SUMMARY:

Alexander Friedman’s article tackles the problem of the “Jewish dimension” of the Belarusian civil protest movement that arose in the wake of the rigged presidential election in August 2020. Based on an analysis of Belarusian mass media and thirty interviews with Belarusian Jews, the article reconstructs the attitudes to protests by various Belarusians who self-identified as Jewish and the attitudes toward Jews on the part of those on both sides of the civil conflict. Of special value are separate detailed interviews with four Jewish women published in full in the concluding part of the article: “A” from Gomel, “N” and “V” from Minsk, and “K” from Israel. These unabridged narratives provide a unique window on the subjectivity of ordinary observers of the Belarusian political process.