Friday, August 14, 2020

Belarus Today on Front Line Between Free World and Authoritarian One, Skobov Says


Paul Goble

            Staunton, August 11 – What is happening in Belarus now, Aleksandr Skobov says, is important far beyond the borders of that country. That is because Belarus is now on front line in the conflict between two worlds, “the world of freedom, democracy and progress, and the world of authoritarianism, rightlessness and the archaic.” 

            And just as in the past when fascism and communism selected the site of battles against democracy and freedom, so too today, the Russian commentator says, the leader of neo-fascist authoritarianism, Vladimir Putin, in his pursuit of the destruction of the West, has chosen Belarus as a battleground (graniru.org/opinion/skobov/m.279683.html).

            “The new authoritarianism of the 21st century, in the first instance a post-Soviet area,” arose because of a lack of trust among the populations of many countries in “the basic principles or the experience of disappointment in them,” something the new states provided a large number of occasions for, Skobov argues.

            Many people in these countries focused exclusively on their immediate lives and viewed politics as they had in Soviet times as something which might affect them but which they had no role in. The new-old elites played on that to destroy the first flowerings of democratic institutions and to build new authoritarian states.

            “In post-Soviet Russia, this paternalist longing for a strong hand” was exploited by Putin who exacerbated the longing of many Russians for “a great empire which everyone had feared.” And the combination of these goals led him to attack the liberal global order “based on the principles of the supremacy of law and the priority of human rights.” 

            “Using both the innate and the acquired weaknesses of ‘the Greater West,’ the Putin Kremlin has achieved a great deal. It has practically paralyzed and transformed into powerless laughingstocks the main international institutions” and it has united “around itself a new neo-fascist international of dictators and outcasts.

            “In this ‘black international,’ Skobov continues, “Lukashenka’s Belarus has occupied a special place.” On the one hand, Lukashenka pioneered many of the authoritarian tactics Putin has adopted. And on the other, precisely because Belarus is “not an eastern despotism” but rather a Europeanized state, the victory of Putinist authoritarianism there weakens Europe.

            The problem for Putin has been that Lukashenka, in the defense of his own authoritarianism, hasn’t been willing to go all the way along the path the Kremlin leader had selected for him and allow his country to be absorbed by the Muscovite state, Skobov says, and that the Belarusian people aren’t prepared to sit still for Lukashenka any longer.

            The Kremlin could remove Lukashenka the way other empires have displaced disobedient vassals, by direct intervention or the organization of a nominally domestic coup.  But the Kremlin will support even a disobedient Lukashenka if that is the price of blocking the coming to power of someone who really won the popular vote.

            For Putin, “the sovereign cannibal must not be overthrown by the rabble.” Too many other peoples might get dangerous ideas. And at the same time, in Putin’s view, Skobov says, Belarus must not return to Europe because that would weaken the Kremlin’s neo-imperial and anti-Western goals. 

            The Belarusian opposition is somewhat naïve in its understanding of just what it is up against. It recalls the leaders of the Prague Spring more than half a century ago. They didn’t understand that for Moscow what mattered was not primarily the maintenance of the Warsaw Pact but rather ensuring that there would not be a free media in Czechoslovakia.

            “It is possible that in order to come to understand the true desires of the Kremlin, Belarus will have to pass through a difficult and bitter set of experiences. But that is a matter for the future,” Skobov says. “Today one thing is important: Lukashenka must go.” Not just for Belarus’ freedom but for the freedom of everyone else as well.

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