East European Politics and Societies Volume 24 Number 1 Winter 2010 6-25 © 2010 SAGE Publications 10.1177/0888325409355818 Narratives of http://eeps.sagepub.com hosted at WWII Partisans and http://online.sagepub.com Genocide in Alexandra Goujon University of Bourgogne,

The memory of WWII always played an important role in Belarus, which was charac- terized as a “ Republic” during the Soviet time. Soviet historiography and memorial narrative emphasized the heroics of the resistance to and allowed only a description of the crimes of the Nazis. New ways of looking at war events appeared during the and after the independence of the country. But after came to power as president in 1994, a neo-Soviet version of the past was adopted and spread. The Great Patriotic War (GPW) has become an increas- ingly publicized event in the official memorial narrative as the culminating moment in Belarusian history. Since the mid-2000s, this narrative tends to be nationalized in order to testify that the Belarusian people’s suffering and resistance behavior were among the highest ones during WWII. Political and academic dissenting voices to the Belarusian authoritarian regime try to downplay this official narrative by pointing out that the were also victims of the Stalinist repression, and their attitude towards the Nazi occupation was more than ambivalent. Behind the memorial discourses, two competitive versions of Belarusian national identity can be distinguished. According to the official version, Belarusian identity is based on the East-Slavic identity that incor- porates the Soviet history in its contemporary development. According to the opposi- tion, it is based on a national memory that discards the Soviet past as a positive one.

Keywords: Belarus, World War II, memory, partisan, genocide

n 28 August 2008, the deputy minister of education in Belarus, Kazimir Farino, Oannounced to the press that the new academic year in all schools would begin with a lesson devoted to the sixty-fifth anniversary of the liberation of Belarus from German fascists invaders.1 The exercise would help prepare students for the 2009 commemoration of Independence Day (July 3) in relation to this event. What is

Author’s Note: An earlier version of this article was presented at the conference “United Europe-Divided Memory,” held at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna, 19-21 September 2008; at the 14th Annual World ASN Convention, held at Columbia University in New York, 23-25 April 2009; and at the confer- ence “World War II and the (Re) Creation of Historical Memory in Contemporary ” in Kyiv, 23-26 September 2009. I thank the participants and discussants for their useful comments. I also wish to thank Maria Salomon Arel for her careful editing. Faculté de droit et de science politique, Université de Bourgogne, 4 boulevard Gabriel, 21000 Dijon, France. Email: [email protected]

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clearly reflected in this government initiative is the role of World War II in official national memory, historiography, and identity politics in Belarus. The memory of WWII plays an important role in Belarus. Since 1945, commemo- rations of the Great Patriotic War (GPW) sought to boost patriotism among the Soviet population. The Victory Monument located in Victory Square in (erected in 1954) is dedicated to Soviet soldiers and partisans who died in WWII. However, the specific role of the Belarusian Soviet Socialist Republic (BSSR) during the war was not highlighted before Piotr Masherov, a Soviet partisan awarded Hero of the status, became the first secretary of the Belarusian Communist Party in 1965. The major memorial monuments connected to partisan warfare and Nazi mass crimes in Belarus emerged only after Masherov came to power.2 The decision to build a memorial complex in Khatyn to honor the hundreds of Belarusian villages destroyed by the Nazis was taken in 1966. The memorial com- plex that finally opened in 1969 also commemorated the great sacrifices, in lives and otherwise, made by Belarus in support of the victory drive against the Nazis. Mount of Glory (Kurgan Slavy), a memorial complex honoring Soviet soldiers who fought during WWII, was also established in 1969, on the outskirts of Minsk. A few years later, in 1974, Minsk was awarded the status of Hero City for outstanding hero- ism during the GPW (about twenty-nine years after Leningrad, Stalingrad, Sevastopol, and Odessa and thirteen years after Kiev). Under Brezhnev, the representation of wartime heroism was ethnicized, promoting a Soviet-Belarusian patriotism that helped legitimize the BSSR as a partisan generation.3 Partisan warfare and Nazi genocide policy were the twin pillars of the official Soviet historical narrative of WWII. With few exceptions, the Soviet era emphasized the heroics of the resistance to fascism rather than the actual crimes and abomina- tions committed by the Nazis.4 Historical information became more critical at the end of the 1950s and early 1960s. Under Brezhnev, “the Great Patriotic War [became] a sacrosanct cluster of heroic exploits that had once and for all proven the superiority of over capitalism.”5 In the late 1980s and 1990s, the war was reexam- ined again. During perestroika, a public debate on the Soviet regime as well as on Soviet contemporary history developed in Belarus and the other federal republics. Important in this connection is the 1988 discovery of mass graves in , on the outskirts of Minsk, where NKVD officers killed several thousand Belarusians and other civilians between 1937 and 1941. Kurapaty soon came to symbolize the crimes of the Stalinist regime and, more recently, of Soviet rule. In these years, the focus was on the atrocities of the Soviet regime rather than its glorious past. Following independence, nation-building in Belarus led to the nationalization of Belarusian history, differentiating it from Soviet historiography and demonstrating its association with European history and values.6 This process was halted with the election of Alexander Lukashenko in 1994, when a neo-Soviet version of the past was adopted and disseminated.7 A new interpretation of the Kurapaty mass graves, which attributed the executions to the German Wehrmacht, was propagated to restore

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the image of Soviet history under Stalin. New textbooks were published that pre- sented the GPW as the culminating moment in Belarusian history. This interpretation ran counter to the mainstream nationalist discourse that had become more common in the pre-Lukashenko years. The latter discourse had a different focus, for example glorifying the battle of Orsha in 1514, when the combined forces of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Kingdom of Poland defeated the army of the Grand Duchy of .8 Since the mid-1990s, the GPW has become increasingly prominent in both Belaru- sian national history and memory. A crucial example of this development is the 1996 decision to change the date of Independence Day from 27 July (the day Belarus declared sovereignty in 1990) to 3 July (the day Minsk was liberated from the Nazis in 1944). In the early 2000s, the official ideology launched by Lukashenko and endorsed by all state-owned institutions reinforced the role of the GPW in politics and society through the promotion of patriotic education across the country. Thus, two new core courses were introduced at the university level: “The Basics of the Ideology of the Republic of Belarus” and “The Great Patriotic War of the Soviet People.” In addition, the sixtieth anniversary of the liberation of Belarus in 2004 and the sixtieth anniversary of victory in the GPW in 2005 offered the Belarusian authorities other opportunities to revive the memory of the war and partisan glory.9 Several important monuments, including Khatyn and the Mount of Glory, were restored in this context. And for the first time, a monument to the Belarusian partisan movement, called “Par- tisan Belarus,” (Belarus partizanskaia), was erected in Minsk in 2005. Since the mid-2000s, there has been a tendency to nationalize the official narrative of the GPW. This development can be viewed as part of a more global nationaliza- tion of official Belarusian identity policy. Lukashenko is pursuing a nation-building strategy of reconciling Belarusian sovereignty with Soviet structures to strengthen authoritarian rule in the country.10 In their treatment of WWII, the authorities promote the Belarusian dimension of the war experience, from both heroic and victim perspec- tives. The integration of a Belarusian-specific aspect into Soviet war memory glorifies Belarus’s distinctiveness. For example, on the sixtieth anniversary of victory in the GPW, the Belarusian presidential Web site published an essay (“ in the History of the Belarusian People”) claiming that “the Belarusian people kept its dis- tinct ethnos only thanks to the partisan movement.”11 Declarations such as these help promote an official that glorifies the Belarusian nation while at the same time integrating it into Soviet historiography and the supranational Slavic community in which it purportedly plays the supreme role.12 War memory is also used to legitimize Lukashenko’s policy towards his oppo- nents, who are often depicted as fascists or belonging to a fifth column. Several Western states that, according the authorities, interfere in Belarus to bring down the government are treated in similar fashion.13 Opponents of the country’s authoritarian regime downplay the heroic discourse surrounding the war and partisan activities by

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The Memorial Narratives of WWII Belarusian Partisan Warfare

The official Belarusian narrative on partisan warfare rests mainly on the Soviet version of war memory. It is deliberately selective, its main purpose being to prove the heroism of the Soviet and/or the Slavic people. This narrative has been progressively nationalized to stress the decisive role of the Belarusians. It is not widely disputed by the opposition but regularly questioned by dissenting scholars and artists.

The Official Narrative on Nationwide War Heroism

War heroism holds a special place in contemporary Belarusian history as propa- gated by official identity policy. Since 1996, the commemoration of victory in WWII has grown—besides Victory Day (9 May), there is also Independence Day (also Republican Day, 3 July), which celebrates the liberation of Minsk in 1944. Formerly (from 1991 to 1996), Independence Day was July 27, recalling the day in 1990 when Belarusian deputies adopted the Declaration of Sovereignty.15 For over a decade now, it is the liberation of Belarus from the Nazis that is commemorated as the his- torical date of the country’s independence:

The Day of Liberation from the fascist occupiers, which celebrate as the main state holiday, is the Independence Day of the Republic of Belarus. This is a holiday that unites the sacred, true and great notions of Liberation, Victory and Independence into a single whole.16

This declaration clearly links the independence of Belarus to the WWII victory rather than to the Declaration of Independence adopted by the Belarusian Parliament in August 1991. In the official narrative, the collapse of the Soviet Union is depicted as a catastrophic event that brought chaos to Belarus. The opposition, on the other hand, equated the same historical moment with the national liberalization of the country.

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The of a positive Soviet memory in the mid-1990s did not lead to the elimination of national historiography, but to its adaptation. The choice of 3 July is relevant in this respect because of its ambivalent nature. The date refers to the liberation of Minsk and not to the end of the war itself.17 It therefore helps nationalize war memory in Belarus. July 3 is more a Belarusian holiday than a typically Soviet one. This demonstrates that the Belarusian leaders prefer to emphasize the particular role of Belarusians in the war even if the reference is to a Soviet event. In the history of the GPW, partisan warfare highlights Belarus’s special role dur- ing the war. Even during the Second World War, Belarus was characterized as a “Partisan Republic” because of the large number of partisans in the territory. According to the official narrative, the Belarusians organized the most massive par- tisan movement in the Soviet Union, as the Belarusian leader recalled during the commemoration of the sixtieth anniversary of WWII in 2005:

Belarus . . . demonstrated the most active participation in reversing the aggression. More than one million Belarusians fought in the Soviet Army. In very difficult condi- tions, about 400, 000 Belarusian partisans and almost 70, 000 underground fighters fought against the fascist occupation. More than 500 of our countrymen were awarded the prestigious status of Hero of the Soviet Union.18

These figures are cited to emphasize the substantial scope of the Belarusian partisan movement, as well as to reveal the patriotism of Belarusians in these dark days. In this connection, a passage from the essay “Victory Day in the History of the Belarusian People” is significant:

Everybody rose up in the fight against the fascist invasion: young and old, men and women, at all levels of Belarusian society. . . . At this time, State patriotism prevailed in the mass consciousness because the overwhelming majority of population shared the system of values in Soviet society. That’s why resistance against the enemy was massive. Every stratum of the Soviet people considered the war against the Nazis as a fair and sacred war, a great patriotic and popular war.19

The official memorial narrative permits only a pro-Soviet version of resistance to the German invaders. It largely ignores the activities of nationalist Belarusian, Ukrainian, and Polish partisans on occupied Soviet territory as well as those of the Jewish resistance. Because of its scale, the Belarusian partisan movement is depicted as the greatest resistance movement in world history: “There was no more massive resistance movement than that which the partisans—in their underground activity—deployed in Belarus against the fascist assailants.”20 According to the official narrative, Belarusian heroism stands out in the entire war history and is therefore deserving of praise the world over, as Lukashenko expressed in 2005: “We established freedom and independence not only in our Homeland but also in the whole world.”21

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Official speeches present the massive popular mobilization in Belarus during the war in various ways. First, mobilization stemmed from a patriotism that was especially widespread in the Soviet Union, translating in Belarus into a specific people’s resistance opposed to the German Army:

It’s especially on the Belarusian land—within the gates of the Brest-Fortress, near Minsk, in the skies above Grodno and Radoshkovichi, on the bank of the Dnieper River and the Dvina River—that the enemy felt for the first time what the heroism and self- sacrifice of our people meant. Everybody was shoulder to shoulder in defending the Motherland.22

Massive mobilization is also attributed to the characteristics of the Belarusian peo- ple, which have been mentioned in various memorial speeches, for example, in Lukashenko’s Independence Day address in July 2005: “From the beginning of the war, the Belarusian people revealed its inflexible will, bravery, moral strength and confidence.”23 The Belarusian authorities regularly cite these characteristics in glo- rifying the Belarusians as an exemplary people. This discourse helps underscore the spontaneous nature of the resistance movement, minimizing the fact that many people avoided taking sides during the war and denying the existence of collaboration movements: “In our country, the enemies didn’t succeed in creating a ‘fifth column’ and dividing it along various lines, including national ones. The traitors’ behaviour led to popular rage and contempt and, fittingly, to fair punishment.”24 In Belarus, there are almost six thousand monuments to WWII. Most are dedicated to soldiers and partisan heroism. War commemorations regularly provide the author- ities with occasions to glorify the Belarusian past and to stress that the country is still in resistance mode—against various attempts by internal and external political forces to destabilize Lukashenko’s regime. During the inaugural ceremony for the monu- ment “Partisan Belarus” in Minsk in 2005, the Belarusian president underscored the ongoing threat, while at the same time asserting Belarus’ ability to thwart it:

I understand veterans. They look with worry at the different colours—orange there, blue etc. . . . I implore you to believe that you should not be anxious for Belarus. As was the case at one time when we launched a deathblow to fascism at the final border of our Motherland, it will be the same now. If anyone tries to enter our glorious land, to soak the people in blood, he will meet an appropriate resistance.25

This statement refers to the prodemocracy orange revolution in neighboring Ukraine in 2004 and the attempted “blue counterrevolution” that opposed it.26 Its thrust is to connect successful Belarusian resistance during the war to the regime’s strength and determination to resist current pressure, both domestic and foreign. On a more general as well as personal level, Lukashenko presents himself as the main guardian of Belarus as a political, social, and economic entity.

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Regarding domestic opposition, Lukashenko continued in his address:

The so-called “opposition” tries to trouble the Belarusian people with the policy of “Europeanization” and “civilization” that the German occupants wanted to implement with help of their followers in 1941-1944. In so doing, the current “opposition” move- ment reveals its true face—an anti-democratic and anti-Belarusian face.27

The authoritarian Belarusian regime seeks to discredit the opposition by accusing it of acting against Belarusian national interests. Since the mid-1990s, Lukashenko has perfected his tactic of preemptive strikes against the opposition as a means of eliminating political threats to his regime.28 During the 1995 parliamentary election campaign, for example, state propaganda was already depicting the opposition as descendants of WWII Nazi collaborators. Since about 1997, the opposition has been effectively barred from official political institutions and has become a sort of resist- ance movement that is regularly repressed by the authorities. The parallel between Europeanization and German war policy reveals how far the authorities have been willing to go to legitimize their domestic and foreign poli- cies. Since coming to power, Lukashenko has turned Belarus away from a Western- orientated foreign policy. Moreover, because of the implementation of an authoritarian style of government, relationships with European organizations have cooled down since 1995, leading to Belarus’s isolation in Europe: Belarus is the only European country that is not a member of the Council of Europe. Between 2001 and 2008, the country has had to bear various sanctions imposed by the European Union. Relationships with the are also very tense. The energy conflict with in late 2006 and early 2007 did prompt Lukashenko to adopt a more balanced and pragmatic foreign policy. This has not prevented him, however, from periodically using anti-European rhetoric to highlight national distinctiveness or secure Russian support and assistance.29

Dissenting Voices on War Heroism

The political opponents of the Lukashenko regime make no attempt to compete with the state on war memory. This is because war memory is a sensitive subject among Belarusians and the opposition lacks sufficient access to the media to dissemi- nate its arguments.30 That being said, there has been some criticism of the official war narrative, mostly from within the academic and artistic communities. The public is not really aware of this dissent, however, since it is expressed primarily on unofficial Web sites and in independent newspapers that are poorly distributed. Several historical studies argue that the massive and spontaneous nature of partisan resistance needs to be qualified.31 They point out, for example, that when the Nazis attacked Soviet Belarus on 22 June 1941, the response of the local population was

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ambivalent at best. According to these analyses, a segment of the Belarusian popula- tion welcomed the Germans as their liberators from Stalin’s repressions. Anti-Nazi sentiment in the Belarusian occupied territories did grow, but only in the spring of 1942, and even after that, the popular Belarusian attitude towards the Germans, col- laborators, and was complex. A broad collaboration movement emerged around organizations such as the Belarusian Self-Defence Help and the Belarusian Home Defence.32 This collaboration is not addressed in the official ver- sion of events, however. To do so would be to acknowledge that the resistance movement was not as massive as claimed and that neither so-called “Slavic friend- ship” nor Soviet patriotism was particularly strong. Officially, collaboration is treated as a minor issue involving a minority of the population, a fact confirmed by the vic- tory of the Allied forces. The postwar writings of Belarusians Vasil Bykaù and Ales Adamovich painted a picture of wartime Belarus that differed from the black-and-white version of guer- rilla war proffered by the state.33 After 1991, some Belarusian historians tried to justify or explain their countrymen’s collaboration with the Germans, in contrast to foreign historians, who were critical of the collaborators.34 A more complex picture that presents the Belarusians as both victims and instruments or executioners appears regularly in various Belarusian historical publications and independent journals, such as Belaruski Historychny Ahliad or Arche.35 This particular narrative was depicted in the film Okkupatsiia. Mysteries, directed by Andrei Kudinenko and released in 2003. The film tells the story of Belarusians during the war who behaved in a variety of ways—some in partisan brigades, others serving the Germans in the police corps, and many just trying to get on with their lives.36 Kudinenko’s film ini- tially obtained an official go-ahead for distribution in Belarus. The authorities withdrew their permission, however, after it was selected to appear at an interna- tional film festival in Moscow. They worried that the film would undermine the official Belarusian narrative about the Soviet partisans. According to the official statement on the ban, “The film does not correspond to the real truth; it can insult the sensitivities of war veterans and negatively influence the education of the young generation.”37 Several academic works written in Belarus and abroad raise doubts about the heroism of partisan warfare. Some historians note that until the spring of 1942, the partisans were in a desperate situation.38 They were involved in small, uncoordinated detachments that did not yet have the support of the population and lacked the strength, communications, and firepower to have a real impact. Historical documents also provide evidence that Soviet partisans targeted not only German soldiers and their voluntary collaboration units but also civilians accused of being collaborators or weak supporters of the partisans. Various Soviet documents confirm that partisan activity often amounted to banditry, rape, pillage, and murder.39 There are also exam- ples of individuals occupying high command positions among the partisans who

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used their authority to engage in criminal activities.40 During the last years of the USSR, these events were discussed and presented in academic circles in some post- Soviet countries but were not made public in Belarus. With the change in the official historical narrative by the mid-1990s, silence was reestablished in the state media and academic institutions on the issue of partisan crimes and guilt. This silence was broken by a public event organized by dissenting scholars, intellectuals, and politicians. In April 2008, the memorial section of the Belarusian Voluntary Society for the Protection of Historical Monuments and Culture (BVSMHCP) installed an Orthodox memorial cross in the village of Drazhno (Minsk province), where partisans killed civilians, according to the journalist, book publisher, and regional ethnographer Viktor Khursik. Khursik’s book, pub- lished in 2003 and based on archival documents and the testimonies of local residents, shows that on 14 April 1943, dozens of villagers were executed and burned by Soviet partisans after a failed attack on a nearby garrison of police collaborators in which the partisans suffered heavy casualties.41 The memorial cross was removed a few days later by order of the local administration, and several participants in the event were sentenced to a fifteen-day administrative arrest.42 In revealing the mistakes and weaknesses of the Soviet system during the war, crit- ics of the official view of partisan warfare approach the nationalist version of Belarusian history that portrays the Soviet period in dark shades. This “revisionist” interpretation, according to the authorities, strikes a blow at national memory and the honor of Belarusians. It is no better than German propaganda. In his introduction to the 2004 textbook on the history of the GPW, Lukashenko stressed this point: “It’s no secret that several untruthful scholars are trying to ‘reassess’ the history of the Great Patriotic War in undermining the role and the significance of our grandfathers’ and great grandfathers’ heroic fights, in rehabilitating traitors and fascist servants.”43 In this view, any attempt to construct a more complex picture of Belarusian partisan warfare than the state’s black-and-white narrative of WWII is a threat to official iden- tity policy and its historical legitimization.

The Memorial Narratives of WWII Genocide in Belarus

In the state’s narrative, the heroism of the resistance movement is symbolic of the popular struggle against what is called the “Nazi genocide policy.” According to the official discourse, this policy sought to exterminate the Slavs as well as the Jews. Moreover, it was the Belarusian people in general who suffered the most during the war. In this interpretation, victory assumes even greater heroic proportions since it ensured the survival of the Belarusian people. As in the Soviet period, official histori- ography does not emphasize the genocide of the Jews. Thus, most of the memorial events surrounding Nazi criminal policy honor Soviet victims but very rarely Belaru- sian Jews. Furthermore, official recognition and commemoration of the Nazi genocide

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policy stands alongside a denial of the criminal nature of the Soviet regime, notably in Stalinist times. Official commemorations dedicated to the victims of the Stalinist purges and repression ceased from the mid-1990s. Some nationalist Belarusian activists, how- ever, continue to commemorate the Kurapaty mass killings, as was begun in 1988. In so doing, they hope to keep alive the memory of the victims of the Soviet regime but also to prove the existence of what they call the “Soviet genocide policy” towards the Belarusians. They want to demonstrate that the Nazi regime was not the only power to commit crimes in Belarus and to highlight the weakness of the Slavic friendship touted by official identity policy.

The Official Memorial Narrative of the Nazi Genocide Policy

The memorial and historical narrative of the crimes perpetrated by the Nazis in Belarus emphasizes the large number of Soviet victims. In his address on the sixtieth anniversary of victory in the GPW in 2005, Lukashenko pointed out that “the Soviet Union lost almost thirty million citizens during the war, which was not the case in any of the other sixty countries involved in the conflict.”44 Furthermore, he contin- ued, “Belarus is the Soviet republic that suffered more than others in fighting the enemy . . . [losing] one third of its population . . . more than 2 200 000 human lives.”45 These figures correspond to those cited on the Web site of the Belarusian national archives, which states, “In the opinion of many historians and scholars, Belarus suffered more in this war than any other European country.”46 Although the figures are still being debated among historians and politicians, they are used offi- cially to reinforce the heroic nature of partisan warfare. They also serve to remind Belarusians of their duty “to keep alive and re-establish the truth on the decisive role of the Soviet Union during the war.”47 The official discourse on WWII’s victims deals mostly with the Soviet people or the inhabitants of Belarus. Occasionally, there is some reference to the particular nationalities involved. For instance, during the 2008 commemoration of Indepen- dence Day, Lukashenko stated, “The Nazis attempted to exterminate peoples that, according to Hitler, were sub-human, like the Slavs, the Jews and others.”48 The genocide of the Jews, when mentioned, is often presented as part of a more global policy aimed at the “the extermination of Soviet citizens”: “Everybody says: Jews suffered, six million perished. But, almost fifty million perished. And not only Jews were killed. The calamity fell on everyone—people were killed. And we also, the Belarusians and the Russians. Our fate was sealed as well.”49 Books on WWII mention the extermination of the Jews, but in general terms. For example, the 2004 textbook on the GPW notes that this extermination was “particu- larly violent” compared to that of other nationalities, affecting more than six hundred

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thousand people in Belarus.50 The same book employs the term Holocaust, which is rarely the case in memorial speeches. However, its discussion of the concentration camps refers to the extermination of so-called “political opponents,” while the map situating the innumerable extermination camps and sites refers to its victims as “Soviet citizens.” Throughout the war literature, the genocide of the Jews, if mentioned, is rarely explained or discussed in any detail, and chapters specifically on war memory do not include the monuments to the Holocaust. Such monuments do exist but are largely absent in Belarusian media reports and are very rarely used for official com- memorations. Their existence depends mostly on private financial and moral support. The main Holocaust memorial in Belarus is the Yama (the Pit)—the first official Holocaust memorial established in the Soviet Union. Erected in 1946 without official permission, it was dedicated (in Yiddish and Russian) to the five thousand Jews from the Minsk ghetto who were murdered at the site on 2 March 1942. In 1997, Lukashenko visited the Yama memorial for the first time. In 2000, the monument was restored and rededicated, with the addition of a walkway and plaza, trees repre- senting the Righteous Gentiles, and a sculpture depicting the Jewish victims descending into a ravine. Since then, there seems to have been very few official com- memorations at the site. Like his Soviet forebears, Lukashenko has shown little interest in stressing the wartime fate of the Jews. Moreover, he is regularly criticized for his anti-Semitic remarks.51 However, in 2008, he participated in a wreath-laying ceremony at the Yama memorial to commemorate the sixty-fifth anniversary of the destruction of the Minsk Ghetto.52 Some observers interpreted his participation as part of an official strategy to improve Belarus’s image in the West. The main memorial site of the Nazi extermination policy is the vast (fifty hect- ares) Memorial Complex of Khatyn, a village located about fifty kilometers from Minsk. On 22 March 1943, all of Khatyn’s 149 inhabitants, including 75 children, were burnt alive by the Nazis. Khatyn subsequently became a symbol of Nazi crimes in Belarus and, more specifically, of the punitive expeditions carried out by the occu- piers. More than 140 punitive expeditions were carried out in an attempt to suppress the partisan movement, to enslave the civilians, and to plunder their property.53 About 9,000 hamlets were destroyed, and almost 620 villages shared Khatyn’s fate. The official historical narrative presents these actions as part of the Nazi genocide policy that, according to various official Belarusian sources, was aimed at a variety of tar- gets. According to the Khatyn Memorial Web site, “The tragedy of Khatyn is not just an occasional episode of this war. It is one of the thousand facts, which testify to the existence of the targeted genocide policy regarding the population of Belarus.”54 In its Belarusian and Russian versions, the Web site of the Khatyn Memorial Complex includes a specific text on the “genocide of the Belarusian people” (genot- sid belaruskogo naroda), described as follows: Mass genocide crimes were committed by the fascists during the Second World War on the occupied territories, especially against the Slavs (Russians, Belarusians,

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Ukrainians, Czechs, Poles, Serbs) and ethnic Jews. Millions of people of different nationalities were killed in death camps and prisons during punitive actions. Massacres were part of the Nazi program to annihilate the Slavonic nations and reduce their bio- logical potential.55

While the genocide of the Jews is not denied, this presentation attempts to show that the Slavs shared the same fate during the war, challenging the notion that the anni- hilation of the Jews, as recognized internationally, was a unique policy of the Nazis. In March 2007, the extremist nationalist National Bolshevik Party of Belarus, which is not officially registered, addressed a petition to the German embassy in Minsk requesting recognition of the genocide of the Belarusian people during the war. It also called for the establishment of 22 March (the date of the Khatyn mass killings) as a day commemorating the genocide of the Slavs.56 This move appears to have been prompted by the ’ designation (in 2005) of 27 January (the date of the liberation of Auschwitz) as an annual International Day of Commemoration Honouring the Victims of the Holocaust. The Khatyn massacre is at the center of several controversies. One of these regards the choice of Khatyn as a memorial site. According to various scholars, Khatyn, which was not the largest Belarusian village to be burned by the Nazis, was selected in 1969 because its name can easily be confused with that of Katyn, a village situated in the Russian Smolensk Region, where the NKVD killed thousands of Polish officers in 1940. In this view, the choice of Khatyn for the war memorial was connected to a calculated Soviet policy of disinformation about the , which the Soviet authorities acknowledged only in 1990.57 Another controversy sur- rounds the perpetrators of the Khatyn mass killings. Both the official Soviet and Belarusian narratives claim that the village “was destroyed by German fascists” or just “fascists,” as indicated at the entrance to the Memorial Complex.58 The question of who exactly the perpetrators were is not addressed here or during the regular com- memorations held at the site. The focus is on the atrocities committed by the Nazis during the war and the victims. At the end of the 1990s, however, it was revealed that Khatyn had been destroyed by the SS Division Dirlewanger and the 118th police battalion, which was composed of Nazi collaborators, mostly Soviet Ukrainian prisoners of war, and nationalists.59 The 118th police battalion was formed in late 1942 in the city of Kyiv and was headed by the German Major Erich Körner. This discovery and the debate it trig- gered became public in 2008, when several Belarusian newspapers, including the official Belarus Segodnia, published articles on the subject.60 In June 2008, a docu- mentary film, entitled “Khatyn Truth,” that disproves the official version of the burning of Khatyn was aired in Minsk.61 The film addressed the question of collabo- ration that is not popular with the authorities because it undermines the official narrative of the wartime resistance movement. Furthermore, it also raises the ques- tion of partisan guilt in the Khatyn massacre since the mass killing was perpetrated

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after a partisan guerrilla group attacked a German convoy, killing a German officer. Since the partisans were aware of the SS practice of retaliating for such action by executing the entire population of a village situated near a partisan attack, the film suggests that they are perhaps partly to blame for the brutal destruction of Khatyn.62

The Dissenting Memorial Narrative of an Unrecognized Soviet (Russian) Genocide

If the Belarusian authorities commemorate WWII, Stalinist repressions are neither officially commemorated nor mentioned in official discourse. They are not studied in state academic institutions and universities and very rarely mentioned in textbooks. Since Lukashenko came to power, the official policy in Belarus has been to deny the Stalinist repressions because they reflect the criminal side of the Soviet regime and therefore undermine its heroic WWII image. Acknowledging the repressions would also open the door to a possible comparison between the Soviet and the Nazi regimes that is not compatible with the official portrayal of the Belarusian people as victims of the Germans. This interpretation is evident in the description of the Nazis that appears on the Belarusian National Archives Web site: “Their crimes have no parallel in the modern . No crimes equal their cruelty and universality.”63 The Nazi genocide and Soviet mass crimes are thus part of memorial and com- memorative competition in politics, the media and academe. Unlike state institutions and the progovernment media, the political opposition and the independent media try to magnify the role of the Stalinist repressions in Belarusian history. At the same time, academics such as Igor Kuznetsov are reassessing the partisan movement in connec- tion with the repressions that took place in Belarus in the 1930s.64 They argue that certain specific aspects of the war that are underestimated by the contemporary WWII narrative can be explained by what occurred in the 1930s, for example, collaboration and the absence of a competent military leadership at the beginning of the war. Kurapaty is a good example of the official denial of Stalinist repressions in Belarus. Kurapaty became a memorial site in June 1988, a few days after the discov- ery of mass graves there was revealed to the public by the press. As elsewhere in the USSR at the time, young people, dissidents, and Soviet intelligentsia expressed the desire to commemorate Stalin’s victims.65 In Belarus, this idea was supported, in particular, by the archaeologist , who had made the Kurapaty mass killings public and headed the newly created (BPF). In this context, a government commission was created and a criminal investigation launched by the Public Prosecutor’s Office of the BSSR. The investigation report, published in January 1989, concluded that NKVD officers had killed no fewer than thirty thou- sand civilians between 1937 and 1941. Shortly after, the Belarusian Council of Ministers adopted a resolution requesting that measures be taken to establish a memorial in Kurapaty.66 Following this resolution, a slab was affixed to a rock in the

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Kurapaty forest indicating that “a memorial would be erected on this site in remem- brance of the victims of mass repression in 1937-1941.” In the early 1990s, flowers were laid at the site during official holidays. However, the government took no further steps to honor the victims or their burial place. Since independence, only political and civic opposition groups have organized rallies and meetings at Kurapaty, especially on Dziady, or All Souls Day (the first Sunday in November), when Belarusians commemorate the dead. And in recent years, Kurapaty has become a regular target of vandals. Following another such act in 2005, the ambassadors of European Union countries in Belarus visited the memorial site to show their respect and pay homage to the victims of repression. Paralleling the state’s growing disinterest in the Kurapaty memorial in the 1990s was the emergence of a new version of events at Kurapaty. The encyclopedia “Belarus,” published in 1995, did note the conclusions of the 1989 investigative commission.67 However, at the same time, an alternative interpretation (the “German lead”) was issued by a so-called civil investigative commission on mass crimes in Kurapaty. According to the findings of this commission, the Nazis carried out the executions, not the NKVD, and the victims were the so-called Hamburg Jews deported from many areas of Western Europe.68 This new scenario echoes what the Soviets had earlier claimed concerning the massacre of Polish officers in Katyn in the spring of 1940. Volume 9 of the new Belarusian encyclopedia published in 1999 mentions both versions of the Kurapaty story: “During the investigations, two ver- sions appeared. According to one, here [in Kurapaty] before the war, NKVD officers from the BSSR killed repressed civilians. In the second version of events, Kurapaty holds the victims of the fascist genocide.”69 Since the mid-1990s, the state has not expressed an official view on the Kurapaty atrocity. This has allowed the authorities to effectively deny the event and avoid any official commemoration of it. A wave of civic commemorations began in September 2001 in connection with Kurapaty. The protesters were responding to a resolution signed by the presi- dent approving an expansion project of the Minsk beltway that would destroy a significant part of the Kurapaty burial ground. After two weeks, the Belarusian authorities sent in riot police and bulldozers to tear down a tent camp set up near Kurapaty by youth opposition groups. The construction work then proceeded under police protection.70 Following these , and on several different occasions, the authorities expressed their unwillingness to erect an official memorial in Kurapaty.71 In deliberations on the 2002 state budget in December 2001, the deputies of the House of Representatives (the lower chamber of parliament) voted against the inclu- sion of a provision allocating financial support for the construction of the Kurapaty memorial. Speaker Vadim Popov stated that, although “constructing a memorial complex at Kurapaty might be a good idea, it should not be funded at the expense of the State.”72 For the nationalist wing of the Belarusian opposition, Kurapaty is the symbol of a genocide perpetrated by the Soviet regime against the Belarusian nation.73 The term

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genocide to describe Stalin’s crimes was first used publicly in Belarus during an anti- Stalin demonstration organized in 1987 by unofficial youth organizations. Not long after, in the first article published on Kurapaty in June 1988, Pazniak discussed the Stalinist genocide. Pazniak’s argument underlines the planning of the repression and the execution of innocent people: “The repression first hit the intellectuals, the politi- cal leaders and the military officers; then the peasants and the workers.”74 According to Pazniak, if all social groups were affected and if the Belarusians were the primary victims, it is appropriate to employ the term genocide. This interpretation echoes the views published in the 1950s by the Belarusian diaspora living in exile in Europe or North America. The first publication dealing with the question genocide appeared in 1950 in Toronto, titled “I Accuse the Kremlin of the Genocide of My Nation.” It was written by Mikola Abramcyk, president of the Council of the Belarusian Popular Republic, created in 1917 and otherwise known as the government in exile.75 In the 2000s, the Kurapaty mass killings are still viewed as genocidal by a seg- ment of the Belarusian intellectual elite. For example, an initiative was launched in September 2001 (“For Saving the Kurapaty Memorial”) whose main goals are the creation of a memorial in Kurapaty to honor the victims of Bolshevik repression and “criticism of the genocide policy of the totalitarian Soviet regime.”76 The Soviet authorities are usually portrayed as the main perpetrators of the Kurapaty genocide, but some Belarusian nationalist groups target Russian elites more specifically. In 2006, the Conservative Christian Party of the Belarusian People’s Front, a national- ist right-wing movement created in 1999 and headed by Zianon Pazniak, made the following revealing declaration:

The victims of the Russian Communist terror against the Belarusian people are buried in Kurapaty, near Minsk. More than 200 thousand innocent people were killed by the butchers of the Russian secret police, the NKVD, between the 1930s-1941 in Belarus alone. For many decades, the occupation authorities hid the truth about this crime by trying to annihilate the tombs in Kurapaty. The pro-Moscow Lukashenko regime is continuing this immoral and blasphemous policy. . . . For the Belarusian people, Kurapaty symbolizes the struggle against the inhuman policy of the Russian empire. The Belarusian people are continuing this struggle. Now, Russia is carrying on the policy of ethnocide and the total of the Belarusian people in order to occupy the territory and enslave the people of Belarus. Russia is using its influence on the Lukashenko regime in order to achieve this. We consider this policy a crime against humanity based on a fascist ideology.77

This declaration captures the intense anti-Russian sentiment of extremist Belarusian ethnic nationalism. Some Belarusian nationalist activists use the colonial discourse and Russia as an external enemy to challenge official nation-building and national memory. They oppose the official narrative but, in fact, employ the same approach: Lukashenko uses anti-German sentiment in the war memorial narrative and combines it regularly with a contemporary anti-European political discourse. In the authoritarian

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political context cultivated by Lukashenko, Nazi genocide policy symbolizes an aggression that can still be perpetrated (albeit in a different form) by Western states hostile to Belarus. On the other side of the political spectrum, Kurapaty is symbolic of an aggressive policy pursued by the Russian elites before and after WWII that continues to this day. For Lukashenko’s regime, Belarusian identity is intrinsically linked to Slavic unity. For his opponents, Belarusian identity cannot be based on a pro-Russian, pro-Slavic, or pro-Soviet historical narrative.

Conclusion

In post-Soviet Belarus, there is no consensus on national memory, particularly with regard to WWII. Belarusian national memory is contested by two main groups of political actors. Each refers to distinct historical events to legitimize its struggle in contemporary politics. National memory is so politically divided that the duty to remember does not appear to be a main concern. While national memory was a public issue during perestroika and the first years of independence, it has been offi- cially censored since Lukashenko came to power. Memory issues, especially on WWII, are not publicly debated. Like in other post-Soviet countries, especially Russia, the official narrative presents the Soviet victory over Nazi as the highest achievement of the state and the nation. At the same time, the Belarusian authorities resist fundamental aspects of national memory, namely, Soviet crimes and repression. The end result is that national memory tends to legitimize an authoritar- ian regime based on historical denials and distortions.

Declaration of Conflicting Interest

The author declared no conflicts of interest with respect to the authorship and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author received no financial support for the research and/or authorship of this article.

Notes

1. Iulia Vanina, “Pervii urok v shkolakh Belarusi 1 sentiabria budet posveshchen 65-letiiu osvobozh- deniia Belarusi ot nemetsko-fashistkikh zakhvatchikov,” Belta, 28 August 2008, http://news.tut.by/ society/115964.html (accessed 14 May 2009). 2. “Velikaia otechestvennaia voina v istoricheskoi pamiati belorusskogo naroda,” in Belarus’ v gody Velikoi Otechestvennoi Voiny 1941-1945, ed. A. A. Kovalenia et al. (Minsk: Belta, 2005), 496:501.

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3. Per Anders Rudling, “‘For a Heroic Belarus!’: The Great Patriotic War as Identity Marker in the Lukashenka and Soviet Belarusian Discourses,” Sprawy Narodowoœciowe/Nationalities Affairs 32 (2008): 43-62. 4. Vladimir Kuzmenko, “Belarus’ during World War II: Some Aspects of the Modern View of the Problem,” Journal of Slavic Military Studies 11:2 (June 1998): 99. 5. Nina Tumarkin, The Living and the Dead. The Rise and Fall of the Cult of World War II in Russia (New York: Basic Books, 1994), 133. 6. Jan Zaprudnik, “Belarus. In Search of National Identity between 1986 and 2000,” in Contemporary Belarus. Between and Dictatorship, ed. Elena A. Korosteleva, Colin W. Lawson, and Rosalind J. Marsh (London: Routledge Curzon, Londres, 2002), 114. 7. Rainer Lindner, “Beseiged Past: National and Court Historians in Lukashenka’s Belarus,” Nationalities Papers 27:4 (1999): 641-44. 8. Natalia Leshchenko, “A Fine Instrument: Two Nation-Building Strategies in Post-Soviet Belarus,” Nations and Nationalism 10:3 (2004): 339. 9. David R. Marples and Uladzimir Padhol, “The Role of Historical Memory and World War II in Contemporary Belarus” (paper presented at the joint ASN/ conference Empires and Nations, Paris, France, 3-5 July 2008). 10. Natalia Leshchenko, “A Fine Instrument,” 348. 11. “Den Pobedy v istorii beloruskogo naroda,” Ofitsialnii internet-portal Prezidenta Respubliki Belarus’, http://www.president.gov.by/press19279.html#doc (accessed 14 May 2009). 12. Alexandra Goujon, “Nationalisme et supranationalisme aux frontières orientales de l’Union européenne,” in Continuité et transformations de la nation, ed. Patrick Charlot, Pierre Guenancia, and Jean-Pierre Sylvestre (Dijon: Editions universitaires de Dijon, 2009), 111-24. 13. David Marples, “Lukashenka Lashes Out at Opposition,” Eurasia Daily Monitor 6:57(25 March 2009), http://www.jamestown.org/single/?no_cache=1&tx_ttnews[tt_news]=34752&tx_ttnews[backPid]=7 &cHash=0187df1df7 (accessed 14 May 2009). 14. This competitive identity narrative has been analyzed by Stephen Shulman in connection with Ukraine: Stephen Shulman, “The Contours of National Identification in Ukraine,” Europe-Asia Studies 56:1 (January 2004): 35-56. 15. Astrid Sahm, “Political Culture and National Symbols: Their Impact on the Belarusian Nation- Building Process,” Nationalities Papers 27:4 (1999): 656. 16. “Vystuplenie Prezidenta A.G. Lukashenko na torzhestvennom sobranii, posviashennom Dniu Nezavisimosti Respubliki Belarus’ (Dniu Respubliki) 3-go iulia 2008,” Belarus Segodnia, 8 July 2008. 17. Some have claimed that the date was not well chosen since the Nazis still occupied a part of Belarus in July 1944. 18. “Vystuplenie Prezidenta A.G. Lukashenko na torzhestvennom sobranii, posviashennom 60-letiiu Pobedy sovetskogo naroda nad nemetsko-fashistskimi zakhvatchikami 7 maia 2005,” Ofitsialnii internet- portal Prezidenta Respubliki Belarus’, http://www.president.gov.by/press19315.html#doc (accessed 14 May 2009). 19. “Den Pobedy v istorii beloruskogo naroda.” 20. “Vystuplenie Prezidenta A.G. Lukashenko na torzhestvennom sobranii, posviashennom 60-letiiu Pobedy sovetskogo naroda nad nemetsko-fashistkimi zakhvatchikami 7 maia 2008.” 21. “Vystuplenie Prezidenta A.G. Lukashenko na torzhestvennom sobranii, posviashennom Dniu Nezavisimosti Respubliki Belarus’ (Dniu Respubliki) 1-go iulia 2005,” Ofitsialnii internet-portal Prezidenta Respubliki Belarus’, http://president.gov.by/press18713.html#doc (accessed 14 May 2009). 22. Ibid. 23. Ibid. 24. “Den Pobedy v istorii beloruskogo naroda.” 25. “Otkrytie skulpturnoi kompozitsii ‘Belarus Partizanskaia’ 29-go aprelia 2005,” Ofitsialnii internet-portal Prezidenta Respubliki Belarus’, http://www.president.gov.by/press19306 .html (accessed 14 May 2009).

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26. “Democratic Revolutions in Post-Communist States,” Communist and Post-Communist Studies 39:3 (2006): 283-429. 27. “Den Pobedy v istorii beloruskogo naroda.” 28. Vitali Silitski, “Preempting Democracy: The Case of Belarus,” Journal of Democracy 16:4 (2005): 83-97. 29. Andrew Wilson, “Belarus’s Post-Georgia Elections: A New Paradigm or the Same Old Balancing Act?” Heinrich Böll Stiftung, October 2008, http://www.boell.pl/downloads/Belarus_post_Georgia_ Elections_A.Wilson.pdf (accessed 14 May 2009). 30. Interview with one of the BPF’s leaders, Minsk, 16 June 2008. 31. See, for instance, Igor Kuznetsov, Zasekretchnye tragedii sovetskoi istorii (Rostov-on-Don: Feniks, 2007). 32. Olga Baranova, “Nationalism, Anti-Bolshevism or the Will to Survive? Collaboration in Belarus under the Nazi Occupation of 1941–1944,” European Review of History 15:2 (2008): 113-28. 33. Vitali Silitski, “A Partisan Reality Show,” Transitions OnLine, 11 May 2005, http://www.tol.cz/ look/TOL/article.tpl?IdLanguage=1&IdPublication=4&NrIssue=115&NrSection=4&NrArticle=14025& ST1=ad&ST_T1=job&ST_AS1=0&ST_LS1=-1&ST2=body&ST_T2=letter&ST_AS2=0&ST_LS2=- 1&ST_max=3 (accessed 14 May 2009). 34. Barbara Törnquist-Plewa, “Remembering World War II in Belarus. A Struggle between Competitive Historical Narratives,” in History, Language and Society in the Borderlands of Europe. Ukraine and Belarus in Focus, ed. Barbara Törnquist-Plewa (Malmö: Sekel, 2006), 38. 35. Ibid., 52. 36. Vitali Silitski, “A Partisan Reality Show.” 37. Jan Maksymiuk, “Belarus: Film about Partisans Goes against Official Grain,” RFE/RL Belarus, Ukraine and Moldova Report, 15 July 2005, http://www.rferl.org/content/article/1059889.html (accessed 14 May 2009). 38. Igor Kuznetsov, Zasekretchnye tragedii sovetskoi istorii. 39. Marek Jan Chodakiewicz, “Review of Sowjetische Partisanen in Weißrußbland. Innenansichten aus dem Gebiet Baranovici 1941-1944. Eine Dokumentation, edited by Bogdan Musial, Munich, Oldenbourg Verlag, 2004,” Sarmatian Review (April 2006): 1219. 40. Vladimir Kuzmenko, “Belarus’ during World War II,” 110. 41. Viktar Khursik, Kroù i popel Drozhna. Historyia Partisanskaga Zlachinstva (Minsk: Viktar Khursik, 2003). 42. “Journalist Arrested for 15 Days,” Khartyia97, 15 May 2008, http://www.charter97.org/en/ news/2008/5/15/6569/ (accessed 14 May 2009). 43. A. G. Lukashenko, preface to Velikaia Otechestvennaia Voina Sovetskogo Naroda (v kontekste Vtoroi mirovoi voiny), by A. A. Kovalenia et al. (Minsk: Izdatelskii tsentr BGU, 2004), 5. 44. “Vystuplenie Prezidenta A.G. Lukashenko na torzhestvennom sobranii, posviashennom 60-letiiu Pobedy sovetskogo naroda nad nemetsko-fashistkimi zakhvachikami 7 maia 2008.” The number of 30 million goes beyond the Soviet legendary figure of 20 million wartime losses. Nina Tumarkin, The Living and the Dead, 133. 45. “Vystuplenie Prezidenta A.G. Lukashenko na tseremonii vozlozhenia venkov k monumentu Pobedy 9 maia 2008,” Ofitsialnii internet-portal Prezidenta Respubliki Belarus’, http://www.president. gov.by/press57621.print.html (accessed 14 May 2009). 46. “Aftermath of the War,” Archives of Belarus, http://archives.gov.by/eng/index.php?id=704880 (accessed 14 May 2009). 47. “Vystuplenie Prezidenta A.G. Lukashenko na torzhestvennom sobranii, posviashennom 60-letiiu Pobedy sovetskogo naroda nad nemetsko-fashistkimi zakhvachikami 7 maia 2008.” 48. “Vystuplenie Prezidenta A.G. Lukashenko na torzhestvennom sobranii, posviashennom Dniu Nezavisimosti Respubliki Belarus’ (Dniu Respubliki) 3-go iulia 2008.”

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49. “Lektsia ‘Istoricheskii vybor Respubliki Belarus’’ v Beloruskom Gosudarstvenom Universitete 14 marta 2003,” Ofitsialnii internet-portal Prezidenta Respubliki Belarus’, http://president.gov.by/ press14059.html#doc (accessed 14 May 2009). 50. A. A. Kovalenia et al., Velikaia Otechestvennaia Voina Sovetskogo Naroda (v kontekste Vtoroi mirovoi voiny), 97. 51. In 2007, Israel slammed Alexander Lukashenko for anti-Semitism, after he said that Jews “don’t care” about the places where they live. “Israel Slams Belarus Leader for Anti-Semitism,” Reuters, 19 October 2007, http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSL193654620071019 (accessed 3 May 2009). 52. Belarus Segodnia, 21 October 2008, http://www.sb.by/2008/10/21/ (accessed 3 May 2009). 53. Valentin Gerasimov, Sviatoslav Gaïduk, and Ivan Kulan, eds., Karatel’nye akcii v Belarusi (Minsk: ODO “Stalia,” 2008). 54. “The Tragedy of Khatyn,” Khatyn.’ State Memorial Komplex “Khatyn,” http://khatyn.by/en/ tragedy/(accessed 14 May 2009). 55. “Genocide Policy,” Khatyn.’ State Memorial Komplex “Khatyn,” http://khatyn.by/en/genocide/ expeditions/(accessed 14 May 2009). 56. Denis Rutkovskii, “Natsboly pytalis’ prorvat’sia posol’stvo Germanii v Minske,” Belaruskii Partizan, 22 March 2007, http://www.belaruspartisan.org/bp-forte/?page=100&backPage=13&news=109 27&newsPage=0 (accessed 14 May 2009). 57. Norman Davies, Europe: A History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 1005; and Benjamin B. Fischer, “The Katyn Controversy: Stalin’s Killing Field,” Studies in Intelligence (Winter 1999–2000), https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/csi-studies/studies/ winter99-00/art6.html (accessed 14 May 2009). 58. “Khatyn,” in Èntsyklapedyia Historyi Belarusi, Tom 6, Kniga II (Minsk: Belaruskaia Èntsyklapedyia, 2003), 64; and “The Tragedy of Khatyn.” 59. Per Anders Rudling, “The Khatyn’ Massacre: A Historical Controversy Revisited,” Journal of Genocide Research (forthcoming). 60. Sergej Krapivin, “Khatyn: ‘format’ tragedii,” Ekspress Novosti, 22 March 2007, http://www .expressnews.by/2254.html (accessed 14 May 2009); and “Zdes ubivali ludiei,” Belarus Segodnia, 22 March 2008. 61. “Khatyn Truth Film Disproves Official Version of Khatyn,” Charter 97, 18 June 2008, http:// www.charter97.org/en/news/2008/6/18/7493/ (accessed 14 May 2009). 62. A book, entitled Khatyn. Tragediia i pamiat’: dokumenty i materially, was published in Belarus in April 2009. It presents all the documents identified thus far relating to the destruction of the Belarusian village of Khatyn, as well as materials on the establishment of the memorial complex on the site of the mass killings. The book includes 150 documents, including unpublished materials from the Central Archives of the State Security Committee of the Republic of Belarus. “Archival News,” Archives of Belarus, http://www.archives.gov.by/eng/index.php?id=news&item=35 (accessed 29 May 2009). 63. “Aftermath of the War.” 64. Igor Kuznetsov, Zasekretchnye tragedii sovetskoi istorii. 65. Kathleen Smith, Remembering Stalin’s Victims. Popular Memory and the End of the USSR (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996). 66. Kurapaty. Zbornik Materyalaù (Poland: Arkhiù Nainoùshai Historii, Hramadska initsyativa “Za uratavanne memaryala Kurapaty,” 2002), 68-69. 67. “Kuparaty,” in Belarus. Èncyclapedychny davednik (Minsk: Beloruskaia Èntsiklapedyia, 1995), 411-12. 68. David R. Marples, “Kuropaty: The Investigation of a Stalinist Historical Controversy,” Slavic Review 53:2 (Summer 1994): 519. 69. “Kurapaty,” in Belorusskaia entsyklopedyia u 18 tamakh, Tom 9 (Minsk: Beloruskaia Èntsiklapedyia, 1999), 42.

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70. Alexandra Goujon, “Kurapaty (1937-1941): NKVD Mass Killings in Soviet Belarus,” Online Encyclopedia of Mass Violence, March 2008, http://www.massviolence.org/Kurapaty-1937-1941-NKVD- Mass-Killings-in-Soviet-Belarus (accessed 14 May 2009). 71. A “Cross of Pain” was erected at the entrance of the mass gravesite in 1989 by civic and political activists. 72. Alexandra Goujon, “Kurapaty (1937-1941): NKVD Mass Killings in Soviet Belarus.” 73. Alexandra Goujon, “Genozid: A Rallying Cry in Belarus. A Rhetoric Analysis of Some Belarusian Nationalist Texts,” Journal of Genocide Research 1:3 (1999): 353-66. 74. Zianon Pazniak, Sapraùdnae Ablitchcha (Minsk: Palifakt, 1992), 16-17. 75. Mikola Abramcyk, I Accuse the Kremlin of Genocide of My Nation (Toronto: Byelorussian Alliance in Canada, 1950). 76. Kurapaty. Zbornik Materyalaù, 113. 77. “The Monument in Kurapaty Has Been Created by the Belarusan People,” declaration by the Con- servative Christian Party—BPF, 12 November 2006, http://www.pbpf.org/art.php?art=9&cat=1&lang=en (accessed 14 May 2009).

Alexandra Goujon is an assistant professor of political science at the University of Bourgogne (Dijon, France). Her research focuses on nationalism and regime change in post-Soviet countries. Her more recent work is a book on Révolutions politiques et identitaires en Ukraine et en Biélorussie (1988-2008) published in 2009 by Belin.”

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