National identity and ageing

‘Pensioners’ in post-2020 Belarusian political narratives

Abstract

This article explores how Belarusian political actors, speaking from diverse civilisational perspectives, discuss the place of older citizens, particularly less privileged women, in society. It demonstrates how the persistent logic of Cold War geopolitics animates social hierarchies in territories positioned between Western and Russian influences. Through an analysis of state-controlled and opposition media, I find that the official national project and the ethnocentric concept of Belarusianness share a discursive construction of ‘pensioners’ as an inferior Other. Invested in confrontation with the West, the autocratic regime claims moral superiority by representing ‘pensioners’ as objects of state care. Drawing on the narrative of suffering under communism/Russian colonialism, advocates of a ‘European’ Belarus discuss older people as obstacles to democracy. By exploring the narrative of ‘in-between-ness’, which champions a democratic Belarus that belongs neither to the Soviet past/Russia nor to the West but is connected to both, I argue that rejecting binary logic in national self-determination opens up opportunities for intergroup solidarity.