Paul
Goble
Staunton, January 21 – The Moscow
media has been filled in recent weeks with a flood of publications portraying
Belarus as an “enemy” of Russia, calling into question Belarusian sovereignty,
and even threatening annexations of part or all of Belarus by Russia on the
Crimean model, according to Dmitry Oreshkin.
The Moscow commentator told RFE/RL’s
Belarusian Service that this flood constitutes a full-blown “information and
ideological attack” not only against traditional targets like the supposedly
artificiality of the Belarusian language and Belarusian nation but also against
Belarusians supposedly plotting against Moscow (svaboda.org/content/bielarus-vorah-i-ahresar-novy-trend-u-rasiei-palitoliah-areskin/27499773.html and belaruspartisan.org/politic/331077/).
Three recent examples of this
campaign include:
·
Moscow’s
“Pravda” newspaper carried a letter from Mensk saying that “Belarusian ‘democratcs
… have crossed all borders not only of good sense but of morality. In their
articles, statements, books and ‘scientific’ works, they seek to show that the
Belarusians and Russians have no common historical roots and that the Russian
people and Russia always were the main enemies of the Belarusians against whom
they almost constantly have fought” (kprf.ru/pravda/issues/2016/3/article-53774/).
·
Another Moscow outlet wrote that “the ‘Youth
Front’ is preparing for a military confrontation with Russia. ‘At the end of
last year, [it] was founded and created a military-patriotic union ‘Bayar’
which now not only is actively recruiting supporters but also conducting
patriotic training in the open air.” The “only difference” between it and
Ukraine’s “’Right Sector,’” the news agency continues, is that “the militants
of the Belarusian ‘Bayar’ immediately designated their goal as being ‘opposition
to the pro-Kremlin fifth column in Belarus and against Russian aggression which
this fifth column is preparing” (news-front.info/2016/01/20/vtoroj-belorusskij-front-pavel-yurincev/).
·
And a Russian economist, Sergey Aleksashenko,
told Ekho Moskvy that if Mensk continues its campaign to become part of Europe,
it will be united to Russia “in a way analogous to the Crimean scenario” (echo.msk.ru/programs/year2016/1692882-echo/).
Oreshkin
points out that “20 years ago, Russian patriots with all their efforts
supported Alyaksandr Lukashenka because they viewed him as the opposition to
liberalization. He was such, but under the influence of objective factors, [he]
while maintaining his authoritarian regime ever more is trying to preserve the
sovereignty of Belarus and defend himself against encroachments by his eastern
neighbor” by turning to Europe.
“If
Moscow were the capital of a contemporary state with a high technological and
cultural level, then it wouldn’t need to be involved in the artificial
promotion of Russian,” Oreshkin says. Instead, Russian would spread as English
does. But when anyone fails to use it, many in Moscow go into hysterics.
The
Russians think that “they have the right to think in Soviet categories. They are
spitting against the wind and therefore they are always losing. And if Vladimir
Putin says that he has received ‘a knife in the back,” that means, when translated
from Soviet language, that he has incorrectly calculated the risks and has
carried out an incorrect strategic.
“For some
reason or other,” others are always plunging a knife in Russia’s back in this
view, Oreshkin says. “Ukraine and Turkey and Syria and now Belarus.”
At the
same time, the Moscow analyst says, he does not think that Belarus faces any
real military threat from Russia. “Russia does not have the material,
financial, demographic or diplomatic resources in order to annex Belarus.
Therefore ever more often will efforts to mobilize the Putin patriotic
electorate in the ideological sphere.”
And
Russians will conclude that “the Belarusians have betrayed us and put a knife
in our backs.” But perhaps that will lead some to ask themselves whether it was
an intelligent move to turn our back to them?
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