By Alexander Perepechko
Published on May 25, 2016
In the middle of March, 2016, I presented a lecture “Belarus: Heeling to the West and New Risks” to students of the Eastern European School of Political Studies (EESPS). This new contact with Belarusians inspired me to do research on Belarus.
What is going to happen to my country of origin? What is the logic of political development of Belarus after 1991? Are there any analogies in the world? Does the recent crisis in the country signify that the Lukashenko regime has symptoms of a fragile state – a state on the brink of collapse? Why? Is there any strategy to avoid the collapse of the Belarusian state? Does the Ukrainian experience matter? How?
I first will look for examples of regimes similar to the one in the Republic of Belarus…
The rise and fall of rural Populism in interwar Eastern Europe and the evolution of the Lukashenko regime in Belarus. From a democratizing state to a fragile state?
Numerous analytical writings about the Republic of Belarus often use – explicitly or implicitly – a comparative perspective. Those who apply this framework almost always focus on a single macro-region – the former Soviet Union. The goal is to establish commonalities between cases with geographical, economic, historical, or cultural similarities.
Much less often scholars study a particular aspect of Belarus as one of similar aspects in the countries of Eastern Europe. Even more rarely, if at all, researchers consider it worthy to look at commonalities between the political evolution of the Republic of Belarus after 1991 and the political evolution of the countries of Eastern Europe between the two World Wars. In the meantime, democratization, the rise of a peasant Populism (without the Populist doctrine!), and the triumph of dictatorship are three similar stages in the development of the Republic of Belarus and interwar Eastern European countries. Modern Belarus and interwar Eastern Europe belong to different historical periods and social systems and technological epochs. However, modern Belarus and interwar Eastern European countries have a common powerful denominator: all are peasant countries created on the ruins of dissolved empires. Consider some statistics.
The peasant proportion of the 1918 populations in Eastern European countries were as follows: Bulgaria – 80%, Rumania – 78%, Yugoslavia – 75%, Poland – 63%, Hungary – 55%, and Czechoslovakia – 34% (Thompson, 1993). According to the World Bank (see Belarus, n.d.), in 1975 about 50% of the population of Belarus lived in rural areas. In 1994, when Lukashenko won the first (and the only democratic) presidential election, about 33% of the population of Belarus was still rural. Note that the bulk of dwellers in Belarusian cities are migrants from villages. These rurbanites (see Mihali, 2005) are typically industrial workers, employed in the primary industries and in factories. Rurbanites usually reside in poorly maintained hostels, communal apartments, or privately owned houses of small and middle-sized towns moderately or weakly impacted by modernization efforts.
Comparative study is based on the idea that working with several cases is the optimal way to make informed generalizations about politics (see Rosamond, 2013). Therefore we need to look side-by-side at the political evolution of the Republic of Belarus after 1991 and the political development of Eastern Europe in 1918-1939. Perhaps a rural environment, work in agriculture, and a rural way of life are factors powerful enough to overcome – at least to some degree – the temporal and systemic differences between these regions and to frame a similar political path for them.
Indeed, in interwar Eastern Europe, democratization led to the rise of peasant parties, movements, and groups (see Eellend, 2008). However, in one country after another, these organizations quickly lost power to dictatorship and were invaded by the Soviet Union or Axis powers:
(democratization) → (rise of peasant Populism) → (dictatorship) → (fragile state)
The process began with Bulgaria in 1923 and continued with Poland in 1926, Yugoslavia in 1929 and Rumania in 1931. In Estonia and Latvia the agrarian parties, or at least their leadership, were the backbones of authoritarian regimes after 1934. Only in Czechoslovakia did democracy remain until 1938, and the Czech Agrarian party could take part in the government by participating in various coalitions. If there are similarities between the political evolution of post-Soviet Belarus and the political evolution of the interwar Eastern European countries, is the Republic of Belarus today becoming a fragile state? It is well known that collapse of a state goes further than regime change…
David Mitrany (1961), a British sociologist of Rumanian origin, gave an insightful account of the evolution of Eastern European countries from democracy to rural Populism and then to authoritarian regimes and fragile states. Those agrarian political regimes turned into authoritarian regimes through corruption or force. The dictatorships were as weak as they were oppressive and inefficient. In 1939-1941, some of these states became fragile and collapsed as a result of German or Italian invasion. Does the Republic of Belarus follow the path of the peasant countries of Eastern Europe in the interwar period?
After World War I, the machinery of government was superimposed upon the underdeveloped agrarian subsistence economies (Mitrany, 1961: 132-133) of Eastern European countries. And West Belarus, or Kresy (Poland’s eastern borderlands before September, 1939), was a part of Eastern Europe. During this period, the rural economies of East Belarus suffered even more because they were brutally transformed by the Soviet government. After World War II, the Soviet governmental machine was imposed on West Belarus, where about 80% of the population was rural.
Thus, not unlike the interwar Eastern European countries, Soviet Belarus had costly bureaucracies and military establishment. In Belarus, this factor, in combination with Soviet modernization efforts, resulted in the creation of an inflated, relatively comfortable capital city (Minsk) and a few relatively comfortable regional centers in the midst of grimy backwardness. Universities and other schools of higher education were created in the capital and the largest cities. This further increased inequality between the few urban centers and the rural periphery, where even technical schools were scarce.
Like in interwar Eastern Europe, peasants in Soviet Belarus had to carry political and military overhead far in excess of what their economy could bear. State control and interference in economic life (e.g., prices and trade) was stunning. The burdens in the interwar Eastern European countries (Mitrany, 1961: 133) and Soviet Belarus were laid upon the rural areas as a whole.
Social structures in Soviet Belarus and the interwar Eastern European countries had another important similarity: their evolution had not allowed the growth of a considerable middle class (Mitrany, 1961: 134). Put differently, no intermediate social group existed between rulers and the great mass of ruled. This factor preserved a semi-feudal structure and at the same time preserved peasants as a class. Yes, political regimes in Soviet Belarus and interwar Eastern Europe immensely exploited the peasant. However, a more advanced liberal capitalist system might have been even worse for peasants: it might have destroyed the peasants altogether. The peasants understood this quite well and silently tolerated the exploitation by not fighting rulers and towns. In return, the Soviet regime in Belarus, for example, tolerated and encouraged patriarchal authoritarian attitudes brought to the cities from the countryside…
Like the 1930s in the interwar Eastern European countries (see De Bromhead et al., 2013), conditions in the early 1990s in Belarus quickly deteriorated, and the old cleavage between town and country also became deeper. The peasants became more discontented because land reform and uncertainty loomed on the horizon. The prospect of land reform and a crisis in agriculture directly threatened the privileges of land barons, whether of gentry in the interwar Eastern European countries or presidents of collective farms and directors of soviet farms (“red barons”) in the Republic of Belarus. As the economic depression grew worse, the intrinsic clash of policy between urban mercantilism and peasant agrarianism resurfaced…
By the time of the first presidential election in Belarus in 1994, the village remained the customary settlement form in rural areas, and a personal plot was the primary source of the peasant household economy. Recall, that the bulk of dwellers in Belarusian cities are rurbanites – migrants from the village. These migrants usually work in factories and primary industries. But in terms of political consciousness, habits, and behavior, the rurbanites are still captives of eternal peasant Populist dreams of social justice, equality, and a perfect state. In agrarian countries, it was relatively easy for peasants and workers to cooperate politically because the industrial proletariat had only recently emerged from the peasantry. Not surprisingly, there is a certain resemblance between rural Populism in Soviet Belarus and the interwar eastern European countries.
Some observers rightfully argue that communist rule a) almost totally wiped out local agrarian economies and peasant communities that formed the rural society in Belarus and b) made Belarus an industrial country with a large working class. Based on this premise these observers argue against the conjecture that the essential characteristics of the rural world are powerful enough to lead to the four-stage political path – democratization, rise of peasant Populism, dictatorship, and collapse of the state – for the Republic of Belarus and interwar Eastern Europe. These arguments need to be taken seriously. Nevertheless they can be challenged.
Firstly, until September 1939, West Belarus was part of Poland and thus part of interwar Eastern Europe. Later, after some territorial concessions to Poland and Lithuania, West Belarus was incorporated into the Belarusian Soviet Socialist Republic and later became part of the Republic of Belarus.
Secondly, the American comparativist Kenneth Jowitt (1992) and other leading experts on Eastern Europe believe that the Soviet state did not eliminate the traditional status structures in rural areas of this region. Jowitt argues that the Soviets replaced the traditional peasant egalitarian and patriarchal authoritarian household with the peasant nuclear family. At the same time, the Soviets replaced the paternal rule of the manor-house with the paternal rule of the corporate-state bureaucracy and attempted to replace the spiritual power of the clergy with the ideological power of the Communist party apparatus. Equality was “achieved” by the expropriation of rural land, and paternalism outweighed egalitarianism. In other words, peasants and their masters (red barons and local bureaucrats in rural areas) remained hostile to the liberal capitalist system and reforms which can lead to capitalism. The Belarusian presidential election of 1994 clearly displayed this fact.
The results of the first presidential election of 1994 in post-Soviet Belarus showed that even the moderate liberal capitalist reforms of Shushkevich in 1992-1994 endangered the privileges of the powerful agrarian corporation of red barons and the existence of peasants as a class. The rural, especially eastern Belarusian, electorate – southeast of the major Moscow-Brest axis – was the core support for Lukashenko. Residents of industrial areas in crisis plus residents of areas contaminated as a result of the Chernobyl catastrophe begged for state subsidies and other forms of assistance; cities and areas in crisis were the stronghold of then prime-minister Kebich, the main opponent of Lukashenko. The agrarian corporation of red barons, supported by peasants and rurbanites, defeated the industrial and urban guild of red directors. The northwestern electorate, especially in cities and several districts of Minsk, were strongholds of the pro-Western, pro-European, and pro-nationalist candidates Paznyak and Shushkevich.
Results of the 1994 presidential election clearly identified two authentically deep social and economic cleavages in Belarus: “westerners” vs. “easterners” (“zapadniki” vs. “vostochniki,” or West Belarus vs. East Belarus) and “rural fundamentalism” vs. “industrial socialism.” The results also illustrate that the centrifugal forces (territorial disintegration) in Belarus are quite strong and in some circumstances might overcome the centripetal forces (territorial integration)… Is the personalist political regime of Lukashenko adequate to prevent the country from the challenge of disintegration and foreign invasion?
Thirdly, many industrial areas in the Republic of Belarus have been on the brink of economic collapse for years. Gigantic Soviet-era factories continue to manufacture tractors, trucks, and other products and …to stockpile them because these obsolete products cannot compete on the world market. The Belarusian state was able to subsidize these factories when oil prices were high yet Russian oil for Belarus was cheap. Derived from this crude oil and sold overseas, petroleum products were the main source of hard currency for the Belarusian state. In fact, consumerism in Belarus was based on oil profits. But oil related profits are over now. Hundreds of thousands of industrial workers (many of them rurbanites) employed at Soviet-era factories might soon be forced to return to their villages. If unable to move back to rural settlements or to find work in cities, unemployed workers might turn to illegal or illicit activities.
What are the Populist programs in Belarus and the interwar eastern European countries about? What do these programs stand for? What do they stand against?
1) To begin with, resentment against the cities – their power, central authority, and economic organization – is a key cause of the peasant resurgence in this part of the world. Indeed, the cities, especially the capital, often govern the countryside with corrupt, oppressive administration on practical grounds of laws or profits, without regard for tradition and equity, which are so important in peasant society. Animosity against individualism and the standardized, mechanized, and dehumanized culture of towns was an essential attitude among the peasants of interwar Eastern Europe and Soviet Belarus and is an important mind-set among the rural dwellers of the Republic of Belarus.
Agrarian parties, movements, and groups in interwar Eastern Europe demanded equality between town and county in the spending of public revenue. Behind the Soviet-style rhetoric, Lukashenko’s propaganda derives from the old slogans of agrarian politicians in interwar Eastern Europe. Indeed, practical implementation of these slogans can raise agricultural production to a point close to self-sufficiency (Mitrany, 1961: 159) but makes industrial modernization hardly possible – as modernization relies on funds taken from agriculture. The consequences of these policies in Belarus are sorrowful: without structural change, investment, and technological innovation, Belarusian cities with Soviet-era factories are becoming a rustbelt – areas of declining industry, aging factories, and falling population.
2) I am reluctant to label the ideology of the last dictatorship in Europe as “conservative” or “nationalist.” By nature, this ideology is on the left side of the ideological spectrum. But it is not “Soviet” or “Marxist-Leninist.” The official ideology of current Belarus reflects Populist ideals, instincts, and the practices of peasants, rurbanites, red barons, and local bureaucrats and is an “echo” of agrarian Populism in interwar Eastern Europe. Even today, about 25% of the population of Belarus is rural.
Also, to the great satisfaction of Lukashenko, about one million urbanites – young, energetic, talented Belarusians – left for the West and other developed parts of the world. These folks have no value for Lukashenko and are sources of potential trouble for his regime; it is better to get rid of troublesome urbanites. Perhaps descriptions like “West hater” only partially describe the personality of the ruler of Belarus. Lukashenko is flesh of the flesh of the peasant world and sprang up from the peasantry. He hates Modernity and its jewels – cosmopolitan cities and capitals. Like most blinkered pro-Russia bureaucrats in Belarus, Lukashenko views Moscow as the “center of the universe” and to “be taken to Moscow” by the Kremlin is his deeply held dream. The capital of Belarus for him is just a seat of power from which to extract “rent” (kickbacks) from lootable resources (oil, but not only oil), perhaps to be deposited in a small southern country. Although the ruler likes to moralize to urbanites, he lives a decadent lifestyle in the capital. His lifestyle would have been intolerable in his village. Politically correct feminists and gender scholars in American academia certainly should make a case of Lukashenko’s oppressive decadent patriarchy!
Similar to peasants in the interwar Eastern European countries, peasants in Belarus pragmatically believe in the property of use. The peasants praise rural society and the rural way of life with agriculture based on their own labor and private ownership restricted by public interest. They favor cooperative action where the work of an individual counts. They want to restrict the role and influence of free market actors (e.g., bankers and traders) not only in agriculture but also in primary industries, large factories, and key public services. To achieve this goal, they accept state ownership and control of vital economic organizations. These ideas were originally developed by the German philosopher and Social Democrat of the 19th century Ferdinand Lassalle (1899) (his original last name was Lasale). Indeed, Lassalle believed that socialism would arise from the state aid given to the producers’ cooperative societies… Leaders of agrarian parties, movements, and groups in interwar Eastern Europe were well aware of Lassalle’s work. Did Lukashenko hear about Lassalle?
3) The Populist goals in post-Soviet Belarus and interwar Eastern Europe have not received support or sympathy from the West. Western governments, socio-political movements, and businesses have not shown enthusiasm to work actively on Populist economic and social programs with dictatorial regimes in these regions. For western Europeans, these programs look to be an eclectic combination of socialist ideals, liberal instincts, and illicit and illegal economic practices. As for Americans, they simply have a hard time playing by rules established by somebody else…
4) Populists in post-Soviet Belarus and interwar Eastern Europe expect that all issues with neighboring countries should be settled by arbitration. Needless to say, the principle of arbitration in Eastern Europe through history has been ignored over and over again by Russia, Western European powers, and the United States. Today, Belarus is facing a Russian invasion and can lose independence but the Belarusian ruler sincerely believes that the territorial pretensions of an aggressor toward the Republic of Belarus can be averted exclusively by diplomatic means.
5) Paradoxically, peasants in this part of the world – tightly attached to national characteristics for generations – have not exhibited nationalist rivalries. Inhabitants of multiethnic rural areas have for generations lived peacefully together in the same villages, unless pressed and pushed by nationalists and nationalist propaganda from the main cities, or triggered by foreign invasion. In the case of Belarus, it is still unclear whether Lukashenko’s “national impotency” is partially a result of his peasant origin and socialization, education in second-tier schools (agricultural academy and semi-provincial university), rural occupation, and way of life: he moved to the capital from the village at the age of thirty-six.
6) Like in the interwar Eastern European countries, peasants in Belarus tend to be rather peaceful and obedient to powers. The peasants look upon the top executive (or dictator) and central government as sources of justice and protection against mistreatment by local officials and bosses. The comparativist from China Hsiao-Tung Fei (1946) attributes this non-aggressiveness to at least two causes. Firstly, granting more land than can be cultivated means little to peasants. And secondly, rural dwellers are not immediately threatened by innovation or intrusion. But when security is removed, say, by failed land reform initiated from the capital, or by foreign invasion, the non-aggressiveness and obedience can vanish in the blink of an eye. Populist politicians are well aware that any attempt to disrupt a slow peaceful evolution of the rural world carries high risks to the existing political order (Mitrany, 1961: 151, 266).
The examples above illustrate why the parliamentary success of agrarian parties, movements, and groups in interwar Eastern Europe and the democratic election of Lukashenko as president of Belarus had a very short life span. A party or person can run on a rural Populist platform and win an election democratically. But after electoral victory, the party or person can stay in power democratically only for a very short period. Realpolitik (practical government) simply cannot be carried out on the basis of Populist idealism. A party or person that ran on Populist programs and won election faces four main scenarios: a) to resign or order a new election, b) to be overthrown, c) to share power by participating in coalitions, or d) to usurp power. Most agrarian parties, movements, and groups in interwar Eastern Europe followed the path of a) or b). The Czech Agrarian party choose option c). Not totally unlike in interwar Estonia and Latvia, Lukashenko selected option d) – from a democratically won election to a personalist dictatorial regime. In doing so, he provoked the Republic of Belarus toward the fragile state. Yet, there is more than one way to collapse. We will investigate this issue in the second part of our paper.
At this point, let’s recapitulate the main ideas of this research essay.
A century ago, the Serbian political geographer Jovan Cvijić (1918) predicted the tragedy of agrarian Populism in interwar Eastern Europe: the rising social sentiment of peasants cannot find manifestation in political action. Much later, comparativists (see Allardt & Valen, 1981; Emerson, 1966) studied the mechanisms of marketization of the rural economy by towns in various countries in different historical, socio-economic, and political circumstances. Their studies and sources used in this modest paper point in the same direction: agrarian Populism runs into a tactical impasse. It seems as though the case of Belarus fits their generalization, too.
After the disbanding of the Communist party in Belarus, peasants and rurbanites, led by the agrarian corporate-state bureaucracy, were able to retain economic, administrative, and political control over the rural world and even take over the whole country.
After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, it was not easy for reformers in the capital of Belarus to organize peasants or to move them by general ideas (e.g., “marketization,” “liberalization,” or “national renaissance”). Rural Populism was born in this part of the world long time ago, and it looks like the peasants of these regions are faithful to Populist ideas and dreams to the end.
Marketization efforts in 1991-1994 in Belarus alienated the rural areas from the capital and urban centers responsible for moderate liberal reforms. To protect collective farms and state farms from inflation and from foreign importation of farm produce, presidents of collective farms and directors of soviet farms brought into play agrarian Populism. As a result, liberal reformers from the capital and towns could neither penetrate nor mobilize sparsely populated rural communities by deploying institutional channels such as county level administration. But this is only the half of it. The red barons were able to use rural Populism as a Trojan horse to open the gates of the capital. Rurbanites happily assisted their rural masters in this endeavor. This is where the tactical impasse of Populism in Belarus began. Why?
The homeland of Populism could not benefit from the simultaneous victory of agrarian parties, movements, groups, and corporations and the rise of democratic political regimes because liberal capitalism can easily destroy peasants altogether. Declining rural elites, whether gentry in the interwar Eastern European countries or red barons and the local state administration in the Republic of Belarus, know that well. Since the agrarian middle class does not exist in this part of the world, the rural elites are able to keep peasants under rigid political and social patronage to prevent them from political activity. For decades, perhaps centuries, peasant Populism in this part of the world has remained in Zugzwang – the compulsion to move without moving because any move can lead to disaster. The only way for the peasants to express their will and power lies not in action but in resistance (Mitrany, 1961: 137, 155).
Finally, while rural Populism has its moments – agrarian parties successfully participated in parliamentary elections in interwar Eastern Europe; Lukashenko was elected as president of Belarus by red barons, peasants, and rurbanites – rural Populism immediately runs into one more tactical impasse: economic strains and crises in this part of the world leave little chance to put into action programs based upon rural Populist ideals of comprehensive social transformation. In Belarus, economic difficulties were postponed for more than 20 years by high oil prices on the world market, cheap Russian oil for Belarus, and Belarus’ offshore role in the oil and petroleum product business. It is obvious that, like citizens of the interwar Eastern European countries, Belarusians might pay a high price for their dreadful delusion in 1994.
How likely is it that this price will become the ultimate price for Belarus? We will find out in the second part of this paper.
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