Belarusians Far More Interested in Business than Russians Are, Daneyko Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 29 – Forty-six percent of Belarusians would like to have their own business, 23 times as many as the share of Russians making the same declaration, according to Pavel Daneyko, head of the IPM Business School, who adds that this both explains why Belarusians are unhappy  now and why they can be expected to make big progress in the future.

            Belarusians are unhappy with the way things are now because the life around them does not correspond to their hopes in the 1990s, the business specialist says; but they are committed to values including involvement with business that bode well for the future of the country (thinktanks.by/publication/2019/05/27/pavel-daneyko-chtoby-transformirovat-belorusskoe-obschestvo-nuzhny-40-let-i-dva-pokoleniya.html and zautra.by/art.php?sn_nid=31135).

            That is shown, Daneyko suggests, in the results of an American study of groups invited to the US. These groups were told what the rules were. The Russians listened but came up with their own. The Ukrainians ignored the rules assuming they didn’t need any, “but the Belarusians said ‘fine’ and lived by these rules” -- and thus made the most progress. 

            According to the business specialist, despite everything, “Belarusians have greater chances for joint collective work than do Russians or Ukrainians, the result of the experience of Jewish-Belarusian relations on this territory which were able to form the very interesting deep values of Belarusians.”

            For all these things to be realized will require “40 years and two generations,” Daneyko says.      

            He adds that the absence of massive privatization in Belarus and emigration of many younger Belarusians may work to the country’s advantage in the future. On the one hand, Belarusians have gravitated to those few areas where privatization has happened rather than becoming mired in nominally private but in fact state-controlled businesses.

            And on the other, the number of Belarusians going abroad should not be a concern. They are establishing good contacts and helping to build ties between the countries they are going to and their homeland. And they will return when it becomes more possible to work in their own country just as has happened in Poland.