‘Motherland’ Review: An Ominous Portrait of the Oppressive Culture of Cruelty in Post-Soviet Belarus
variety.comJessica Kiang The very first words in the Belarusian national anthem, which is being sung devoutly at an army graduation ceremony as “Motherland” begins, are “We Belarusians are peaceful people.” It does not take long for the irony to bite.
Grave skies heavy with snow frame the stark beauty of Siarhiej Kanaplianik’s camerawork, as Hanna Badziaka and Alexander Mihalkovich’s handsome, bitter film outlines something close to the inverse of that ideal: a culture of brutality, bullying and complicity that is fostered in the Belarusian military, and then seeps like the cold into the very bones of civilian society.
Dedovshchina, as some terse titles explain, translates to the benign-sounding “rule of Grandads.” But it describes a systematic code of psychological and physical abuse visited on new conscripts by their longer-serving colleagues, that the Belarusian military establishment, like that of other former Soviet countries, inherited from the Russian army.
Most of the time, dedovshschina can be characterized as a particularly violent and humiliating form of ritual hazing, designed to break any spirit of independence or rebellion in newcomers.
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