NEWS ANALYSIS

Belarus: the nature of the dictatorship

by David R. Marples

The month of March has seen a dramatic upsurge in government repressions in Belarus as President Alyaksandr Lukashenka has taken further steps to consolidate the powers granted to him by the national referendum of November 1996. The targets have been independent societies and organizations, foreign journalists and the United States Embassy.

A new crackdown

March and April tend to be sensitive months for the Belarusian government; several anniversary commemorations embrace both Communist and national events. In 1996, the two months saw several violent clashes and the detention of about 100 demonstrators. One year earlier a sit-in by opposition deputies in the Parliament was resolved by force when presidential guards were ordered to violate parliamentary immunity. President Lukashenka tried to pre-empt problems this year by banning public demonstrations close to the presidential residence and the Parliament.

Early in March, the President's Office intensified a campaign of hitherto low-level harassment of public organizations unaffiliated with the government by issuing a decree which implied that tax exemptions formerly granted to such organizations would be reviewed. The offices of the Belarusian charitable fund For the Children of Chornobyl, which have survived three recent and very thorough government audits, were entered by officials of the Committee for State Security, who proceeded to rifle through various files. The fund's president, Gennadii Grushevoi, was a victor in the November 1996 parliamentary elections, but not permitted to take his seat in the new rump Parliament established by Mr. Lukashenka. By December, a petition with over 100,000 signatures had been collected in Mr. Grushevoi's district, one of the most effective grassroots campaigns against President Lukashenka's actions to date.

Another thorn in the side of the presidency has been the Belarusian Soros Foundation (SFB). The president has threatened in the past to tax the foundation, which in 1995 and 1996 reportedly spent $10 million on programs to assist Belarus. On March 16, the head of the SFB, Peter Byrne, was detained at the Miensk-2 International Airport for 18 hours and then deported to Germany. The Belarusian government alleges that Mr. Byrne had taken part in illegal meetings organized by the opposition. The SFB denies this accusation.

That the move to expel Mr. Byrne was orchestrated by the presidency is clear: no remorse has been expressed over the event, nor has there been any response to protests by Nicholas Burns of the U.S. State Department and others against the deportation and the government's invasion of the offices of various opposition political parties in Miensk.

One week later, on March 23, the First Secretary of the U.S. Embassy in Miensk, Serge Alexandrov, was arrested while observing an unsanctioned demonstration in central Miensk. He was then declared "persona non grata" and given 24 hours to leave the country. The U.S. retaliated by expelling the First Secretary Vladimir Hramyka of the Belarusian Embassy in Washington. The U.S. has also cut off some $40 million worth of aid to Belarus.

The new Belarusian ambassador to Washington, Valerii Tsepkalo, was informed en route to the United States that he would not be welcome to enter that country "for some time," and the U.S. ambassador to Belarus, Kenneth Yalowitz, was recalled to Washington for talks. Relations between Belarus and the United States have reached an all-time low, while President Lukashenka has defended his actions publicly.

A further public demonstration occurred on March 25, when, on the 79th anniversary of the declaration of Belarusian independence in 1918, an unsanctioned march of the Belarusian Popular Front tried to move toward an approved march by the Belarusian Liberal-Democratic Party (the Belarusian equivalent of the right-oriented Russian party led by Vladimir Zhirinovsky). The attack by the militia on the opposition demonstrators was one of the most brutal to date. The head of the United Civil Party, Henadz Karpenka, a prominent Miensk politician, was arrested and placed under close guard in a military hospital. Many foreigners were among those detained.

Other than political opponents and civil societies, the main target of President Lukashenka has been Russian television networks in Belarus, which have featured shots of militia beating demonstrators. On March 26 the government announced stricter regulations for foreign media and on the following day Aleksandr Stupnikov of the Russian NTV network was ordered to leave Belarus by the end of the month. The Yeltsin government in Moscow has expressed its concern at the constant infringements against Russian broadcasters in Miensk. Since a majority of these people are Belarusian citizens, the Belarusian response has usually been that the matter is an internal one.

The attacks on human rights have been all-encompassing over the past year. There is no longer an effective Parliament, and even the Constitutional Court, once a watchdog over the president, has been silenced by the president's acquisition of the right to appoint half its members. Opposition newspapers are subject to harassment, provocation, unwarranted taxes and even assassination attempts on prominent journalists.

Analysis

Given the nature of the Lukashenka regime, the new onslaught against the remaining, passive opposition is perhaps to be expected. But where is it leading? What are the president's current priorities? On April 2 President Lukashenka is expected in Moscow to conclude what has been described as an all-embracing integration accord that is expected to formalize dual citizenship for citizens of Russia and Belarus. The meeting between the two presidents takes place on the anniversary of the original formation of a "Community of Russia and Belarus," and the date April 2 has been declared a national holiday by the Belarusian president.

The symbolism of the Moscow meeting however, is more significant than the signing of another agreement. Mr. Lukashenka revels in his status as a public figure and has an almost Hitlerian penchant for public ceremonies and parades. Yet his interests and those of the Russian neighbor do not coincide. He has benefited from Russia's current preoccupation with the proposed expansion of NATO into Eastern Europe. Under such circumstances Russia is hardly likely to risk alienating an ostensibly devoted ally such as Mr. Lukashenka, who has always been willing to assist Russia by allowing Russian military installations on Belarusian soil. Nonetheless, Russia's enthusiasm for the April 2 "integration" is muted. Mr. Lukashenka is unpredictable and volatile. And Russia is unlikely to agree to any stipulations that would necessitate some form of economic commitment to a struggling partner.

In turn, President Lukashenka's dictatorship has been almost consolidated. Integration with Russia in complete form would serve only to undermine his regime (he could not, for example, impose restrictions on the Russian media as he has on the Belarusian). In this sense, one of the paradoxes of full integration is that it would permit Belarusian citizens and societies a greater voice than they have at present.

Mr. Lukashenka has now turned on the factories and farmers, reinstituting the Soviet practice of subbotniki (voluntary work on Saturdays), with the first subbotnik scheduled for Lenin's birthday on April 22. He has promised sudden inspections of farms from the presidential helicopter and the most severe punishments upon those who do not heed his call for rigorous work.

The Belarusian president has attained one goal. Real and imaginary enemies have been eliminated (or are in the process of being eliminated). Belarus has been "isolated" by the West. What remains is a quasi-Soviet state with a currently popular and populist leader. The outcome is likely to be a dictatorship without opposition, a country virtually devoid of economic initiatives that will continue to fall behind all its neighbors in terms of economic progress and development. For better or worse, Mr. Lukashenka can turn only to Russia for friendship, protection and assistance. President Lukashenka's political vision has always been broader than that of his nation of 10.4 million. It includes images of empire, of power, of former Soviet greatness and - albeit with some reservations - essentially an affinity for the Stalinist past.

Conclusion

Can such a dictatorship be stopped? What hope is there for those without human rights, struggling against the gross intrusions of the authorities, physical violence and intimidation, and the lack of a public outlet for their grievances? There is no ready answer. It is a mistake, however, to perceive of citizens of Belarus as passive pawns of the president. A young intellectual elite is openly scornful of the government (many of those arrested in recent demonstrations were declared to be minors). Mr. Lukashenka's most loyal support is from people at least one generation older than he (almost one-quarter of citizens are of pensionable age).

Moreover, the president has demonstrated a remarkable ability to unite against him the various opposition factions, from the Communists on the left to the Belarusian Popular Front on the right. The president's undoing may lie in the unity of these groups. At the same time some public outlet must be kept open. Without a critical observer within the country, the dictatorship could step up its repressions. One is given the impression that measures adopted to date are far less harsh than the president would have taken were such events concealed from the outside world.

Finally, the experience of the post-Soviet states demonstrates one key fact: implementation the changes whether progressive or retrogressive, emanate from the top. Democracy in Russia, thus is dependent on the reforms of Mr. Yeltsin; autocracy in Belarus begins with Mr. Lukashenka. Whereas the former benefited from public revulsion for the Soviet regime, the latter owed his rise to power largely because of public disgust with the economic chaos and corruption associated with the period of "perestroika," defined as commencing under Mikhail Gorbachev and continuing through the administration the chairman of the Belarusian Parliament, Stanislau Shushkevich.1 The reversal of the current political situation in Belarus, logically, can only begin with change at the top. The new Constitution has served to solidify further the omnipotence of the president.

1 I am grateful to Dr. Gennadii Grushevoi for this insight.

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. He is the author of "Belarus: From Soviet Rule to Nuclear Catastrophe" (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1996).

Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, April 6, 1997, No. 14, Vol. LXV

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