherence to shared schemata and tropes used by both pro-government and anti-government groups in their public political discourse. I shall use examples of such discourse to demonstrate this ongoing effort to cope with the Soviet collapse and show that this phenomenon is not isolated to a single group, region, or political agenda, but rather a shared experience throughout Belarus.

¹ In this paper, the term “Soviet” will be used to refer both to the USSR as well as to the institutions, norms, and ideals associated with it. When someone refers to Belarus as a “Soviet” nation, they do not mean to say that the USSR still exists as a sovereign state and never collapsed, but that they see Belarus as a state which exemplifies the ideals for which it stood, and they see those ideals as alive and well in the world today. Note that this does not mean Marxism-Leninsism explicitly, but more vague notions of Soviet rightness and legitimacy.