The article studies tendencies in the development of regional elites in Belarus by analyzing composition of the Regional Local Councils based on the results of local elections in 1999, 2003 and 2007. It examines the validity of regional elites’ analysis by studying Local Council Members and a level of electoral discipline of local executive committees during the local elections. Besides, it reviews political parties’ representation in the local Counsels, age and gender composition and peculiarities of the territorial representation, etc.

Key words: Local elections, local elections in Belarus, elections in 1999, 2003 and 2007, regional elites, political parties, party system, local councils.

This article is an attempt to answer the question of how the new technologies of communication were used during the election to the local Councils which took place on January 14, 2007. The way it is possible to compare a solid local newspaper and a web-site with its blogs and virtual communities. What is common and what is different between the readers of the printed newspaper and the participants of various social networks.

Key words: LiveJournal, blog, communities, local election, new media, local newspapers, social networks.

The figures presented in this study show a low level of web campaigning among the opposition and the government-supported nominees alike during the 2008 Parliamentary election in Belarus. The research indicates low personal input from the candidates to Internet campaigning and apathetic online activities on political parties’ Web sites.

Key words: The Internet use, web campaigning, Belarusian elections.

The subject of this article is to reveal the phenomenon of spontaneous groups which arose during the protests caused by the 2006 Presidential elections. The author tries to give a definition of the notion «spontaneous groups», to classify the groups according to their origin and internal structure and to specify the causes of their formation. There is also an attempt to outline near-term perspectives of spontaneous groups.

Key words: The 2006 elections, opposition, spontaneous groups, protests, resistance, network movement.

The article analyzes territorial peculiarities of the electoral behavior in Belarus on the basis of the official ballots during the Presidential elections in 1994, 2001 and 2006. The author concludes that regardless of the lack of full trust to the official data (in particular in 2001 and 2006), its analysis allows to retrace the territorial peculiarities of voting and to localize the relatively «oppositional» and «anti-oppositional» areas which reflect the essential regional differences preserved by the authoritarian regime.

Key words: Presidential elections, election, elections of 1994, 2001 and 2006 in Belarus, electoral behavior, map of the electoral behavior, political forces in Belarus.

An analysis of the contemporary state of political and civil consciousness in Belarus discovers a number of contradictions. The high level of electoral participation goes with low motivation of voters «to influence the trend of developments in the country ». Another aspect of the existing contradictions the perception by state between residents of their citizenship: the identification with the citizens of the Republic of Belarus and significance of citizenship and while on the other hand, the neglect of political and legal status of citizen as a resource for solving social problems. On the basis of empirical sociological data the author determines in the article the correlation between the ideas about the concept «a citizen» and the peculiarity of perception of the country and of themselves as its citizens in conditions of contemporary Belarus.

Keywords: Identity, identification, civil conciseness, public opinion, political behaviour.

Images on banknotes are one of the ways of visualizing and distributing knowledge about a certain historical period and fixing it in a nation’s consciousness, thus influencing the national identity. The author analyses the images on the banknotes of the three neighboring countries: Lithuania, Ukraine and Belarus, studying the common features and differences in their design. The author draws a conclusion about the closeness of the Lithuanian and Ukrainian approaches that influenced their national identities through the banknotes’ images, while Belarusian identity engineers ignored this approach.

Key words: Political symbols, symbolism of Belarus, Lithuania and Ukraine, historical memory, identity construction, finances, money.

The current study is an investigation of the basic ideas and practices of skinheads in Belarus as a local variety of worldwide youth counterculture. There are several themes that are on parade within the frame of the given paper: the origin and development of skinheads’ style, neo-Nazi ideas’ orientation of the skinhead style proponents and the genesis of skinheads’ gangs in Belarus. Special attention has been focused on interrelation of youth counterculture with right-wing radicalism. The authors also touched upon the basic ideas which determine skinheads’ Weltanschauung and practices to support the specific collective identity.

Key words: Skinheads, youth counterculture, style, collective identity, political radicalism.

The author reviews in the article the main stages of the Crivitian «idea» evolution in the context of Belarusian political thought. The process of Crivitian «idea» development was divided in the article into four periods: the fixation (ХIХ– early ХХ), the conceptualization (in 1920s–40s), an interruption in representation (1950s–80s) and present state (since the end of 1980-ies). The author gives the main characteristics, political and cultural features of each period, along with political analysis of the Crivitian «idea» and its position among the other cultural and political projects.

Key words: Crivitian «idea», History of ideas, identity, Belarusian identity, nationbuilding in Belarus.

The year of 1948. Western Belarus. Local elections are taking place. Some undesirables became witnesses of falsification in one of polling places. As a result of their complaint, the Communist party’s institutions became interested in the case. The article is dedicated to an analysis of one case from the election practice in Belarus in the late 1940’s.

Key words: Elections, local elections, Western Belarus, Joseph Stalin, falsification, Ministry of State Security, All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, Sapotskina.