{"id":11437,"date":"2022-06-23T09:27:45","date_gmt":"2022-06-23T06:27:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/api.pozirk.online\/longreads\/officials-employ-false-war-narratives-to-assert-legitimacy-discredit-west\/"},"modified":"2026-02-24T20:29:13","modified_gmt":"2026-02-24T20:29:13","slug":"officials-employ-false-war-narratives-to-assert-legitimacy-discredit-west","status":"publish","type":"longreads","link":"https:\/\/pozirk.online\/en\/longreads\/11437\/","title":{"rendered":"Officials employ false war narratives to assert legitimacy, discredit West"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\n <span>By Alaksandr K\u0142asko\u016dski,&nbsp;BPN<\/span>\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\t * Reproduction prohibited\n<\/p>\n<p>\n <b>Belarusian officials distort historical narratives, claiming that the West is responsible for deaths of millions of Belarusians during World War II. The regime casts itself as a successor to the side that won the Second World War, demanding respect from its critics despite blatant attacks on human rights.<\/b>\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\t Alaksandr Luka\u0161enka, in his June 22 address on Day of People\u2019s Commemoration of the Victims of the Great Patriotic War and Genocide Against the Belarusian People, said that \u201cmany in the West would like to forget atrocities committed by their fathers and grandfathers on our soil.\u201d\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\t He has consistently ignored the fact that Britain, the United States and other Western countries played a crucial role in Nazi Germany\u2019s defeat. Britain and France declared a war on Nazi Germany two days after it invaded Poland on September 1, 1939. From June 1940 Britain fought alone, while Joseph Stalin\u2019s Soviet Union aligned itself with Hitler.\n<\/p>\n<h2> <span>Half-truths<\/span> <\/h2>\n<p>\n\t Belarus\u2019 ceremonies honoring the few remaining war veterans have increasingly become enmeshed in politics of the present.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\t Belarusian officials, during an event at Brest Hero Fortress, played up Soviet troops\u2019 defense of the fortress in 1941. Many Belarusians may be unaware that Polish troops fought courageously to defend the same fortress from the Nazis in September 1939. After the bastion was captured, Nazi and Soviet troops, which had attacked Poland from the two directions, held a joint parade in Brest.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\t Officials and state propaganda downplay the Soviet Union\u2019s failures and heavy losses during the war.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\t When history does not align with the regime\u2019s political objectives, officials deny historical events and distort historical narratives to try to cast the Soviet Union in a more favorable light.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\t Officials use the term Great Patriotic War instead of the Second World War to cut off a period from September 1939 to June 1941, during which the Soviet Union formed a controversial alliance with Hitler under the secret protocol attached to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.\n<\/p>\n<h2> <span>Minsk claims to be successor to Great Victory<\/span> <\/h2>\n<p>\n\t Belarusian and Russian officials cast themselves as successors to the Great Victory, denying the West a moral right to lecture the two repressive regimes on human rights, put forward any political demands and impose sanctions. By jumping on the ancestors\u2019 bandwagon, the Belarusian and Russian regimes seek to gain political weight, an ideological foothold and a propaganda advantage in their clash with the democratic community.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\t Alaksandr \u0141uka\u0161enka and Vladimir Putin want to be associated with the victors to bolster their claim to power, said Valeryj Karbalevi\u010d, a Belarusian political analyst.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\t Natalla Ka\u010danava, chair of the Council of the Republic and \u0141uka\u0161enka\u2019s long-time chief ideology officer, said at a Minsk conference on June 15 that Belarus seeks to assert its \u201cright to interpret events of the Great Patriotic War based on historical truth that the Belarusian people know\u201d firsthand.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\t In fact, the Belarusian public is split over politics, including over interpretations of World War II. Officials would like to have the exclusive right to dictate their narratives.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\t The government seeks to end scientific discussions by silencing historians and journalists who try to be impartial.\n<\/p>\n<h2> <span>Officials portray opponents as Nazis<\/span> <\/h2>\n<p>\n\t Officials also employ Second World War narratives to demonize their political opponents. They blame the collective West for the misfortunes that befell the Belarusians during the war. Western sanctions imposed on Belarus for providing its territory and infrastructure to Russian troops for attacks on Ukraine are cast as attempts by Nazi descendants to retaliate. Opposition supporters are portrayed as fascists.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\t Earlier this year, \u0141uka\u0161enka signed a law entitled \u201cOn Genocide Against the Belarusian People\u201d that makes it a crime to deny that atrocities committed by the Nazis and their collaborators during the Great Patriotic War and after the war before 1951 were a genocide. However, the authorities have refused to make a historical assessment of the crimes perpetrated by the Joseph Stalin regime.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\t In March \u0141uka\u0161enka renamed the anniversary of the Nazi attack on the Soviet Union as Day of People\u2019s Commemoration of the Victims of the Great Patriotic War and Genocide Against the Belarusian People.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\t In 2021 the Prosecutor General\u2019s Office opened a genocide case in connection with the deaths of millions of Belarusians during World War II at the hands of \u201coccupiers and their collaborators.\u201d&nbsp;\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\t Officials often cite the case to claim that the regime\u2019s political opponents and politicians who advocate sanctions against Belarus are spiritual descendants of the Nazi occupiers and their collaborators.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\t Earlier this month, Prosecutor General Andrej \u0160vied said that his office was looking into activities of Polish President Andrzej Duda\u2019s grandfather, who he claimed was a member of a punitive battalion during the war.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\t \u201cHe was particularly cruel, primarily in the Minsk and Viciebsk regions,\u201d he claimed. \u201cSo the thesis that there is a genetic link between Nazi criminals and their descendants is confirmed by indisputable evidence and facts.\u201d\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\t Na\u0161a Niva&nbsp;dismissed \u0160vied\u2019s claim as an old fake story planted by Russia.<\/p>\n<p>\t \u201cPropagandists claim that Andrzej Duda is the grandson of Mykhailo Duda, a Ukrainian People\u2019s Army commander who fought against the Poles and in Volhynia in 1943,\u201d it wrote.<\/p>\n<p>\t Andrzej Duda rebutted the claim in 2015 by tweeting that his grandfather, Alojzy Duda, was in fact a furrier and died in 1992.<\/p>\n<p>\t The Ukrainian military commander could not be Andrzej Duda\u2019s grandfather because&nbsp;he had no children, Na\u0161a Niva noted.\n<\/p>\n<h2> <span>Official rhetoric is a hard sell<\/span> <\/h2>\n<p>\n\t Officials hope that their twisted Great Patriotic War narratives can implant patriotism in the young generation. But since that war occurred a long time ago, it is clear that officials had nothing to do with it and the Soviet victory.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\t \u201cThe notion that the Great Victory is the main instrument legitimizing the political regime exposes a crisis of its ideology,\u201d Karbalevi\u010d stressed. \u201cThe notion appeals to the past without offering any narratives of the future. Everything revolves around what happened about 80 years ago.\u201d Young generations are unlikely to find it very exciting, he added.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\t Belarusian and Russian propaganda officers portray the Russian invasion of Ukraine as the continuation of the Soviet Union\u2019s fight against fascism and Nazis. Russia\u2019s failure to win that war might bury the Great Victory ideology underlying the Kremlin\u2019s policy of irredentism, Karbalievi\u010d said.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\t &nbsp;\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\t &nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Alaksandr K\u0142asko\u016dski,&nbsp;BPN * Reproduction prohibited Belarusian officials distort historical narratives, claiming that the West is responsible for deaths of millions of Belarusians during World War II. The regime casts itself as a successor to the side that won the Second World War, demanding respect from its critics despite blatant attacks on human rights. Alaksandr [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":75,"featured_media":0,"template":"","rubric":[22],"class_list":["post-11437","longreads","type-longreads","status-publish","hentry","rubric-theviewer"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v25.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Officials employ false war narratives to assert legitimacy, discredit West | Pozirk<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"By Alaksandr K\u0142asko\u016dski,&nbsp;BPN * Reproduction prohibited Belarusian officials distort historical narratives, claiming that the West is responsible for\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/pozirk.online\/en\/longreads\/11437\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" 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