It looks like it will be another long, cold winter in Belarus. On Tuesday the 21^st of February, armed KGB agents raided the homes of 10 young opposition activists in Minsk, searching their homes and taking them away for questioning. The activists were all members of Partnership, a Belarusian NGO which acts as an independent monitor of elections.

President Aleksander Lukashenko himself launched the crackdown on Tuesday, in a speech to his security forces. He was quoted by state BelTA news agency as saying: “Aware that they have no chance of winning by legal means, our opponents are itching to stir up trouble, shake the country's very foundations and blacken our spiritual values. Our main task is to shield the Belarusian people from foreign-imposed actions, from lies and violence”.

Partnership was closed down a few months ago, because it wasn’t allowed a license to operate as an NGO. This is Lukashenko’s favorite method of cracking down on any overly independent sections of civil society – last year, he closed the Independent Institute of Socio-Economic and Political Studies (IISEPS), which is one of the leading sociological think-tanks in eastern Europe and ought to be a source of pride for Belarusians, because it was often quoted in the media as IISEPS rather than by its full name. A threat to the country’s spiritual values, clearly.

Oleg Manaev, head of the ex-Institute, tells me: “Every day, members of the media, civil society and the opposition face various problems. In December, for example, the government excluded 18 independent newspapers from official distribution by post or in news-stands, so they had to try and organize their own delivery, which is no easy thing in Belarus. Leading independent papers like Narodnaya Volya can now only issue every 10 days or so”.

Manaev says: “The government is purging the political landscape to prepare for the announcement of an ‘elegant victory’ for Lukashenko in next month’s election”. The official result is likely to be 80% for the big guy, with no more than 20% for the other three candidates “to demonstrate that Lukashenko is the only real candidate”.

In actual fact, independent polls suggest Lukashenko would still win around 50% in a free election, with leading opposition candidate Aleksander Milinkevich and social democrat leader Aleksander Kazulin winning around 20% and 10% respectively. Lukashenko remains popular with the old and the poor, with those who feel afraid and reliant on the state. As one Belarusian cab driver said to me yesterday “I will vote for Lukashenko. Who else is there? We don’t know any of the opposition figures”. Why do you think that is? Still, the man was ashamed, timid. At least, he told me, Lukashenko brings stability and a steady wage packet.

Younger people, business people, people who actually have courage and believe in their ability to succeed, these people strain against Lukashenko’s dictatorship of the mediocre. But they are cracked down on too – the leader of the Minsk association of entrepreneurs was put in prison for 10 days. So the smartest leave the country altogether, and come to Moscow, or they stay in Minsk, stewing in their frustration, ashamed of their country and its kolhoz leader, waiting for better times.

Western governments observe the country with contempt. But what is to be done? The EU has pledged its explicit support for Milinkevich, who met with Javier Solana, Jose Manuel Barroso, Angela Merkel and other leading European politicians. But Manaev says: “The EU’s support is more moral than actual. We’ve seen during the Ukraine gas crisis and the Iran nuclear crisis that the EU will avoid confrontations if it possibly can. It can’t be trusted to see through the struggle for Belarusian democracy to the end”.

The US is perhaps more prepared to put its money where its mouth is. It has pledged to give tens of millions of dollars each year to support free and fair elections in Belarus. Neighbouring countries Poland and the Baltics are also prepared to give more than moral support – Poland is presently considering sending a big election-monitoring force, according to sources in the OSCE. 

But it looks unlikely anything is going to happen in March. As a source in the Polish foreign ministry says: “It’s a long-term process. The movement inevitably has to come from within, we can’t impose it from outside”.

For now, an old and weak generation raised in the Soviet Union holds power in Belarus, and Lukashenko is the zimmer frame it uses to hold itself up. This generation connects economic liberalism with the Mafia, and freedom with chaos. But a younger generation is growing, which sees the examples of Poland and the Baltics, and sees that freedom is not to be feared, that they can do better than this tyranny of the babushka. Lukashenko may win the battle this March, but he has already lost the war.

Julian Evans, a British freelance journalist based in Moscow.

February 22, 2006

Hot topics

• POLITICAL SITUATION IN BELARUS