Symbol of unity

On the facets of Belarusian statehood and unity

September 17th — National Unity Day — has become, on the one hand, an act of restoring historical justice towards the Belarusian people, and on the other — an element uniting the past, present and future of the country

View of Independence Palace, Minsk 

Road to consolidation

A significant reason for the restoration of the Belarusians’ state unity in the late 1930s was the material and spiritual deterioration of living standards for the vast majority of workers and peasants in Western Belarus. The discriminatory economic and cultural policies of the interwar Polish authorities led to the emergence and escalation of the struggle for national and social liberation, the final stage of which was the liberation campaign of the Red Army in 1939.

The difficult path to unification was the first historical lesson: reunification confirmed the original national interest in the independence and self-reliance of the common Belarusian family.

There can be no strong state without a unified territory and a cohesive people. National consolidation allows everyone to come together, to demonstrate what society cherished in the past and what it aspires to achieve in the future.

Stress test

The events of August 2020 became another historical lesson for Belarus. External instigators and ill-wishers — using colossal resources and deploying the destructive technologies of ‘colour revolutions’ — essentially attempted to eliminate our country from the political map of the world. The calculation, however, proved incorrect.

Despite a series of fibs and fakes and frontally conducted subversive actions, Belarusians stood firm and remained true to their traditions and their history.

  

Life-affirming idea

History is always, in all eras, linked to a specific national idea. Higher values, which are specified in the programmes and practices for implementing the national-state ideology, are important in this regard. 
National Unity Day — September 17th, embodying the territorial unity and ethnic consolidation of our people — is one of the highest ideological values through which we set basic guidelines for the activities of each and everyone. 
Historical lessons from our past and prospects for the future show that a timeless principle is crucial for us — ‘Belarus has been and will always be!’. These symbolise three facets: concrete-historical, existential and axiological.
In the implementation of the Belarusian model of social development, ideological support for the activities of the Belarusian state plays a significant role. The central place here belongs to the figure of the first President. His long-term fruitful activity in consolidating society clearly demonstrates a real national-state demand for connecting our ideology with the value-ideological support of the state course. The backbone of this is Belarus as a country, with its past, present and future. In this connection, the first element reflects the centuries-old history of Belarusian statehood and culture.

What the choice begins with

The existential dimension in the intrinsic feature of the national idea means the most essential, fundamental thing in the life of every Belarusian and all of us as a whole. This is something what the life choice begins with, unfolds further in the fullness of the specifics of life, becomes the subject of reflection on the main thing in the fate of an individual citizen and the entire nation, and acts as the initial ‘point of reference’ for the movement towards the desired. This main thing for everyone is the stable, sovereign and independent functioning and development of modern Belarus. This value-worldview imperative has always been the core of Aleksandr Lukashenko’s political credo.
At a recent solemn meeting dedicated to the Independence Day of the Republic of Belarus, the Head of State said, “Belarus under a peaceful sky is both the goal of our entire policy and the image of the future to which we aspire.”

Higher values

The value dimension reflects the idea of the continuous and eternal existence of Belarus. Its content is revealed by a number of spiritual potentials, which are called higher values. Their indisputable height is determined by the fact that it is they that contribute to the transformation of ideas about the structure of the modern world order and Belarus’ existence codes into guidelines for activity for all of us. For the state, this is a general resource for development. That is the first point.
Second. Higher values are a system of motivational preferences, on which the determination of our strategic goals and the implementation of programmes for sustainable social and state development ultimately depend. This aspect becomes the pivotal integrator and navigator.

Third. At the individual level, higher values are transformed into a personal conviction of the rightness of implementing a nationwide cause, and at the collective level — into the recognition of a developed image of Belarus’ future and participation in programmes for its implementation. The symbolic space for uniting personal and collective efforts becomes the ideology of patriotism.

The transmitters of higher values in Belarus are the family, school, university, small homeland, army, government, patriotically minded citizens, and the great Fatherland. This is the fourth point. Therefore, National Unity Day and the historical events that fill it are critical for paving our road to the future.

View of Novopolotsk city, Vitebsk Region             Anton Stepanishchev 

By Viktor Vatyl, Doctor of Political Sciences, Chairman of the Belarusian Society of Political Scientists republican public association