From Frying Pan to Fire: Protest, War and the Forging of a Belarusian Nation

Abstract

The mass street protests after Belarus’s 2020 presidential election failed to oust dictator Alyaksandr Lukashenka. They nonetheless represented a political and national awakening of Belarusian society, with a level of popular engagement in politics unseen in Belarus during the preceding three decades. Eighteen months after the election crisis, Belarusians were plunged into a new crisis as their state provided a supporting role in Russia’s large-scale invasion of Ukraine. This article identifies the main causes of the 2020 protests and their relationship to Belarusian national identity. It assesses the state of the national awakening three years after the 2020 election in the context of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Belarus’s role in that war; asking whether Belarus is still sovereign and whether loss of sovereignty is fatal for Belarusian national identity. It argues that Lukashenka’s position remains highly precarious and that the national awakening hangs in the balance.