From utopia to dystopia

Photo: Review News / Shutterstock

On the contrary, the last three decades of Belarus’s history have been that of mental, economic and political stagnation and regression, which were supposed to be compensated for by a propaganda narrative oozing from the monopolised media. It was the media’s power and effectiveness that made it possible to create the image of a utopian state with a society without aspirations satisfied with its leader. It was through propaganda that the “Imaginarium of Lukashenka” was built – a symbolic universe that the leader shared for many years with his devoted supporters and politically indifferent citizens.

Authoritarian coma

What was Belarus created by Lukashenka like? In short, it could be defined as a maximally simplified world in which the key dogma states that the foundations of the socio-political order are determined only by the leader, and that the role of society is reduced to passive acceptance. For years, the pillars of “Lukashism” were determined by a key triad of ideas: the primacy of state identity over national identity, neo-Soviet historical policy and social conservatism. At times, these ideas were joined by a feigned “Belarusianisation”. Utopian Belarus turned out to be a state full of appearances, in which the leader only pretends to be great while enduring numerous humiliations and affronts from his closest ally. In order to preserve power, he even agreed effectively to be a “potato dictator” and “meme” his image. While there was a semblance of reformist readiness to follow the changing social and geopolitical circumstances, in reality the measures used in political practice were neither revealing nor innovative. On the contrary, they could be counted among the already tried-and-tested arsenal used by other satraps. This includes the marginalisation of the legislature, the subordination of power, the zeroing or abolition of term limits, the ritualisation of rigged elections, and pseudo-constitutional referenda. All the instruments used by the Lukashenka regime have previously been tested in Russia, Kazakhstan or Turkmenistan. Over the following decades, the instrumentalisation of law progressed in Belarus and its authority, like that of the state, virtually ceased to exist. However, this was only one manifestation of the widespread destruction of a political system that was gradually but systematically degenerating.

Throughout the years, the core of Lukashenka’s leadership legitimisation strategy was to continually convince Belarusians that, due to the peculiarities of the country’s geopolitical position and the nation’s dramatic history, the main understanding between the leader and society should be based on stability. To be clear, this does not include prosperity, concerns for human and civil rights, or the possibility of individual self-fulfilment. Stability should be maintained at any cost. However, this fixation on stability, in reality, meant a conscious effort by the authorities to create permanent political and mental stagnation in society. As a result, Belarus slowly became the leader’s personal fiefdom and opposition protests became fewer and weaker. It was as if the belief that anything can ever change was gradually fading among Belarusians. They have learned how to live in a state without prospects, and how to survive in Lukashenka’s phantasmagoria. Some of them enthusiastically accepted this reality, some in their powerlessness passively waited for change, and some chose a better life in exile or paid for their resistance with arrests and imprisonment.

A pervasive sense that there were few alternatives allowed Lukashenka to put the country into an “authoritarian coma”, in which all democratic tendencies were effectively halted. Another thing is that after 1994 this was relatively easy, as there was a lack of socio-political projects competing with Lukashism. Most worthwhile initiatives were short-lived and after a while swallowed up by the ideological vacuum left by the bankruptcy of communist ideology. In turn, the authorities deliberately perpetuated beliefs in society that all forms of political participation should be channelled into state-controlled organisations. Minsk also promoted the idea that elections are only ritualistic and plebiscitary and that the key to the happiness of Belarus and Belarusians is the survival of the personalist regime, in other words: Lukashism. Thus, a project of gradual modernisation without democratisation was pursued, which in practice meant the creation of a whole system of interconnected political and economic vessels, the bloodstream of which was the redistribution of wealth carried out at Lukashenka’s own discretion. The beneficiary of successive tranches of credit support from Moscow, the IMF, the World Bank, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, or the EU was not the Belarusian people, but the power elite headed by the president. Intensively promoted activities in the international field, such as the mock multi-vector nature of Belarus’s foreign policy, in fact helped to prop up the personalist authoritarian regime. The propaganda-generated construct of a “dictatorship of prosperity” in a stable patrimonial state, has been reinforced for years by myths circulating in the public space (effectively fuelled by the president himself) about the extremely high level of legitimacy Lukashenka’s leadership has managed to maintain in society thanks to his economic successes.

Two Belaruses

In August 2020, not only Belarusian citizens, but the whole world learned that there are in fact two Belaruses. One is the utopian imaginary of Lukashism headed by a soft dictator, and the other is a dystopian, oppressive state in which the greatest enemy of power is a society fighting for their rights. From the term “the dictatorship of prosperity”, only “dictatorship” remained and “prosperity” was enjoyed only by members of the power elite who show absolute loyalty to the leader.

The deliberate exclusion of individuals or entire social groups from this Imaginarium created by Lukashenka is characteristic of the erosion of legitimacy, which indicates a short-term or permanent break in the legitimacy chain. By consciously ceasing to internalise the values, beliefs or standards of behaviour imposed by the leader, an increasing number of Belarusians are building an autonomous space resistant to Lukashenka’s propaganda. As a result, they stop engaging with power-controlled groups and structures. It is now not uncommon for them to create with others alternative spaces for political participation, both within Belarus and in exile. The most advanced expression of such activity is the creation of a Belarusian government-in-exile. Today, some part of the Belarusian diaspora even believes that their homeland has ceased to be independent and has, in fact, been annexed by the Russian Federation.

The regime learnt relatively quickly how to respond to such outbreaks of legitimacy erosion, and significant adjustments to Lukashenka’s survival strategy emerged. One of the key instruments to minimise the risk of delegitimisation has been the repression of the opposition civil society. This high level of oppression enforced by the regime is largely preventive – the authorities use blind terror, hoping for a chilling effect. A wave of arrests, Bolshevik-style show trials and long prison sentences followed. To this day, physical, psychological and economic violence is used against citizens. In addition to beatings, intimidation or rape, severe financial penalties are also applied. Those who are “inconvenient” to the authorities are dismissed from their jobs, removed from their destroyed and/or confiscated property, prevented from running private businesses and threatened with the termination of their parental rights. Overall, they  have their professional and personal lives destroyed. Whoever is not with Lukashenka has become a “traitor”, “fascist”, “extremist”, “terrorist”, “servant of the West”, or a neo-Soviet “enemy of the people”. Further, the state police fight against all manifestations of “extremism” – opposition websites, stickers with the slogans “Sasha 3%” or “Luka” and any object in white-red-white colours. Even pairs of socks can now be considered “extremist”.

No longer a land of milk and honey

One of the ways that the authoritarian system is consolidating itself is the growing implementation of multiple parallel social engineering projects. The belief that a perfectly obedient, controllable society can be created from the top down stems directly from the mentality and experience of the leader himself. Therefore, almost everything is normatively defined in Belarus today, and a constitutional referendum even adopted a legal obligation for citizens to take care of their health. However, the Belarusian leader still lacks a new opening that would allow him to genuinely strengthen his position both in the power system and society. The successive ideological proposals he promotes document this conceptual regression. Indeed, it seems that Belarus is increasingly reverting to the past in its political, economic, historical and symbolic spheres.

Meanwhile, Lukashism, in the midst of a post-election internal crisis and an external crisis such as the Russian aggression against Ukraine, is trying to survive by simulating changes to the state’s political system in a constitutional referendum. This is being done by introducing a new legislature that does not change the actual balance of power. The propaganda message promoted by the authorities is factually shallow and lacks finesse in its form. This is the newspeak according to which the state has to “overcome negative trends in the economy” and achieve a “stable, dynamic pace of development”. Society also has to carry out tasks in a “comprehensive” and “responsible” manner. Power calls for inclusive social mobilisation in which citizens are presented not as passive elements but as full-fledged political subjects. However, Lukashenka declares “Mobilise everyone!” The state’s harvest campaign, which includes potato and sugar beet digging and a corn and flax harvest, awaits eager Belarusian citizens – civil servants, students and schoolchildren – ready to be re-educated through hard work. As a reward, the leader prohibits further price rises and introduces “the obligation to unconditionally saturate the domestic market with goods and services”. Such a message is of course reminiscent of the traditions of Soviet propaganda, but this is not the first time the Belarusian leader has sought to lower social tensions by serving Belarusians with empty promises.

In 2016, Lukashenka declared his willingness to implement structural reforms in the economy alongside the need to adapt the constitution to the changing geopolitical environment. All this appeared in the form of vague visions and was simply an attempt to buy time. This time, such a mechanism for escaping real change in the political, economic and social spheres will not work because, after 2020, Belarusian society completely lost confidence in the government-controlled mass media, especially as the Belarusian infosphere has become a Kremlin-controlled field of information confrontation. By exploiting the multifocal, cross-border, networked structure of the propaganda and disinformation ecosystem, Minsk has risen to become the main regional distributor of the Russian message. A similar process of subordination to the Russian narrative is taking place with the rapid securitisation of Belarus’s historical policy. History is once again becoming a field of confrontation – according to the nomenclature used by Minsk and Moscow – played out on the “historical front”. No one will believe in the future of the utopian Imaginarium of Lukashenka anymore. Today’s Belarus is not a land of milk and honey, a peaceful land of conservative farmers and programmers. This is a country whose symbols have become the state detention centre on Akrestsina Street and the BELARUS 1523.3 MTZ tractor, given – like the country itself – as a birthday present to Vladimir Putin.

Justyna Olędzka is an adjunct professor at the University of Białystok. She specialises in post-Soviet states and is also a member of the Analytical Group “BELARUS-UKRAINE-REGION” established by the Centre for East European Studies of the University of Warsaw. Follow her on Twitter at: @JustynaWij.

Alyaksandr Lukashenka, Authoritarianism, belarus, Belarus 2020 presidential election