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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