Opinions & Interviews

“It is time to choose what will become the idea to unite all the Belarusians, the idea that everyone — from academicians to peasants — will believe,” said the President.

According to the Belarusian head of state, the feelings of patriotism and the readiness to preserve the legacy should be shaped through the interest in history and culture of the nation. "Our history has never been a beautiful fairy-tale. Belarus is a crossroads of European and Asian roads that has seen many wars and interventions. But however hard they may have tried they have not been able to enslave this courageous nation. Thanks to the belief and spiritual force of the ancestors Belarus came back from ashes like a phoenix," noted the head of state.

The President believes that reliance on the heroic legacy should be the foundation for the upbringing of citizens. The celebration of the 70th anniversary of Belarus’ liberation and the Great Victory should become a powerful stimulus for the patriotic uplift. “But our history is more than the events of those war years. It includes the Polotsk principality and the Turov principality where seedlings of our statehood and culture cropped up. It includes works and thoughts of enlighteners Euphrosyne of Polotsk and Kirill of Turov, Frantsisk Skorina and Nikolai Gusovsky of the Renaissance Age, fathers of the new-age Belarusian culture Yanka Kupala and Yakub Kolas. It includes the technological and cultural breakthrough of the Soviet years and our hard work to create the sovereign Belarusian state,” said the President. “We should not discard positive aspects of this legacy so that it could bolster the spiritual platform of the state,” stressed Alexander Lukashenko.

The President remarked that nowadays it is often said that conventional morale is being replaced by wise egoism since success stems from financial interests. “But any material wellbeing needs a solid spiritual foundation. Calls for rejecting the cultural originality for the sake of globalization are now followed by more and more frequent calls for getting back to time-tried norms and ideals,” said the head of state.

On the one hand, old Europe is dominated by adherents of the so-called neo-liberal morals. On the other hand, the East, in particularly, China, believes that progress stems from the continuity between the past and the present. In Russia the movement in favor of progress based on experience and traditions is gaining pace, remarked the President.

Alexander Lukashenko pointed out that like a pendulum the destiny of the Belarusian people had always fluctuated between two geopolitical poles — the East and the West. The Belarusian culture has clear traces of the influence of the Russian culture, Western European and Asian ones. “But still we have preserved our identity, more in some aspects than in other ones. The world recognizes us as Belarusians and it is worth a lot,” said the head of state.