Belarusians Formed Major Component of ‘Russian Party’ in Soviet Times, Averyanov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Nov. 6 – Many have forgotten or never knew that Belarusian officials in the Soviet leadership formed a major part of the so-called “Russian party” which promoted the transformation of the USSR at the end of Brezhnev’s times into a conservative Russian state, Kirill Averyanov says.

            That made them very different than the leaders of republics like Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Kazakhstan who promoted anti-Moscow and even anti-Russian policies and sought to reduce or even exclude the Russian language and Russian culture from their republics, the Regnum commentator says (iarex.ru/articles/87402.html).

            And this background helps to explain why many Russians are inclined to accept Alyaksandr Lukashenka’s claim to this day that “Belarusians are Russians with the mark of quality” because he like his predecessors who helped power the Russian party in Brezhnev’s times are close to the thinking of the Putin-era Moscow elite.

            Two of the six party leaders historian Valery Ganichev identifies as members of the Russian party were Belarusian party leaders, Kirill Mazurov and Pyotr Masherov. In addition, one of their closest allies was a fellow Belarusian, Vasily Shauro, who headed cultural policy in the USSR between 1965 and 1986 and played a key role in the exiling of Aleksandr Yakovlev for his anti-Russian nationalist positions.

            When Gorbachev returned Yakovlev to Moscow and made him a Central Committee secretary, the future Soviet president sent Shauro into retirement. According to Averyanov, that contributed to the unravelling of the USSR. Yet another Belarusian who promoted the goals of the Russian party but was forced out by Gorbachev was Mikhail Zimyanin.

            The Regnum analyst concludes that “Belarusians in the Soviet leadership were indeed the most committed to state power. They did not see their small homeland  as being outside a common political and cultural space with Moscow.” And thus they promoted the Russian party because it had the same goals. Averyanov suggests some in Moscow have never forgotten that.