Westerners have a hard time understanding the former Soviet Union. One point of confusion is the omnipresence of communist era monuments and paraphernalia littering the former Soviet republics. Westerners like to see them as holdovers or relics of Soviet times which persist due to unenlightened attitudes or illiberal propaganda. Belarus is a good place to begin to understand their true meaning. In Belarus almost every prominent Soviet monument is placed abreast an even more prominent Christian structure.
In the heart of the Belarusian capital, Minsk, a large statue of Lenin stands prominently outside of the house of government. One immediately notes that Lenin is gazing upwards directly at Mary the Mother of God ascending into Heaven: the official symbol of the city of Minsk. The building immediately to the left of Lenin is a beautiful Catholic Church with a prominent statue of Saint John Paul II and a large picture of the old Polish Pope and Pope Francis. An even more striking example is the newly rebuilt Russian Orthodox Church in Ivieniec which towers over a well kept and honored memorial to the Soviet victory in the Great Patriotic War built only a few meters away.
This is not a contradiction. This is not propaganda. This is simply the history of Belarus. The Great Patriotic War is honored here because it was a war fought for the survival of the people inhabiting this land. The population of Belarus was so severely decimated by the German invasion that pre-war population levels were only regained in the late 1970s. In order to liberate Minsk against superior German tanks, Soviet T-34s had to ram German tanks head on to stop them in their tracks so that Soviet tank destroyers could shoot them at point blank range. Losses from this kind of combat were staggering. It is small recompensation that German prisoners rebuilt Minsk after the war.
The many memorials and statues comemorating the Great Patriotic War are not celebrations of communism. They are a testimony to the suffering of impoverished and exploited peoples whose misery was exacerbated beyond anything humanly imaginable and who managed to fight back, survive and even recover their ancient faith.
To expect Belarusians to tear down the memorials to the Great Patriotic War is to expect them to forget their heritage. Belarus has clearly chosen to embrace that heritage in full. Orthodox and Catholic Churches blossom with life while Soviet era memorials are perfectly well kept and honored. To forget the Soviet memorials would be to spit on the dead who fought against the German onslaught. A sin no smaller than the communist endeavor to close, wall off and mask the Churches in the past.
The Belarusian policy whereby historical sites are nurtured and preserved in full, leaving us to see history in its totally and better ponder its meaning, is probably the best policy of the slavic nation states between Germany and Russia. It is jarring, shocking and counterintuitive but also the closest to truth and honesty and the only policy which unites citizens in contemplation rather than sowing discord. Belorus seems to understand that the word “memorial” implies a claim on memory, not celebration or acclaim.
Poland and Ukraine offer two alternative politics of history, both inferior to Belarusian policy, both a testimony to the three alternative understandings of the Great Patriotic War which divides Slavic peoples.
For Poles, World War II began in 1939 with the joint German-Soviet invasion. Poland does not acknowledge the Soviet Union as a member of the Allied war effort, nor does Poland really acknowledge the fall of Berlin on May 9th 1945 as the end of the war. Modern Poland follows a politics of history according to which German occupation was followed by Soviet occupation and World War II ended in 1989 when Poland regained full independence.
Meanwhile, Ukraine goes even further, celebrating the German invasion of Poland in 1939 and of the Soviet Union in 1941 as the beginning of Ukranian national liberation. For Ukraine, Hitler’s Germany was a force for good and the Allied victory was a tragedy which brought with it the triumph of communism.
Belarus shares elements of the Ukranian and Polish experience but rather than choosing to elevate one aspect of history over another, Belarus seems to aim for honest objectivity and allows the people to make up their own minds when pondering difficult and tragic matters. It is not an objectivity easily attained. The Belorusian consensus is a choice which recognizes that while truth may be a laudable goal, the nature of the path towards truth is likewise important and cannot be divisive.
The Belarusian Identity: A Model for Poland & Russia
What is a Belarusian? Many old Belarusians in the Western part of the country call themselves Lithuanians, by which they do not mean to identify with the European Union member state called Lithuania, but rather as a sign of identification with the Grand Dutchy of Lithuania and the union of Poland and Lithuania. But the roots of Belarus go further back as well. The people were once part of Kievian Rus. They are called Belorussian as opposed to the Minor-Russians who became modern Ukranians because they were Christianized (thus made pure and white) prior to “black Russia” which generally denotes the Pagan Russians before the light of Christianity.
Following the collapse of the Russian Empire and the beginning of the Polish-Soviet war over the Kresy lands, German foreign policy sought to create quasi-loyal buffer states meant to isolate and weaken Russia. To this end, Germans had sent Piłsudzki to Poland and Lenin to Moscow. Their accolytes likewise proclaimed a free and independent Belarus and Ukraine which was immediately opposed by Belorusian communists. The only foreign diplomatic mission established by this non-Soviet Belarus was in Berlin.
In both cases, Germany was too weak to follow through on its plans and Poland came to terms with the Soviet Union dividing modern Ukraine and Belarus between themselves. Many Poles sought to recreate the old Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth while the Soviet Union saw its mission as the emancipation of farmers and workers and the liquidation of old national-religious identities in favor of a new Soviet identity. Yet this new Soviet identity likewise foresaw the creation of distinctly non-Polish Belarusian and Ukrainian identities.
Language has likewise always been one of several political tools utilized by partisans to forge identity in Belarus. The Belarusian language is quite comprehensible to Poles, less so for Russians. However, because Belarusian is now written in the cyrylic alphabet used by Russians it is more legible to the Russian eye than to the Polish eye which utilizes the Latin alphabet. In practice, Belarusian is not spoken by the majority of Belarusians who prefer to simply speak Russian. Official state business is conducted in Russian and the only place one can sometimes hear Belorusian is in Polish Catholic Churches. In short: Belorusians in Belarus speak Russian while Poles in Belarus speak Belorusian.
The roots of this curious circumstance are manifold. The Belorusian language was once written in the Latin alphabet and spoken by the peasantry. Under Polish-Lithuanian dominion, Belorusian was at times outlawed in order to Polonize the population. When Belarus came under Russian rule, subsequent Russian Tsars likewise outlawed Belorusian as part of their Russification efforts. In Soviet times efforts were made to institute Russian as a common language amongst all slavic Soviet Republics in order to hasten the development of communism.
Belorussian has sometimes been stigmatized as a peasant dialect unfit for cultured and educated peoples. Naturally a cross section of excellent Belorusian literature and poetry testifies otherwise. There have always been Belorusian intellectuals who have cultivated their language and resisted its stigmatisation.
Still, for practical purposes, Belorusians learn to speak Russian because Russia is their largest political and economic partner and German because Germany is the ruling political authority of the European Union which borders Belarus to the west.
The Belorusian identity is necessarily tied to the Soviet era because only through the Soviet Union did Belarus come to be as Belarus. While Belarusian history is Polish-Lithuanian and Russian, the history of a distinctly Belorusian political identity is Soviet.
With the demise of the Soviet Union, Belarus is now on a journey in search of its own identity outside of communist philosophy. This journey consists of unearthing its history as well as forging a national present. It is a delicate journey because Belarus is composed of ethnic groups whose origins are often diametrically at odds. Yet there is one common thread that runs through all of Belarusian history, whether Polish-Lithuanian, Kievian Rus, Russian or Soviet: that common thread is Christianity, specifically Roman-Catholicism and Russian Orthodoxy.
No matter where one turns it is clear that the Christian faith was a positive and universalist humanist force for good in Belarusian history. Christianity is the glue which holds this otherwise highly diversified society together. Belorusian hospitality reflects this Christian culture in accordance with the Biblical edict “a guest in the home is God in the home.” Belorusian traditions also demonstrate a wonderful sense of humor. A toast by women on behalf of men goes: ” to men! Our Tsars! Our gods! May they always kneel at our feet!”
Of course there were times when Christianity was a mere façade for political dominion. Religious affiliation, like language, was a mark of political loyalty. Orthodoxy meant fidelity to the Tsar. Catholicism meant fidelity to Poland. Atheism meant fidelity to the Soviet ideal. Thankfully, the present state of Catholic and Orthodox faith in Belarus means fidelity to a loving Christ.
Belarusian religious practice is authentic Christianity and it is made all the more noble thanks to the wise policy of the Catholic and Orthodox Churches which are now in an advanced stage of partial communion tending towards full communion. A wonderful illustration can be found a short distance outside of Ivieniec: a statue of Mary, the Mother of God. To one side stands an Orthodox Cross, to the other a Catholic cross. The inscription on the statue quotes John 17:21 “Let them all be one.”