The Collapse of the USSR: Images of Historical Responsibility in the Discursive Space of the Republic of Belarus (1991—2020)

Abstract

The article analyses the transformation of the images of historical responsibility in political, media and educational discourses of the Republic of Belarus in 1991—2020. On the basis of the constructivist approach the social nature of historical responsibility is considered on the example of the Belarusian case as a social practice, formed within a certain community and network of actors, focused on the appropriation or participation in the distribution of symbolic capital. The results of content analysis and comparison of political, media and educational discourses make it possible to conclude that even under the conditions of the Belarusian case with its hypertrophied influence of the political sphere on all aspects of social life and long-term tendencies of re-Sovietization of historical culture, images of the USSR collapse remain fragmentary and depend on public discourses, their value environments and the actors standing behind them. It has been revealed that despite the change in the vector of historical policy (from the nationally-oriented vector to a combination of the Soviet and national), as well as the slow convergence of the Russocentric and Westernized versions of historical memory, the events of the USSR collapse continue to remain in the shadow of the discourse of Belarus' independence, being a historical illustration to it. The article analyzes in detail the peculiarities of transformation of the images of victims and perpetrators of the collapse of the USSR in the Belarusian context, as well as demonstrates examples of changes in assessments of the inevitability and fate of the events that took place for the Republic of Belarus.