For decades, external observers have dismissed Belarus as a country with a weak or contested national identity and an underdeveloped civil society. Academic articles about the country often remark on how little it has changed since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Belarus was the domino few expected to fall when a series of color revolutions swept the region in the 2000s. When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014, some analysts even took heart in Belarus’s predictable lack of change.

The current moment is different. People from all walks of life have come together to demand free and fair elections – having truly experienced this only once, when Alyaksandr Lukashenka was first elected in 1994. More than a week after the election, nonviolent protests continue across Belarus. They include all cross-sections of society, including the smallest towns and villages, and have spread to state-owned industries. The use of disproportionate violence by the regime – two protesters have died and at least 7,000 were detained and brutally beaten in custody – has backfired, bringing more people into the streets. A few policemen, soldiers, and a diplomat have already switched sides, all highly symbolic actions. Despite provocations and brutal crackdowns, protesters have remained peaceful and orderly, thanks in part to coordination on Telegram, a messaging app.

The groundswell of activism was already visible months before the August 9 election. It was made possible by the maturing of Belarusian civil society – which is tech-savvy, highly educated, and increasingly well-travelled. Between 2010 and 2018, the share of individuals using the Internet increased from 32% to 79%. The country has experienced a rapid growth of its IT sector, partially an inadvertent outcome of Soviet legacies interacting with globalization. The explosion of the IT sector in Belarus, and the social forces that it unleashed, have emboldened a society tired of Lukashenka’s governance style.

The dress rehearsal for what we see today was the mobilization to deal with COVID-19. The regime’s incompetence in addressing the pandemic mobilized citizens and businesses, who organized crowdfunding campaigns, made informational videos about the virus, and took their own protective measures. This activism became political as hundreds lined up to add their signatures to one of several alternative presidential candidates. A record number of electoral committees (55) applied for registration (the previous record was 27, twenty years ago). A home-grown initiative, Honest People, emerged to guard against falsification: it urged voters to photograph their ballots and report electoral irregularities on an online platform appropriately named “Golos,” which means voice. With state media broadcasting propaganda, Belarusians have also created their own blogs and channels, including A Country for Life on YouTube, by would-be candidate Sergei Tikhanovsky, with 294,000 subscribers. NEXTA, a channel on the Telegram app which helps coordinate the protests and broadcasts key developments, now has over 2 million subscribers.

One of the strategies of the Lukashenka regime following the August 9th election has been to portray the country as divided and with the potential to be torn apart. However, Belarusians remain united. To begin with, differences in identity and geopolitical preferences between east and west Belarus were historically small. During his five terms in office, Lukashenka opposed an ethno-nationalist model and contributed to the Russification of the population, which has further reduced differences between east and west. Most Belarusians across the country speak Russian, even as they see themselves as a separate nation and support Belarusian sovereignty. The majority (82%) are Russian Orthodox, and although Catholics are more dominant in the west, religion is not a significant cleavage in Belarusian society. Most are also satisfied with the current format of the Belarus-Russia relationship: according to a Belarusian Analytics Workshop (BAW) survey (N=1077) in February 2020, 76% of Belarusians support open borders with Russia and only 5% favor reinstating visas and customs.

In the past, the opposition’s anti-Russian discourse alienated many Belarusians. This time, the main opposition candidates have not campaigned on anti-Russian platforms, nor even campaigned in Belarusian. They are not pro-Russian, but simply pragmatic about identity issues. One example is Viktar Babaryka, who was refused registration and jailed on trumped up corruption charges in June. Many Belarusians first learned about Babaryka because of his support for Belarusian culture: he sponsored many art and cultural activities and brought the original copy of Francysk Skaryna’s Bible (printed in 1517) to Belarus, as well as paintings by Marc Chagall, Leon Bakst, and Chaim Soutine. At the same time, Babaryka headed Belgazprombank, one of the largest banks in Belarus, which is actually owned by Russia’s Gazprombank.

They were many opposition candidates who sought office, but Lukashenka attempted to fix the election by refusing to register them and arresting two of the three most prominent challengers. He miscalculated, inadvertently uniting opposition under the leadership of Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, who registered to run as a stand-in for her jailed husband. Tikhanovskaya’s campaign mobilized previously apolitical segments of the population around the promise of change. Anti-Russian rhetoric was absent from her speeches, and she promised to hold a new, free and fair election. Everyone who has been disillusioned with Lukashenka – and after 26 years there are many – could get behind this promise. Before the authorities shut down the Internet on election day, 1.2 million out of 6.8 million eligible voters had registered their votes with Golos. Of these, about 95 percent voted for Tikhanovskaya, according to preliminary results. This an impressive endorsement, even if we assume that Golos was used predominantly by supporters of the opposition.

Analysts have expressed fear that Putin’s Russia may take advantage of Lukashenka’s moment of weakness in order to reassert its control over Belarus. It seems that Lukashenka himself hopes for Russia’s intervention: to discourage protesters, he recently announced that Moscow had promised help in case of a coup, though statements from Moscow on this were much more careful. Lukashenka had previously arrested alleged Russian Wagner operatives, hoping to stoke fears of Russia’s subversive activities in Belarus, inadvertently angering Russia. In June, he cast a stone at Gazprom, when he charged Babaryka with organizing a criminal conspiracy to withdraw millions of dollars from Belarus at Gazprom’s bidding.

It is important to remember that an intervention on behalf of a widely discredited leader would be very costly for Moscow: the scale of the protests is immense, but their mood is not in the least bit nationalistic or anti-Russian. The key opposition candidates ran on platforms acceptable to Putin. In the past, Belarusians have showed their readiness to resist Russia’s plans to build a military base in Belarus. This time, Moscow’s intervention would almost certainly backfire and not only change the mood in Belarus, but also trigger international sanctions and cost a lot of money. Losing Lukashenka is a smaller problem in comparison, particularly because he has not always been easy to deal with. To be sure, the success of a protest movement in unseating the incumbent could set a dangerous precedent. The Belarusian example may prove inspiring to Russians next door. Still, Moscow may decide to sit this one out.

Whatever transpires, Belarus’s political system will not look the same when the dust settles. In his 26th year in office, President Lukashenka has been fully discredited and is unlikely to be able to continue to rule as usual. The organizational skills developed during this period, as well as a firm belief that change is possible, will also stay with Belarusians. Now is the time for solidarity with Belarusians, who want to live in a more democratic country and are risking their lives for it.

– Volha Charnysh and Harris Mylonas

– Photo by Artem Podrez from Pexels.com