NEWS ANALYSIS: Belarus, the black sheep of Eastern Europe? (10/13/96)

NEWS ANALYSIS

Belarus, the black sheep of Eastern Europe?

by David R. Marples

The political situation in Belarus has again become tense as another confrontation looms between the president and the Parliament. At issue is a November 7 referendum on an amended Constitution, initiated by President Alyaksandr Lukashenka, that would greatly extend the powers of the presidency, providing him with an extended term in office (from four years to six), allowing him to dissolve the assembly in the case of a no-confidence vote in the government, and also giving the president the right to nominate a third of the seats in a proposed upper chamber.

At the same time, Belarus's international standing became more questionable when the United States granted asylum recently to the former leader of the Belarusian Popular Front (BPF), Zyanon Paznyak, on the grounds that he would likely be arrested if he returned to his native land. This is the first sign that the U.S. considers Belarus under the present administration an authoritarian regime that has infringed seriously upon the human rights of its citizens.

Why Belarus?

The question arises: Why Belarus, of all the countries in Eastern Europe, retained a strongly authoritarian regime that seeks to forge direct links with its Soviet past and indeed, in some respects, has remained mired in Soviet-era politics and structures? President Lukashenka, for example, has elaborated a new draft economic plan that seeks to strengthen state control over the economy. Belarus is manifestly moving in a direction opposite to the one taken by its neighbors. Why is this the case and what is its significance in Central and Eastern European politics?

One can provide both short- and long-term responses to this question. The historical perspective is important. During the second world war, Belarus was occupied for longer and suffered proportionally more losses than any other Soviet republic. It became the focus of official efforts to combat the German occupation through the establishment of partisan operations. The latter, despite official mythology, were developed slowly and only after local leaders of the resistance had been thoroughly purged. After the war, the pro-Soviet partisan leaders, led by K.T. Mazurau and P.M. Masherau, dominated Belarusian party politics.

The period of the leadership of Petr Masherau, indeed, remains among the most notable for the development and assertiveness of Belarus within the Soviet system. Succeeding his mentor Mr. Mazurau as the party leader in 1965, Mr. Masherau was by Soviet standards a charismatic figure, popular among Belarusians and supervising a period of notable industrial growth and well-being. He had become the leader of a group known as The Partisans - highly patriotic, hawkish on foreign policy (he was, for example, a rigid opponent of détente, which he regarded as a compromise with the enemy) and in many respects a model Communist.

Simultaneously, Mr. Masherau was a far from typical Brezhnev apparatchik. He remained dedicated to Belarusian interests to the extent that some of his colleagues in Moscow regarded him as a potentially dangerous nationalist. This was symbolized by his appearing in public in national costume and speaking the native language at some official functions.

He can be compared to the leader of the Communist Party of Ukraine Petro Shelest both in outlook and politics. Whereas Mr. Shelest was removed in 1972, however, and replaced by a Russophile hardliner in Volodymyr Shcherbytsky, Mr. Masherau remained at his post, protected by the patronage of Mr. Mazurau, by now a member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in Moscow.

Mr. Masherau was never advanced beyond the status of a candidate member of the Politburo. By 1980, he had been isolated by the Brezhnevite clique, which had also successfully removed Mr. Mazurau in Moscow. Without his patron, Mr. Masherau's position had become untenable. In October 1980 he was killed in a mysterious car crash that seemingly had violated all the rules of protocol for Soviet leaders.

This "accident" has never been satisfactorily explained. What is notable is that thousands of Miensk residents braved a torrential downpour to pay their respects to their dead leader at his funeral service on October 6, while representatives of the CC CPSU Politburo were conspicuous by their absence.

The death of Mr. Masherau was a traumatic one for Belarusians, who look back on this period as one of stability and even triumph.

In May-June of this year, the Independent Institute of Social and Economic Research in Miensk conducted a survey of 1,535 adults and asked them: Whom of the political figures of the past do you consider to be the ideal politician? A remarkable 45.2 percent selected Mr. Masherau, and at the village level, the percentage was almost 54.

The remainder of the list also illustrates the priorities of this Sovietized population: Peter the Great was second with 34.2 percent, Leonid Brezhnev was third with 20 percent, and the only non-Russian/Soviet figure on the list was the former British prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, at 19.5 percent.

In short, Belarusians tend to revere strong leaders, often with highly authoritarian tendencies. Mr. Masherau is probably unique in combining the wartime past with the period of most rapid economic development of the republic.

Belarusians look to the past

There are other reasons Belarusians tend to look backward. The republic experienced a period of remarkable urban growth to match the economic progress. A republic that was essentially rural prior to the war experienced one of the most rapid periods of urbanization in history. Moreover, Miensk - the very center and fulchrum of party operations - became, as a result of the various partitions and additions to the existing state, the dominant center. More than 25 percent of the urban population and over one-sixth of the total population of Belarus resides in Miensk. The city is the cultural center, the heart of the educational system and of virtually all publishing. It also remains the heart of the official media. In the Soviet period, the Communist Party apparatus in Miensk was among the most powerful and deeply entrenched in the USSR.

Under these circumstances, the path for the pro-democracy forces was always going to be a difficult one. There were, it is true, several extenuating circumstances that boded well for the development of anti-Soviet sentiment: the deliberate elimination of the Belarusian language by the Soviet authorities as illustrated by the closure of Belarusian schools in the 1960s and 1970s; the discovery of the mass graves at Kurapaty near Miensk, a symbol of Stalinist atrocities that the Soviet regime could never bring itself to acknowledge (it was blamed on the German occupation); and the 1986 Chornobyl tragedy, which led to the contamination of over one-fifth of Belarusian territory with radioactive cesium and strontium.

The leadership of the anti-Soviet forces was assumed by the Belarusian Popular Front, which itself was modelled on counterparts in the Baltic republics and (to a lesser extent) Ukraine. Yet not only was the BPF harassed from the outset, it never enjoyed the popularity of similar movements in the former Soviet Union. National consciousness in Belarus has remained relatively weak. Belarus lacks periods of statehood, and it lacks historical memory. Indeed the population - as attested by some newspaper articles asking fundamental historical questions - remains largely ignorant of its past.

In Mr. Paznyak, the BPF had acquired a fiery leader. At the same time he was a leader who appeared unprepared to compromise. In particular he was not prepared to support the first post-Soviet leadership, led by the chairman of the Supreme Soviet and former pro-rector of Miensk State University, Stanislau Shushkevich. The authorities were also quick to exploit what appeared to be Mr. Paznyak's Russophobia. In short, the democratic forces remained disunited at a critical period of state development.

When Mr. Shushkevich was removed in January 1994 as a result of trumped-up corruption charges, the political situation seemed clear. Vyachaslau Kebich, the prime minister, seemed certain to take over as the country's first president in the July 1994 elections. He was outgunned by the relatively unknown Mr. Lukashenka, a man who had acquired popularity as the evidently unsullied chairman of the Parliament's Committee on Corruption. Meanwhile Messrs. Paznyak and Shushkevich ran against each other in the first round, accumulating a fairly impressive aggregate percentage of 23. This effectively ended democratic hopes.

Significance of Belarusian developments

It seems fair to assert that few Belarusians predicted the outcome of a Lukashenka presidency. His authoritarian tendencies were unknown. But how significant are the recent developments in Belarus for the stability of Eastern Europe? Does it matter if this small republic of 10.3 million becomes a political dinosaur amid the fast-developing Baltic nations, a revived Poland, a fairly stable Ukraine, and a Russia that has committed itself to market reforms? The question can be examined from two angles.

First, from the perspective of Poland and the Baltics, President Lukashenka does not represent a danger, and indeed the countries surrounding Belarus may take comfort from its problems. As long as Belarus remains committed to a state-economy, it can be postulated, there is little chance of any fruition for the renewed union with Russia. Better, therefore, that Belarus politically remains alienated from its giant neighbor as this renders remote any possibility of a revived Slavic bloc. The other country in this equation, Ukraine, has clearly adopted an independence path, distancing itself from the Commonwealth of Independent States and Russia's war in Chechnya.

Second, and converse, is the reaction in Russia itself, which has become politically an unstable element. It is well known that Mr. Lukashenka supported the candidacy of Gennadiy Zyuganov in the Russian presidential elections of 1996. Yet relations between President Lukashenka and Boris Yeltsin's new security advisor, Alexander Lebed, appear to be good. A Lebed victory in a speculated leadership battle with Viktor Chernomyrdin in a post-Yeltsin Russia would thus raise some serious questions for stability in Eastern Europe and could lead to the sort of Russian-Belarusian rapprochement that Mr. Lukashenka has been seeking. Even Mr. Lebed, however, appears more committed to economic reforms and a market economy than does President Lukashenka. It would also be difficult for Mr. Lebed to halt the market forces in Russia.

From the Western perspective, Belarus is hardly the ideal choice for future investment among the most open of governments. The country lacks developed natural resources, and it has suffered extraordinary setbacks in its state-operated industry without the natural market of Russia accessible to the east. Only its machine-building complex appears at present to offer opportunities for significant exports, while the consequences of Chornobyl have made Westerners very wary also.

Economically, the currency has dropped sharply against the dollar and Deutschmark in recent months, there is a huge backlog of unpaid wages, and, in contrast to Ukraine, Belarus lacks the solid core of new nouveau-riche entrepreneurs. Added to these factors, the instability of the presidency and unpredictability of his future actions, potential investors relegate Belarus to the lower divisions in virtually every facet of business life.

The perspectives

Given such a gloomy scenario, can one posit that the Lukashenka regime could last indefinitely? The answer appears to be negative. The anti-Lukashenka forces are growing. The year 1996 has been notable for the number and size of anti-government demonstrations, particularly in Miensk. These protests are not yet forceful enough to pose a challenge to the president, but they do indicate that the population is not helplessly passive in the face of measures that are regarded, to say the least, as idiosyncratic and dictatorial. Belarusians may revere the past, but they resent being deprived of a voice in the running of their country for the first time since the mid-1980s.

Conceivably the president could win his short-term battles, amend the Constitution and override the Parliament (in which a clear majority opposes what seems to be a blatant power grab). Belarus, however, is too small to operate in a political vacuum, immune to events in neighboring republics. As it becomes more isolated from the West, from the IMF and other bodies, the regime is unlikely to survive economically.

Even an economy tightly controlled by the state must rely on energy imports from Russia, Turkmenistan and other countries. Of all Belarus's neighbors, Russia remains the key player. Russia already runs the western border regions. It has no interest in a Soviet-style regime in Belarus, nor is it concerned to take on the responsibilities of bailing out a nation in the throes of economic collapse with little collateral in return for aid.

The victim of this situation can only be Alyaksandr Lukashenka. But he himself is a symbol - albeit an obsolete one - of a revered past in which Belarus is perceived by many to have played a glorious and significant role in a Soviet community. That this past is based more on myth than reality is immaterial.

David R. Marples is professor of history at the University of Alberta in Edmonton and director of the Stasiuk Program for the Study of Contemporary Ukraine at the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, which is based at that university. The article above was originally written for Oxford Analytica.