“Dear friends, distinguished professors, researchers, and guests of the Aleksanteri Conference,
I am glad that the University of Helsinki is hosting this conference. Finland has passed the difficult path of decolonization.
For decades, the term Finlandization was used to describe the situation in my country, Belarus. Belarus was keeping its nominal independence while remaining in the Russian sphere of influence.
Today, Finlandization means something completely different. Finns not only got rid of their shameful dependence on the metropole, but also joined NATO, and before that – the European Union.
Having such an aggressive beast of the Russian empire as your neighbor, you always face attempts to undermine your integrity, your identity and your sovereignty.
We see what Russia is doing now in Belarus and Ukraine. It sees our countries as colonies that have to be returned to the empire by all means and all costs.
Dear friends,
Decolonizing space is about decolonizing minds. Belarusians massively decolonized their thinking in 2020. Suddenly, they rediscovered their national culture. National history. National symbols. And national pride. All areas in which they once perceived themselves as secondary to Russians. What they were long taught to see as ugly and shameful, turned out to be beautiful and dignified.
It came as a surprise to many. Nobody predicted this turn. Nobody could foresee that the protests, this time, would be so massive. That quantity would become a new quality.
Was it a miracle? Maybe. All I know for sure is that decolonization of thinking is irreversible. After 2020, Belarusians will never be the same.
Since the beginning of our peaceful revolution, we’ve been learning to think of Belarus in terms of our European past and our European future. To see Belarus as a part of Europe.
Among our political prisoners, there are many representatives of our rich culture: poets, musicians, artists, journalists, scholars, and even one Nobel Peace Prize winner, Ales Bialiatski.
One of the imprisoned intellectuals is philosopher Uladzimir Matskevich, who is serving his five year sentence. He wrote: “The Great Belarusian Dream must come first, and ideologies second. If we have the Great Belarusian Dream, all ideologies will be harmless for us.”
Today, we are lucky to have our Great Belarusian Dream. And the name of this Dream is Europe.
The process of decolonizing Belarus was interrupted by brutal Russia-backed violence. Since then, we see the opposite process: re-colonization. It means thousands of political prisoners, hundreds of thousands in exile. It means semi-official ban of Belarusian language, Belarusian literature and history in schools. It means the political weaponization of the church. It means further russification and war propaganda everywhere. It means Russian troops and Russian nuclear weapons in Belarus.
But the re-colonization will fail. And so will the ideology of the “Russian world”. Why? Just because the wheel of history can’t be turned back. The Great Belarusian Dream of Europe will become reality, sooner or later.
I wish you fruitful discussions on its topics. Let’s decolonize our minds and see beyond the obvious. This is your main duty as scholars. We, politicians, need your knowledge and your ideas. Thank you for your research and for your thinking.
Zhyve Belarus”.
