АНГЛИЙСКИЙ ЯЗЫК (ENGLISH) (последнее)
EVOLUTION OF THE BELARUSIAN POLITICAL ELITE
Актуальные публикации по английскому языку. История Великобритании и других англоязычных стран. Публикации, книги, статьи, заметки на английском языке.
Political processes in Belarus are determined by the logic of internal development that have been at work since the Soviet era.
There are many definitions of the terms ?politics? and ?political elite?. The simplest one is the following: politics means struggle for power or realisation of power. Accordingly, political elite is a group of people that gain or use power professionally in a particular society in the given time. Primarily, those working for the Soviet state and party administration represented political elite of the post-war Belarus, then called the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic.
Until the early 1990s, political struggle in Belarus was expressed mainly through conflict of interest between various groups within the Soviet state and party apparatus. As political scientists now say, opposition was basically intra-system, or, in other words, existed within the establishment. In Belarus, after the disintegration of the former Soviet Union, no new politicians from outside of the Soviet administration or party apparatus have come to power.
In 1988-94, when the opposition from outside of the establishment was getting strength (in Belarus they flocked around the Belarusian National Front and associated organisations), ?decommunisation? and ?deKGBsation? of the state apparatus, similar to that in some states of the former Eastern bloc and ex-Soviet republics, was not conducted. After A. Lukashenko come to power in summer 1994, the former nomenklatura system to select and promote civil servants and administrators has been restored in Belarus. Moreover, this delicate work is managed by people who successfully climbed ?political ladder? in the Soviet times-like Mr M. Myasnikovich, who went through all party positions up to the Secretary of the Minsk Committee of the Communist Party of Belarus, and now is the Head of the Executive Office of the President of Belarus, or Mr V. Rusakevich, now Vice-Premier in the Belarusian Government. In other words, the Soviet state apparatus, after some internal transformation, is still in power in Belarus.
To understand its current evolution one has to see the Belarusian leadership in the context of those processes that were unfolding in Belarus back in the Soviet era. Is it possible to single out the internal structure of political elite of the post-war Belarus and stages of its development?
The Most Successful Operation of the Belarusian Partisans
World War II was the time of formation of the new Belarusian political elite. In Western Belarus, almost all local politicians of different orientations died or left their homeland during this war, repressions by the Soviet law enforcement bodies, and mass outflow of the Catholic population to the post-war Poland.1 Were lost nearly the whole political elite from Eastern Belarus and those social groups that served as a traditional source of reinforcements to the ruling administration in between the wars. Almost all Belarusian Jews, Russians and Poles who lived in towns, Polish intelligentsia either died or left Belarus and did not return from the places where they took refuge 2.
Naturally, the administration in Belarus was manned primarily with the former Soviet guerrillas, commonly called partisans in the Soviet Union, and bureaucrats sent by Moscow, who were not directly connected with the partisan movement. There existed contradictions between these two groups, something that was usual for all the Soviet republics.
During the war, Soviet partisans were active mostly in Eastern Belarus. The new ruling class in Soviet Belarus was not just partisan by origin of the majority of its members, but also predominantly East Belarusian. To Western Belarus, the new political elite of the Soviet Belarus was supposed to be a ?coloniser?. For West Belarusians, it had been difficult to get promotions until late 1960s, when the inertia of the post-war practices of suppression of the armed anti-Soviet underground died away.
Among Soviet partisans that joined new government?s administrations two major groups-from Vitebsk and Mogilev-Homel regions-could be singled out, although there were other, less influential groups. This division was obviously caused by the ways operations were conducted in these areas shortly before the liberation of Belarus from the Nazis. In the early 1944, main partisan groups operating in the north-eastern part of Belarus-the then biggest partisan forces in Belarus-concentrated, on Stalin?s orders, in a single formation. After Germans had thrown several front divisions against partisans, the Soviet Army did not come to help guerrillas. As a result, most of the partisan units were destroyed. Pyotr Masherov fought in one of those partisan units.
At the same time, partisan brigades from Mogilev and Homel regions were re-deployed to Western Belarus and escaped crushing defeat. Those who served in these brigades constituted the backbone of the local administrations in Western Belarus in the first post-war years. On the whole, those partisans that fought in Dnieper regions were the biggest group among ex-partisans in the ruling class in Belarus.
The status of people who once lived in the temporarily occupied territories made them politically untrustworthy. Regular trials of those who had collaborated with the German occupation authorities, which had repercussions all over Belarus in the post-war years, were politically motivated. At any time, almost any former partisan and later Communist party leader or administrator could have been accused of collaboration with the Nazis and put on trial. The case of the Minsk underground fighters has been the most vivid example of this scheme. Every new Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Belarus would set up a commission to investigate the causes of the seizure of this underground group by Nazis. The last such commission was established in 1990.
On the other hand, the post-war Belarus lay in ruins. Practically lost were urban population, so were the industrial potential, which was quite low even before the war. Restoration of the country required consolidated efforts in order to ?knock out? funds or-as we say now-investments for the Soviet Belarus from the central authorities.
Post-war politicians managed to fulfil these tasks brilliantly. By the late 1970s, the industrial growth in Belarus had made it possible to talk on a very high level of industrialisation: exports from Belarus amounted to 80% of all goods manufactured in Belarus. This is a record level for the countries of Eastern bloc and ex-Soviet republics. Moreover, almost all exported products were produced in the processing industry. The industrialisation begun in Belarus in the second half of the 1940s, with the assembling of some industrial facilities taken from Germany as reparations.
After J. Stalin?s death in 1953, a kind of internal revolution took place in Belarus. The influence of cadres sent from Moscow fell dramatically, and the authority of ex-partisans rose sharply. Within the ?partisan? group dominated people known here as members of the ?Vitebsk clan?. The all-mighty Tsanava, the then head of the NKVD branch in Belarus, the man who made ex-partisans tremble, was executed. In an unprecedented move the Belarusian Communist Party?s Central Committee managed to uphold, against the pressures from Moscow, its leader Ponomarenko, former Chief of Staff of the Partisan Movement and the then First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Belarus. P. Mazurov and P. Masherov firmly had held power for several years. In this regard, people would joke in Minsk that the most successful operation of the Belarusian partisans was their post-war ?seizure? of the House of Government in Minsk. Belarusians born in Western Belarus got an opportunity for promotions in the industrial structures.
The system of higher and secondary education grew very rapidly during the ruling of Mazurov and Masherov in the then Soviet Belarus. The pace of growth of the system of education was so remarkable that in the 1960s demand for qualified working force, engineers and technical personnel in Belarus was satisfied with people trained locally, in Belarus (see Table 1).
The inflow of Russians and Ukrainians to Belarus slowed down notably. As a result, by the general census of the population of Belarus in 1989, this country was third in the share of its main ethnic group, following Armenia and Lithuania. Ethnic Belarusians made up 78% of the population of Belarus. Accordingly, conflict of interests between Belarusians and people sent by Moscow within the political elite turned to be of secondary importance, especially against the background of frictions between various groups of Belarusians, and, first of all, between industrial managers and party bureaucrats.
Ex-Partisans Give Place to Industrialists
In the 1950-80s, the socio-economic structure of the Belarusian society changed. The Soviet Belarus became an industrial country. Within the ruling elite the importance of industrialists-industrial managers and administrators from other branches that were providing support to the large-scale industrial production-grew considerably.
The principles, on which new generation of industrial managers was formed, were different from those on which the apparatus was formed in the first post-war years. In industry, promotions resulted not as much from old partisan connections, but from individual?s managerial qualifications. In particular, it was the system of higher technical education through which the generation of managers from Western Belarus grew rapidly.
As the industrialisation went on in the country, old antagonisms between West and East Belarusians were fading away. Within the industrial sector differences between representatives of various Belarusian regions and other Soviet republics decreased. On the other hand, tensions emerged in relations between managing offices of enterprises subordinated directly to Moscow and those of local and regional subordination. With few big enterprises, local administrations would definitely dominate on their territory. With the big industrial sector coming up, local leaders had to take into account opinions and interests of managing offices of big enterprises, especially if a big facility was a major job creation centre.
By the early 1980s, another significant shift within the ruling elite has occurred. Then, the share of people born in Western Belarus reached about a half of the whole po-pulation of Belarus. If nothing extraordinary happens, the share of West Belarusians will continue to grow in the near 10-15 years and will stabilise at the level of 60-65%. By 2010, the share of East Belarusians is likely to drop to 25- 30% of the population. Demographic resources of Eastern Belarus got exhausted in the course of industria-lisation. Depopulation in the east of Belarus started about 15 years earlier than in its western part. 3
Changes in the cultural groups of Belarusians and transformation of industrialists into the leading part of the Belarusian ruling class coincided with natural retirement of the war-winning generation in the 1970-80s. Those who in 1945 were 25, became pensioners aged 65 in 1985.
Perestroika, initiated by Moscow, shielded with its slogans a radical transformation of the whole political structure of Belarusian society. This transformation started because of the Belarus?s domestic reasons. The 1989 decision to re-subordinate enterprises managed from Moscow to the Belarusian government can be regarded as, perhaps, an internal revolution. Since that time the Communist Party and its members within the system of the Belarusian political relations were doomed. In fact, power quickly went to the hands of industrialists. This was clearly seen during Vyacheslav Kebich?s prime- ministership.
Regions In a Clenched Fist
The regional political elites played a special, although shadowed-if compared with industrialists and party bureaucrats,-role in Belarus. Its six regions are roughly equal in population, though they differ in terms of internal socio-economic structure. Starting from the late 1950s, the interests of industrialists had been dominant in the eastern regions, whereas in Western Belarus the interests of highly industrialised agriculture had been prevailing. By late 1970s, managers of huge livestock farms, heads of big kolkhozes (collective farms), heads of organisations that constructed agricultural facilities and water drainage systems had effectively taken power away from local administrations and especially local party bosses. This was precisely the reason for the phenomenon of the political rise of E. Sokolov.
As for its socio-economic structure, in the late 1970s-early 1980s, the Soviet Belarus technologically was an integral pyramid, with every region having its own dynamic technological niche. Belarusian socio-economic monolith had brought about a corresponding monolithic organisation of the political elite. The regional elites were, first of all, mixture of various types of the industrial elites, for whom interests of the regions themselves were secondary to interests of the dominating industrial branches in these regions. While the socio-economic structure of Belarus was providing for a rapid economic growth, interests of all major regional elites were satisfied and harmonised.
Moreover, the flywheel of industrial development led to the absorption by West Belarusians of regional elites in the western regions. On the whole, under the pressure of the ?western wave?, the old ?Westerners - Easterners? antagonism had also lost its actuality in the regions by the early 1980s.
Five Belarusian regions make up five balanced national industrial complexes, each with its own specialisation. Only Grodno region has never been balanced in terms of its internal economy. The configuration of its administrative borders does not allow to create an integral econo-mic complex. The degree of industrialisation of its agriculture is lower than that of Brest region because of the substantially smaller scale of drainage works on the marshy lands. Perhaps, this imbalance is the reason why only within Grodno region tensions in relations between local ?politicians? have been so conspicuous. It is in Grodno that the Chairman of the Regional Executive Committee Artsimenya was assassinated in 1993. In other regions, internal conflict of interests has never gone so far.
Because of the Belarus?s internal socio-economic unity, inter-regional conflict of interests during all post-war years was not about more autonomy of the regions from the republican central authorities, but about the influence of a particular region on the central authorities and the system as a whole. Belarus is a sort of clenched fist, where all different industrial branches elites in regions have their well-defined roles, which, in general, satisfy their ambitions. This is not like, for example, in Ukraine, which even in the Soviet times was a republic reminding one of an ?open palm?, with its regions trying to isolate themselves from each other. As long as big industry was working in Belarus, the weight and importance of industrialists and the interests of big industrial production did not allow for a serious advance of interests of the other social groups and non-industrial groupings in the ruling class.
Consequences of De-Industrialisation
If we talk about the 1990s, we should note one important factor: the downfall of industrial production in Belarus. Though not so dramatic as in the other ex-Soviet republics (except for Uzbekistan), this downfall has thrown back the political structure of the society. The influence of some professional groups within the ruling class, especially of those working for stability in the society through ideology and direct violence-police and security forces, all sorts of ?ideologists?, or whatever they are called now,-has grown again. The significance of industrialists, who failed to manage the country and cope with the crisis when Vyacheslav Kebich was in power, went down dramatically. The political influence of non-industrial social groups and the related political forces has grown. During the confrontation between opposition and the President of Belarus, the former had certain public support in the least industrialised regions of the country, primarily in Grodno region. The Agrarian Party, as a matter of fact, relied on the support of people from this particular region.
In this regard, the concentration of power that is presently taking place in Belarus is a logical and predictable reaction of the Belarusian political elite as a system to the downfall of industrial production. Now, in the political system of Belarus, which set back to the level of the 1960s, the President?s vertikal?, the rigid administrative system for exercising power from top to the bottom of the state, plays the same role as ?ex-partisans? connections. Instead of the ?common partisan past?, what matters now is personal loyalty to the President and his ideology. The vertikal? is a sort of equivalent to the Communist Party of Belarus. Along the same lines, in the current structure of power we can clearly see the continuity of the Soviet practices: the level of representation of West Belarusians grows rapidly; the importance of people sent from Moscow and the influence of Moscow goes down; interregional conflict of interests is contained by the centre; there is no heavy domination of any regional ?clan? over the others at the level of the centre. The de-industrialisation of the 1990s has regenerated in Belarus the political structure of the 1960s.
Possible industrial recession in the foreseeable future is likely to stimulate consolidation of the elite in a single ?fist?, with more influential than now police, security and ideology apparatus. The collapse of the structure of power, something that many opposition leaders expect, will not be the result of any such recession.
1. Belarusy: etnageagrafiya, demagrafiya, diyaspara, kanfesii, Labaratoriya etnichnai i kanfesiynai geagrafii nasel?nitstva Belaruskaga Dzyarzhaunaga Universiteta, Minsk, 1996.
2. Belarus u Vyalikai Aichynnai Vaine, 1941-1945, Minsk, 1990.
3. J. Shevtsov. Iz lesov, bolot i zemlyanok. Delo, No. 7, 1996, pp. 8-24.
There are many definitions of the terms ?politics? and ?political elite?. The simplest one is the following: politics means struggle for power or realisation of power. Accordingly, political elite is a group of people that gain or use power professionally in a particular society in the given time. Primarily, those working for the Soviet state and party administration represented political elite of the post-war Belarus, then called the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic.
Until the early 1990s, political struggle in Belarus was expressed mainly through conflict of interest between various groups within the Soviet state and party apparatus. As political scientists now say, opposition was basically intra-system, or, in other words, existed within the establishment. In Belarus, after the disintegration of the former Soviet Union, no new politicians from outside of the Soviet administration or party apparatus have come to power.
In 1988-94, when the opposition from outside of the establishment was getting strength (in Belarus they flocked around the Belarusian National Front and associated organisations), ?decommunisation? and ?deKGBsation? of the state apparatus, similar to that in some states of the former Eastern bloc and ex-Soviet republics, was not conducted. After A. Lukashenko come to power in summer 1994, the former nomenklatura system to select and promote civil servants and administrators has been restored in Belarus. Moreover, this delicate work is managed by people who successfully climbed ?political ladder? in the Soviet times-like Mr M. Myasnikovich, who went through all party positions up to the Secretary of the Minsk Committee of the Communist Party of Belarus, and now is the Head of the Executive Office of the President of Belarus, or Mr V. Rusakevich, now Vice-Premier in the Belarusian Government. In other words, the Soviet state apparatus, after some internal transformation, is still in power in Belarus.
To understand its current evolution one has to see the Belarusian leadership in the context of those processes that were unfolding in Belarus back in the Soviet era. Is it possible to single out the internal structure of political elite of the post-war Belarus and stages of its development?
The Most Successful Operation of the Belarusian Partisans
World War II was the time of formation of the new Belarusian political elite. In Western Belarus, almost all local politicians of different orientations died or left their homeland during this war, repressions by the Soviet law enforcement bodies, and mass outflow of the Catholic population to the post-war Poland.1 Were lost nearly the whole political elite from Eastern Belarus and those social groups that served as a traditional source of reinforcements to the ruling administration in between the wars. Almost all Belarusian Jews, Russians and Poles who lived in towns, Polish intelligentsia either died or left Belarus and did not return from the places where they took refuge 2.
Naturally, the administration in Belarus was manned primarily with the former Soviet guerrillas, commonly called partisans in the Soviet Union, and bureaucrats sent by Moscow, who were not directly connected with the partisan movement. There existed contradictions between these two groups, something that was usual for all the Soviet republics.
During the war, Soviet partisans were active mostly in Eastern Belarus. The new ruling class in Soviet Belarus was not just partisan by origin of the majority of its members, but also predominantly East Belarusian. To Western Belarus, the new political elite of the Soviet Belarus was supposed to be a ?coloniser?. For West Belarusians, it had been difficult to get promotions until late 1960s, when the inertia of the post-war practices of suppression of the armed anti-Soviet underground died away.
Among Soviet partisans that joined new government?s administrations two major groups-from Vitebsk and Mogilev-Homel regions-could be singled out, although there were other, less influential groups. This division was obviously caused by the ways operations were conducted in these areas shortly before the liberation of Belarus from the Nazis. In the early 1944, main partisan groups operating in the north-eastern part of Belarus-the then biggest partisan forces in Belarus-concentrated, on Stalin?s orders, in a single formation. After Germans had thrown several front divisions against partisans, the Soviet Army did not come to help guerrillas. As a result, most of the partisan units were destroyed. Pyotr Masherov fought in one of those partisan units.
At the same time, partisan brigades from Mogilev and Homel regions were re-deployed to Western Belarus and escaped crushing defeat. Those who served in these brigades constituted the backbone of the local administrations in Western Belarus in the first post-war years. On the whole, those partisans that fought in Dnieper regions were the biggest group among ex-partisans in the ruling class in Belarus.
The status of people who once lived in the temporarily occupied territories made them politically untrustworthy. Regular trials of those who had collaborated with the German occupation authorities, which had repercussions all over Belarus in the post-war years, were politically motivated. At any time, almost any former partisan and later Communist party leader or administrator could have been accused of collaboration with the Nazis and put on trial. The case of the Minsk underground fighters has been the most vivid example of this scheme. Every new Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Belarus would set up a commission to investigate the causes of the seizure of this underground group by Nazis. The last such commission was established in 1990.
On the other hand, the post-war Belarus lay in ruins. Practically lost were urban population, so were the industrial potential, which was quite low even before the war. Restoration of the country required consolidated efforts in order to ?knock out? funds or-as we say now-investments for the Soviet Belarus from the central authorities.
Post-war politicians managed to fulfil these tasks brilliantly. By the late 1970s, the industrial growth in Belarus had made it possible to talk on a very high level of industrialisation: exports from Belarus amounted to 80% of all goods manufactured in Belarus. This is a record level for the countries of Eastern bloc and ex-Soviet republics. Moreover, almost all exported products were produced in the processing industry. The industrialisation begun in Belarus in the second half of the 1940s, with the assembling of some industrial facilities taken from Germany as reparations.
After J. Stalin?s death in 1953, a kind of internal revolution took place in Belarus. The influence of cadres sent from Moscow fell dramatically, and the authority of ex-partisans rose sharply. Within the ?partisan? group dominated people known here as members of the ?Vitebsk clan?. The all-mighty Tsanava, the then head of the NKVD branch in Belarus, the man who made ex-partisans tremble, was executed. In an unprecedented move the Belarusian Communist Party?s Central Committee managed to uphold, against the pressures from Moscow, its leader Ponomarenko, former Chief of Staff of the Partisan Movement and the then First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Belarus. P. Mazurov and P. Masherov firmly had held power for several years. In this regard, people would joke in Minsk that the most successful operation of the Belarusian partisans was their post-war ?seizure? of the House of Government in Minsk. Belarusians born in Western Belarus got an opportunity for promotions in the industrial structures.
The system of higher and secondary education grew very rapidly during the ruling of Mazurov and Masherov in the then Soviet Belarus. The pace of growth of the system of education was so remarkable that in the 1960s demand for qualified working force, engineers and technical personnel in Belarus was satisfied with people trained locally, in Belarus (see Table 1).
The inflow of Russians and Ukrainians to Belarus slowed down notably. As a result, by the general census of the population of Belarus in 1989, this country was third in the share of its main ethnic group, following Armenia and Lithuania. Ethnic Belarusians made up 78% of the population of Belarus. Accordingly, conflict of interests between Belarusians and people sent by Moscow within the political elite turned to be of secondary importance, especially against the background of frictions between various groups of Belarusians, and, first of all, between industrial managers and party bureaucrats.
Ex-Partisans Give Place to Industrialists
In the 1950-80s, the socio-economic structure of the Belarusian society changed. The Soviet Belarus became an industrial country. Within the ruling elite the importance of industrialists-industrial managers and administrators from other branches that were providing support to the large-scale industrial production-grew considerably.
The principles, on which new generation of industrial managers was formed, were different from those on which the apparatus was formed in the first post-war years. In industry, promotions resulted not as much from old partisan connections, but from individual?s managerial qualifications. In particular, it was the system of higher technical education through which the generation of managers from Western Belarus grew rapidly.
As the industrialisation went on in the country, old antagonisms between West and East Belarusians were fading away. Within the industrial sector differences between representatives of various Belarusian regions and other Soviet republics decreased. On the other hand, tensions emerged in relations between managing offices of enterprises subordinated directly to Moscow and those of local and regional subordination. With few big enterprises, local administrations would definitely dominate on their territory. With the big industrial sector coming up, local leaders had to take into account opinions and interests of managing offices of big enterprises, especially if a big facility was a major job creation centre.
By the early 1980s, another significant shift within the ruling elite has occurred. Then, the share of people born in Western Belarus reached about a half of the whole po-pulation of Belarus. If nothing extraordinary happens, the share of West Belarusians will continue to grow in the near 10-15 years and will stabilise at the level of 60-65%. By 2010, the share of East Belarusians is likely to drop to 25- 30% of the population. Demographic resources of Eastern Belarus got exhausted in the course of industria-lisation. Depopulation in the east of Belarus started about 15 years earlier than in its western part. 3
Changes in the cultural groups of Belarusians and transformation of industrialists into the leading part of the Belarusian ruling class coincided with natural retirement of the war-winning generation in the 1970-80s. Those who in 1945 were 25, became pensioners aged 65 in 1985.
Perestroika, initiated by Moscow, shielded with its slogans a radical transformation of the whole political structure of Belarusian society. This transformation started because of the Belarus?s domestic reasons. The 1989 decision to re-subordinate enterprises managed from Moscow to the Belarusian government can be regarded as, perhaps, an internal revolution. Since that time the Communist Party and its members within the system of the Belarusian political relations were doomed. In fact, power quickly went to the hands of industrialists. This was clearly seen during Vyacheslav Kebich?s prime- ministership.
Regions In a Clenched Fist
The regional political elites played a special, although shadowed-if compared with industrialists and party bureaucrats,-role in Belarus. Its six regions are roughly equal in population, though they differ in terms of internal socio-economic structure. Starting from the late 1950s, the interests of industrialists had been dominant in the eastern regions, whereas in Western Belarus the interests of highly industrialised agriculture had been prevailing. By late 1970s, managers of huge livestock farms, heads of big kolkhozes (collective farms), heads of organisations that constructed agricultural facilities and water drainage systems had effectively taken power away from local administrations and especially local party bosses. This was precisely the reason for the phenomenon of the political rise of E. Sokolov.
As for its socio-economic structure, in the late 1970s-early 1980s, the Soviet Belarus technologically was an integral pyramid, with every region having its own dynamic technological niche. Belarusian socio-economic monolith had brought about a corresponding monolithic organisation of the political elite. The regional elites were, first of all, mixture of various types of the industrial elites, for whom interests of the regions themselves were secondary to interests of the dominating industrial branches in these regions. While the socio-economic structure of Belarus was providing for a rapid economic growth, interests of all major regional elites were satisfied and harmonised.
Moreover, the flywheel of industrial development led to the absorption by West Belarusians of regional elites in the western regions. On the whole, under the pressure of the ?western wave?, the old ?Westerners - Easterners? antagonism had also lost its actuality in the regions by the early 1980s.
Five Belarusian regions make up five balanced national industrial complexes, each with its own specialisation. Only Grodno region has never been balanced in terms of its internal economy. The configuration of its administrative borders does not allow to create an integral econo-mic complex. The degree of industrialisation of its agriculture is lower than that of Brest region because of the substantially smaller scale of drainage works on the marshy lands. Perhaps, this imbalance is the reason why only within Grodno region tensions in relations between local ?politicians? have been so conspicuous. It is in Grodno that the Chairman of the Regional Executive Committee Artsimenya was assassinated in 1993. In other regions, internal conflict of interests has never gone so far.
Because of the Belarus?s internal socio-economic unity, inter-regional conflict of interests during all post-war years was not about more autonomy of the regions from the republican central authorities, but about the influence of a particular region on the central authorities and the system as a whole. Belarus is a sort of clenched fist, where all different industrial branches elites in regions have their well-defined roles, which, in general, satisfy their ambitions. This is not like, for example, in Ukraine, which even in the Soviet times was a republic reminding one of an ?open palm?, with its regions trying to isolate themselves from each other. As long as big industry was working in Belarus, the weight and importance of industrialists and the interests of big industrial production did not allow for a serious advance of interests of the other social groups and non-industrial groupings in the ruling class.
Consequences of De-Industrialisation
If we talk about the 1990s, we should note one important factor: the downfall of industrial production in Belarus. Though not so dramatic as in the other ex-Soviet republics (except for Uzbekistan), this downfall has thrown back the political structure of the society. The influence of some professional groups within the ruling class, especially of those working for stability in the society through ideology and direct violence-police and security forces, all sorts of ?ideologists?, or whatever they are called now,-has grown again. The significance of industrialists, who failed to manage the country and cope with the crisis when Vyacheslav Kebich was in power, went down dramatically. The political influence of non-industrial social groups and the related political forces has grown. During the confrontation between opposition and the President of Belarus, the former had certain public support in the least industrialised regions of the country, primarily in Grodno region. The Agrarian Party, as a matter of fact, relied on the support of people from this particular region.
In this regard, the concentration of power that is presently taking place in Belarus is a logical and predictable reaction of the Belarusian political elite as a system to the downfall of industrial production. Now, in the political system of Belarus, which set back to the level of the 1960s, the President?s vertikal?, the rigid administrative system for exercising power from top to the bottom of the state, plays the same role as ?ex-partisans? connections. Instead of the ?common partisan past?, what matters now is personal loyalty to the President and his ideology. The vertikal? is a sort of equivalent to the Communist Party of Belarus. Along the same lines, in the current structure of power we can clearly see the continuity of the Soviet practices: the level of representation of West Belarusians grows rapidly; the importance of people sent from Moscow and the influence of Moscow goes down; interregional conflict of interests is contained by the centre; there is no heavy domination of any regional ?clan? over the others at the level of the centre. The de-industrialisation of the 1990s has regenerated in Belarus the political structure of the 1960s.
Possible industrial recession in the foreseeable future is likely to stimulate consolidation of the elite in a single ?fist?, with more influential than now police, security and ideology apparatus. The collapse of the structure of power, something that many opposition leaders expect, will not be the result of any such recession.
1. Belarusy: etnageagrafiya, demagrafiya, diyaspara, kanfesii, Labaratoriya etnichnai i kanfesiynai geagrafii nasel?nitstva Belaruskaga Dzyarzhaunaga Universiteta, Minsk, 1996.
2. Belarus u Vyalikai Aichynnai Vaine, 1941-1945, Minsk, 1990.
3. J. Shevtsov. Iz lesov, bolot i zemlyanok. Delo, No. 7, 1996, pp. 8-24.
Опубликовано 14 мая 2014 года
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