Historia w służbie polityki. Zmiany polityczne a konstruowanie przekazu historycznego na ziemiach białoruskich w XX i XXI wieku

Abstract

A historical message is one of the key factors in shaping the sense of a community. When modern national groups began to develop, more and more attention was paid to selecting a historical content appropriately. The community can accept the picture of the past if it largely coincides with its expectations. The picture should also differ from that of other nations and it should have its own specific memory frames. The more emotional and elemental its nature is, the more emotions it may arouse. The picture of the past took either a national or a communist form, which depended on a changing political situation. The consecutive governing bodies of the Belarusian territories in the 20ᵗʰ and 21ˢͭ centuries emphasized the aspects of the history that were essential from their point of view. In the second half of the 19th century (in the tsarist period), the implemented policy tried to erode differences between a Russian and a Belarusian nationality. The discrepancy between a Polish landed class and Belarusian rural dwellers rose. As a result of this policy, a nobleman neighbor was more threatening for a Belarusian peasant than a tsarist official. The common Orthodox religion was also solid ground for understanding and bringing together a Russian and a Belarusian culture. During the tsarist period, Belarusians were not treated as a separate nation, but as a branch of the great Russian community. The concept of Western Russia was developed in the 19th century and it distinguished three historical groups within the Russian nation: Great Russians, Little Russians (Ukrainians) and Belarusians. They belonged to the East Slavic Orthodox community and their residence within the borders of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania was described as a Polish episode in the Russian history of these lands. The events of the 1905 revolution were a chance to strengthen the national Belarusian historical message. However, constructing the Belarusian administration was possible only during the German occupation of 1915-1918. At that time, the first schools with the Belarusian language of instruction were created and the Belarusian picture of the past became more and more popular with the public. On March 25, 1918, the Council of the Belorussian People s Republic announced the country s independence. For decades it was an important date for the national circles. The Polish-Bolshevik war (1919-1920) ended in the division of the Belarusian territories. In the Republic of Poland, assimilating minorities quickly, especially the Slavic ones, was considered the best option. It was believed that without having a strong sense of the national identity, the Belarusians would not object to this process. It was assumed that a Polish picture of the past, strengthened by the school, army, administration and social organizations, would be quickly accepted by the Belarusian community as its own. For the first few years of the republic s existence, historical processes were interpreted with almost no restraints. The discussion, however, was led mainly by scientific circles. The general public was subjected to strong Marxist indoctrination, in which the history focused on the class struggle. Relative liberalization ended in the late 1920s, when political repressions began. The end of belarusization (in terms of the historical message) meant returning to the tsarist concept of Western Russia modified by the Soviet rhetoric. In the 1930s, the republic s authorities already implemented a historical policy which aimed at blocking the formation of an independent Belarusian nation. The historical message gained a universal character and the Belarusian territories became only a part of changes taking place in Russia and then in the Soviet Union. The history and historians were supposed to provide evidence for legitimizing the socialist system. The entire nation-conscious Belarusian elite was exterminated. The Soviet aggression on September 17, 1939 brought apparent changes on the Belarusian territories. The Red Army spread the Soviet rhetoric to the areas that so far belonged to the Polish State. The historical message reproduced patterns already present in the BSSR. Political conditions changed again after the Nazi Germany attacked the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941. In a new political reality, the construction of a national (nationalistic) picture of the history became a priority. Historical issues began to dominate the propaganda more overwhelmingly than in the Soviet era. They contradicted the Soviet historical message but applied the same intrusive methods of reaching out to the citizens. The nationalist description of the history opposed that of the communist circles. In 1941-1944, these two groups fought a battle over the picture of the Belarusian past. The Polish interpretation of the historical process remained marginal. The military victory of the Red Army over the Wehrmacht in 1944 meant a total success of the Soviet historical message. The historical policy pursued by the Soviet authorities after the war was, just like in the 1930s, radical. Any negative attitude towards the official message was forbidden. The entire population was subjected to the propaganda. The totalitarian regime required its citizens to unconditionally adopt slogans, obey rules and therefore, actively support the State and Stalin. The historical policy changed in 1956 at the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, when the cult of the individual was criticized. N. Khrushchev and new party leaders accused J. Stalin and L. Beria of departing from the historical premises of the communist ideology represented by Lenin. In the 1960s and 70s, one of the main goals of the communist authorities was to accelerate economic development. In the new political and economic situation, the process of creating the Soviet nation, which was initiated before the war, gained its momentum. Education, including the historical one, was subordinated to this goal. The оѵегаіі change involved enormous social changes. An important stage in the changes in the Soviet system was M. Gorbachev s rise to power. He realized that in a rapidly transformed world (an economic crisis, an arms race), it was impossible to keep the society uninformed about the past. The unchanged historical policy was to be adapted to the requirements of new challenges. The changes accelerated, though. M. Gorbachev, who wanted to reform communism, in fact, triggered deeply hidden dissatisfaction. The national circles became more and more active. The Belarusian society found Z. Paznyak s article ‘Kuropaty. The Way of Death" (published in June 1988 in “Litaratura i Mastactwa”) unbelievable. Readers learned about the scale of crimes committed in the Stalinist times. In the new political reality (after 1991), Belarusian historians had to reevaluate the current Marxist-Leninist picture of the past. The overriding objective of the most research was to display a Belarussian character in еѵегу possible element of the past. This assumption was criticized by the post-Soviet academia. Political opponents accused this trend of excessive nationalism. The idea of writing history from scratch was also criticized. The dispute among intellectuals differed significantly from the feelings of the society, whose steadily deteriorating economic situation became a much more important issue. Nostalgia for 'good Soviet times' was widespread. The struggle for the construction of the historical message intensified during a presidential campaign in 1994. Electing Alexander Lukashenko to be the president was an act of opposition to the picture of the history propagated by the national circles. In the new, post-election reality, it was contrasted with the rebuilt, strong, historical union of Eastern Slavs. The return to the good old Soviet times’ was to be activated by bringing together Belarus and Russia. The post-Soviet rhetoric became dominant in the official public historical message. The discussion around the national symbols and the Belarusian language were the elements of the ongoing political struggle to strengthen the president s power. The picture of the history proposed by A. Lukashenko was accepted by a large number of the citizens as their own mostly because, as in the Soviet era, it emphasized the economic aspect rather than the national conflicts. A. Lukashenko and his State administration managed to build their own picture of the history of the Belarusian State, which became the State ideology. In this new message, Belarus and its history became a value in itself, although its key and unquestionable heritage was the Soviet Union and the attachment to the Orthodox culture. The Belarusian authorities were aware that strengthening national issues in the historical message cannot have meant separating the country from the Belarusian-Russian common history. It was also necessary to take into account the attachments of the citizens to a general, long-lasting picture of history. Lukashenka's administration was also able to deepen a relationship with the eastern or the western heritage, depending on a changing political demand. The pursuit of such a policy was possible because in the constructed historical message, the Soviet times with their heroes of the Great Patriotic War (World War II), as well as selected elements of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, were adjacent. It gave a lot of freedom to maneuver and allowed, depending on the current political demand, often almost imperceptibly for the citizens, to emphasize certain issues in the conducted historical policy.