And through it all, protesters have carried a flag that may be new to those unfamiliar with Belarusian politics. Its red-and-white design flies in the face of the post-Soviet nation’s red-and-green official banner. It is a key to understanding the nation’s past – and may hint at its future.
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Belarus protests against President Lukashenko continue with demands for new elections
Belarus protests against President Lukashenko continue with demands for new elections
“The flag was invented in 1915, and was supposed to resemble Belarusian folk costumes in white, with a red girdle,” said Per Rudling, a research associate at the Centre for Baltic and East European Studies at Sodertorn University in Stockholm. The colours evoke historical Lithuanian and Polish kingdoms, which used to include lands in western Belarus before they were annexed to the Soviet Union during World War II.
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Belarusian nationalist groups used the flag in 1918 when declaring the Belarusian People’s Republic (BNR), an unrecognised state that failed to create an independent government and was eventually subsumed into the USSR.
“It was used by pro-German collaborationist units during World War II, and as a nationalist symbol it was used by émigré nationalists during the Cold War,” Rudling said. “It was thus disliked by the Soviets, who sought to associate it with treason and fascism”.
It was adopted as the national flag when the state gained independence in 1991 but, following Lukashenko’s installation as president in 1994, it was replaced by a red-green modified version of the Soviet flag designed in 1951. The move was seen as in line with “integrationist” policies of the 1990s that encouraged close ties to Russia, nostalgia for the Soviet period and increasingly authoritarian rule.
The red-and-white flag’s suppression, in the end, became an expression of Lukashenko’s tendency to look to the Soviet past for legitimisation and power.
For the past two and half decades, this had led to the Kremlin having a rather large hand in Belarusian politics. This was most evident in the “Union State”, an official structure promoting the integration of the two countries – for which Belarus was given lucrative discounts on Russian gas imports.
But an energy dispute in late 2018 proved the first crack in what would become an increasingly tense relationship between the two countries. Lukashenko warned the Kremlin that it risked losing its “only ally to the West” and negotiations to unite in a single state (one of Russian president Vladimir Putin’s reported strategies to keep power once his term is up in 2024) stalled, with rumours claiming Lukashenko was reluctant to give up power, even to Moscow.
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In a dramatic turn before the elections this month, 33 Russian citizens were arrested in Belarus, with Lukashenko claiming them to be part of the notorious Wagner mercenary regiment that’s been linked to Russian interests in the Middle East and Africa. The Belarusian president warned against Russian plans to disrupt the elections and take control, claims that Lukashenko has since rolled back in his bid to regain Moscow’s favour amid pressure from the European community over his violent response to the protests.
This rapprochement with Moscow, especially in the face of rebukes from the EU, has some concerned over what part Russia may play in the weeks to come. Lukashenko has warned against Nato aggression on its borders and has called upon Russia to honour the collective defence security pact between former Soviet states. Moscow, for its part, has declared its readiness to provide security support “if necessary”.
The use of historically complicated symbols like the red-and-white flag, some are concerned, may even provide a justification for foreign intervention.
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This was partially the case in neighbouring Ukraine, said Hanna Hyrtsenko, a Kiev-based researcher who specialises in the country’s far-right groups. Certain images used in the Euromaidan protests in 2014, especially a red-and-black flag, were presented in the Russian media as fascist symbols due to the occasional collaboration between Ukrainian independence movements with the Nazis in World War II. This led to associations of the entire movement with fascism, one that was portrayed as being supported by the West.
“I believe this myth was invented to evoke associations with a ‘heroic Soviet’ past,” Hyrtsenko said, referring to a narrative within Russia that promotes the Russians as the main victors against Hitler, and therefore the liberators of Europe. “This is to give legitimacy to its military intervention – and to give legitimacy to the Putin regime.”
While there are many differences between the Ukrainian and Belarusian political contexts, the mention of fascist connotations of the red-and-white flag in Russian state and social media, for Hyrtsenko, may be the “start of an information war with unpredictable consequences”. Foreign policy analysts have picked up on similar trends, asking if Belarus has the possibility to become another Ukraine.
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Katsiaryna, a protester from the Belarusian city of Gomel who requested her surname not be published, said that Tikhanovskaya and other opposition leaders promoted both flags in the lead-up to the election, emphasising unity over the different alliances. “This is part of what makes us different from Ukraine,” she said. “The protests are not about geopolitics, about the EU or Russia. There were few EU flags in Tikhanovskaya’s campaign rallies, and European integration was not on the agenda, as compared to on the Maidan. People are just fighting for their fundamental rights and freedoms.”
Felix Ackermann, a leading German historian specialising in Belarus, agreed. “The election campaign turned symbols used by a rather narrow group of ethno-nationalists into symbols recognised by a very broad share of the population,” he said. “The white-red-white flag isn’t the symbol of ‘the opposition’ any more, but the symbol of freedom and the sovereignty of the people itself.”
The situation on the ground is changing rapidly, with more sectors of Belarusian society joining the protests daily, hoisting their own red-and-white flags on the streets and promoting them on social media. Whether they will be able to maintain geopolitical neutrality, and thus not unintentionally provoke a Russian response, is yet to be seen.
But for protesters like Katsiaryna, this is almost beside the point. “The white-red-white is a symbol of a new, democratic Belarus … a profound break from the past, and a break from the dictatorial regime as an embodiment of this violence.”
Joining Nato, or even the European Union, is less of a demand than fair elections, transparent institutions and a change in leadership. For them the flag is a sign of solidarity and they hope that the days of “Europe’s last dictator”, as Lukashenko is called, are indeed numbered.
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