Belarus

Russia’s annexation of Crimea and intervention in Eastern Ukraine in 2014 alarmed not only Western-leaning states in Central Europe and the Baltic but also Moscow’s traditional allies. These events signalled that Moscow is now willing and capable of using direct military force against perceived strategic threats in its self-proclaimed region of vested interests. With the exception of Ukraine and the Baltic States, this Letort Paper examines how Russia’s front-line states have adjusted their foreign policy posture since 2014. Belarus, Moldova, the states of Central Asia and the South Caucasus calculate the benefits and risks in their relationship with Moscow and either make concessions or strengthen their defenses accordingly to avoid triggering a Russian reaction. This Letort Paper provides a range of policy recommendations intended to maximize the opportunities of a new alignment with the West for these states while minimizing the risk of Russia, using again, those capabilities it has demonstrated in Ukraine and Syria.

Slavs in the Making takes a fresh look at archaeological evidence from parts of Slavic-speaking Europe north of the Lower Danube, including the present-day territories of the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, Belarus, Ukraine, and Russia.

Nothing is known about what the inhabitants of those remote lands called themselves during the sixth century, or whether they spoke a Slavic language. The book engages critically with the archaeological evidence from these regions, and questions its association with the "Slavs" that has often been taken for granted. It also deals with the linguistic evidence—primarily names of rivers and other bodies of water—that has been used to identify the primordial homeland of the Slavs, and from which their migration towards the Lower Danube is believed to have started. It is precisely in this area that sociolinguistics can offer a serious alternative to the language tree model currently favoured in linguistic paleontology. The question of how best to explain the spread of Slavic remains a controversial issue. This book attempts to provide an answer, and not just a critique of the method of linguistic paleontology upon which the theory of the Slavic migration and homeland relies.

The book proposes a model of interpretation that builds upon the idea that (Common) Slavic cannot possibly be the result of Slavic migration. It addresses the question of migration in the archaeology of early medieval Eastern Europe, and makes a strong case for a more nuanced interpretation of the archaeological evidence of mobility. It will appeal to scholars and students interested in medieval history, migration, and the history of Eastern and Central Europe.

Der Beitrag diskutiert die Organisation des deutschen Massenmordes an Jüdinnen und Juden im besetzten Belarus in den Jahren 1941 bis 1944 und beschreibt die komplexen, zum Teil divergierenden Interessen und Motive der deutschen Akteure wie der Zivilverwaltung, der SS- und Polizeieinheiten sowie der Wehrmacht. Dabei wird der Frage nachgegangen, welche Rolle hierbei die Kollaboration von Teilen der belarussischen Bevölkerung spielte. Entlang verschiedener Tötungswellen wird dargestellt, dass das Tempo der „Judenvernichtung“ sowohl vom Kriegsverlauf als auch von den ökonomischen Interessen der Besatzungsbehörden geleitet wurde.

Asymmetric interdependencies with Russia have been identified as a key factor influencing domestic change in response to EU policies in Eastern Partnership (EaP) countries. As argued in the literature, interdependencies can either facilitate or constrain EU-demanded change, depending on whether they are associated with EaP countries’ sensitivity or vulnerability to Russia’s policies. In this paper, we provide a systematic mapping and process-tracing of interdependencies in three EaP countries (Belarus, Moldova and Ukraine) and four key sectors (trade, migration, energy and security). We further explore Russia’s use of interdependencies and attempts at issue-linkage between the above sectors. Finally, we scrutinize domestic elites’ responses to Russia’s strategies.

Drawing upon the distinction between sensitivity and vulnerability, we seek in particular to identify the conditions under which Russia’s policies effectively incentivize or disincentivize the political elites in EaP countries to engage with the EU’s and Russia’s policies. We find that Russia’s attempts to link issues (even if to varying degrees across countries and sectors) effectively undermined further integration with the EU in those cases where policy alternatives were too costly for the incumbent elites. By contrast, Russia’s use of nexuses between different policy sectors have facilitated or even supported integration with the EU when the latter offered an affordable alternative to the EaP countries.

In 2013, there were three times fewer adoptions worldwide than in 2003. Moreover, most internationally adopted children now have “special needs”, which means that they are relatively old, are with siblings, or have a disability. This article looks at the causes and consequences of declining intercountry adoption over the last decade, in France and across the world.

This article explores photographic works produced by key members of the Minsk School of Photography before and after the collapse of the USSR in the 1980s and 1990s. Mostly reworking found images from the Soviet past, these artists employed the visual language of that period to disassociate themselves from Soviet practices of photographic recording. Appropriating conventions of the portrait genre, the Minsk photographers used them to create a stream of obfuscated representations in which individuals are presented devoid of their originary contexts, biographies, and, frequently, faces. Through their de-facing tactics, these photographers visualized forms of indirect postcolonial presence. Erasing subjectivity and abstracting imprints of lived experience, their vicarious photography articulates a model of dealing with history that allows presence without identity or identification.

In recent literature on post-Soviet electoral revolutions in places where attempts at regime change through popular protest did not succeed, opposition groups are often simply regarded as 'failed'. And yet, opposition actors exist and participate in the political life of their country. Building on the Belarusian and Azerbaijani cases, we argue that opposition actors are maintained in a 'ghetto', often virtual, tightly managed by the ruling authorities who exert monopolistic control over civic activities. Opposition actors adapt to the restricted conditions – accepting a certain level of dependency. They thus develop various tactics to engage with the outside, striving to reduce the ghetto walls. To this end this article proposes a typology of what we call oppositional 'resistance models': electoral, in the media, lobbying and through education. The models highlight what makes 'opposition' in authoritarian states and are a step towards a more comprehensive understanding of the phenomenon in this context.

This article focuses on folk expressions on " the election without choice", as the state elections in authoritarian societies are often labeled. The research is based on the case of Belarus, where the electoral fraud has become a matter of common knowledge both for the Belarusians themselves and outside observers. Yet, even though the independent opinion polls are not exactly as positive for the Belarusian president as the official results of the election, they show that Alexander Lukashenko wins within the self-sufficient system he has created. This hegemony is nurtured, for instance, by various manifestations of the election sham reproduced by Belarusians. At the same time, the election rumors and jokes circulating in the oral communication and on the Internet question the existing hegemony. By means of fieldwork examples I show in this article how the genres of rumors and jokes are interconnected, sometimes to the point of being indis-cernible. Rather than looking at the borders of the two genres, I will concentrate on their interplay, intertextual bridges between them, the ideologies they share, and new directions for understanding the non-verifiable folklore they provide.

The interrelation between language and nation-building is a key issue in Belarusian media discourse. The discussion is conducted on all topical areas of language policy (status planning, corpus planning, acquisition planning) and includes different views on the present and future political orientation of the country. Based on statements made by selected political actors and intellectuals in Belarusian mass media in the years 1994-2010 this study identifies the main positions and argumentation patterns in the debate on language and nation-building. Belarusian president Lukashenka underscores the continuity of linguistic development since Soviet times and rejects a status reduction for the Russian language, i.e. a break with Soviet language policy. As to „oppositional“ Belarusian intellectuals, opinions on the language issue are divided: The range extends from the nationalistic and clearly anti-Russian viewpoint of exile politician Zianon Pazniak via nationally „conscious“ but moderate views to statements favoring „democratic bilingualism“, accompanied at times by an openly neglecting attitude towards the Belarusian language.

The essay proceeds from the assumptions that for a economic/political integration group to succeed, first, its participants’ motives should ideally be as alike as possible and not oppose one another and, second, their expectations from integration should correspond to the organisation’s capabilities. In light of these assumptions, the study endeavours to assess the Eurasian Economic Union’s (EAEU) potential for stability and development. First, the author analyses the key motives that were driving its member states’ decisions to enter the organisation, compares them with one another and discusses how the countries’ motives influence their conduct in the union. Second, the author confronts those motives against the EAEU’s activities and the general logic of interstate politics on the post-Soviet space to reckon up whether the bloc’s capabilities fit with the expectations of its member countries. Finally, based on that discussion, the author speculates on how the divergence/convergence of EAEU member states’ goals, as well as the (in-)feasibility of their expectations, affect the organisation’s development.

Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to comprehensively explore marketing issues for foreign industrial companies of large, small and medium size entering emerging markets (EMs), particularly transition economies in Eastern Europe. The vast majority of current studies about emerging markets focus only on defining suitable strategies related to large consumer goods corporations.

Design/methodology/approach
The research adopted a multiple case study approach. Five Italian companies belonging to different business-to-business industries that have entered emerging countries in Eastern Europe were selected for investigation.

Findings
Empirical analysis uncovered recurring issues related to: institutional factors causing market uncertainty and instability; difficulties in building a sales network; a need for product adaptation to guarantee satisfactory performance; choices related to communication, branding and trade fairs; and considerations about competition and first mover advantage. Results can be interpreted as an extension of the analysis of institutional voids by Khanna and Palepu (1997).

Research limitations/implications
The study is based on the analysis of five case studies of companies operating in specific emerging markets, namely in Eastern Europe Countries (EEc) Further research based on different samples and different emerging countries is needed before generalizing results.

Practical implications
The study shows that the main institutional void affecting business-to-business companies entering emerging markets (EEc) is the lack of locally developed sales and after-sales networks. This institutional void slows the entry process of business-to-business companies in EMs. Given these constraints, from the perspective of business-to-business SMEs, it may be fruitful to pursue niche positioning in EMs.

Originality/value
The study analyzes emerging markets opportunities and entry strategies from the business-to-business marketing perspective, uncovering the most critical issues.

The present Master’s thesis deals with a current trend in the process of forming national identity in Belarus. After discussing the literature on nation and national identity, the author traces the historical developments, which led to the fragmented picture of conception of national identities in Belarus that we observe today. The paper proposes that four different logics of nation-building were present in Belarusian history, none of them leading to the finalization of a common identity. Afterwards, according to the typology of Grigory Ioffe, three contemporary understandings of Belarusian identities are depicted. Comparing these three projects, a fourth, inclusive conception is outlined. Then, Mova Nanova (Language Anew), a very popular initiative aiming at promoting national identity, is presented in detail. Mova Nanova offers weekly meetings of Belarusian language and culture all over the country. Their conception of “Belarusianness” is examined through interviews with Alesia Litvinouskaja, founder of the project, and Alena Tserashkova, who conducts the branch Mova Nanova for Children. This understanding is compared to the four other conceptions of Belarusian identity. Finally, the thesis assesses, whether Mova Nanova offers an inclusive approach to the crucial questions of Belarusian identity and thus can help to develop a common national discourse in Belarus. The author aims at embedding one of the most interesting initiatives of the emerging civil society of Belarus into the broader research on nation-building and identity formation in the East European country.

Submission date: 31.03.2016

This article looks into Armenia's and Belarus’ engagement with the European Union's (EU) and Russia's conditionalities, the two EU Eastern Partnership (EaP) countries that are also members of the Russia-led Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU). While paying attention to political, economic (including energy and technical) as well as security dimensions of the EU's and Russia's approaches, as proposed in the present special section, the article demonstrates that the conditionalities extended by the EU and Russia to the two countries in question have differed. In their turn, Armenia and Belarus have reacted differently to Russia's and the EU's conditionalities. Against the backdrop of the changing significance ascribed to both the EU's and Russia's policies towards their common neighbourhood since the 1990s, the present contribution identifies and analyses factors that account for the diverging positions of Armenia and Belarus, including the type of regime, the geopolitical considerations, the stakes in the economic and energy spheres and the predisposition to integration. The article shows that in the resulting complex context, Armenia and Belarus have been able to influence the shape and content of the EU's and Russia's conditionalities, although in a different way and to a different extent.

This report aims to provide an overview of the cultural heritage sector in Belarus and identify the most important areas of its development, taking into account the interests of local actors and latest European approaches. Heritage should primarily be used to develop the social, economic and cultural domains, improve the quality of life and foster the competitiveness of cities and regions. This report identified the following actors working in heritage: state bodies, state cultural institutions (including museums), restorers and urban planners, NGOs and informal initiatives and commercial companies. The report is based on more than 30 interviews with experts and research trips to Minsk, Hrodna, Brest, Mstislaw, Nesvizh, and Ashmyany. Data from open sources was used extensively.

Obwohl die Ukraine den territorial zweitgrößten Staat Europas darstellt, ist sie nur selten Objekt adäquater Medienberichterstattung, tiefgehender öffentlicher Diskussionen und politischer Auseinandersetzung in Deutschland. Im Resultat ist das deutsche Engagement für die Gazprom-Unterwasserpipelines Nord und South Stream von unzureichender Berücksichtigung des Spannungspotentials dieser Projekte für die russisch-ukrainischen Beziehungen gekennzeichnet. Der niedrige Stellenwert der Ukraine im deutschen öffentlichen Diskurs steht im Widerspruch zur erheblichen geo- und sicherheitspolitischen Bedeutung des Landes. Eine Neuorientierung der europäischen und deutschen Ostpolitik ist überfällig. While territorially being the second largest state of Europe, Ukraine is only rarely the object of adequate media representation, deep public discussions or political debate in Germany. As a result, the German involvement in Gazprom’s underwater pipelines Nord and South Stream is characterized by a lack of attention to their potential of increasing tensions in Russian-Ukrainian relations. The low salience of Ukraine in German public discourse is in contradiction to the geopolitical importance of the country. A reorientation of the EU’s and Germany’s Eastern policies is overdue.

Монография посвящена проблемам развития современного беларусского языка. Знакомит читателя с  реальным планом ассимметричного билингвизма в Беларуси, конкретными примерами проявления интерференции в коммуникативной, медиальной и  образовательной сферах, системе товарных знаков. Представляет этап русско-беларусской языковой интерференции рубежа ХХ–ХХI веков. Более подробно рассматривается  уровень речевой и его атрибут – трасянка.

Free copy available here https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/sXe6F2RYSVu9cg6eXVti/full

This article analyses how two official languages of Belarus, Russian and Belarusian, are represented on the homepages of two national news websites through the analysis of media discourse within headlines and leads of news stories, and focusing on aspects of multimodality of websites. In view of the equal legal status of these languages, this study investigates the extent to which readers of news in Russian and Belarusian are exposed to different content, and how these differences are connected to existing language ideologies. Critical discourse analysis of textual contents of linguistic versions in combination with multimodal analysis of the websites' layout revealed that Russian and Belarusian tend to be used differently in news on politics, culture and sports and, hence, are represented as having different values. More specifically, the media examined here present the same stories from different ideological perspectives and websites' thematic sections include different news depending on the language of the webpage. This study demonstrated that multilingual websites represent a useful source of data for the study of language ideologies in the media. The methodological approach employed here can be replicated in other contexts characterised by bilingualism and diglossia (Fishman 1967) linguistic situations.

Рахно К.Ю. Культ кабана на белорусско-русском этническом пограничье и его осетинские параллели // V Всероссийские Миллеровские чтения (Материалы научной конференции 20-22 октября 2016 г.): сборник статей. – Владикавказ: СОИГСИ ВНЦ РАН, 2016. – С. 78-86.

The EEU has ended up in something of a catch-22. It was designed as an economic initiative which could gradually achieve geopolitical objectives. But the perceived urgency and prevalence of geopolitics helped precipitate a crisis in Ukraine. This, in turn, has further undermined the potential for Eurasian integration to become a sustainable economic project. Thus, rather than have economic integration bring about geopolitical results, geopolitics has threatened the economic basis for the EEU.

This short article brings together previous literature on language policy in Belarus. Having formerly been a part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and now an established independent nation, the article explores the influence of Belarus' various changes in identity. It reflects broadly on the language policies of the nations it was once a part of, outlining the fluctuating journey of the Belarusian language through periods of widespread usage and acceptance to periods of oppression. A more thorough analysis is provided of the impact of language policy post-independence (and also, of the Law on Languages which slightly predates the declaration of independence), from the initial glimmer of hope provided by the establishment of Belarusian as the sole official language to the long-term decline imposed upon the Belarusian public by pro-Russian `dictator' Lukashenko. The article concludes by highlighting recent activity that could offer an optimistic outlook for the future.

Following Poland’s accession to the EU its borders with non-EU Member States became at the same time the EU’s external borders. In the east Poland borders Belarus and Ukraine. The length of Poland–Belarus border is 418.24 km and of Poland-Ukraine border – 535.18 km, which totals 953.42 km, and constitutes 27% of the
whole length of Polish borders. The aim of the article is to discuss briefly the place and importance of migration and border management issues within the cross-border
cooperation at Poland’s eastern border (and the EU’s eastern external border) under the European Neighbourhood Instrument Cross-border Cooperation Programme Poland–Belarus–Ukraine 2014–2020 to draw a cross-section picture of the current situation and
its circumstances. The programme for the years 2014–2020 identifies four priorities for cooperation in the geographic area concerned, among which the last one focuses on promotion of border management and border security, mobility and migration management.

Abstract : The project of Eurasian Economic Union has been reactivated by Russia at the end of the last decade. Its aim is to build a vast market by integrating several ex-republics of the Soviet Union, paving the way for the rebuilding of a competitive and innovative industrial capacity. But behind the industrial ambition of Russia, actual and potential member’s  objectives may be divergent. Moreover, the institutional conditions of the constitution of this Economic Union undermine it. Consequently, the perspective of a real regional economic integration - that would be necessary - remains unclear. 

Résumé : L’Union Économique Eurasiatique est un projet réactivé par la Russie à la fin des années 2000. Il vise à constituer un grand marché par l’intégration de certaines ex-républiques de l’URSS, avec pour objectif de reconstituer une capacité industrielle et d’innovation qui soit compétitive à l’échelle mondiale. Mais derrière l’ambition industrielle de la Russie, les objectifs des partenaires actuels et potentiels divergent. En outre, les conditions institutionnelles de l’édification de cette Union la fragilisent. Par conséquent, les perspectives d’une intégration économique régionale réelle, qui serait nécessaire, restent floues.

"In the twentieth century, nationalism has become an unwritten yet strong hegemonic rule that prescribes and defines cultural configurations of statehood. In the context of post-socialist and post-colonial transformations in “expanding” Eastern Europe, nation building is a complicated and incoherent process: the nation’s canonic attributes may contradict the cultural and historical “circumstances” of the development of a particular nation. This article questions a complicated dynamic between theoretical frameworks of nationalism and their applications in Eastern European states, such as in Belarus. More specifically, it argues against the discursive conceptualization of Belarus as a “nonexistent” or “undeveloped” nation. This article suggests rethinking nation building in Belarus in relation to the notion of major/minor developed by Deleuze and Guattari. The author implies that the unusual mode of Belarusian nationalism is not only a part of a struggle for domination between different intellectual groups in Belarus; it is also an issue of relying on traditional scholarly paradigms of nationalism that may no longer suffice.


Review in Hungarian: "Kis nemzet: A Fehérorosz nacionalizmus alternatív megjelenési formái" http://www.hhrf.org/kisebbsegkutatas/kk_2010_04/cikk.php?id=1895"

The article examines the limitations of methodological nationalism in the studies of social memory through a case study of memory of Stalinist repression in Belarus. It analyses how various social agencies – national and local activists, religious organisations, and international foundations – use the memory of repression for constructing post‐Soviet Belarusian identity by embedding their national representations in larger transnational frameworks. Drawing on the concept of ‘internal globalisation’, this article develops the idea of ‘internal transnationalism’ that suggests the importance of wider transnational configurations for the definition of nation. Internalized transnationalism does not make a national memory concept less nation‐centred, but it affects the choice of its cultural, political and civilizational framing. In contrast to methodological cosmopolitanism that implies rediscovering of the national as an internalized global, methodological transnationalism emphasizes the multiplicity of co‐existing transnational networks that can be invoked by social actors in their national mnemonic agenda. Using the case of the Kurapaty memorial site the article analyses how multiple framings of memory representations – the Belarusian national memory, liberal anti‐communist memory, contesting memories, such as Polish, Baltic and Jewish – compete and juxtapose in the space of social memory of political repression.

Рахно К.Ю. Коммуникативные аспекты гончарской магии в украинской и беларусской мифологической прозе //  Традыцыі і  сучасны  стан культуры  і мастацтва:  матэрыялы  Міжнароднай навукова-практычнай канферэнцыі (28-29 лістапада 2013 года, г. Мінск): У 2 частках. – Мінск: Права і эканоміка, 2014. – Частка 2. – С. 152–156.