Employing the Distant Past for Modern Nation-Building: Teaching the History of a Long-Defunct Empire in Secondary Education in Belarus

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

Abstract

The break-up of empires in the 19th and 20th centuries signified the affirmation of the national idea as the organizing principle of political legitimacy. When communist regimes in Central and Eastern Europe fell at the end of the 20th century, in the aftermath of the collapse of the ‘last empire’, many people in areas formerly under Soviet control or domination found themselves redefining their loyalties. For people in some societies the task was easy, as their national identity had already been ‘consolidated’. In some other societies, however, nation-building would have to be launched virtually from scratch.

This paper explores how the alleged weakness of a (titular) national identity leads the Republic of Belarus to adopt a certain treatment of the history of a long-defunct polity. The country under consideration used to belong to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth until its partitions by outside actors in the late 18th century. The article analyzes how the history of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and the subsequent Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth is taught in secondary schools in Belarus. The author hypothesizes that in ‘de-nationalized’ Belarus, leaders will feel a strong need to venerate the country’s alleged ‘glorious’ ancient past, even to the point of appropriating the whole legacy of a medieval multinational empire, labeling the Grand Duchy of Lithuania a ‘Belarusian state’. The analysis is grounded in the ethno-symbolism theory of nationalism and a qualitative approach is employed to conduct an examination of the content of textbooks, as well as interviews with history teachers in Belarus.

Author

• Yuliya Brel-Fournier, U of Delaware