In Schoolbooks and on Telegram

Abstract

Since 1991 memory politics in Belarus has undergone several shifts, conditioned by the alteration in international and inner policies and the whims of political elites. During the last two years, the civil protest movement and recently, the Russian war in Ukraine afresh prompted the re-interpreting of the past. In this revised interpretation, the already central place of WWII has become even more pronounced. The history of this war has been turned into a weapon by which Belarusian pro-governmental historians and propagandists attempt to combat the “collective West,” the NATO, the Ukrainian and Belarusian nationalists, and the émigré diaspora alike. This paper aims to outline the portrayal of Ukraine and Ukrainians in Belarusian memory politics (in school textbooks and, since 2020, on Telegram). It asks about the place Belarusian southern neighbour and, until recently, the “brotherly people” occupied in the official Belarusian historical narrative, shaped by the mythologisation of WWII.