Andrej Vardamacki. Belarusians and their national identity

The article is prepared on the basis of national-wide representative survey conducted by Belarusian Analytical Workroom in cooperation with NOVAK laboratory in 2012. The sample size is 1058 respondents and it is micro-model of Belarusian society aged 18+ by the parameters of gender, age, education, type of settlement and regions of Belarus. Urban and rural populations were presented proportionally in accordance with statistics of census.

Sociological data allowed us to formulate the essence and specificity of Belarusian national identity at the given historical period of development. Belarusians’ national identity at the moment is state-orientated, not culture-orientated one. By the year 2012 it was marked by two watersheds: a) a contradiction between ideas of the “long” history of its emergence, and a preference for more “recent” Soviet-style symbols; b) the presence of both pro-Soviet and pro-European orientations in roughly equal proportions. The mass protests taking place in Belarus this year testify significant changes that will be considered in our next publication.