This richly illustrated issue deals with the European traditions of the Belarusian cultural and political heritage. The concept is defined in the editorial Another tradition and historian Ales Biely's preface The Latin accent.

Parliamentary elections: Belarusian tranquility, European intrigue?
We start with a "hot" analysis of the current political situation in Belarus. Head of the Belarusian Institute of the Strategic Studies, Vital Silicki, writes about how the Belarusian regime uses this year's parliamentary election as a window of opportunity to intensify dialogue with the West. Nevertheless, he does not predict any significant changes for the domestic political actors, whose room for maneuver remains highly limited.

The echo of explosions: why authorities suspected the opposition
The round table assembled some activists who were detained for ten days after the infamous bomb blast in Minsk on the night of 4 July 2008. The explosion was followed by a wave of witch-hunting and serious repercussions within the Belarusian establishment. But why did the Belarusian authorities accuse the opposition almost by default, even though they had no evidence of its involvement in the terrorist plot? Why are the opponents treated as an evil against which any unlawful measures are fully justified and legitimate? You can find some answers here.

The Minsk maneuver
The political observers Balazs Jarabik, Kyiv-based representative of the Pact for Belarus and Ukraine and senior associate at the Democratization Policy Council in Washington, and Alastair Rabagliati, associate at the Commonwealth Secretariat in London conclude the discussion on how Lukashenka uses the current election to gain leverage in his dealings with the EU.

The remembrance of victims and the remembrance of executioners
Art and movie critic Andrej Rasinski draws the attention of the Belarusian viewers to the Polish director Andrej Wajda's newest film Katyn.

How Hronski has dealt with Kalinouski
Historian Andrej Vaskievich explains why the Belarusian regime consistently excludes one of the leaders of the January Insurrection in the Belarusian lands (1863-1864), Wincenty-Konstantyn Kalinowski (or Kastus Kalinouski in Belarusian), from the Belarusian national pantheon. Vaskievich argues that the Belarusian authorities exploit ethnic nationalism and suggests that Kalinouski's heritage, including the ideas of civic nationalism, republicanism, human rights, and the fighting against despotic rule, still frustrates the domestic autocracy.

Coming late. The notes in the margins of Andrzej Romanowski book "Pozytywizm na Litwie. Polskie zycie kulturalne na ziemiach litewsko-bialorusko-inflanckich w latach 1864-1904"
A review by Aleh Dziarnovich, historian from the Minsk-based Institute of History of the National Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Belarus.

The debates around Valer Bulhakau's book The origin of the Belarusian nationalism continue in two articles – The left-liberal reflection on the Belarusian idea by Andrej Cichamirau, PhD candidate from the Warsaw-based Graduate School for Social Research at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences, and On the Belarusian national idea and on the so called "Belarusian intellectual space" by the Minsk-based essayist Anatol Astapienka. The former criticizes Bulhakau's book from the scientific positivism position, the latter does the same from the conservative nationalist position.

The evolution of the political nation of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in the medieval and early modern age
Not long ago, historian Ales Biely earned his PhD at the Vilnius-based Institute of History of the National Academy of Sciences of the Lithuanian Republic. Biely looks at the nation-building in the present day Belarusian and Lithuanian lands in the medieval and early modern eras.

The historian Vital Harmatny from the Baranavichy State University reconstructs the battle's historical background in The Battle of Orsha (September 8, 1514). The much smaller army of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and Poland defeated the Russian forces, capturing their commanders. He argues that the modern Belarusians can be proud of the "landmark pages in Belarusian history" and that the tradition of celebrating 8 September as the Day of Belarusian Military Glory, which started in 1992 at Minsk Independence Square, is historically justified.

The issue also contains the Belarusian renditions of the Polish historian Konrad Bobiatynski's monograph From Smolensk to Vilna. The war between the Polish-Lithuanian Common Wealth and Muscovy (1654-1655).

Belarusain historian Andrej Katlarchuk defends his doctoral thesis In the shadows of Poland and Russia: the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and Sweden in the European crisis of the mid-17th century at the Stockholm-based Södertörns högskola, and the thesis is published in this issue of Arche.

The philanthropists and the donations in the Brest-Litovsk (17-18th centuries)
The Brest-based historian Iryna Laurouskaja researches the religious life in Brest after the Church union proclamation.

The New York University Department of History professor Larry Wolff in his The Uniate Church and the partitions of Poland: Religious Survival in an Age of Enlightened Absolutism and his Belarusian counterpart Symon Lukoska in his 1780-1800. The religious conversions of the Belarusian Uniates analyze the reasons why the Uniate Church could survive after the partitioning of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in Ukrainian Galicia and was undercut in the lands of present day Belarus.

A fellow of the Civic Space Institute at the Lazarski School of Commerce and Law in Warsaw, Piotra Rudkouski sketches the epistemological ideas of Aniol Dowgird (1776-1835), a prominent Enlightenment philosopher born in the Mahilou district (the east of Belarus) in Aniol Dowgird's problems with reality. Apart from describing the general historical background of Dowgird's philosophy, the author shows Dowgird's contribution to epistemological realism and points out some problematic moments in his stance.

Russification: word and practice (1863-1914)
Associate Professor of History of Russia, East-Central Europe at the Southern Illinois University Theodore R. Weeks deconstructs the traditional perceptions on the Russification in the North-western provinces of the Russian empire at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century. He views Russification as a permanent subversive process provoking deep cultural traumas for Belarusians and Lithuanians.

Belarusian anticommunist underground activity: an attempt to pose a question
Polish historian Rafal Wnuk, an employee of the Institute of History of the Polish Academy of Sciences and of the Polish Institute of National Remembrance, tries to differentiate between the true and the false in the history of the Belarusian Resistance during and after WWII.

The issue ends with the rendition into Belarusian of Ignacy Jackowski's A story from my time or the Lithuanian adventures, prepared by Mikola Chaustovich, professor of Belarusian State University, head of the Department of History of the Belarusian Literature. In Jackowski's publication, a classical Belarusian poem (attributed traditionally to the Belarusian poet Pauluk Bahrym) was published for the first time.

A saga on Palestra
And finally the historian Ales Biely sheds light on those Belarusian intellectuals of the 19th century whose developed European legal awareness forced them into conflicts with the power institutions of the Russian empire.

Published 2008-10-03