The re-Sovietisation of Belarus

According to one estimate, the number of post-2020 Belarusian emigrants is around a quarter of a million people. This means that up to one-third of those who took part in the 2020 protests were forced to leave the country. Photo: Ruslan Kalnitsky / Shutterstock

The World Bank assesses that Belarusian GDP in the first half of 2022 diminished by 4.2 per cent, and by the end of the year it will contract by 6.2 per cent. Lukashenka’s answer to this loss of legitimacy and economic crisis is a re-Sovietisation of the economy and society. State interventions in the functioning of enterprises have increased. Mass repressions have imprisoned thousands of people and many have now fled the country. Indoctrination in schools is on the rise. Will all these measures reshape Belarusian society and make it loyal to the regime?

Cutting ties with the West

After the European Union’s sanctions in June of this year, the Belarusian economy can only count on the Russian market. At least in terms of the things that matter. The export of the essential elements of Belarus-EU trade, such as oil and metal or chemical products, is almost entirely blocked. Moreover, the sanctions have blocked traditional export routes of oil products and fertilisers through the Baltic states since the beginning of the year. Finally, the state’s participation in the aggression against Ukraine closed the single largest market for Belarusian oil products. Kyiv had not restricted this import, even though it verbally supported EU sanctions against Minsk. Lukashenka’s support for Russian aggression was thus the last straw that finally changed the Ukrainian position.

Not surprisingly, Minsk’s reaction was to turn to its only ally – Moscow – as Lukashenka frequently does. Russia has always been Belarus’s crucial economic partner, yet the post-2020 developments have brought the two countries even closer together. Despite the fact that they both recently restricted the publication of detailed trade exchange data, some information suggests that Belarusian exporters are using Russian Baltic ports to transport goods that were earlier sent through Latvia, Lithuania or Estonia. In this way, some oil products found their way to the Russian market.

According to Belarusian statistical data, Russia is the destination for around 58 per cent of Belarus’s foreign trade. This information indeed gives the impression of a return to the old days, when Belarus was a part of the Soviet Union. According to Belarusian Prime Minister Roman Golovchenko, Russia is also about to loan over 1.5 billion US dollars to finance import substitution projects in Belarus. According to him, seven projects worth about 330 million US dollars will be launched in the machine industry before the year’s end. This indicates that Moscow counts on Minsk’s help in replacing imported goods that Russia has lost due to the sanctions.

Yet, it is still difficult to assess whether this policy will be enough to compensate for the loss of the traditional market and the growth of transport costs. While Belarusian electronic appliances have the potential to expand their share of the Russian market, another important product – Belarusian trucks – is losing ground to Chinese ones. Equally important is that Belarusian agriculture, being the source of most exports to Russia, has been in crisis for many years. Therefore, a rise in their exports is also unlikely. 

Hope for new markets?

In the past, Lukashenka frequently tasked his subordinates with seeking new foreign markets for Belarusian goods. These attempts never resulted in substantial changes in the geographical structure of Belarusian exports. One reason is the tight connection to the Russian market described above. The other is the limited range of goods that Belarus can present to new partners.  

To extend its foreign trade reach, Minsk has recently applied for membership in the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation. However, the organisation rather focuses on security and political cooperation and does not support economic collaboration between its members. At the same time, as long as, for example, China remains interested in buying Belarusian fertilisers, one should not expect a meaningful growth in Belarusian machinery exports to other Asian countries.

Another project that the Belarusian authorities are advertising is the substitution of high-technology products currently under sanctions in Russia. In September this year, Lukashenka famously presented the “Belarusian laptop”. However, he admitted that the machine was made with only 12 per cent of components produced domestically.

Minsk has always been known for its manual command of the economy. Yet, for a long time, Lukashenka was at least trying to keep up appearances and pretend that he is not the sole decision maker in this regard. In 2022 the gloves were taken off and now everything is clear, including the fact that Lukashenka introduced price limits and blocked exports to stop food prices from rising. In addition, the authorities have continued to increase all kinds of taxes, especially those aimed at influential private companies (in Belarus these are the ones that actually make a profit).

Other ways of tightening control over the economy are connected to the domestic political situation. The ongoing repressions against those who oppose the regime and Belarus’s participation in the Russian aggression in Ukraine further led the authorities to introduce some new forms of supervision over society. Lukashenka hoped that this would help him better control the domestic economy. In October 2022 he ordered local authorities to start controlling the movement of highly qualified employees of state-owned farms, where a lack of skilled labour is acute. As a result, no manager or specialist in these places can quit their job without the permission of a local executive. Lukashenka believes that such control should also be introduced in the education and healthcare sectors.

The authorities have also been restricting the functioning of private social services. As a result, many private schools have been closed or forced to renew their educational certificates. Parents whose children attended such facilities have thus been told to move their kids to state institutions. The rationale behind these decisions has been explained by the Minister of Education Andrei Ivanets, who stated that many private schools had relations with “countries unfriendly to Belarus”. A similar process has been taking place with regards to private medical services. The authorities began to conduct more frequent and thorough controls of such places, aiming to close as many as possible. To justify his deeds, in June this year Lukashenka said that “No one is going to make money on people’s health”. He claims that more resources could be directed to other parts of the economy by limiting private social services.

Back to Soviet times

The level of repressions that we are seeing in Belarus now has not been recorded since the time of Stalin. Based on the estimations of the human rights centre Viasna, in October 2022 there were more than 1,300 political prisoners jailed in Belarus. Every day police forces detain around 14 people for political reasons. Between one to two of them are subsequently punished under criminal law and are sentenced to several years in prison. The scale of these repressions is so large that even the human rights activists admit that they are able to register only up to half of all “political” detentions. Therefore, the true number of political prisoners in Belarus could even be as high as 4,000. This would mean that dissidents account for more than 12 per cent of the entire Belarusian prison population.

A survey conducted in August 2022 by the Centre of New Ideas among the opponents of the regime has shown that six per cent of respondents had relatives and close friends in prison. One-third of the respondents had prisoners among more distant colleagues. According to another study conducted by the sociologist Andrei Vardamatski, every fifth Belarusian has a close or distant friend among those who had to flee the country. Vardamatski estimates that the number of post-2020 emigrants is around a quarter of a million people. This means that up to one-third of those who took part in the 2020 protests were forced to leave the country. This is not surprising given the large purges that took place in the public sector and mass layoffs that took place on political grounds, affecting up to 200,000 people. This is every tenth person employed in public administration, schools and universities.

After the mass protests which took place in reaction to the 2020 elections, Lukashenka’s regime banned the activities of about one thousand NGOs. This was a clear attempt to move  Belarusian society back to Soviet times, where only initiatives serving state power were allowed. The remnants of the independent trade unions still existing in 2022 were abolished in July of this year. The Supreme Court liquidated the last existing organisations of this kind.

The regime has declared almost all independent media “extremist organisations”. As a result, the majority of journalists have moved to neighbouring countries and restarted their work from abroad. More than 30 media employees remain imprisoned. The same is true for the majority of independent social and economic research centres. In addition, the authorities have introduced a series of regulations that have also strengthened control over various professions, especially those that have large social impact.  

In addition, many Soviet practices have been reintroduced in public schools. For example, newly adopted instruction on extracurricular activities requires classroom teachers to monitor their pupils and “cultivate their feeling of patriotism”. In line with this concept, at the beginning of each week pupils are obliged to listen to the national anthem. Military and patriotic education is now a school subject taught by newly hired teachers. As part of this education, pupils attend classes on “patriotic subjects” once a month. These lectures are often given by invited police officers or state officials. Finally, in 2023 another Soviet tradition will be restored. Schoolchildren will have to start wearing uniforms.

Are the repressions working?

Repressions on such a large scale have indeed weakened society’s ability to oppose the authoritarian regime. Research conducted in 2022 by the Centre of New Ideas shows that more than half of regime opponents try to escape from their traumatic experiences, focusing on work and family life. One-third have decreased their consumption of news.

Sociologists gathered around another research project called the Belarus Change Tracker point out that two years after the early stage of the protests, the dividing lines within Belarusian society have stabilised. As a result, we can see that less than half of Belarusian citizens are now willing to accept the existing authoritarian system, while slightly more than half remain sceptical or opposed to the regime. Similar “stabilisation” is also visible in the world of mass media. Thus, in August 2022 Belarusian state-owned TV and Moscow-controlled media had the same popularity as independent Belarusian media working from abroad.

Nevertheless, about 60 per cent of regime opponents admit that they still discuss political developments with their friends. This means that the social networks built in 2020 are still in place. People do not regret their participation in the protests. They perceived the events which took place in 2020 as the emergence of a new Belarusian political nation. They do not believe that the revolution has ended. Moreover, while in 2020 less than five per cent of Lukashenka’s opponents accepted violent methods as a means of political struggle, two years later more than half of them see violent protests as acceptable.

The challenge of re-Sovietisation

To re-establish Soviet social and economic structures, Lukashenka is looking for new resources. He would probably like to have 75 per cent of citizens employed in the public sector, as was the case 30 years ago. However, currently only half of Belarusians are employed by the state and that is mainly in healthcare, education, the police, the military and public administration. The number of employees in state-owned factories is in constant decline. Furthermore, since 2020 we have not seen state-owned enterprises recruiting new staff. Truth be told, these Soviet-era enterprises are not designed to make profits and in order to expand they need enormous funds. And this is something the Belarusian authorities have been seriously lacking.

There is one more element which was crucial to the existence of the Soviet system and which Lukashenka is missing: the much-developed Soviet social engineering which could provide a tempting ideology and a vision of the future. Lukashenka has clearly lost this charm as evidently today the Belarusian people no longer understand his speeches about the greatness of the long-dead USSR, “best management practices” from the communist times or his advice on how to manage collective farms. The majority of Belarusians now represent a very different generation. They grew up after the fall of communism, in big cities, in independent Belarus.

Attempts to brainwash the younger generation and “strengthen discipline” in the public sector will thus have limited effects. For the moment, the additional “ideological” work has fallen on the shoulders of low paid, stressed-out and therefore increasingly scarce and incompetent personnel. Attempts to get people “attached” to agriculture, education or healthcare by forbidding them to quit their jobs will only have the opposite effect. The university admissions for these professions will gradually go down, increasing the deficit of highly skilled employees. Mass layoffs on political grounds may have produced some career opportunities for those who want to work in state media, schools and universities. However, the young careerists who get hired there do not seem to demonstrate talent and competence. Most of the “monitoring” and patriotic events that they are assigned to organise turn into senseless, routine activities which bring nothing more than increased paperwork.

Certainly, mass emigration has weakened the protest potential of Belarusian society and this has been a huge blow for the country’s human capital. Yet, at the same time, the migration of hundreds of thousands of entrepreneurial Belarusians to countries such as Poland and Lithuania has dramatically increased the people-to-people contact between the EU and Belarus. Belarusian NGOs and media also quickly learnt to work from abroad and help civic activists functioning almost clandestinely in Belarus. The same can be said about business. About four thousand Belarusian firms, which is one per cent of those functioning in Belarus, have registered in EU countries since 2020.    

By cracking down on civil society and business, the regime is in fact fighting the supply of modern products, services and ideas. No matter what, Lukashenka cannot eliminate the demand for them. This issue continues to appear wherever the old Soviet system cannot meet the needs of a non-Soviet society. This includes the need for high-quality medicine, modern education, interesting recreation, independent media and an attractive national identity. The response to all these desires is thus offered by private companies and civic initiatives. Accordingly, in providing their services, they act either openly or without the knowledge of the regime.

How to help Belarusians?

The nature of the crisis in Belarus is similar to what we see in other countries of the region. It is the long-term process of the collapse of old Soviet structures, be it in the economy, society, politics or ideology. Lukashenka does not understand the modern urban dwellers that he is desperately trying to rule. In order to re-establish control over people, his regime has been trying to move the society backwards. Thus, even though repressions will be extremely costly for Belarusian society, Lukashenka is unlikely to achieve his goal. Terror can last for years, but the regime will exist only as long as it has financial resources for the security forces and the support of the Kremlin. What it will not have is the support of the people.

Clearly, the future of Belarus is also being decided on the battlefields in Ukraine. This fact does not mean that western governments and societies should wait for the end of the war to act in support of the Belarusian democratic forces. It is necessary to act now in order to help Belarusians build a new economy, a new political culture and a new identity, one that is not based on the Soviet past.

We should also do what we can to constrain Belarusian state-owned enterprises that serve the regime. It is thus necessary to simultaneously invest in human capital and the further development of the private economy in Belarus. It is already quite well known that the democratic upheaval which Belarus experienced in 2020 would not have been possible without a dynamic private sector and its developed contacts with the West. It is thus necessary not to build additional visa barriers, but rather facilitate the employment of Belarusian healthcare workers, IT specialists and entrepreneurs in the European Union. Assistance should also be given to Belarusian youth so they can receive quality education in Poland, Lithuania, Estonia and other countries. There is no doubt that we should support Belarusian companies in the EU, especially if they plan to establish connections with people who are still in Belarus.

It is almost certain that even though Lukashenka’s regime will try to break all ties with the West, relations with those who are in the country will still be possible because demand for contacts with the EU is high in Belarus. As stated before, Belarusian society has already outgrown its ageing Soviet-era authoritarian leader and craves a bright, new future. It wants nothing to do with the Soviet past.

Aliaksandr Papko is a Belarusian political scientist and journalist, a member of the Analytical Group “BELARUS-UKRAINE-REGION” established by the Centre for East European Studies of the University of Warsaw. . He graduated from the Faculty of Journalism and Political Science of the University of Warsaw and the College of Europe in Natolin. He received his doctorate in sociology from the Polish Academy of Sciences.

Kacper Wańczyk is an analyst focusing on Belarus, Russia and Ukraine and a PhD student at Koźmiński University in Warsaw. He is a former diplomat who has served in Belarus and Afghanistan, among other places. He is also a member of the Analytical Group “BELARUS-UKRAINE-REGION”. Follow him on Twitter at: @kacperen.

Alyaksandr Lukashenka, belarus, economy, sanctions