ПОЛИТИКА (последнее)
POST-SOVIET POLITICAL ELITES
Политология, современная политика. Статьи, заметки, фельетоны, исследования. Книги по политологии.
Peculiarity of the activity of political elites on the post-Soviet space is seen in a clear strengthening of their role in the shaping of the society?s future. Besides typical administrative functions, such as control, co-ordination, mobilisation, stimulating, political elite accepted the responsibility for the construction of social reality. This has considerably enlarged variability of possible consequences of this construction.
On the one pole, there was a hypothetical perspective of regulating social transformations to achieve progress and to shape them in a civilised manner. On the other pole, there was an alternative of purposeful destruction of the established system without clear prospects of an escape from the deadlock of economic and political crisis.
The reality of the post-Soviet space shows that the result is the latter case. It gives grounds to argue that the political elites? efforts have failed to produce positive results, bringing about what turned to be a tragedy for their countries and peoples.
Taking into consideration the dimensions of the post-Soviet space, it would be an inexcusable mistake to underestimate negative effects of this failure, thinking that consequences of the latter would be born on at the local level only. The global nature of these consequences will be seen soon, and, probably, they have already been telling on the fate of the world community. That is why I think it is important to make an adequate assessment of the post-Soviet political elites in the context of their influence on global-local relations.
While estimating the practice of transformation of our society towards democracy, one cannot reject the evident thing: a widening gap of alienation between the civil society and its political elite has been part of this process. Today, one third of the population is negative about national political elite on the whole. People do not expect that there will be progress in their country?s development resulting from efforts by individual leaders, or political parties and public movements. The monitoring study of political situation in different regions of the former USSR proves this statement. The traditional question of to whom one connects one?s hopes for improvement in one?s position is answered in an invariable way. On average, from 32% to 38% of those polled reject all suggested answers but one: ?With no one.? It is interesting to note that under the conditions of deep political conflict between the elite in power and that in opposition both sides usually lose. The spring 1997 events in Belarus proved this conclusion. Then, the opposition that staged mass demonstrations of protest entered into conflict with the authorities. The response of those in power was toughening of the political regime and punitive sanctions like arrests and detentions of protestors. As never before, public opinion in Belarus was close to a radical split. At the same time, the response to the events in the mass consciousness made it possible to argue that the potential of public alienation from both political forces in conflict increased up to 42%.
Sociologists, political scientists and politicians pay attention to the percentage balance between ?supporters? of and ?opponents? to the official course. Mainly on the basis of this balance, they make prognosis of further developments in the political situation. But the character of the situation in our case is that the number of those who make part of neither of the groups mentioned above is swiftly growing.
The political situation in Belarus now is characterised by the existence of two dominating segments in public opinion. First are staunch supporters of the official poli-tical course. For a number of years the rating of President A. Lukashenko has been relatively high and stable-42% on average. All polling agencies that conduct polls in Belarus confirm this figure.
The second dominating segment in the public opinion-about 40%-do not support any political force in Belarus. As to the rating of the opposition, it is insignificant- about 16% on average. No opposition leader has won support of more than 3% of voters. One can expect that the opposition might have support of up to 20% of population. However, this is likely to be the case of support of an idea of opposition rather than adequate assessment of the political realities.
Thus, the political space of Belarus is divided in two major fragments: those who believe President A. Lukashenko and those who trust no one, including the incumbent president. It seems that those choosing to stay out of politics are becoming a decisive force of the society. The future political situation will depend on the decision of this force which side to take on a particular issue.
Similar tendencies, if not more conspicuous in terms of deepening alienation of masses from political elites, are seen across all the post-Soviet space. Naturally, comes the question if modern political elite is aware of evident transformations in mass consciousness towards alienation and of the possible consequences of the latter. Political analysis makes one admit these transformations. At the same time, this does not exclude one from interpreting this phenomenon from the other perspective. The nature of alienation could be interpreted as a phenomenon of natural lagging of mass consciousness behind ?advanced? consciousness of the elites in a particular society. While the elites can be more or less identified through interests and values that are common for their representatives, mass consciousness has not reached the similar level of aggregation and the interests of masses have not been clearly articulated. In fact, the tragedy of modern political elites consists in that public at large do not support their values. This explains why political parties, collective subjects of political action, are not popular. The Lukashenko phenomenon can also be explained in this context. The position of A. Lukashenko is quite clear: he simply follows appeals of the mass consciousness. These appeals can hardly be seen as reasonable, since mass consciousness, unlike that of political elites, has not been catching up with the offered opportunity to accept values and ideals of democracy.
The ontological aspects of structural and psychological alienation of public at large from political elites are stemming from the difference in their position in socio-political space. The measure of their ?remoteness? from mechanisms and processes of wealth re-distribution determines this difference. Political elites has always been close to these mechanisms and processes. However, today?s booming interests of personal enrichment, carrier growth and success have created such an imbalance with all- national interests that the latter are seemingly becoming an issue of discord rather than that of consolidation of our political elites. With this, the idea of all-national interest has not been clearly articulated yet. Now, we can state with certainty that national political elites have not stood to the test of opportunities which opened before them. To make of personal interests an absolute priority before all- national ones has actually become a natural and ?legitimate? choice.
This seems to be true for representatives of both the ruling and opposition political elites, with the latter remaining out of any power structures like in Belarus. It is not by chance that public opinion (more than 35% of those polled) believes that the opposition leaders? principal aim is just seizure of power. Only 16% agree that patriotic considerations could be reasons underpinning actions of opposition (see Fig. 1).
Fig. 1
Protracted political games, with politicians smoothly changing sides from power to opposition and the other way round, have contributed to the estrangement of ordinary citizens from the politics. For many, the formula ?to be closer to the authorities is to be well-off? has become an evident thing.
One should bear in mind that all reforms carried out on all the post-Soviet space have had a common tragic feature. The reforms were implemented with no regard to social welfare. Millions of people were placed under conditions of self-survival and adaptation to ?shock therapy? which, in our case, had been dragging on for about decade. As a result, there has been a split within the society, separating its insignificant part, which included the political elite, from the bulk of population that have experienced sharp impoverishment, lack of social protection and now have no prospects for the future.
According to sociological polls in Belarus in 1994, when A. Lukashenko came to power, about 68% of those polled found themselves below the poverty line. By 1996, this figure has dropped to 56.6%, and remains now too high. At the same time, one should take into account that now Belarus is believed to be better off than other regions of the CIS. With no ethnic conflicts, systemic non-payments, and criminals openly challenging law and the power of the authorities-on all these issues Russia?s situation, for example, must be considered more dramatic.
Unfortunately, during the years of perestroika there has been created not a single case to show to the public that the new is better off than the old. The arguments in favour of freedom and democracy, so popular at the beginning of this decade, have vanished. Mass bloodshed, or such things like ?democratic dictatorship?, ?authoritarian democracy? will never find any rational justification in the mass consciousness. The re-evaluation of values goes in hand with growing nostalgia for the Soviet Union, a ?firm hand? in government, firm discipline and order in the country. The phenomenon of A. Lukashenko is that his strategic course meets expectations of the majority of population, and not only in Belarus. The idea that his electorate consists exclusively of supporters of the socia-list regime, of those mainly of pension age, has not been proved with any convincing empirical data. In this connection we have managed to find out an interesting trend. Economic orientations on the whole do not constitute a determining factor for belonging to the electorate of the first president of Belarus. Attempts to correlate econo-mic attitudes of the working class in Belarus with the rating of A. Lukashenko have not produced a statistically valid effect (see Fig. 2).
Fig. 2
Naturally, economic orientations of mass consciousness are ambivalent and limited by people?s competence. But what makes people of diffe-rent economic and political outlook support A. Lukashenko? The answer should be sought in other than usual stereotypes of political and economic thinking. It is linked with the logic of common sense; because the position of A. Lukashenko is appealing for the majority, since he resorts to ideas of common sense and justice that are part of this majority?s mentality.
At the same time, a considerable part of population has lost belief in the reasonable basis of power and justice, and it looks like that belief has been lost for long.
Опубликовано 04 мая 2014 года
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