The issues discussed at the 2nd International Congress of Belarusan Studies.

The 2nd International Congress of Belarusan Studies, photo by EuroBelarus.info

Not only the results of the scientists’ and experts’ work were presented, but also the areas for further scientific research were discussed under the 2nd International Congress of Belarusan Studies.

The Congress gave consideration to the wide range of social disciplines and humanities - history, political science, art and religious studies, as well as addressed certain challenges of the modern Belarusan society.

The concept of the Congress this year was built around the "turnaround towards Belarus": making Belarusan and foreign researchers pay attention to a better Belarusan research, including its comparative and regional perspective.

According to the organizers, the mission of the Congress is to develop a community of scientists, analysts and experts, and to promote a better understanding of Belarus in the academic and social environment of the country, the region and the world.

There were twenty sections at the Congress out of which several clusters can be defined.

History

The historical cluster was perhaps the largest and the most diverse of the Congress where there were four historical sections dedicated to politics, governance system, economics in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania; the problems of ethnicity in medieval and early New Era; modernization, industrialization and political changes in Belarus in the XIX century and in the XX century. According to the workshops’ work results, great interest was detected, those towards Belarusan history, both within Belarus and abroad. In particular, Oleg Dernovich, coordinator of one of the sections, drew attention to the need to establish a permanent seminar on ethnicity.

Culture, literature, cinema

In the section "Modern Belarusan culture" both took part as a practicioners, art managers and theorists researchers of culture and art. Research studies of contemporary art are held from various perspectives - sociological, philosophical, historical, and all these waere presented at the section that discussed the historicization of contemporary Belarusan art, the question of its presence in the European context. It was noted that there is lack of studies of contemporary Belarusan art. A separate cluster was connected with art criticism (how to write about contemporary art). A number of reports were devoted to the Belarusan segment of contemporary art: modern plastics, art in public space, photography, deviant art, etc.

- Until now, management of culture and art has missed of research in cultural studies and art. I believe that the great achievement of our section was bringing this to the public discussion, said a master of cultural studies Margarita Korzun.

One of the practical outcomes of the section was creation of an informal professional network, under which the researchers will keep in touch, monitor the implementation of the modern cultural projects.

How to capture the specificity of the Belarusan cinema and how to consider it? Looking at the different periods of the Belarusan cinema, the relevant sections’ participants had to spend a complicated “surgery” in order to separate Soviet and national aspects in the domestic film industry. Thus, new original terms have appeared, such as the trash officialese.

A separate section gathered the people examining Belarusan literature abroad (in the UK, Ukraine, Poland, Germany). Doctor of Philology from the Drohobych State Pedagogical University (Ukraine) Igor Nabytovich is working on a monograph on Uladzimir Karatkevich. Professor Gun-Britt Kohler brought a book about the Belarusan literature, published in Germany in German language, being the outcome of a conference held last year in Oldenburg.

Belarusan Bible, theological thought, religious studies

A meeting of representatives of different faiths took place in under the Congress, as well as an attempt was made as to integrate theological thought in the academic community, a deconstruction of the confessional and regional approaches to theological thought took place in order to include it into the larger context.

The competent experts gathered at the section, to discuss the problems of the Belarusan academic translation of the Bible.

At the section on religious studies, the scientific issues were raised related to the activation of religious studies in special areas (religious anthropology, philosophy of religion, problems of freedom of conscience and religion, interfaith relations, etc.).

Belarus in the international affairs’ system

- The two quite distressing results of the section work can be observed. Firstly, Belarus has firmly taken place between East and West. Most likely, Belarus has occupied this niche for a long time, and we won’t be able to move neither this way nor that way (though it can have a different interpretation). Secondly, Belarus today is not so much a subject, but rather an object in international relations. The topics for the future that is worth research is the way out of the situation, said moderator of the section Dzianis Melyantsou.

Variety of (post) communism

Aleksey Lastovsky proposed to hold the next Congress under the slogan "turnaway from Belarus" rather that "turnaround towards Belarus": "It is clear that we are all studying our country in depth at this Congress, sometimes comparing it with the neighbors. We should not forget that Belarus must have knowledge about the whole world, not only about our region, but also about other countries, in order that Belarus could confidently walk with this knowledge not only on the east or west, but in any direction".

Studies of the Belarusan civil society

A separate interdisciplinary section was formed by researchers of the Belarusan civil society. General development issues of the civil society as a whole object were discussed at the section, as well as the study of civil society organizations’ activity in some aspects (activities of the environmental protection, representations of Belarusans on human rights, on the new social movements in Belarus, on the legal aspects of communication between the civil society organizations and the government in the public councils and others).

The section participants came to the conclusion that the level of communication in the field of studies of civil society could have been better. As a reason that the research studies remain unknown to the general public, the lack of channels for disseminating information about ongoing research was named, as well as sites for the research results’ location.

The participants suggested that a database of civil society’ studies to be created (perhaps, on the basis of existing web sites of Belarusan NGOs and think tanks involved in the civil sector analytics).

Education

Unfortunately, half of the registered participants wasn’t able to attend the section on the reform of the Belarusan education system. Thus, the leadership of the Yanka Kupala State University of Grodno didn’t let historian Sergei Tokto to visit the Congress. In this regard, one can not forget the recent case when one of the authors of the book "Grodnovedenie" Andrey Chernyakevich was fired from the same Grodno-based university - formally for absenteeism from work, but in fact for his social activity, which is entirely of his professional activity – a book writing (ban on profession issue).

At the closing of the Congress, a philosopher, methodologist, the head of the Board of the International Consortium EuroBelarus Uladzimir Matskevich expressed protest on behalf of the participants against such behavior of the Belarusan universities’ management.