State-building in the Republic of Belarus: the Role of Social Cleavages and Political Divides | South-Russian Journal of Social Sciences
State-building in the Republic of Belarus: the Role of Social Cleavages and Political Divides
Vol. 23 (2022) No. 2, Political Institutions and Processes
Vol. 23 (2022) No. 2
Political Institutions and Processes

State-building in the Republic of Belarus: the Role of Social Cleavages and Political Divides

Pantin V.I.
Center for Comparative Socio-­Economic and Political Studies, Primakov National Research Institute of World Economy and International Relations, Russian Academy of Sciences
ORCID ID 0000-0002-4218-4579
Lapkin V.V.
Center for Comparative Socio-­Economic and Political Studies, Primakov National Research Institute of World Economy and International Relations, Russian Academy of Sciences
ORCID ID 0000-0002-0775-2630
PDF (Russian)
https://doi.org/10.31429/26190567-23-2-6-17
https://doi.org/10.31429/26190567-23-2-6-17

How to Cite Array

Pantin V.I., Lapkin V.V. (2022) State-building in the Republic of Belarus: the Role of Social Cleavages and Political Divides. South-Russian Journal of Social Sciences, 23 (2), pp. 6-17. DOI: 10.31429/26190567-23-2-6-17 (In Russian)
Submission Date 2022-05-20
Accepted Date 2022-06-22
Published Date 2022-08-30

Copyright (c) 2022 Владимир Игоревич Пантин, Владимир Валентинович Лапкин

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Abstract

The article analyses social cleavages and political divides in modern Belarus, as well as the influence of political divides on the dynamics and nature of state building. It is shown that the evolutionary development of the Belarusian statehood during the 1990s — 2010s was largely due to the predominance of Soviet identity, the slow politicization of the existing social cleavages, and the absence of acute social, linguistic and cultural conflicts. At the same time, there are distinct regional and trans-­generational social cleavages in the contemporary Belarusian society, as well as rural-­urban divisions; the politicization of these cleavages became evident during and after the 2020 presidential elections. However, due to the long-term domination of Soviet identity in Belarusian society, the embeddedness of the Russian language and culture, and the relative weakness of ethno-­nationalism, the political divisions in Belarus have not reached critical point, and state building was largely associated with the Russian-­Belarusian integration processes. It is concluded that internal political divisions in Belarus are important for state building processes and also for the international status of the country.

Keywords

social cleavages, political divides, state building, identity policy, Belarus, Russia, EU countries, USA

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