Khatyn Thesis***
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Copyright by Michael Guthrie Dorman 2017 The Thesis Committee for Michael Guthrie Dorman Certifies that this is the approved version of the following thesis: Khatyn and the Myth of Genocide in Lukashenko’s Belarus APPROVED BY SUPERVISING COMMITTEE: Supervisor: Charters Wynn Oksana Lutsyshyna Khatyn And The Myth of Genocide In Lukashenko’s Belarus by Michael Guthrie Dorman Thesis Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts The University of Texas at Austin August 2017 Abstract Khatyn And The Myth of Genocide In Lukashenko’s Belarus Michael Guthrie Dorman, MA The University of Texas at Austin, 2017 Supervisor: Charters Wynn During the German occupation of Soviet Belarus, punitive actions against the local population were a common occurrence. Often these actions included the destruction of villages along with part or all of their inhabitants. In March of 1943 the village of Khatyn was burned to the ground along with all of its inhabitants by Nazi troops, many of whom were from Western Ukraine. Though more than 600 Belarusian villages met a similar fate, the site of the Khatyn massacre was chosen for the construction of an expansive memorial complex in 1969. Over the course of its existence, the Khatyn memorial has become one of the most important symbols of the tremendous loss of life and suffering the Second World War inflicted on Belarus. Additionally, it has become an integral part of the Belarusian identity. During the rule of the country’s first and only president to date, Alexander Lukashenko, the Khatyn memorial’s centrality to the Belarusian identity has been used to expand the republic’s war narrative. In Lukashenko’s Belarus, the story of the Khatyn village massacre and the memorial complex that stands in its commemoration have played key roles in revising the suffering experienced in Belarus during WWII. Moreover, Khatyn has been one of the main sources of evidence used to prove what the Lukashenko government describes as the “genocide of the Belarusian nation.” 1 Table of Contents Chapter 1 Introduction 3 Chapter 2 The Great Patriotic War in Belarus: An Overview 15 Chapter 3 The Khatyn Massacre 23 Chapter 4 The Khatyn Memorial 29 Chapter 5 Khatyn In Lukashenko’s Belarus: The Policy of Genocide 35 Chapter 6 Conclusion 53 Bibliography 56 2 Chapter 1: Introduction Belarus’s first and only president to date, Alexander Lukashenko, was elected on June 24th, 1994, after winning a massive 80.3% of the votes in the republic’s first and only free and open election in accordance with all international standards.1 Lukashenko’s ascension to office marked the beginning of what has become one of longest reigns of any non-royal national leader currently in power.2 Over the course of his presidency, Lukashenko has ruled Belarus in an authoritarian style that has earned him the title of “Europe’s last dictator.” As part of insuring the stability of his position as president and his concentration of power, Lukashenko’s government has tightly controlled the media in Belarus as well as the curriculum taught in the republic’s educational system. In both of these areas of Belarusian society the history of the Second World War is given a level of hyper-visibility that exceeds even that of the Soviet era. Moreover, for the Lukashenko regime, the ability of a particular historical narrative to create a political climate conducive to the longevity of Lukashenko’s leadership far outweighs the accuracy of the version of history being propagated. As such, the Lukashenko regime has approached the details of the history of the Second World War in Belarus as malleable, engaging in historical revisionism in the name of politically expediency. The narrative of the “Great Patriotic War” promoted in Lukashenko’s Belarus emphasizes the extreme wartime suffering endured by ethnic Belarusians, while ignoring and dismissing details that draw the state-sanctioned version into question.3 In 1"Biografiya Prezidenta Respubliki Belarus." Biografiya Prezidenta Respubliki Belarus Lukashenko Aleksandra Grigorevicha | Oficialnyj internet-portal Presidenta Respubliki Belarus. Accessed April 24, 2017. http://president.gov.by/ru/biography_ru/. 2 As of June, 2017 3 The Great Patriotic War refers specifically to the Soviet’s involvement in WWII between the years of 1941-1945 and is part of a Soviet war narrative promoting a single handed Soviet victory and the war as a uniquely Soviet experience. In present-day Belarus, the term Great Patriotic War tends to be used interchangeable with the terms “WWII” and “Second World 3 propagating its version of the history of the Great Patriotic War in Belarus, the Lukashenko regime has gone to great lengths to avoid acknowledging the extent to which Belarus’s prewar population was multiethnic and the disproportionate rate at which Belarus’s minority ethnicities account for the republic’s wartime losses.4 Thus, the Lukashenko government portrays the history of the Great Patriotic War in Belarusian lands as a tragedy carried out intentionally and specifically against ethnic Belarusians, resulting in the “genocide of the Belarusian nation.”5 Lukashenko’s relationship with the specifics of the past are most readily visible through his approach to the details of his biography. In 2009, Lukashenko decided to change his date of birth from the 30th of August to the 31st so that he and his favorite son, Nikolai, would have the same birthday. Russian and Belarusian news channels reported on their birthday celebration without noting the change in date. Another and bolder example of the leader reworking the particulars of his biography happened in 1996 when he told a group of veterans in Volgograd, “I really understand you. You know, my father was also killed during the Second World War.” Being from Belarus, the territory that suffered the highest per capita losses during the war, this would have been an entirely believable story had Lukashenko not been born in 1954. In an interview with BelSat TV, Valer Karbalevich, a political scientist and author of a non- governmental sanctioned biography on Lukashenko, stated that ‘Lukashenko’s (official) War.” All three terms are regularly used in the Belarusian media and by the country’s president in reference to what the Belarusian government portrays as a primarily bilateral Nazi-Soviet conflict lasting from 1941-1945. 4 Bohdan, Siarhei, “Belarus of Jews And Muslims,” Accessed June 20, 2017. http://belarusdigest.com/story/belarus-jews-and-muslims-7540. 5 Litskevich, Oleg, "Genocid Belorusskogo Naroda," Beldumka.belta.by, Accessed April 25, 2017, http://beldumka.belta.by/isfiles/000167_845710.pdf. 4 biography is similar to that of all authoritarian leaders, especially those of the Soviet Union, it is written like a beautiful myth rather than a factual life history.’6 As is often the case with totalitarian regimes, in Lukashenko’s Belarus the government has the ability to control which parts of history are remembered and which parts are forgotten.7 The government’s extensive media oversight sharply limits accessibility to alternative versions of history for those living within Belarus’s boarders. In its effort to crystallize the genocide myth in Belarusian memory, the Lukashenko regime has used the republic’s state-run media to build a narrative of victimhood and tragedy beyond what historians have generally attributed to the territory of present-day Belarus.8 In doing this, there has been an extensive focus on the frequently repeated mantra that “Belarusians suffered the largest losses of any nation,” a statement justified by pointing out that half of Belarus’s population of approximately 9 million had been killed, moved, or deported by the end of the war.9 The fact that the Holocaust was responsible for more than forty percent of Belarus’s (civilian) losses is excluded from the 6 "Zachem Lukashenko perepicavaet svaio biografiio," "BelSat TV," Accessed April 25, 2017. http://belsat.eu/ru/news/zachem-lukashenko-perepisyvaet-svoyu-biografiyu/. 7 Kotljarchuk, Andrej, "World War II Memory Politics: Jewish, Polish and Roma Minorities of Belarus," Accessed April 25, 2017, http://belarusjournal.com/article/world-war-ii-memory- politics-jewish-polish-and-roma-minorities-belarus-205; The term “totalitarian” is used here rather than “authoritarian” due to the fact that as ruler of Belarus, Lukashenko has gone far beyond merely securing and maintaining power. Since becoming president, Lukashenko has sought to shape all aspects of social life in Belarus, stifling organizations with ideologies in opposition to his own and controlling the flow of information in Belarus through its state-run media and educational system. 8 Kasmach, Lizaveta, "Victory Day: Between Remembrance and Militant Memory," Belarus Digest, Accessed April 25, 2017, http://belarusdigest.com/story/victory-day-between- remembrance-and-militant-memory-25683. 9 Snyder, Timothy, Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler And Stalin (New York: Basic Books, 2012), 250 5 republic’s official history.10 With the Lukashenko regime using the term “Belarusian” to denote citizenship rather than ethnicity in calculating wartime losses, German atrocities committed against Jews, Roma, and other minority ethnic groups in Belarus have been written into the republic’s official history of the Great Patriotic War as Belarusian losses.11 This has allowed for the death camps, ghettos, and other sites of mass murder in Belarus that are widely accepted as part of the Holocaust to be included in the Lukashenko government’s Great Patriotic War narrative as evidence of a Belarusian genocide.12 The practice of placing all wartime losses under one collective identity harkens back to the Great Patriotic War narrative of the Soviet era.