SUMMARY:

For many years, Belarus was used by scholars as an example of impotent post-Soviet transition, unable to acquire a new social vision and subjectivity. Mark Cinkevich argues that the Belarusian civil protest movement that arose in the wake of the rigged presidential election in August 2020 has revealed a dramatic sea change in the Belarusian society that seems to have acquired and recognized a distinctive historical and political subjectivity. Cinkevich explains this profound transformation by the fact that Belarusian society has embraced rather than rejected the Soviet discourse. President Lukashenka’s reactionary neo-Sovietism has played a joke on him by gradually changing the positionality of Belarusians vis-à-vis the Soviet legacy. Eventually, Belarus society assumed a hegemonic role over the production and application of the Soviet discourse and full control over its meanings. The next urgent task according to Cinkevich is to articulate a new worldview based on the recently acquired historical subjectivity, including a critical reassessment of the Soviet past by its self-conscious heirs.