Gigin: no need in historical police
Vadim Gigin, the Chairman of the Republican Znanie Belarusian Society, was among the participants of the meeting on implementation of Belarus’ historical policy chaired by the President today. After the event, he shared his vision of how the work should be organised in this area.
“It is no need to build new institutions, we have everything. The President emphasised this correctly today. There are sources of money, financing. Moreover, not much is needed. There are also people who are ready to do this. We simply need to put everything together – like a mosaic, and to build up a single clear picture of our historical policy. We should not repeat the negative experience of our neighbours – Ukraine and the Baltic States – where history was transformed virtually into historical police, such as all sorts of institutions of national memory, etc. We should in no case follow this experience. There is no need to drive society into this Procrustean bed. Actually, we do not need this,” the expert noted.
Mr. Gigin reminded that, in the past, the Belarusian Popular Front Party’s slogan was ‘History is Weapon’. “They used history as a certain tool to distort the Belarusian national identity and achieve their political goals. This system has been discussed at the meeting today,” he said.
At the same time, the expert noted that there are scientific studies in Belarus which are written in an academic, precise and verified language, “Meanwhile, we need to convey this to our people. We should also not neglect our traditional media. We need to help our scientists engage broad audience and share this information with people so that they can hear it.”
According to Mr. Gigin, historical information regarding the number of requests from enterprises and organisations is on par with socio-political topics. “We have aroused interest this year. Look, the Belarusian people’s struggle for the reunification as of September 17th, 1939, the genocide facts during the Great Patriotic War, the articles of our Constitution devoted to the struggle for historical memory, and other issues generate keen discussion. People want to know their heroes, they strongly urge to be told of them. Our task is to provide this information – in a simple, understandable language,” he added.
