Paul
Goble
Staunton, January 16 – Many in the Belarusian
opposition today find themselves in a terrible position. On the one hand, they
are unalterably opposed to the authoritarian and anything but genuinely
national Alyaksandr Lukashenka. But on the other, they do not want to do anything
to weaken their country and expose it to an even greater risk of an Anschluss
by Russia.
That is something Lukashenka, of
course, is able to exploit: Few Belarusians now are prepared to take to the streets
to protest if that could be used by Vladimir Putin to occupy and suppress their
independence. But that very attitude says something some often forget: Even the
Belarusian opposition is deeply patriotic and opposed to weakening their
country.
There is much to criticize in the
Belarusian opposition: its inability to overcome personal rivalries, its
utopianism, and its lack of consistency. But that patriotism is at the root of
its opposition to Lukashenka just as it is at the root of its even greater
opposition to Putin and absorption by Russia.
Writing on the Belarus Partisan portal, opposition figure Ruslan Ignatovich makes
this clear. He says bluntly: “I hate the Belarusian powers that be. But if
someone in these wild times will call us into the street and put pressure on
them, my feet will not carry me there. Because I would view such actions as aiding
Putin” (belaruspartisan.by/politic/451698/).
“And I hate Putin’s Russia much more”
than the Belarusian dictatorship, Ignatovich continues. That makes the challenge for the Belarusian
opposition both more difficult and more urgent, more difficult because of this
choice and more urgent because building up a genuinely European Belarus is the
only way to defend the nation and the state.
According to the opposition
commentator, “it is possible that our country is living through the most dramatic
period of its history” given that many are now openly discussing the possibility
that Belarus could lose its independence. What they should be talking about is
why this is possible – and what should be done now.
For the last two decades, “those who
rule Belarus have been doing everything necessary for this to come to pass.
They’ve allowed Russia to dominate television and they’ve put in the school
programs a course on “Russian literature, not world literature but precisely
Russian. Our children read Pushkin along with Shakespeare but more than Kolos
or Korotkevich.”
Belarusian officials “do not know
their native language. There are now “fewer Belarusian language schools and
kindergartens in Belarus than in Poland. “And I am writing this text in Russia,”
Ignatovich says, “because the majority of citizens of my country in a banal
fashion ignore Belarusian articles.”
The powers that be are not the only
ones to blame for this situation, he continues. “A significant part of the
opposition also has helped kill our independence.” The leaders cannot agree among themselves on
how to celebrate even key holidays so they can’t expect ordinary Belarusians to
know what to do. And protest activity instead of growing has fallen.
This all works to Moscow’s
advantage, and it is certain that just as Moscow has penetrated even those Ukrainian
forces now fighting against Russian occupation, so too it has penetrated
Belarusian opposition groups and controls the behavior of some of them in ways
that work against what the groups say they are about.
“Where are our opposition figures
today when over Belarus hangs a real threat? Why aren’t they calling for
meetings against Putin?” And why aren’t the Belarusian powers that be calling them
into the streets to support Belarusian independence? If that happened, “millions
would come out.
But
as Ignatovich himself confesses, he is uncertain what to do now given that
Moscow would likely exploit a rise in opposition activity and that as a patriot,
he hates Putin and Russia more than he hates Lukashenka and his regime. It truly
appears to have become a time of no good choices in Belarus.
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