Authors

Discussion

In independent Belarus, even after 1991, the Soviet memory of the victory in the Great Patriotic War was cultivated, although new distinctive features emerged, emphasizing the heroism of the Belarusian people and a close connection with the legitimation of the Lukashenka regime (Marples, 2014; Rudling, 2017) The Belarusian authorities not only act as the main “defenders” of this memory, their opponents are identified either with Nazi collaborators (internal opponents) or with aggressor countries (external opponents). After the protests of 2020, a new topic, which was previously marginal, came to the fore in the memory of the Great Patriotic War. We are talking about the concept of genocide of the Belarusian people during the war. In 2021, the Belarusian parliament adopted a special law on genocide, and all political and cultural institutions were forced to make the topic of genocide a key topic on their agenda. In this presentation, I plan to address the following issues: 1) How did the concept of “genocide” enter the political agenda of Belarus? 2) What practical functions does this concept perform? 3) What power institutions use it to form symbolic capital? 4) Are there any chances for international recognition of the genocide of the Belarusian people? 5) What consequences do this have for historical science? 6) Has the official memory of the Great Patriotic War changed after the spread of the concept of genocide?