"Belarus Is Often Referred To As The Fourth Baltic Country"
- 6.05.2026, 12:50
We're going back to Europe.
The new book of the famous historian and publicist Yuri Felshtinsky "Natalia Radina's Belarus: Journalist vs. Dictator" was presented at the Berlin Book Fair Berlin Bebelplatz.
The meeting, which took place on May 2 in the Gallery of Kunstschule Berlin, was attended by the author of the book Yuri Felshtinsky and the editor-in-chief of the website Charter97.org Natalia Radina. The moderator was the well-known political scientist Alexander Morozov.
In the course of the meeting Natalia Radina answered the question about the future of Belarus. She sees our country as part of the united Europe:
- The European Union is not going anywhere, moreover, in the current struggle for hegemony, the unexpected winner may become not China, but the European Union. Some regional unions may exist, but the main processes will take place inside the EU.
Belarus will not become a part of Russia. Mentally, we are really absolutely different people. The Belarusian nation emerged as a result of mixing Baltic and Slavic tribes, that's why we are called the fourth Baltic country. We want to return to Europe, where we have always been. This book tells very briefly where Belarus originated from, what formations the Belarusian territory was in. Our history goes from the Polotsk Principality, then the territory of Belarus was part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and on this we base our identity today.
Then we were part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, at the division of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth at the end of the 18th century Belarus became part of the Russian Empire. For hundreds of years we were at war with Russia - both the GDL and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Belarus is watered with blood, a lot of evil came from the Russian kingdom. I don't think that Russia will be preserved in the future, because we can't be a prison of nations in the 21st century. I am sure that Belarus will eventually get rid of Moscow's influence.
Yuri Felshtinsky said that for him, as an American historian, the western-centricity of Belarusians was also a great discovery:
- Belarus has always been oriented to the West, not to the East. For some reason, there has always been such an understanding about the Baltic States, but not about Belarus. I think that as a result of this war Russia will remain on the map, but it will disintegrate, and in the best scenario for us it will finally cease to be an empire and can then finally become a normal country if it gets rid of imperial thinking.
-I don't think that this is an easy and quick process, and I don't count on it. I believe that if Belarus becomes a part of Europe and, accordingly, a part of the European Union, it will be possible to finally create a buffer zone from Finland to Ukraine with the support of the Ukrainian AFU. And this buffer, including Belarus, will create an opportunity for Europe to coexist peacefully with the Russian Federation.