Welcome to the new website!

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Up-to-date theme, support for mobile devices, friendly and inclusive environment - what are the other advantages of the new site?

Dear colleagues and friends!

As you noticed, BISS has moved to a new site. Minimalist in design and rich in  content, this site - hopefully - will be a great place for intellectual meetings over the next five to seven years.

Among other advantages of the new site:

  • A contemporary theme that meets industry standards.
  • Support for mobile devices: the site is easy to use on any device.
  • Friendly and inclusive environment: the site is designed in accordance with WAI-ARIA standards, which makes it possible to use it for people with vision or musculoskeletal disorders.
  • User-friendly interface.
  • Advanced markup with HTML 5 and native support for data entry on mobile devices.

Unlike the old site, where there were three language versions, now we provide only two: a joint Belarusian-Russian and English. This is for practical considerations: there is no need to duplicate Belarusian content in Russian and vice versa; we believe it will be better if we focus on more regular updates of the English version instead.

We have also developed an economical and convenient taxonomy of our publications. Expert papers are grouped into two basic categories: Research (results of extensive and multifaceted study) and Analysis (concise expert commentary on a particular topic, event, or trend).

In terms of topic, materials are grouped into three main categories, among which Values and Global are permanent, and the third, which includes materials on current socio-political processes, will be grouped into temporary sub-categories, currently Elections-2020 and Covid.

There is also the Be Critical category, which contains educational and analytical materials related to the promotion of critical thinking skills in Belarus.

There are many more innovations. But you can probe them on your own by surfing the website. Should you come across any flaws or if you have any ideas for improvement, please write to biss@belinstitute.com

Last but not the least. Our move to the new site coincided with the so-called presidential election campaign in Belarus, during which the worst side of authoritarianism and the best side of civil society have come out to fore. On the one hand, we are witnessing a brazen profanation of electoral procedures - the rules are being set by one of the players right ‘on the go’ and are constantly changing (which in turn is indicative of the self-doubt of this player).

On the other hand, we see a rise in courage and solidarity across different spheres of society, including state agencies and formerly apolitical business elites. Regardless of the outcome of the current ‘election campaign’, Belarusian society will be moving towards democracy and economic reforms.

With the launch of the new site, we publish a new concept of BISS activity. The concept was developed by the team and approved by the Board last spring, but its relevance seems particularly clear now, in a period of intensifying discussions about the future Belarus. The proposed concept, apart from specifying the research mission of the institute, contains a strategic vision for Belarus as an Open Society & Distinct Nation (OSDN).

You can find a brief presentation of the BISS concept the Mission section. In detail, it is presented in a series of programmatic articles under the tag BISS Idea - as yet only in Belarusian, but English translation will appear in weeks.

We look forward to your feedback on our new concept.

Visit us, read, watch, discuss!

Yours - Piotr Rudkouski, director of BISS

p.s. The old site will still be available at http://old.belinstitute.com/