Paul
Goble
Staunton, February 27 – When an ancien regime begins to pull back in the
face of popular demands, that represents a defeat for the former and a victory
for the latter -- even if those in power calculate they can regroup and make a
comeback. That is because such successes
for the protesters are something they won’t forget even if there is a new
crackdown.
Today, Belarusian protesters won an
important if admittedly “a small victory” of that kind, one out of which larger
ones will come: Those despoiling Belarus’ holiest site, the Kuropaty mass
graves, say they won’t work and are pulling out their construction equipment
from the site (svaboda.org/a/28334191.html
and https://charter97.org/ru/news/2017/2/27/242159/).
Their pullback occurred on the
eighth day of demonstrations against new construction there, demonstrations
that have been overshadowed by mass protests the last two weekends in the major
cities of Belarus. But there is a compelling reason to believe that the
Kuropaty protests may threaten the Lukashenka dictatorship even more than protests
against the vagrants tax.
And it is this: Kuropaty, the site
of the mass murder of Belarusians in Stalin’s time, since its discovery in
1988, has stimulated the rise of Belarusian nationalism, a collective sense
that the Belarusian people have been the victims of Soviet Russian imperialism
and must take responsibility for their own nation into their own hands.
Lukashenka tried to hijack that
feeling, but as BelarusPartisan points out, there are ten important reasons why
Kuropaty which is sacred to the memory of Belarusians must be defended in their
first instance against the current regime.
And those reasons are helping to recast the protests against the
vagrants tax into a national movement against the Minsk dictator.
Among those reasons are the
following: Kuropaty is “the place of a Soviet genocide,” it is “the main
argument for de-communization,” it is “the beginning of the Belarusian state,”
it is “the watershed between hypocrisy and truth,” it is “a place of
reconciliation for Belarusians,” and it has secured their “international
reputation” (belaruspartisan.org/politic/372214/).
Meanwhile, there have been three
other signs in the last 24 hours that the Belarusian protests are growing into
a revolution. First, the mass meetings
in Belarusian cities are increasingly making political demands and not just
calling for the repeal of the vagrants tax (svaboda.org/a/28333248.html and charter97.org/ru/news/2017/2/26/242125/).
The meeting in Baranovichei
yesterday, for example, called for reducing the pension age, replacing
transportation taxes, and transforming the country into a parliamentary
republic, a step that would in effect leave Lukashenka a figurehead if he were
able to remain in office at all. As one participant put it, Belarusians are no
longer prepared to tolerate the existing system.
Second, as happens in almost all
revolutionary situations, there emerge out of the crowds new leaders who may
have greater influence than any of the dissidents or opposition politicians
from the pre-revolutionary period. One such individual is a 38-year-old
kindergarten worker named Svetlana Botvich (vkurier.by/87798
and charter97.org/ru/news/2017/2/27/242155/).
Not herself subject to the vagrants
tax and never a participant in earlier demonstrations, Botvich has emerged as
what the local media call “the Joan of Arc” of these protest because of her
outspokenness and anger. In the last few days, she has said that she sees
injustice all around as a result of Lukashenka’s policies and “I do not intend
to keep quiet.”
And third, rural residents in
Belarus are beginning to withhold payment to the government for communal
services. That is a measure of their anger, and it will deprive Lukashenka of
yet more income (vitvesti.by/ekologiia/menshe-poloviny-vladeltcev-chastnykh-domov-v-selskoi-mestnosti-zakliuchili-dogovory-na-vyvoz-musora.html
and charter97.org/ru/news/2017/2/27/242149/).
No comments:
Post a Comment