Belarus is a typical borderline country featuring multi-ethnicity, including various cultures, denominations and languages co-existing one near the other. Current socio-linguistic situation in Belarus may be defined as socially conditioned diglossia. Russian is the language of the governing elites, all-level education, popular culture and mass-media. Urban inhabitants speak almost entirely Russian, and the majority of village inhabitants speak Belarusian dialects. When, during Lukaszenka’s rule, Belarusian language fell once again in disgrace, it once again became a symbol of national revival and a fighting tool of opposition. Representatives of democratic elites speak Belarusian, but only when they hold informal meetings or political events. Based on biographic interviews held with the representatives of the Belarusian intelligentsia in Belarus, the Author has revealed a process of the narrators’ discovering an importance of a mother tongue as a sign of national identity. The process of realizing the importance of the Belarusian language in the life of an individual, as well as ethnic community, as well as a process of conscious learning of the language is, for contemporary Belarusians, one of the stages of shaping national identity. Learning the language is followed by participating in Belarusian symbolic culture and remembering history and reviving common memory, which finally leads to conscious identity with a mother land in a symbolic sense, which is broader than purely territorial reference.

The Lower Devonian (Emsian) and Middle Devonian of Belarus contain assemblages of biostratigraphically useful faunal and floral microremains. Surface deposits are few, with most material being derived from borehole cores. Acanthodian scales are particularly numerous and comparison with scales from other regions of the Old Red Sandstone continent (Laurussia), specifically the Orcadian Basin of Scotland, the Baltic Region, Spitsbergen, and Severnaya Zemlya have demonstrated a lot of synonymy of acanthodian species between these areas. This is especially the case between Belarus, the Orcadian Basin and the Baltic Region, which has allowed us to produce an interregional biostratigraphic scheme, as well as to postulate marine connection routes between these areas. The acanthodian biostratigraphy of Belarus is particularly important as it is associated with spores and marine invertebrates, so giving the potential of more detailed correlations across not only the Old Red Sandstone continent, but elsewhere in the Devonian world. We also demonstrate that differences in preservation (e.g., wear and how articulated a specimen is) is one of the main reasons for synonymy.

This article investigates the post-return experiences of highly skilled Belarusian professionals. I con-centrate on the socio-cultural aspects of highly skilled migration and view returnees as carriers of new experiences, ideas, and practices by studying the ways in which they apply various socio-cultural re-mittances to the different spheres of their lives. In particular, I argue that the formation and transmission of socio-cultural remittances are strongly heterogeneous and selective processes, which manifest them-selves to varying degrees not only in different people, but also in different aspects of people’s lives. The analysis of several socio-cultural remittances in private and public spheres shows that in some cases the socio-cultural remittances display strong gender differences. Moreover, the highly skilled returnees appear to be proactive remitters: some of them re-interpret and transform the socio-cultural remittances before transmitting them. The research draws on the analysis of 43 in-depth interviews with highly skilled professionals who returned to Belarus after long periods of time spent abroad.

This article presents the main recent developments in migration trends to and from Belarus. It studies these trends via the migration systems theory lenses, according to which Belarus belongs to the Eurasian migra-tion system. The most significant migration flows are directed towards Russia, due to the existence of the Union State. However, over the last decade, Belarusian statistics have shown a gradual transformation in the direction of these migration flows. After the recession in Russia in 2015, the number of emigrants from Belarus to EU countries increased. The most significant changes have occurred in the migration dynamics between Belarus and Poland and Lithuania. The existence of the Pole’s Card makes it more difficult to measure the number of Belarusian immigrants in Poland, therefore, I provide a comparative analysis of Belarusian and Polish statistics in order to show a more realistic picture of the number and structure of Belarusian emigrants and the problem of underestimation in the sending country. Particular attention is paid to the consequences of the political situation in Belarus after 2020; this has become an additional push factor for emigrants and may also lead to a further reduction of Belarusian migratory links within the Eurasian migration system. Thus, the statistics for 2021 show a significant increase in the number of Bel-arusian emigrants to the EU, while emigration to Russia has remained at the same level.

With the Act on the Polish Card Poland followed the pattern of some European states (mostly Central and Eastern European ones) of enacting specific domestic legislation conferring special treatment and benefits to persons who are recognized as its kin-minorities. The most important analysis of this phenomenon from the perspective of international law was the 2001 Venice Commission’s report entitled “Report on the Protection of National Minorities by their Kin-State.” The Polish legislation was adopted in 2007, so for obvious reasons it was not considered by the Venice Commission. However, a rather unexpected and unusual examination of the Polish kin-state legislation from the perspective of international law came from Belarus. The Constitutional Court of the Republic of Belarus (CCRB) conducted a comprehensive examination of the Act on the Polish Card in 2011. The main aim of this article is to present and comment on the reasoning of the CCRB. Beginning with the broader context, this article starts with a presentation of the origins and a short description of the Act on the Polish Card, followed by a discussion of why the Polish Card and other kin-state legislation instruments are topics of concern in international law. The main part of the article is devoted to the presentation and assessment of the 2011 CCRB decision on the Act on the Polish Card. The author’s assessment confirms at least some of the concerns put forward by the CCRB, i.e., that both the Act on the Polish Card and the practice based on it contradict some norms and principles of international law, namely the principle of territorial sovereignty, the norms of consular law, and several bilateral treaties in force between these two states. Bearing in mind that despite those concerns more than a quarter-million Polish Cards (also sometimes called Pole’s Cards) have been issued so far by the Polish authorities, the article ends with a discussion of why such a prolonged nonconformity with international law is possible.