“ARCHE 2/2013”: Problems of Historical Memory and Historical Politics

The review was prepared within the framework of the joint “Book Review” project of the Political Sphere Institute “Political Sphere” and the Center for European Studies in Minsk.

The review was prepared by historian Aliaksei Bratachkin.

In June 2013, a new issue of the journal “ARCHE” was published, almost entirely devoted to problems of historical memory and historical politics in Belarus. The contents of this substantial issue (almost 500 pages) can be examined in detail on the journal’s website http://www.arche.by/by/page/ideas/15751#disqus_thread, while in this review I would like to draw attention to a number of individual publications and, possibly, to the latest trends in the development of Belarusian historiography.

Studies of historical memory and historical politics in Belarus

The subject of historical memory and historical politics began to interest Belarusian researchers not so long ago. The first publications in fact appeared toward the end of the first decade of the 2000s (articles by Hienadź Sahanovič, Aliaksei Lastoŭski, Aleś Smaliančuk, and others). It was in these works, with references to the concepts of Jan Assmann, Pierre Nora, Maurice Halbwachs, and other authors, that the problem of historical memory in the Belarusian context began to be considered in its various dimensions (the problematization of the concept of the “collective memory” of Belarusians, the study of the connection between memory and national identity, and so on).

Articles also appeared that studied the problem of historical politics as a phenomenon of intervention by various actors (the state, historians, political parties and figures, public organizations, and so on) in the processes of creating images of history that are significant for society. Attempts to establish political control over historical education in schools and universities, practices of memorializing certain historical figures and events, and much else often turn into “historical politics.”

If in democratic countries historical politics does indeed presuppose the equal participation of all actors in it, then in Belarus we are dealing with a version of historical politics in which it is mainly implemented by the state (the political regime existing in Belarus), which has significantly more resources and opportunities than other actors to influence the images of history that circulate in society. This is precisely why, incidentally, studies of historical memory and historical politics have mainly been taken up by scholars working outside state institutions, which once again underscores the fact that research in Belarus often represents a certain form of resistance, and that its aims are shaped precisely by the desire to oppose the dominant discourse of power (another question is how broad the horizon of such research is, but that is a separate issue).

Outside academic discourse, the issues of historical politics and historical memory in their critical dimension are often raised in popular form on independent information resources as well (“ARCHE,” “New Europe,” TUT.by, and so on). In state media, the critical dimension of presenting information of this kind is absent, since they are directly the main retransmitters of the historical politics pursued by the Belarusian state; they do not need criticism.

The topic of the newly published issue of “ARCHE,” therefore, is relatively new for the mass reader in Belarus and, in part, even for the academic community. Precisely for this reason, the issue lacks a high-quality introduction that would present an overview of the studies of historical memory and historical politics already conducted in Belarus, describe the inclusion of such studies in the international context, and clarify the concepts connected with such research. This would also help reveal the links between various Belarusian researchers and their topics against the background of the absence of peer review and other academically important practices.

 

What is the difference between Belarusian historians and “Western” historians?

A somewhat “strange” question that can be asked when looking at this issue of “ARCHE” is: how “Belarusian” did it turn out to be? What is meant here is not its connection to the Belarusian context (there everything is in order), but the authors of the issue. Their biographies, placed before the beginning of each text, as well as the texts themselves, already testify to a number of problems in Belarusian historiography. A number of significant publications in the issue are signed by foreign authors: the German historians Bernhard Chiari, Robert Maier, and Christian Ganzer, the French researcher Alexandra Goujon, the Canadian professor David Marples, and the Swedish historian Per Anders Rudling.

This international character cannot but be welcome, and at first glance it shows the interest in the Belarusian context that exists in the academic community beyond Belarus. But if one looks closely, this interest is focused not so much on Belarus itself as either on the broad geographical and at the same time political context of “Eastern Europe” and the Poland-Ukraine-Belarus region, or on the study of broader phenomena (such, for example, as the memory of the Second World War or the Holocaust) using Belarusian examples. There is also nothing wrong with this; it is simply that such “external” attention to Belarusian issues is manifested specifically in approaches to methodology and the “language” of research.

All the authors listed above, in their articles, are mainly engaged in analyzing the memory of the Second World War and the Holocaust in Belarus and the related practices of memorialization. They use the phrase “the myth of the Great Patriotic War” quite freely (this, for example, is the direct title of the article by Chiari and Maier), and, when describing memory of it, they analyze “narratives” and “discourses” created “under Lukashenka” or by the “nationalist opposition.” In other words, these authors, first, share the ideas of the social construction of historical knowledge, and second, their research identity is in a certain sense “free” from internal Belarusian problems, and they can write from an equally distant position about Lukashenka’s historical politics or about attempts by other political or intellectual forces in Belarus to “control” history. They also have no need to perform the role of those who strengthen Belarusian national identity (unless, of course, a critical approach to this problem is considered such a “strengthening” activity), and they handle the concept of “nation” quite freely and in a constructivist manner.

A somewhat different situation (or rather, semantic shifts) is noticeable in the articles by Belarusian authors. The word “myth” occurs less frequently in them, and the sociologists Aliaksei Lastoŭski and Nadzieja Jefimava, in their joint article on the study of the place of ideas about the origins of Belarusian statehood in the historical memory of Belarusians, even specifically explain the word “myth,” placing it in the context of contemporary humanities. This is one of the features of our, forgive me, “catching-up historiography,” which consists in the fact that researchers are forced to make excessive didactic digressions in order to introduce into the Belarusian context concepts that have long been known beyond it.

 

The charm of “national identity”

Returning to the idea of the social construction of historical knowledge, one should also pay attention to the subject matter of the articles by Belarusian authors: the concepts of “national identity,” “nation,” “national hero,” and “national pantheon” appear much more often than the concept of “myth” in its proper sense. The articles by Jury Drakachrust, Aliaksei Lastoŭski and Nadzieja Jefimava, Andrej Vaškievič, and others are oriented toward the study of historical memory and historical politics, and the background for these articles is, in essence, the construct of a “problematic Belarusian national identity.” And although the authors seem to realize that “national identity” is a construct, almost all of them, whether voluntarily or involuntarily, slip into the pathos of solving the “problem of national identity” in an entirely practical and even political key, already forgetting that this is a “construct.”

Thus, their research identity is not sufficiently differentiated in relation to the search for their own national identity. Belarusian authors are oriented toward legitimizing a particular national narrative or the idea of solving “problems” with national identity, so that problems of memory become subordinated to this idea. A special “language” of these studies emerges: academic discourse is mixed with journalism, and researchers seem temporarily to “forget” the constructed nature of the concepts around which they build their research.

It is clear that “absolutely objective” knowledge is impossible today, and any researchers (including Western ones) are inscribed in a certain local context that cannot be fully “overcome”; but in the Belarusian case we are dealing with too intense a degree of such embeddedness. Researchers are specifically engaged, they construct research objects in connection with their own preferences, and they conclude their articles by demonstrating this engagement.

For example, the joint article by Aliaksei Lastoŭski and Nadzieja Jefimava “The Origins of National Statehood in Belarusian Historical Memory” is devoted to analyzing mass perceptions among Belarusians regarding the origins of their own statehood. The authors justify their turn to this problem (and its connection with identity and historical memory) by making an excursion into how the concept of statehood and its “origins” acquired importance as nationalism strengthened. And, of course, in their account the central place is occupied by the idea of statehood and the nation as constructs (in accordance with all the current theories available). Then the authors determine that in today’s Belarus people are divided into several groups that imagine the history of Belarusian statehood differently, and that the perception of the Belarusian language and other important things is also connected with this.

However, what conclusion do the authors of this article ultimately reach? It turns out that, in the authors’ opinion, today we continue to live in a “national world” in which the role of “national historiography” is extremely important, while the “deconstructivist zeal” produces “phantoms” in the form of “universal human rights” and “cosmopolitan identity” (one would still like to know on what grounds all this is being declared). In addition, the study has shown, as the authors write, that there exists a “connection between language, historical memory, and identity, which the national prophets asserted and which scholars are now trying to feel out.” In that case, perhaps it would be better simply to cite the “national prophets” immediately and conduct no research at all?

Or, if research is to be conducted, then one should stop turning constructs into “reality,” critically defining the object of one’s own research and sociologically situating Belarusians not only among signifiers reduced to a single understanding, such as “nation,” “statehood,” and the like, but also filling these signifiers with new meanings that correspond to the present day and to the theories being used. For example, is the issue only whether the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the Belarusian People’s Republic, or the BSSR is considered the beginning of Belarusian statehood? Or is it also a matter of what this very statehood represented politically, and that the tradition of statehood is important not only because of the word itself, but also, for example, in connection with whether one can speak of certain democratic or authoritarian “traditions” in the Belarusian context? In the end, the very concentration on “statehood” in our society is connected not only with the development of nationalism, but also with the Soviet idea of identifying the state with society, and untangling these two concepts today is no less important than simply strengthening the signifier “statehood” through studies showing that it is traced back to the Middle Ages.

The conclusion of Jury Drakachrust’s article, devoted to competing historical narratives in Belarus, also speaks to a somewhat strange understanding of what the research function is today. In it, the conclusion states that “Victory” in the Second World War is the only event that unites Belarusians even with different political views. And immediately the author indicates that recently there have been attempts to destroy this “Victory” in “popular memory,” and that this is, in effect, foolishness. But it seems that the author himself could distinguish between types of “destruction”: is it a matter of the rational deconstruction of historical myths in mass consciousness, or of implanting new myths? And he need not end the article with such strange remarks in the context of an academic journal.

 

How new is the content of the “ARCHE” issue?

On the one hand, as was said at the beginning of the review, the thematic issue of “ARCHE” devoted to problems of historical memory and historical politics offers a new selection of materials on a topic that is relatively new for our context. And the issue contains interesting and substantial articles, apart from those already mentioned above: a major study by Andrej Rolenka on historical memory and its construction in the ideology of the Belarusian state; an article by Andrej Tichamiroŭ on Ukrainian trends in the field of studies of historical politics and memory (a comparative context is something all of us so often lack); an article by Andrej Kotliarchuk that considers the problem of historical memory of the war through the prism of ethnic groups in Belarusian society (Roma, Poles, and Jews), and so on. Diversity of authors is a good thing (there are “Western” researchers, joint projects by Belarusians and “Western” historians, and authors who are Belarusians, received education outside the country and returned to work at home, or work outside Belarus while maintaining academic ties).

But to what extent did the diversity of authors contribute to a diversity of topics? It seems that part of the topics in the study of historical memory and historical politics is “set” by the Western academic mainstream (and, of course, as a result it turns out that our memory of the Holocaust and the Second World War is not like “theirs”). Another part of the topics is set by the Belarusian mainstream of our own, formed back in the 1990s and oriented simultaneously toward research and toward the defense of identity (and then it turns out that “national historiography” is in any case more important than the “phantoms of universal human rights”).

In addition, doubts arise as to whether the analytical deconstruction of the “myth of the Great Patriotic War,” for example, is the only instrument for speaking about the problems of the current state of historical memory and historical politics in Belarus. Since the period of independence, we have witnessed the creation of new and quite widely disseminated “myths” and narratives about, for example, that same independence and the period of the 1990s in Belarus as a whole. And if one looks more closely at contemporary historical politics, one can see not only state discourse or the Soviet legacy (many articles in the issue write that the “Soviet legacy” is to blame for everything), but also certain entirely contemporary actions that do not come only from the state. It is also obvious that very few sociological studies are currently being conducted in Belarus that focus on the problem of historical memory and historical politics (for example, there are practically no studies devoted to the memory of the Holocaust in its mass dimension, rather than only through the prism of academic or power discourses).

One would also like to ask to what extent the efforts of researchers to deconstruct the historical politics being conducted in our country, for example, are significant against the background of established practices of historical culture and the absence of elements of ideas about social constructivism in popular historical literature (including school textbooks). Are ordinary citizens capable of perceiving words such as “myth” and “national identity” in a “constructivist” way, when even representatives of the academic community have difficulty with this? This, however, is of course a broader question that goes beyond the scope of the present review.