MINSK, 2 July (BelTA) - The national idea of Belarusians is the idea of a legitimate desire to be the master of their historical land, Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko said at a meeting in the run-up to Independence Day in Minsk on 2 July, BelTA has learned.
“We admire the spiritual strength and courage of our compatriots who preserved their language, culture and faith through centuries of total Polonization. The people who defended the right to be called Belarusians had a national idea maturing in the hearts: the idea of a free people. The idea of a legitimate desire to be the master of our historical land," Aleksandr Lukashenko said.
The head of state stressed that this right was won in historical battles: "With the Teutonic Order, where the Slavic regiments demonstrated exemplary bravery; with the army of Napoleon, against which Belarusian peasants unleashed a partisan war; with the Polish insurgents, whom peasants would capture and take to the tsarist authorities because they did not want the Polish oppression to return; with the German invaders, when the entire Belarusian people rose up for the holy war."
In the last war, the Great Patriotic War, Belarusians defended not only their lives but also the memory of past generations who would have been simply erased from world history, the president emphasized. "It was the war to destroy the Slavic ethnos, culture and entire peoples," he said.
