T he current edition of the almanac "CTRL+S. Heritage as a Challenge" was conceived already before the start of the war in Ukraine. While explaining the essence of the conceptual idea to potential authors, I suggested that they write their materials answering the question: “What can you do with something you can’t do anything with?” This question regarding cultural heritage was formulated long ago, even before the Belarusian events of 2020. In fact, what can be done with the huge number of Belarusian ruins, requiring preservation with absolutely no resources from the government for that? What is to be done with a dissonant heritage that, by its very existence, challenges all myths about our “loyal” past? And finally, what can be done with memory, with the desire to preserve as many cultural sites and assets as possible, with the insurmountable process of material decay and so on, and so on...

Who could have known how painfully topical this issue would become in light of the Belarusian political crisis, not to mention the beginning of Russian aggression in Ukraine! A war, the important reasons for which
was the inability of Russian society to overcome the historical trauma from the collapse of the Soviet Empire, as well as insufficiency of coming to terms with the totalitarian experience and the critical lack of reflection on the legacy of Russian colonialism. Will this work ever be done? And what can be done about it?

In the meanwhile, we live in a tragic whirlwind of events, in our texts, in our reflection, we cannot stop thinking about the most important things: about the war, about political persecution and mass emigration,
and in the end – about the Belarusian culture itself, which, being extremely vulnerable, today once again found itself at a turning point in its history.

And yet, the difficulty of the situation in which we found ourselves (and it still may worsen!), can be compensated by the strength of our hope and the work that is being done today for a better future. A crisis,
like any challenge, always leads to mobilization. A person generally becomes concentrated only when something greater than himself appears. This greater can manifest itself in many different forms: it can challenge, it can oppress or, on the contrary, it can fascinate. But the most important is that only when we find ourselves in front of this greater, do we become human. 

We believe that the great danger now is not only where, as today, exists a direct threat to life and freedom. The weight of our memory, the ruins, and the unfathomable depth of culture also represent something greater, the challenge that makes us human. Thus, our heritage itself is a challenge.

The authors of this issue have very different experiences and identities: academic researchers, cultural managers, activists, students, artists. Someone has experience of unjust detention, someone is an international star, some, due to the danger of their own texts, wished to remain anonymous. Some write in Russian, others (and luckily more and more!) – in Belarusian or English. But it is no less important for us that they are all teachers, students, or good friends of our university's cultural heritage programs.

This year’s edition contains two sections. The title of the first – “Heritage in crisis” refers not only to the current tragic events, but also to a certain exhaustion of traditional ideas and methods of working with
heritage. It begins with an interview with the famous Ukrainian director Serhiy Laznitsa, with whom we talked about the current historical processes and his experience in documentary filmmaking. The following
materials are devoted to the way the political crisis in Belarus, the war in Ukraine and the COVID-19 pandemic have affected the sector of cultural heritage. Also this section contains an attempt at an artistic reflection
on complex issues of Belarusian identity and culture by artists Maxim Osipau and Victoria Bahdanovich.

The second chapter – “The Challenge of Genius Loci” – was formed as a logical development of the general volume’s theme. The Spirit of a Place is not only a philosophical concept, an indestructible topographical constant that represents the core of cultural and social development of certain places; it is also a working approach to the educational process of our bachelor’s program “European Heritage”, organized around
the creation of the opportunity (and necessity!) of confrontation with the key topos of European culture. Here the reader will find materials from EHU students and teachers who have already experienced this encounter and are now sharing their own thoughts about its nature.