New Eastern Europe podcasts. These are Belarussians who are demanding President Alexander Lukashenka to
quit. The spark that set the streets on fire was the election fraud on
August ninth, twenty twenty. Despite huge mobilization before the elections and visible support
forced Fitlanda Tianoska. Just before the second round of the elections, the authorities
said that Alexander Lukashenka was supported by over eighty percent of citizens. Belarussians took
to the streets against the lies, against the regime, which responded with violence.
The letter of society and repressions against those who did not want to fall
into it, however, are not something new, although twenty six years ago
it was different. The beginnings of the regime of Alexander Lukashenko are recalled by
Edward Lucas, former British media correspondent and expert on Eastern Europe. I remember
the nineteen ninety four elections in Belarus because I covered them as a correspondent,
and I'm ashamed to say that I thought that Lukashenka was rather a good thing,
certainly compared with the previous regime of Vacheslav Kebich who's being completely forgotten,
and Lukashenka seemed to be a man of the people, dynamic, keen on
fighting corruption, and I thought that this might be a welcome change. And
unfortunately his autocratic and even dictatorial instincts came to the fall and we never had
a proper election again. The regime's attempts to stay in power were marked by
brutality towards the opposition and indeed disappearance in subductions, murders. And yet over
that period Belarus has changed very much underneath the surface. It's become a much
more sophisticated, internationally oriented country, and in a way, I think Lukashenka's
rule has created the conditions in which people are now keen to get rid of
him. The scale of the demonstrations and earlier support for the opposition candidates,
especially Svidlanda Tikalovska, was a shock to the authorities, but also a surprise
to many observers. At times it was hard for Belarushian's to believe in what
was happening. Pyotr Drotkovsky, director of the Belarushians Center for Strategic Studies,
talks about the range of Minsk protests protest segment. Firstly, the protest coverture
paths of society from students to pensioners, from traditional opponents and ending with those
who only join the protests after the elections, that is, people who woke
up politically. So the scale is very wide. Of course, this does
not mean that let's say nearly one hundred percent of society has been resurrected.
Well, it can be estimated at twenty to thirty percent, maybe thirty five
percent of those who are actively participating in the protest directly that is, by
going out onto the street or indirectly by supporting the protesters. So this is
the first such moment. The second moment is the incredible scale of solidarity,
both financial and psychological, human and other forms of solidarity. And I think
that there is hesitation. I would not like to call it a split,
but hesitation inside state structures. I also think that of the power structures.
So the fact that Lukashenka still has to change key positions of the power forces
proves that the situation is not so stable within the system system. What happened
to explode a country that, at least from the outside, looked like an
oasis of stability. Yet Alexander Lukashenka seemed to have everything under control and to
meet the expectations of the citizens Usov Belarussian political scientists doctor of political science,
they changed to. In fact, he rules for twenty six years. In
a sense, he could fulfill the expectations of the part of the population who
voted for him. That is a return to Sovietism, the initiation of eap
integration with Russia, and as a result in authoritarian regime was formed governments that
were based solely on repression, perhaps invisible to the majority, in counterfeits,
electoral fraud, arrests and the imprisonment of the opposition. Unfortunately, the majority
of people, the masses did not pay attention to it. As for Lukashenka's
policy towards the internal opposition and this kind of political indeference, political apathy,
it lasted for these twenty six years, and what happened in twenty twenty was
completely unexpected to the unexpected political electoral outbreak, both for Belarusian society itself and
for the authoritarian regime of Lukashenka and the cause of this political crisis which has
just expressed itself in the form of these protracted protests, and indeed the terror
by the authorities lies in several important things. It is also worth pointing to
a certain moment that led to a change in orientation and social expectations and in
the expectations of the majority. The moment brought this turning point is associated primarily
with the coronavirus and the second moment with the remnants of the election campaign,
in which, unexpectedly for the system and society people who had been outside of
traditional politics Victor Barbarico and Sergezski Victor Barbarico Valero. The last straw that broke
the camels back in Belarus was the coronavirus pandemic. The disease was ignored,
even ridiculed by President Lukashenko, just as here you can hear him saying yellow
cheese is a cure for covert nineteen. Coronavirus has become a kind of chernobyl
for Lukashenka. Originally, as in the European Union, countries in the world,
and in Russia in general, the lockdown began. Lukashenka, as we
remember, resigned from such restrictions in terms of restriction of people's movement, school
closings and quarantine for enterprises. This was absolutely not a subject in Belarus.
Initially, in February March, Lukashenka's policy was received quite positively, even in
neighboring countries. Everyone was watching Lukashenka fight the virus effectively. But as it
became apparent that the coronavirus is a profoundly serious disease, and when it was
necessary to change the rhetoric in a sense, and even maybe politics, When
even the Belarusian society itself, which initially supported Lukashenka in this strategy, began
to doubt the correctness of this approach, began to show information about shortages,
serious problems in hospital, about the dead, and this number started to grow.
That's when Lukashenka's rhetoric still did not change, so he was still talking
about the fact that the coronavirus is a kind of corona psychosis. When society
was starting to think in a completely different way, and instead of changing a
strategy and approach to the problem, Lukashenka started to lie. So the whole
system started to lie, to hide data, to falsify data. People who
died from the coronavirus, although they had some health problems before that they were
diagnosed that they did not die from the coronavirus, but from heart attacks from
diabetes. That is, the Ministry of Health and personally Lukashenka, they simply
began to lie to the society on a statewide scale, not realizing that people
began to draw information from completely different sources. If there was still any control
over the mass media and the Soviet unions, the authorities in Belarus completely lost
their monopoly on information. This is the second problem why it happened as it
did. At the same time, people stops trusting the state media, they
stopped trusting the Ministry of Health, They stopped trusting Lakashenka and his rudeness towards
those who died, towards those who fought. Because these hospitals did not receive
any material or financial support, and it is the society that organized itself,
showed solidarity and raised money to support the healthcare system somehow system Hallelubak Bela Russian
journalists. The pandemic was of course an important point for Belarusians right, but
also the lies that Belarusians heard from their screens. When I traveled all over
the country before the elections, I also talked to people. They said that
when they were lied to, people were simplish. That this contributed to the
fact that their trust in independent media, in social media, and in bloggers
through a lot the government media itself contributed to the fact that they truly killed
such trust. In recent years, the government has been putting a lot of
emphasis on television, somehow trying to develop television, but it has ignored social
media a lot, ignored bloggers who disseminated alternative, neutral, objective information.
It is trying to do so, so it's as if they're sort of lost.
The government has gotten lost. Do people ignore the state run media?
Certainly not. I talk to people in other regions, in the countryside,
and very often it is the only source of information. I think there's also
a mechanism that maybe at work here where people believe that not everything can be
untrue, that the government cannot lie a hundred percent, something must be true.
And of course this is dangerous. It divides the nation brade with post
propaganda opposite the lack of trust and state media and propaganda and a version to
this propaganda created a completely different information situation. People started looking for information in
opposition or in alternative media. During this period, telegram channels became immensely popular.
Where people looked for information was right there, and of course the picture
of the situation in these alternative means of information was completely different. People realized
that the government was lined them. As the system lost its monopoly on information,
the system lost its monopoly on creation in the world. People understood that
Lukashenka state equals a lie. And besides, Lukashenka, in his traditional approach,
wanted to show that he was the host of the situation with his bravado.
At the same time, when the peak of infections in Belarus was already
there, the Eastern Orthodox churches were not closed. People went to the church.
It was during this period it was Eastern Orthodox Easter, and crowds of
people gathered in these churches, and this increased the number of infections even more.
The second thing that they were called subotniks when employees of factories, state
institutions had to forcibly take part in cleaning in some social work and under the
conditions grew tires. When even Russia was on lockdown, had even closed the
borders. And the last such blow to yourself shot in the head was the
organization of the parade on May ninth, twenty twenty, the day of the
victory of a fascist Germany. Even Moscow had to abandon this parade, which
was the most important in that ideology, and it was the first time that
such a revolution took place. Because the parade was attended by a maximum of
fifteen thousand people, and before that up to fifteen to one hundred thousand people
gathered there for these various celebrations, it was already showing that something was wrong
and the authorities Lukashenka personally did not pay attention to less difficult politic act.
It is in these circumstances that three previously unknown politicians appeared. That is,
Sergey Tihanowski, who was a blogger, simply traveled around villages interviewed simple people,
showing them what was actually going on. He also began to be extremely
popular as a blogger. Apart from the fact that this is a revolution of
novices, it is also a evolution of bloggers. But bloggers have become in
a sense a new political force, in a sense, such an engine driving
this revolution because they paid attention to local problems, not even political ones,
but to local unprofessionalists, the arrogance of local dignitaries officials to ignore the problems
of ordinary people. The attitude towards these local dignitaries started to shift to Lukashenka
because he is responsible for who he will allocate, Because I will not win
these local officials, but they are only allocated by Lukashenka. The crisis of
trust in these local officials also spread to Lukashenka and destroyed such local support for
him. Because villagers and small towns were always on his side. They always
voted for Lukashenka. They were never interested in human rights or a choice of
sorts. It was about simple things that finally began to be articulated. The
coronavirus was imposed on all of this. People saw that they were ignoring them.
They were just ignoring the problems. See how Owski was rather a speaker
who articulated the problems of smaller communities, that is, simply the leader of
the proletariat. Because the intellectualists kept their distance. Suddenly Victor Barbarico appears,
who was a banker for twenty years and was a director for Gazprombank, one
of the most authoritative institutions. Although related to Russia, banking and finance in
Belarus, Barbarico began to attract the attention of the middle class in the middle
nomenclatura, which means that finally, for people of even different strata, there
were alternatives that they did not have because before the election process, the traditional
opposition wanted to implement some common project to emerge from these various broken and weakened
political parties of the only candidate to repeat the scenario from two thousand and six,
but it was met with total disaster. It actually showed that neither support
nor trust in this traditional opposition is there, so there is no point in
participating in the election camp. Against this background, the appearance of Barbarica and
Valerikala as representatives of the nomenclature saying of the upper class was initially skeptical,
but the appearance of these three people unexpectedly caught attention that people were beginning to
know the alternative in it. In addition, the authorities initially did not use
oppression because they saw no threat in this so called dialogue. However, the
organization of the campaign this dynamic led to the electrical revolution. First, it
was expressed in the fact that people began to sign up in mass for Zikanowski,
and there was such long lines. There were not even such lines before.
Such a wave of political activity made it clear that the election scenario would
be completely different than it used to be. That Nazi Anson supply from the
East European study of the University of Warsaw emphasizers that in respose to the outbreak
of social discontent, the Pularussian regime reacted in a well known and practice manner,
that is repression. It is worth understanding that what is happening in Berus
now and what has happened in August and September, this didn't just happen in
twenty twenty. It has been going on for at least twenty years. I'm
talking about repression and violence above all, because from the beginning of the twenty
first century Lukashenka began to use all these known methods, that is the practice
of suppressing protests with the help of force, plus the known disappearances of famous
people whose bodies were not found. This is minister Zaharenka, this is a
journalist called Zavansky, an operator of Russian state television. So from then on
the state began to apply these repressions Over these twenty years, the repression has
taken on completely different forms. From direct violence. We suspect the whole society
suspects the kid in kidnapping people. The brutal force of throwing in nive political
prisoners is a constant element of Belarus's internal policy and economic repressions, blocking the
possibility of obtaining education in general. We now observe in a nutshell what is
happening in belarusis for twenty years, and now everything is happening in these three
months technicians. The Belarussian sociologist Aleena Garsheva chose attention to the scale and universal
nature of the repression that affects anyone who dares to express their opposition to the
government. Not depenty much talk belity come in the Belarusian situation. It should
be remembered that there have always been repressions against politicians who oppose Lukashenka. So
this is nothing new. It is not an invention of twenty twenty. The
trend of this year is that the repression has undoubtedly become massive and universal.
As the protest has become massive and universal, an unprecedented number of inhabitants have
fought the regime. What are the repressions. First of all, repression involves
arrests, beatings, and often torture during detention or in arrest. Secondly,
it is economic repression. For example, the company that supported the protests and
strikes now has special and incredibly detailed controls of the services. Thirdly, and
this is a new dimension, housing communities are harassed, those housing estates and
buildings in which flags appeared or films were shown. In other words, white
red and white spirit of BIP. And despite the brutal reaction of the authorities,
the protests have not subsided. They continue, they are transforming. A
certain routine has emerged, which Depot and writer Andre Hadanovitch talks about from Minsk
Trai Jeveney Missions New People Maso protested September on October or strange months, not
only mass protests but also activities mainly related to the districts where people live.
That is, on Sundays, they go out in one hundred or more,
maybe one thousand protests every day from Monday to Saturday. People gather in smaller
and larger groups just near their houses in their districts, and this is where
miracles begin. Yesterday, stranger becomes friends. People become friends. They start
to treat themselves a little bit as friends, fellow people who do important work
together. And on the one hand make their districts and look like a real
Belarusian district in the evening, so they decorate. They start with ribbons in
white, red and white, then symbols, face painting and daily meetings and
meeting over tea, cookies, non alcoholic drinks. It must be said right
away so as not to draw attention to it. People thought that they had
little of these neighborhood meetings. Why not combine it with art and education.
And then they started inviting guests. Zah guests come to the meetings, lecturers,
artists, ordinary debaters, artists born history remembered, questions about the future
arise. Although missus Tiknovskaya is the symbolic leader of the Opposition, I'm not
sure she's really a contender for power. I think that the Opposition has gone
a long way to go in terms of articulating its demands and also in building
itself up as a serious grassroots movement on the lines of solidarity in Poland in
the nineteen eighties. It's made a very promising start. It's won the battle
of ideas, and the enthusiasm is extraordinary and it's very moving to watch.
But if you actually want to defeat a regime by sheer force of numbers,
there's still some way to go. The question of Bilarus's future geopolitical orientation has
been decisively parked by the opposition. They're not saying that this is not to
be decided now. What they want is a free election, the release of
political prisoners and the removal of Lukashenka and everything else can wait. But can
it really wait for the first time in a long time. The answer to
this and other questions can be asked of the Pilarussians themselves. In the following
podcasts, we present various phases of a changing society and country, and we
mainly ask Belarussians themselves. Podcast produced by pre Range Productions