Elections in Belarus are a continuation of the collapse of the USSR

Maxim Trustlyubov analyzes why Lukashenko’s power was weakened - and advises books that help to better understand what is happening there

On Sunday, August 9, Presidential elections will be held in Belarus. The leader of this country, Alexander Lukashenko, was in an unusually difficult situation for himself - perhaps the opposition has never led such a successful campaign against him and, apparently, enjoys such high support as never before. The Columnist The New York Times, the editor of The Russia File and Medusa Maxim Trudolyubov reveals the reasons why Lukashenko was successfully kept in power for 26 years - and why his regime was threatened.

Why did Lukashenko have so long in power?

Alexander Lukashenko is in power in Belarus for 26 years - the longer all the heads of the states of Europe and the post -Soviet world. But today's Belarus is the result of not only his works. Without strategic support from the main partner of Minsk - Moscow - there would be neither these 26 years, nor today's device of Belarus, amazing, none of the neighbors of an unlike country.

There were years when the total support from Russia reached, according to the IMF estimates , 27% of the Belarusian GDP (although it often fluctuated between 10 and 20%), and the total accumulated support for the period from 2005 to 2015, one of the assessments , amounted to $ 106 billion. A huge part of this support was for preferential supply of oil and gas. “This is not thrown out money for us-these are the calculated steps in the calculation of the future result,” said Vladimir Putin once.

Thanks to the two oil refinery (refineries), the post -Soviet Belarus turned out to be a major exporter of gasoline and other oil products, and thanks to Russian oil, which had been received at preferential prices, this export was very profitable. The refineries were built as part of the supply chain of Soviet oil to Western Europe and went to Belarus due to its geographical position among the western borders of the USSR. Here we approach another support for modern Belarus - relatively late industrialization, thanks to which the country today remains an industrial economy with a large export component.

Industrialization generally took place in the Belarusian SSR mainly after the war. And the social fruits of industrialization - moving to cities and modernization of society - fell as a result for later generations than in Russia. Lukashenko himself belongs to this layer: he grew up in the east of the country and remembers the hardships of the life of Belarusian peasants and real improvements in their life in late Soviet times. So its support on the industrial industry is understandable. The Minsk Tractor (tractors "Belarus") and the Belarusian automobile plants (famous Belazes) are still being built in the post -war period, they still produce most of the tractors and career dump trucks in the CIS. True, among the "Soviet" enterprises of Belarus, much more ineffective and artificially supported by swimming.

Thanks to the help of the eastern neighbor, the political and economic system, built by the extremes of privatization and prevent criminalization and stratification of society comparable to Russian, wrote the geographer and researcher of the post-Soviet space Grigory Ioffe in the Book of Belarus, published in the late 2000s (Grigory ioffe. Understanding Belirus and How Western Foreign Policy Misses The Mark). Ioffe also indicated that the nationalist and liberal opposition objectively lost Lukashenko as the leader of rural and industrial Belarus, and the “weak” local identity - against the background of “strong” Polish and “strong” Russian - make statehood and the course on integration with Russia quite meaningful politics.

What has changed?

However, recently, these arguments have been losing strength thanks to the development of Belarusian society, on the one hand, and the actions of Russia itself - on the other. For its internal reasons, since the beginning of 2019, Russia has been changing the taxation scheme (the so -called tax maneuver) of the oil industry, as a result of which oil for Belarusian refinery is becoming more expensive. But Moscow’s desire to deepen integration with Belarus does not weaken, which leads to conflicts. Russian politicians, apparently, are sure that they can afford it: Minsk is deeply dependent on Moscow, not only because of oil and gas supplies, but also due to the large debt of Belarus to Russia.

However, Lukashenko’s main problem is not economic, but social. In the Belarus in which he came to power, it was beneficial to be a pro -Moscow politician. But in Belarus 2020, this is no longer the case. The main thing that has changed in 26 years is the attitude of society to the Belarusian language and the search for national identity. During the last census of the population, 23% of Belarus residents said that they use Belarusian as a language of home communication. The historian and anthropologist Pavel Tereshkovich believes that this is an exaggeration, but, in his opinion, it in itself means that "for a significant part of Belarusians, the language is a symbol of national identity, and not a real means of communication."

The Belarusian moved from the villages to the cities: most of those who deliberately speak in Belarusian, Tereshkovich argues, are the townspeople, not the peasants. Samsung was one of the first to notice that advertising in Belarusian adds 10-12% to sales, and switched to Belarusian. Now the country has a lot of advertising in the Belarusian, although the law does not require this. In the city communities, the Belarusian language is in fashion: a sign of modernity, and not backwardness - from the “language of the past” it turned into a “language of the future”.

The new Belarus is a generation in many ways. According to the Belarusian analytical workshop (BAW), supporters of European choice now prevail over supporters of the Union with Russia, not only in the age group of 18–24, but also in the 25–34 group. This is probably due to the openness of the borders and the fact that young residents of the country have the opportunity to study abroad (modern dictatorships are not very afraid of it).

What is Lukashenko trying to do with this?

For these reasons, the approaches that served Lukashenko faithfully and the truth under the “old” Belarus and in “old” relations with Moscow are now harmful to him. In response to the transition of Moscow to more market relations, Minsk could begin the path to economic independence with the support of European development institutions - for example, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. The archaic, “semi -Soviet” economy with a high share of the state and hopeless state -owned enterprises could begin to turn Belarusian politicians into attractive, having thought out and offering a transparent and profitable program of privatization. However, the privatization of Lukashenko is a abusive word.

Minsk, who, according to forecasts, is promised a strong decline now, and then stagnation or minimal growth, could become more open to business - but Lukashenko thinks in categories of state plan and salaries. Since the mid-2000s, Lukashenko promises that the average salary in the country will be $ 500, although this is not profitable for him, since each devaluation of the Belarusian ruble, making the economy more competitive, moves Lukashenko from his goal. This goal has not yet been achieved .

Everything that Lukashenko can while can scare voters with the intervention of militants from Russia-just as he once scared the intervention of militants from Poland and Lithuania (the Belarusian president does this for every election). The story of the detention of 33 Russian “Wagnerians” - no matter how it is arranged - one of the elements of his election campaign, well, evidence of the loss of trust and the failure of communication between Moscow and Minsk. He is trying to connect other candidates with Russia, because such a connection denigrates them. So, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, around whom a significant part of the opposition has united, said the other day that the “Wagnerians” are now taking place in the case of her husband, blogger Sergei Tikhanovsky, not registered by a presidential candidate and planted in jail.

The late Soviet industry, the support of Russia, the long rule of Lukashenko helped maintain the connections formed in the logic of the USSR, and mothballed their fragments. But over the 30 years that have passed since the collapse of the Union, a new Belarus has grown, Russia has a new economic logic, and Lukashenko has remained. The current events around the upcoming presidential elections are the decay of one of the former units of the USSR. Empires always break up for a long time and painfully.

What will happen next?

It is great to see in events around the elections something more complicated than just a conflict between “progressive” and “backward” forces (the European Union will consider “progressive” pro -European forces, Russia - pro -Russian). Literally during 2019, the number of supporters of orientation towards Russia, according to BAW, decreased in Belarus from 60.4 to 40.4%, and projuroral sympathies, on the contrary, grew over the same period from 24.4 to 32%. This picture may begin to resemble the 2013 Moscow and European politicians in 2013.

But this optics should be careful. In Belarus, unlike, for example, from Ukraine, there is no clear border between the West and East of the country, as there is no deep polarization of views on Russia. Yes, the inhabitants of Belarus are actively going to rallies, and even more watch Internet stands from rallies, but they are peacefully tuned. Almost 75% of citizens advocate that Belarus and Russia remain "independent, but friendly countries with open borders, without visas and customs." Very few, only 3.7% of respondents want to join the Russian Federation on the rights of another region, but almost everyone wants to maintain close relations.

The alarm is that both Minsk with frightened Lukashenko and Moscow with security officials are inclined to consider social and political conflicts in the former USSR in the logic of threats of national security. If this logic turns on again, Moscow will consider the only alternative to the power of the conflict and destabilization losing power to its dictator. The logic “not hold it in a good way-we will hold on a bad” more than once led to serious consequences.

What else to read about it

Belarus Economic Update. World Bank Group. May, 2020

A small, focused on Belarus, is subject to shocks with sharp changes in the policy of neighbors, with market fluctuations or crises such as Covid-19 pandemia. All these three factors have now coincided, therefore, in 2020, the country's economy, according to the World Bank, is waiting for a decline by at least 4%, the largest over 25 years. The growth will remain weak.

Belarusian dream. Belarusian research center Beroc. 2020

The authors of a recent study by the Belarusian Dream , interviewing social activists and opinions of opinions, found out that they feel closer to the residents of the Baltic countries and countries of Western Europe than to the inhabitants of Russia. The authors are specified that the survey was conducted at a time when negotiations were conducted between Russia and Belarus to strengthen integration, and this increased the number of negative assessments of Russia in the press and in society as a whole. Note that this is the attitude of the “informed elite” , and not society as a whole.

Aleksievich S. Chernobyl prayer. M.: Ostozhye, 1997

Belarus was badly damaged by the explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in 1986, the deferred effects of that disaster still affect the country's lives. Understanding this circumstance is important for a deep understanding of modern Belarus, which the book of the Nobel Prize in Literature Svetlana Aleksievich “Chernobyl prayer. Chronicle of the future ”can help.

Maxim Trustlyubov