Churches in authoritarian Belarus: Breeding ground for protest against war and oppression

During RJ sabbatical I summarise my previous research on the institutional framework of religious life in Belarus, then I map the position of the churches during the political crisis (2020-2023), and finally I explicate the logics behind the protest mobilisations and the governmental repressions. The aim of this study is twofold. Based on interviews with clergy and active believers conducted in 2019-2022 as well as on the analysis of media sources and official documents, this study seeks to map in detail the position of the

churches on the recent events in Belarus and to discuss their contract with the authoritarian regime. The second purpose is to contribute to the research on the state-society relationship in autocratic regimes by nuancing the thesis that civil society is either marginalized or fully co-opted by the authoritarian state. RJ Sabbatical will result in publication of the monograph with open access.

This project will enrich the scholarship on the role of churches in Belarusian society and will indicate potential directions whereby initiatives of the religious groups can foster civic society enactment. I am planning to spend two months at The European Humanities University - a Belarusian university which operates in exile in Vilnius, Lithuania. The project will allow Belarusian researchers in exile to get in contact with Swedish academia, this way enabling them to tap into the European cutting-edge research.