Belarus in the Long Shadow of 2020

The long shadow of 2020’s protests against a rigged election continues to shape Belarus’s political, social, and cultural landscape. The country has undergone a profound reconfiguration of state-society relations, and the ruptures exposed by the protests were further deepened by Russia’s war in Ukraine. Though the regime suppressed the protests and reasserted control, the events of 2020 triggered a deep societal transformation marked by new forms of civic subjectivity, political consciousness, and diasporic mobilization. This article examines the regime’s repressive turn and memory politics, the impact of politically driven migration, the rise of a transnational Belarusian identity, and the role of digital infrastructures in sustaining civic networks beyond the state’s reach.