Beyond the ‘Partisan Republic’: The Self-Portrait of Late Soviet Belarus in the Republic’s Media

• In Event: Belarus III: Partisans, Empire, Revolution: Building the Belarusian Nation through Literature, Music, and Teaching of History

Abstract

The central role that the collective memory and trauma of the Second World War played in shaping Belarusian national identity has been well established. Yet this was not the only constituent element of the post-war Belarusian national identity promoted under the Soviet auspices. This paper looks beyond the tropes of the ‘heroic partisan republic’ to explore how the republic’s press constructed the image of Belarus as a nation with a distinctive ethnic culture and history, how this image intersected with the ideological constraints of the Soviet empire, and how it combined, and sometimes clashed, with late Soviet Belarus’s narrative of modernisation.

Author

• Natalya Chernyshova, Queen Mary, U of London (UK)