“Minsk Phenomenon” was the title of a 2013 Russian-language translation of University of Giessen historian Thomas Boehn’s book, which addressed the dominance of the city of Minsk in the development of contemporary Belarus. In many ways the Belarusian capital is...
The 21st issue of the Political Sphere journal considers the current intellectual situation in Belarus in the context of its authoritarian political regime, the structural problems of the development of the Belarusian state and nation, and the constantly changing...
On 24 January, CNN published a rating of the world’s ugliest monuments, causing an outrage in many post-Soviet countries, both officially and among the general public. The channel described the Courage monument from the Brest Fortress memorial in Belarus as looking constipated,...
The regime of Aliaksandr Lukashenka rejected the ethno-national model of state suggested by his predecessors in the early 1990s.Instead, he restored a soviet style “statist nation” with a centralised bureaucratic machine at its core. These are the conclusions reached in...
Today Belarus celebrates its Independence Day. Yesterday, the Square of the National flag opened next to the new building of Residency of President with great pomp. Veterans of the WWII, famous Belarusian sportsmen, officials and youth swore allegiance to the...
The official interpretation of history in Belarus has experienced a dramatic evolution since the USSR's collapse. At the first stage a Belarusian nationalist-oriented approach dominated in historiography. After Lukashenka came to power in 1994, a reversal to a Soviet...
Few people from the West know that tens of thousands of Belarusians fought in Afghanistan. The war has long been over, but its legacy remains. The Afghan war brought not only death, physical disabilities and material losses. It also made drug...
If you ask a Belarusian about the most important national feature of Belarus, he will most probably mention tolerance. This opinion seems to be deeply rooted in mass consciousness. Lukashenka's regime often uses it in ideological discourse to prove that...
Lukashenka and his entourage believe that their resistance to the wave of democratisation from the West is quite rational and well-reasoned. They hope that sooner or later, if they remain tenacious and consistent, the West will let them alone and...
Last month ended the trial against former leader of the Belarusian Republican Youth Union Leanid Kavalyou. Police caught Kavalyou with a major bribe. The sentence was harsh – seven years of imprisonment in a maximum security colony with property confiscation. The criminal...
The 2012 Olympic Games brought little happiness to Belarus' team: not matching even half of their expectations and receiving the fewest medals ever. This means trouble for Lukashenka’s plans to restore the image of Belarus’ overall prosperity thanks to athletics. Yet...
As the new diplomatic war between Belarus and the European Union unfolds, Belarus may lose its right to host the World Ice Hockey Championship in 2014. Because of problems with democracy and human rights The Congress of the International...
