05.12.1996

Heavy hand at the top in Belarus

In much of the former Soviet Union and eastern Europe the gulf between illusion and reality is large. Furthermore, conventional Western notions of ‘left’ and ‘right’ often do not apply in the political sense. The collapse of the USSR and the Warsaw Pact have resulted in a strange political terrain arising - in much the same way that earthquake survivors often report being so disoriented after the earth tremor that for some time they lose all horizontal and vertical perspective.

A case in point is Belarus, formerly the Belorussian Soviet Socialist Republic. This territory and its people have long been hard to define. The area has been under Polish and Russian sway at various times - even Lithuania, one of Europe’s least suspected empires, ruled the area at one point in the Middle Ages. Western Belorussia was part of Poland between 192l and 1939, while the eastern part entered the Soviet Union.

The local people reflect this mixed historical background. Most Belarusians speak Russian as their first language. The Belarusian language is treasured by local nationalists and most people in the republic can at least understand it, but the standard Belarusian language is an artificial attempt to systematise peasant dialects, which are essentially Western Russian with a heavy admixture of Polish vocabulary.

Belarusian nationalism is a fairly recent phenomenon. During World War II, the invading armies of Nazi Germany tried to stimulate it in an effort to enlist Belarusians in the “crusade against Bolshevism”. They failed. Anti-Russian nationalism was far weaker in Belarus than it was in Ukraine or the Baltic states. Partisan warfare against the German forces was intense, and Nazi reprisals, added to the destruction of most of the large Jewish minority, meant that the area had one of the highest death tolls in the war - about 25% of the pre-war population.

During the last years of the USSR, the Belorussian SSR was one of the more stable and pro-Moscow parts, though the southern part of the Belorussian republic was badly affected by radioactive fallout from Chernobyl. A nationalist movement has developed, and election results suggest that 10-20% of inhabitants of Belarus are attracted to it.

The collapse of the USSR did heavy damage to the economic infrastructure of Belarus, much of it related to servicing Soviet military bases, which included intercontinental ballistic missiles aimed at deterring Nato. The emotional trauma produced by the collapse seems to have hit many Belarusians particularly hard, resulting in a strong feeling of ‘Soviet nostalgia’ which has found political expression. The Party of Communists of Belarus (PCB) has profited from this to some degree, but the main beneficiary has in fact been a certain Alyaksandr Lukashenka, who is not a PCB member, and is indeed hostile to the party.

He won a presidential election on a platform which exploited ‘Soviet nostalgia’ on a grand scale. After winning, he decreed that the flag of Belarus would be similar to the red, green and white flag of the Belorussian SSR, only differing in lacking the hammer and sickle. (The flag of Belarus just after independence was white and red and bore some resemblance to Poland’s flag.)

Since becoming president, Lukashenka has fostered closer links with Russia, including a customs union, and has been repeatedly in conflict with his own parliament and the judiciary. One of the main opposition leaders, Zyanon Paznyak, who heads the nationalist People’s Front of Belarus, fled to Poland and later the USA to claim political asylum. He said he faced arrest on political grounds if he remained in Belarus. There is plentiful evidence that Lukashenka has used his police and security service against the opposition.

Opposition newspapers have been confiscated and even Russian TV crews have been attacked by unknown goons of probably Lukashenkist origin. (Lukashenka has complained that the main Russian TV channels tell lies about Belarus.) The surreal aspect of this is that the opposition includes the Party of Communists, while Lukashenka’s security police are still officially called the Committee of State Security (KGB).

Lukashenka’s authoritarian bent could lead him in the direction of a Bonapartist dictatorship, but western hostility to him is largely motivated by the fact that he is anti-Nato. Not long ago he pointed out that Belarus could act as a shield for Russia’s western flank against Nato encroachments. His relations with the top Russian leadership are quite cordial - they too dislike Nato expansion and are prepared to use Soviet symbolism when it suits them. He is no communist, and neither are they.

Lukashenka and the republic he heads are a book where one can read strange matters, but to one extent or other this is true of the whole region in and around the former Soviet Union 

Andrew MacKay