The national self and the 'other'

Identity is what defines us as individuals. It’s how we perceive ourselves in comparison to others and the world. Therefore, national identity is what makes a country-specific and stand out to make them identifiable to other countries. How a nation defines itself can be based on numerous factors such as language, ethnicity, culture, politics, and religion. Belarus is an eastern European country bordered by Russia. It has retained closer political and economic ties to Russia than any other former Soviet republic. Therefore, Belarus’ national identity can be puzzling to pinpoint because they are dependent on their neighboring country, Russia. Russia and Belarus have similar cultural, political, and religious views. However, the main identities attributing to Belarus are language, mythology, and religion, making it semi-distinguishable to other countries. In this blog post, I will be explaining Belarus’ national identity on what it means to be a Belarusian and their association with any ‘others’ that may contribute to identifying their national identity.

Language has a way of shaping a nation’s identity by continuing to live on, whereas, for example, history may not be because it is not practiced on a consistent basis with the public. According to Gorbachev (1987), language is the soul of a nation and its supreme cultural identity. Belarus has two official languages, Belarusian and Russian, but they have not agreed on a national language thus far. In the past, there have been efforts to create a national language, but since 1917 Belarus has been split on which language to claim. Polls indicate that less than 25% of Belarusians know their native language well and less than 50% were willing to promote their knowledge of it (Gapanovich,1993). Even President Lukashenka speaks a mixture of both official languages. Their split languages are an example of how puzzling it can be to define Belarus’ national identity language as Belarusian only when its other official language is tied to Russia.

As a factor attributing to Belarus’ national identity, mythology is broken into two parts: myths and its history. National myths are defined as creative recombination’s of the past (Smith, 1998, p. 15). In Belarus, people are unlikely to engage in a nation’s building and self-identifying without some assurance that its history is going to set them apart and allow them to sound glorious and unique (Marples, 2002, p. 4). According to Vakar (2002), individual’s memory of the historical past has been a proven compelling factor in promoting movements of national self-determination. Because countries don’t want to sound as close to each other in relation to past historical accomplishments, there is no clear national identity for Belarus.

There is a clash of mythologies that correlates to Belarus having two sets of national symbols. The first one is Soviet vintage, which includes “Zubrovka, Pesnyary, Viskuli, and the 1941–44 partisan war or rather landmarks, films and memories of those years” (Ioffe, 2003, p. 1259). The other national symbol is the Belarusian flag and its national emblem. Belarus is the only post-Soviet nation that returned to its Soviet emblem (Ioffe, 2003). Russia didn’t keep its emblem; it disposed of both its former Soviet-era flag and emblem. This is an example of how these symbols reflect Belarus’ continual ties to the Soviet past. Myths from the Soviet vintage years demonstrates how symbols are not well suited for developing national feelings toward an identity.

The last national identifying trait for Belarus is religion. Religion as a factor of Belarus’ national identity begins in 1569 with most residents of Belarus belonging to an Eastern Catholic Church (sometimes referred to as the Uniate Church) from up until 1839. The Church represented a transitional creed between the other two dominant religions, Catholicism, leaning toward the Poles and Orthodoxy, leaning toward Russians (Ioffe, 2003). Belarusian nationalist writings suggest that the church’s collapse more than anything else undermined the Belarusians’ sense of being different from the neighboring ethnic groups. When trying to define the national identity of Belarus’ religion, it gets troublesome because Belarus does not have a state-based religion that’s affiliated with the state or country. According to Belarus government policy, Belarus has no official religion, but under its Constitution, it allows its citizens freedom of worship and religious practices, as long as they pose no threat to social or governmental institutions. It wasn’t until the Eastern Catholics (Greco-Catholics who abode by Orthodox rites, but recognized the supremacy of the Pope) shifted to Orthodox, that Belarusians immediately followed. Belarus has been stuck in-between two dominant religions, Orthodox and Catholicism, but since most of its population identifies with Orthodox, that is the religion it associates its identity towards. But according to Ioffe (2003), ultimately Belarus’ national religious identity looks toward both Russia and Poland for cultural ties to religion.

When discussing types of Othering, Belarus has been influenced by both external and internal significant others. Triandafyllidou (1998) defines external significant others as dominant nations, bordering nations with ongoing territorial disputes, and nations that claim similar origin. Russia in relation to Belarus fits under external others perfectly. Russia has been influencing Belarus’ national identity immensely because of its close ties and dependency upon Russia. These factors include political, economic, and cultural traditions. Internal others can also include Russians, Poles, and Ukrainians. These internal otherings include ethnic minorities, languages, and different religious groups.

National identity is what makes a country-specific, identifiable, and stand out to other countries. A country’s national identity can be created based on religion, language, culture, and ethnicity. The types of otherings have influenced Belarus’ national identity crisis. Belarus has taken parts of other countries identities and to tried to make them their own such as language, religion, and mythology. After researching Belarus’ national identity, I have concluded that their national identity is still evolving. Belarus does not have a clear, set identity that makes it specific, identifiable, and different to other countries.

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References

Bekus, N. (2013). Ethnic identity in post-Soviet Belarus: Ethnolinguistic survival as an argument in the political struggle. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 35(1), 43-58. Retrieved from http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01434632.2013.845197

Belarus Population. (2018). World Population Review. Retrieved from http://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/belarus-population/

Brown, A. (2005). Language and identity in Belarus. Language Policy, 4(3), 311-332. Retrieved from http://web.a.ebscohost.com/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=0&sid=9789e7e1-4385-4195-9c05-7edc3b59d278%40sessionmgr4006

Ioffe, G. (2003). Understanding Belarus: Belarusian identity. Europe-Asia Studies, 55(8), 1241-1272. Retrieved from http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0966813032000141105#aHR0cDovL3d3dy50YW5kZm9ubGluZS5jb20vZG9pL3BkZi8xMC4xMDgwLzA5NjY4MTMwMzIwMDAxNDExMDU/bmVlZEFjY2Vzcz10cnVlQEBAMA==

Smith, A. D. (1998). The Ethnic Origins of Nation. Nations and Nationalism, 10(1/2), 125-141. Retrieved from https://smerdaleos.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/198589879-anthony-smith-the-ethnic-origins-of-nations.pdf

Triandafyllidou, A. (1998). National identity and the “Other.” Ethnic and Racial Studies, 21(4), 593-612. Retrieved from http://web.b.ebscohost.com.proxy.seattleu.edu/ehost/detail/detail?vid=0&sid=98c65e78-225d-45ef-b69a-71e36dc3d0fd%40sessionmgr103&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZSZzY29wZT1zaXRl#AN=905053&db=sih