View article

Independence in 1991 and the need to construct a new national identity have drawn the attention of national post-Soviet political elites to the capital cities. Minsk was unique in this process because the set of possible cultural interpretations was initially limited there to post-war architecture that represented the Soviet power and its attributes. In this study, I analyzed cultural narratives in the space of Minsk as represented by the names of the places, the outer look and decorations of the city. For this purpose, I conducted content-analysis of historical and modern names of the city objects, and interpreted the strategies of building new national identity by the authorities. I found that the current narrative of national identity in Minsk is constructed on the basis of the 1945 Victory of WWII and the pre-communist 19 th century history of the city’s development. These are symbolically promoted and legitimized strategies to interpret Minsk. Moreover, the current project of national identity in Minsk strives for a monopoly, thus cutting down on the sources of other identities of the city. However, new capitalist features are increasingly including Minsk into global capitalist dynamics.