‘Dictatorship is Our Brand’ Lukashenka’s Press Aide Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, March 9 – Most dictatorships go out of their way to deny that fact, calling themselves democracies, often hyphenated, to underscore their view that they are democracies in their own way. But now in a sign of changing times, one dictatorship is on the verge of breaking ranks and calling itself what it really is. That exception is Alyaksandr Lukashenka’s Belarus.

            Long notorious as “the last dictatorship in Europe,” a term favored both by Moscow and by Westerners who don’t want to face up the much more insidious and horrific dictatorship Vladimir Putin has erected, Belarusian officials have insisted in the face of compelling evidence to the contrary that in fact Belarus is a democracy, with elections, a parliament and so on.

            Natalya Eismont, Lukashenka’s press secretary, said on ONT television that she has been thinking a lot about the word “dictatorship” and its many meanings, has concluded it has positive ones and is now “the national brand” of Belarus, and that a demand for dictatorship as a guarantor of stability may spread about the world (news.tut.by/economics/629086.html).

            People often use the word in a negative way, she continued, but as far as she is concerned, “’dictatorship’ already at times is acquiring a positive shade of meaning, shorthand for “the order, discipline and absolutely normal and peaceful life” she suggested Belarusians and other nations want.

           

            To be sure, this off-the-cuff remark does not mean that the Lukashenka regime is about to declare itself a dictatorship on any and all occasions.  But it does mean something else that is even more worrisome: the normalization of the term “dictatorship” in the minds of many people as a system of governance that has the right to exist alongside others.

            And to the extent that is happening not only in Belarus but beyond its borders in Russia and the West, this represents yet another step away from those hopeful times of a generation ago when peoples and governments believed that democracy was the only kind of regime anyone should have.

            That drive failed not only because it did not get the continuing support it needed but also because Western governments and populations eager to declare victory in the Cold War and then get a peace “dividend” were more than ready to declare countries democracies if they said they were and worry only about economics rather than democratic procedures and laws.

            Belarusians at least understand what is happening and why it isn’t good.  Pavel Usov, a political analyst, tells Gleb Yurin of Belaruskaya prauda Eismont’s words are an attempt to give a “sympathetic” face to dictatorship but reflect her fundamental ignorance of what a dictatorship is (belprauda.org/diktatura-s-simpatichnym-litsom-ejsmont-respubliku-pora-menyat-na-diktaturu/).

            Indeed, Usov argues, Eismont’s words represent “an unconscious manifestation of ignorance as to what a dictatorship is. Only someone insane or stupid could praise a dictatorship” as she has done.  Eismont, of course, who is 35 has spent her “entire conscious life” under Lukashenka’s dictatorship. “She is a child of this dictatorship. She was able to find her place in t his system, agreed to serve it, has made a career and owes everything to the dictatorship.

            Her celebration of this system is thus entirely natural because “in other words,” Usov says, “she belongs to the dictatorship. Without it, she is nothing. Dictatorship corrupts people, perverts their consciousness and ideas, and transforms them into slaves who serve without understanding anything.”

            “If Eismont thought otherwise,” he continues, “she wouldn’t be in Lukashenka’s entourage. Therefore, she did not exaggerate anything; for her, Luakshenka is a great man and dictatorship is the greatest of achievements. Is this absurd? Alas, this is the reality of someone who grows up unfree.”