Last week Belarus held presidential elections. No sensation occurred, everything was predictable: the results, the authorities’ behavior, the opposition’s reaction, and estimations made by the Russian officials and Western bureaucrats.

The Belarusian authorities announced Bat’ka (The Father) Lukashenka gained victory by the overwhelming majority of population. The opposition stated serious frauds had taken place.

Both of them were right.

The elections in Belarus made an obscure déjà vu impression. The same thing happened five years ago, when the united opposition was contesting the presidential post with Bat’ka Lukashenka. Back then, Belarusian people were absolutely frank casting votes for their leader. Some really fancied him, the others simply cannot imagine someone else on that position, the rest (a considerable amount) suspect that should the opposition finally seize power, things are sure to get even worse. Still, it didn’t give the Belarusian bureaucracy a peace of mind: they wanted a knockdown, an overwhelming triumph. What’s more, every local governor for all he is worth was trying to show that in his region Lukashenka was ahead by more votes than in his neighbor’s. So they went in for vote-rigging.

The undisputed victory of Lukashenka turned into a scandalous falsification.

Basically, the same thing happened this time. Neither the leadership, nor the opposition in Belarus has changed a bit. They’ve just sunk into backwardness and crudity even more. Last time, according to the independent experts, the real 60% result of Aliaksandr Lukashenka was artificially raised by 20%; this year, analysts say, it is as much as 30%. Even having subtracted about the third of the false votes, Lukashenka is still left with more than a half of electorate on his side.

In other words, his term of office extension might have been totally legal, but he once again decided to cheat.

The Russian and the Western mass media have split up into two camps: fervent partisans of the Belarusian regime and its furious enemies. With all that, either of the camps wouldn’t even make a guess, what this regime looks like, and especially, what kind of opposition that is.

Unlike Russia or Kazakhstan, Belarus is not rich in natural resources, therefore, it cannot export raw materials. Unlike Ukraine, it does not have siderurgy. Its domestic market is quite limited as well, for the country is not big. In the times of the USSR it served as the Soviet economy’s “assembly line”. In other words, only the developed processing industry will keep the Belarusian economy floating, given it produces goods of high enough quality to be exported to the former Soviet Republics and anywhere else if possible.

Implementing Russian model of privatization will result in an immeasurable disaster, against which all horrors of Neoliberal reforms implemented by Egor Gaidar would seem just a joke. The entire country would just die out. The more relaxed Ukrainian version wouldn’t work out either, due to the shortage of the resources available. To stay alive, the Belarusian economy needed guaranteed secure and modernized industry, simultaneously keeping wages low; otherwise, the Belarusian enterprises will not be competitive on the exterior market. Holding the wages and trying to avoid the collapse could only be made possible, preserving the social security protection, which inevitably handed the control over economy to the state, making it act as an investor, a proprietor, responsible for the healthy functioning of the industries, and as a distribution system. The Soviet type of economy has slowly been modifying in Belarus into an East Asia type of “export economy”, though with local flavor: not a tiger, of course, but a cat. The “Belarusian cat” model predetermined Lukashenka’s political endurance. Bat’ka was doing what the society expected him to. He did it roughly, undemocratically, enjoying support of the bureaucratic structures, inherited from the Soviet times. In return, he got the unlimited power for himself and his team.

However, the Social conservative regime does not satisfy Belarusian big city dwellers, who see that life in Moscow, Kyiv or Warsaw is way more dynamic. As Russian and Ukrainian economies are recovering, the Belarusian industries receive new orders. But a part of the country’s population (including workers) starts to question the advantages of the Belarusian economic model. Firstly, Belarusian officials are becoming more of a bourgeoisie, speculating over the possible privatization prospects. Thus, one way or the other, the regime will inevitably become corrupted. The Belarusian bureaucrats in 1990s differed from their Russian colleagues not by excessive honesty, but by humbleness of their demands. But their appetites are growing.

It makes no sense to account for the opposition’s failure by repressions. History knows much harder regimes toppled. On the world’s scale the dictatorship in Belarus is moderate.

The opposition was rejected by the Belarusian population in the first place because it hasn’t come up with something inspirational to suggest. Liberal programs and promises to prosper in the European house were nothing but bluffing. Paradoxically, what did add some weight the opposition was its persecution by the authorities. It raised the opposition’s moral prestige, stirred up sympathy. It was not enough to compensate for the narrow social basis, though. And the narrower the social basis is, the more significance is attached to the foreign sponsors. The attempts to repeat Kyiv Maidan in Minsk failed, as would other similar activity. Dumb Russian bureaucrats and mediocre journalists may of course trust the omnipotent political technologies. In practice they work out only under certain conditions and may not be thoughtlessly replicated. Lukashenka didn’t even bother to break up the demonstration. The cold did a better job than police squads would have done.

Neither the current opposition, nor its updated version, which will undoubtedly be created after the elections, will ever seize power. This absolutely must not lead to thinking that the future of the Belarusian regime is cloudless. Lukashenka as a political phenomenon was produced by specific circumstances back in mid-1990s. Since then, the situation has changed and keeps changing. The survival matter is no longer the case, but the further development issues will eventually become more and more acute. Lukashenka’s new term will not just be another one in a row.

If Bat’ka chooses the path of privatization and liberal reforms, he will be supported by the majority of the bureaucratic elite, and the West might even forget about his dictator’s habitudes. But he will lose support of many of the population. If no changes occur, the elite will feel dissatisfied and the middle class in the cities will consolidate. Opposition spirit strengthening—not provoked from the outside, but stimulated by the existing circumstances in the inside—might lead to severing repressions. As know, under the changing conditions the tightening of the screw method often has a boomerang effect.

One way or the other, the political crisis is inevitable, perhaps, resulting in a “color” revolution, conducted (like other color revolutions) not by the opposition, but the part of the ruling elites, determined to make changes. This is exactly how the story in Ukraine unfolded.

There is the third scenario, the one, when the working class and the civil society demonstrate their ability for self-organization and propose an alternative of their own. It will very much depend on the state of affairs in Russia and Ukraine. It’s just that the experience of the kind with the post-Soviet states leaves much to be desired.

Boris Kagarlitsky is a Director of The Institute for Globalization Studies.

March 29, 2006

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