Belarus’ new political nation? 2020 anti-authoritarian protests as identity building

Abstract

The rigged 2020 presidential election in Belarus, as well as the disproportionate use of violence by authorities and multiple reports of tortures of detainees served as a catalyst for the Belarusian society. The mass protests that ensued were on a scale unseen since the 1990’s. Mass mobilization of citizens during Sunday rallies as well as grassroot activity and the rise of local communities led some to proclaim the birth of a new civic society and even a new Belarusian political nation (Przybylski, 2020). The ultimate validity of these statements can be fully evaluated only with the benefit of hindsight, which we do not have as of the time of writing. One can nevertheless safely argue that unprecedented mass political mobilization and new forms of horizontal solidarity are important contributions to nation building—which, in the social constructivist paradigm, should be understood as a never-ending process rather than a singular event. This line of thought has been previously developed by authors who understand nations and nation-states as performing their identities through various genres of cultural production (e.g. Shapiro, 2004). This contribution focuses on symbolic politics of the protest movement as ‘‘signifying practices’’ (Hall, 1997) and examines ways in which these practices reappropriate crucial symbolic legacies in order to articulate a new political subject through representations of an anti-Lukashenka majority. Following a discussion of the broader context of identity building in the post-Communist Belarus, I provide an empirical analysis of two key legacies recycled by the protests. The first one is the political legacy of Belarusian national revivalism and its symbols that quickly became the dominant visual theme in the protests. Though, in their origin, these symbols were closely linked to ethnocultural Belarusian nationalism, the protest movement has worked to resignify them into