‘LONG-SUFFERING LANDS’ BETWEEN POLAND AND BELARUS. POLITICS OF STATE HISTORY IN BELARUS ABOUT SEPTEMBER 17TH, 1939, WORLD WAR II, AND BUILDING THE NATION

The present text aims to address the phenomenon of the institutionalization of historical memory in Belarus, a country where Aliaksandar Lukashenka has been president since 1994. It also aims to answer questions related to the possibility of a synchronization of memory related to the moment of September 17th, 1939, perceived contradictorily in Belarus and Poland. Furthermore, we would also like to cover some of the objectives of the national identity construction that the Minsk regime has ideologically built during the last three decades. Instrumentalized by political and ideological discourse, it is the institutionalized memory of the state that sustains the long-term survival of the Minsk regime. Belarus has experienced, since the mid-1990s, a return to Soviet interpretations of historical events, being an extreme case of rehabilitation and glorification of the communist legacy. Especially the so-called Great Patriotic War (1941-1945) has become a center point of Belarusian memory and identity. On June 7th, 2021, the President of the Republic of Belarus signed Decree No. 206, establishing the National Unity Day on September 17th. The decree mentions that September 17th, 1939 symbolizes the restoration of historical justice and the reunification of the Belarusian nation, forcibly divided through Poland’s coercion by the Riga Peace Treaty of 1921. On September 17th, 1939, the USSR invaded Poland; previously, Nazi Germany had started its hostilities against the country on September 1st, 1939. The Red Army occupied the Eastern territories of Poland, i.e., Western Ukraine and Western Belarus. Whereas Moscow and the Western Belarus communists labeled this as a “liberation” and a “reunification” of Belarus within the borders of the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic, for Poland this day signifies an “aggression” and the “annexation” of the Eastern regions of its national territory. The power of attraction of the “Russian world”, instituted by Kremlin, manifests in Belarus not only by promoting soothing common traditional values, which refer to the Russian and Belarusian uniqueness, but also, at the same time, by denying the ties and space of common memory between Belarus and Poland. The idea that the Soviet aggression of September 17th, 1939, a fulfillment of the secret Additional Protocol to the Molotov– Ribbentrop Pact, is a turning point and a founding moment of the Belarusian nation (even though it involved the dissolution of Polish statehood) is a relevant aspect of the political and ideological use of memory by Alyiaksandar Lukashenka’s regime.