Belarusian Nationalism and the Clash of Civilizations

Abstract

:Belarus belongs to Huntington’s “cleft countries.” A religious split of its population into the Orthodox majority and the Catholic minority has been–and remains–a serious problem for the Belarusian national movement. At the beginning of the twentieth century, Belarusian national leaders intended to restore Greek Catholicism (the Uniatefaith) as the national creed. In the 1920s their high hopes focused on the growing neo-Protestantism. Neither of their activities produced lasting results before 1939. For fifty years after the end of World War II, all of Belarus, including its western part, was a Soviet republic within the Soviet Union, where the Soviet authorities forcefully promoted atheism and a pan-Soviet patriotism (lack of nationalism) for all citizens. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Belarus became a sovereign state. Political power was at first held by the Catholics until the 1994 presidential elections. Alaksandr Lukashenka, the newly elected president, who is still in power, presented himself to the nation as an “Orthodox atheist.” Since then Belarus has remained firmly in the political sphere of Eastern (Russian) and Orthodox orientation. The decade of state sovereignty produced religious renewal in Belarus. In addition to the Orthodox and Catholic faiths, neo-Protestantism has been revived and continues to grow at a rapid pace. It is quickly becoming the third major creed in Belarus. There are reasons to believe that this religious trichotomy may have an important and benefiCial impact on the further development of the Belarusian national movement and on both the internal and international stability of Belarus.