Abstract
The revolution of 2020 in Belarus has often been described as a new 1989 and there is no doubt that the emancipatory appeal of the Belarusian protests is similar to the one that sustained the 1989 revolutions. But will building the democratic system—the major aspiration of the Belarusian protesters—follow the scripts of liberalization and westernization in evidence in other eastern and central European countries? Will self-determination in post-Lukashenka Belarus follow a scenario modelled on the patterns adopted by other east European and post-Soviet states, where ethnocentric national identities and the memory of victims of communism became distinctive markers of east European post-communism? Examining the symbolic dimension of the protest repertoire, this article demonstrates how the protests re-arranged the system of historical and cultural references that shaped the foundation of Belarusian collective memory and identity discourses since 1994. It reveals how a broad variety of actors engaged in contention activated a process of re-signification of cultural and political symbols and ideas and led to the formation of a blended socio-cultural imaginary, which integrates previously disconnected and competing projects and ideologies.
Highlights
The protests of 2020 in Belarus have often been described as a new 1989, and the photograph of Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya against the background of a fragment of the Berlin Wall painted in the colors of the Belarusian flag would seem to confirm it.[1]
Thinking of the Belarusian protests as a “new 1989” implies a particular reading of these events as a moment of “synchronization” of the country’s development with the post-1989 transformation. It suggests that the processes and ideas that were at the core of “post-communism in the making” in eastern Europe will reverberate in Belarus with the fall of the Lukashenka regime
Echo of 1989? Protest Imaginaries and Identity Dilemmas in Belarus 5 scripts of liberalization and westernization in evidence in other central and east European countries?4 Will self-determination in post-Lukashenka Belarus follow the pattern evident in other east European states, with their focus on ethnocentric national identities and the memory of victims of communism?5 These questions will remain unanswered until regime change takes place, when the new elites that will come to power after Lukashenka start to make their strategic choices
Summary
The protests of 2020 in Belarus have often been described as a new 1989, and the photograph of Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya against the background of a fragment of the Berlin Wall painted in the colors of the Belarusian flag would seem to confirm it.[1]. Thinking of the Belarusian protests as a “new 1989” implies a particular reading of these events as a moment of “synchronization” of the country’s development with the post-1989 transformation. It suggests that the processes and ideas that were at the core of “post-communism in the making” in eastern Europe will reverberate in Belarus with the fall of the Lukashenka regime. On the use of the concept of “eventful protests” for the study of protests having no connection
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