David Marples: September 17 and the Roots of Contemporary Belarus
[David Marples is a Professor of History and Classics at the University Alberta in Edmonton. He is the author of ten books on Soviet and post-Soviet affairs, including Belarus: From Soviet Rule to Nuclear Catastrophe (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1996) and Belarus: A Denationalized Nation (Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1999).]
The 70th anniversary of the start of the Second World War in 1939 has been commemorated worldwide. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has denounced revisionism and attempts to belittle the Soviet victory. In Belarus, President Alyaksandr Lukashenka commemorated September 17 as the pivotal date in the foundation of the modern state, and speakers at a conference at the House of Officers requested that it be added to the calendar of state days of remembrance.
The Lukashenka regime, like its Russian counterpart, is notable for its selective memory. Having remained in power as a result of manipulated referendums and elections, it has deployed the war as its foundation stone of legitimacy. The national holiday is July 3 (established in 1995), the date of Minsk's liberation from the Germans in 1944. May 9, the Soviet Victory Day, sees the largest parade of the year with the president in attendance. Monuments and museums commemorating the war dominate cities and towns, and the focus is on Belarusian suffering and contributions to the Allied victory.
In 2005, the historical complex Liniya Stalina opened to mark the 60th anniversary of the wartime victory and Belarusian resistance to the German onslaught (www.stalin-line.museum.by). The president regularly watches the reenactments of wartime battles. That no such fortifications existed in the summer of 1941 is immaterial; the museum is simply another myth about the war perpetuated by the Belarusian authorities in order to link Soviet Belorussia to the modern state.
Thus, it is hardly surprising that in his address on September 17, Lukashenka referred to the "liberation drive" of the Red Army to protect native Belarusians and Ukrainians from the Germans by annexing the eastern territories of Poland, following Hitler's invasion sixteen days earlier. On the "freed lands," he added, were created conditions for a new life as a single territorial unit. The "sovereign and peace-loving state" of today originated on this date seventy years ago (SB-Belarus' Segodnya, Sept 17).
There was focus elsewhere on the cruelty of the Polish occupation of Western Belarus, 1921-39. Maksim Asipau noted in Vecherniy Minsk that although Belarusians and other national minorities of Poland had been guaranteed equal rights with Poles in political life and in the development of languages and culture, in practice these were not granted, and Belarusian Catholics were forcibly subsumed into Poland. Consequently, Belarusians welcomed the invading Red Army with flowers (Vecherniy Minsk, Sept 17).
Belarusian pro-governmental communist organizations and the Union of Officers held a conference entitled "September 17 -the Day of the Reunion of the Belarusian People," which included several well-known historians, but the interpretation differed little from that of Soviet times. The conference drew up an appeal to the president to recognize September 17 as a national day of commemoration (Vo Slavu Rodiny, Sept 17)...
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The 70th anniversary of the start of the Second World War in 1939 has been commemorated worldwide. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has denounced revisionism and attempts to belittle the Soviet victory. In Belarus, President Alyaksandr Lukashenka commemorated September 17 as the pivotal date in the foundation of the modern state, and speakers at a conference at the House of Officers requested that it be added to the calendar of state days of remembrance.
The Lukashenka regime, like its Russian counterpart, is notable for its selective memory. Having remained in power as a result of manipulated referendums and elections, it has deployed the war as its foundation stone of legitimacy. The national holiday is July 3 (established in 1995), the date of Minsk's liberation from the Germans in 1944. May 9, the Soviet Victory Day, sees the largest parade of the year with the president in attendance. Monuments and museums commemorating the war dominate cities and towns, and the focus is on Belarusian suffering and contributions to the Allied victory.
In 2005, the historical complex Liniya Stalina opened to mark the 60th anniversary of the wartime victory and Belarusian resistance to the German onslaught (www.stalin-line.museum.by). The president regularly watches the reenactments of wartime battles. That no such fortifications existed in the summer of 1941 is immaterial; the museum is simply another myth about the war perpetuated by the Belarusian authorities in order to link Soviet Belorussia to the modern state.
Thus, it is hardly surprising that in his address on September 17, Lukashenka referred to the "liberation drive" of the Red Army to protect native Belarusians and Ukrainians from the Germans by annexing the eastern territories of Poland, following Hitler's invasion sixteen days earlier. On the "freed lands," he added, were created conditions for a new life as a single territorial unit. The "sovereign and peace-loving state" of today originated on this date seventy years ago (SB-Belarus' Segodnya, Sept 17).
There was focus elsewhere on the cruelty of the Polish occupation of Western Belarus, 1921-39. Maksim Asipau noted in Vecherniy Minsk that although Belarusians and other national minorities of Poland had been guaranteed equal rights with Poles in political life and in the development of languages and culture, in practice these were not granted, and Belarusian Catholics were forcibly subsumed into Poland. Consequently, Belarusians welcomed the invading Red Army with flowers (Vecherniy Minsk, Sept 17).
Belarusian pro-governmental communist organizations and the Union of Officers held a conference entitled "September 17 -the Day of the Reunion of the Belarusian People," which included several well-known historians, but the interpretation differed little from that of Soviet times. The conference drew up an appeal to the president to recognize September 17 as a national day of commemoration (Vo Slavu Rodiny, Sept 17)...