ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses the ways in which the tale of Belarus's collective heroism was repeatedly told and retold within the bounds of a highly politicized discourse. The myth of the partisan republic was a self-fulfilling narrative about the Belarusian people's inherently pro-Soviet cultural belonging, both past and present, which sought to nullify the possibility of any alternative interpretation of the war. The discourse of the Belarusians' 'all-national' partisan devotion was not only closely interwoven with a memory of victimhood; remembrance of the dead was subordinated to the partisan myth. The partisan myth had a colonial dimension: as one Belarusian scholar puts it, official memory was 'advanced to support the authority of the metropolis over territories that were liable to escape control'. Belarus was the most important theatre of partisan warfare, its thick forests and marshy terrain providing the ideal conditions for stealth combat.
