Instytut Pamięci Narodowej “Death Parade” on Victory Day (Minsk, 2020) - Issues -

Aliaksei Lastouski PhD

European Humanities University, Vilnius, Lithuania

ORCID 0000-0002-5034-7454

DOI: 10.48261/INRR210308

Keywords: Great Patriotic War, Belarus, politics of history, celebration of Victory Day, COVID-19

Abstract: Being borrowed from the Soviet historical narrative and successfully adapted to the needs of the Belarusian state, the memory of Victory in the Great Patriotic War has become the ideological basis for the authoritarian regime in Belarus. This article is aimed at addressing the celebration of the Victory Day in Minsk in 2020 and, through the analysis of this particular case, identify the main frames for the ideological image of Victory in the Belarusian authorities’ politics of history as well as the mechanisms for population involvement and ideological mobilisation. The year 2020 has become critical for Belarusian politics as for the first time since 1994, mass democratic protests challenged Aliaksandr Lukashenka’s complete control over Belarusian society.

Financial disclosure: This study was supported by The Foundation for Baltic and East European Studies (Östersjöstiftelsen), Research project “Religion in post-Soviet nation-building: Official mediations and grassroots’ accounts in Belarus” (61/2017).

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