On August 9, 2020, thousands of people flooded the streets of Belarus to protest a rigged election. Despite a strong grassroots campaign and widespread support for the opposition candidate, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, long-term incumbent President Alexander Lukashenko claimed victory with a massive 80% of the vote.
Lukashenko has held power in Belarus for 26 years since he initially won Belarus’s first and only truly democratic election in 1994. Since then, every election has been a “landslide victory” for Lukashenko, according to the state-run election bureau, but this year was different: Belarusians have not accepted these results. Before the election, a leaked poll by the Belarusian Academy of Science indicated widespread discontent with the Lukashenko government. Indeed, non-partisan exit polling revealed that Tikhanovskaya herself garnered roughly 80% of the vote, and, anecdotally, few Belarusians actually know people outside of the security forces and the Lukashenko administration who actually voted for Lukashenko.
While Belarus is no stranger to rigged elections, the sheer magnitude of fraud in this election mobilized the populace to demand change. Other reasons catalyzed the protest as well: A new generation of Belarusians who do not know anything other than the Lukashenko government feel left behind by a stagnating economy, and Lukashenko’s abysmal response to the COVID pandemic mobilized civil society to fight it in his stead. In all, the blatant election fraud in the midst of such political and economic inadequacy finally catalyzed the long-simmering public resentment towards Lukashenko’s government.
Solidarity
After the August 9 election, Tikhanovskaya fled to Lithuania for her own safety, following many other Belarusian opposition figures. Evidence suggests she was right to do so. Since the protests began, Lukashenko’s government has vanished dozens of protestors, imprisoning them without trial or charges.
Peaceful protestors were beaten in the streets by riot police and dragged away to prison. “The degree of this violence exceeded any that the Belarusians had seen” previously, Artyom Shraibman, a Belarusian political analyst based in Minsk, told the HPR. “Thousands of people [were] detained, hundreds [were] tortured and beaten.” Belarus knew state-sanctioned violence, but nothing like this.
Across the country, stories of police officers torturing protesters have turned into mass mobilization. Footage of police brutality circulated widely throughout social media, echoing the widespread condemnation of excessive force by police that drew large protests across the United States after videos spread of the murder of George Floyd. Students walked out of class, and workers struck in protest. Almost 300 CEOs of IT companies based in Belarus threatened to leave the country unless the government ended its brutal crackdown on the protests. Even CEOs who had been loyal to the regime in the past turned on Lukashenko after the state-sponsored violence attacked the movement for free and fair elections.
Following the tide of public opinion, at least a dozen Belarusian police officers have stepped down to protest Lukashenko’s actions. They cite excessive force and unlawful arrests as reasons to no longer support the government. Although protests and support for protests are not unprecedented in itself, the size and scope of the protests, as well as the level of solidarity, are unheard of in the history of modern Belarus.
Protests have bled into late October and November with ongoing fervor after the opposition called for a general strike at major state factories, pressuring Lukashenko to step down. Belarus’ contracting economy and the threat of the pandemic are still dominant complaints among the protestors, even three months after the election. Lukashenko’s government is in a crisis of legitimacy, a crisis that is unlikely to end until he makes major concessions to the will of the Belarusian people or steps down.
A History of Protest
Anger at the Belarusian government is nothing new. After the 2005 elections — elections which civil society groups also denounced as fraudulent — protestors took to the streets. This protest movement, which became known as the Denim Revolution, culminated in a 40,000 person protest in March 2006.
However, this movement was not nearly as popular as the present protest movement, likely because of denim’s symbolism. In post-Soviet states, jeans “evoke the west,” but Belarus was, and still is, heavily dependent on Russia for support. Indeed, Belarus as a state has remained closer, politically and economically, to Russia than any other former Soviet republic, and public opinion in Belarus tends to skew pro-Russian as well. The Jeans Revolution’s pro-Western sentiments were simply not appealing to many Belarusians.
In contrast, the 2020 protests have specifically attempted to dispel the narrative that they have Western connections. The opposition leaders themselves have said as much, stating openly that they are not anti-Russia, but pro-democracy, in line with Belarusian public opinion. In an interview with the HPR, Harvard Government lecturer George Soroka commented that “it’s not as if [Belarusians] want to move to the west. They don’t.” Russia is historically, politically, economically, and culturally tied to Belarus. According to Soroka, “Russia will always be their nearest neighbor.”
Although the 2020 protest movement might echo many of the color revolutions of the early 2000s, in scope and scale, the cores of these movements are very different. The 2004 Orange Revolution and the 2013 Maidan protests in Ukraine, for example, were driven by citizens angered by the violation of democratic norms. Soroka remarked that “whatever flaws Ukrainian democracy had, and there were many, Ukraine had alternation of leaders. Belarus has had the same president since 1994.” The people of Belarus are calling for democratic institutions to begin since the country has been under authoritarian rule since its independence.
In an interview with the HPR, University of Pennsylvania professor Mitchell Orenstein likened the 2020 Belarusian movement to the 1848 revolutions, a movement known as “the Spring of Nations,” rather than the color revolutions. According to Orenstein, the color revolutions were “pretty narrow in scope,” and they “didn’t fundamentally alter the direction of these countries.” In contrast, the 2020 protest movement is a moment of Belarusian nation-building founded on democratic values.
How We Got Here
The Economy
After the fall of the Soviet Union, according to Orenstein, Lukashenko’s Belarus adhered much more closely to the Soviet model than other post-Soviet states, which transitioned more closely towards a privatized, “Wild West” capitalism economic model. This model did not produce massive growth, but it avoided the massive waves of layoffs and the oligarchic wealth concentration that Ukraine and Russia experienced. Lukashenko gained power during an uncertain time for Belarus, and he promised stability, which he delivered on.
Over the last decade, however, this model has led to economic stagnation, not growth. Although Belarusians are not overwhelmingly poor, the typical Belarusian has seen little salary increase over the last five years. Outside of Minsk, the capital city, many rural Belarusians live in underdeveloped areas. Lukashenko’s government has made poor economic decisions as well, including taxing people for being unemployed and statutorily increasing the average salary, thus devaluing the Belarusian ruble by 60%.
The past decade of economic stagnation has caught up to Lukashenko. According to Soroka, the newer generations are “frankly fed up with the leadership of a despot and are fed up with seeing their life chances circumscribed.” Lukashenko’s appeal that “he didn’t screw up too badly in the 1990’s” holds very little water with a new, cosmopolitan generation. General economic stagnation, coupled with the younger generations and a rising middle class pushing for economic growth, means the people of Belarus were ready to demand a change in the system.
COVID-19
Lukashenko’s policies regarding the coronavirus pandemic have also been particularly egregious, exacerbating economic problems in Belarus. According to the Eurasian Development Bank, the Belarusian economy is projected to contract by 2.3% this year, largely due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and may not recover for years to come.
At the beginning of the pandemic, and even now, Lukashenko’s rhetoric has explicitly minimized the consequences of COVID-19. Instead of following WHO directives by imposing lockdowns and a national testing regime, Lukashenko has suggested “killing the virus with vodka” and “working in the fields” to avoid infection. At the same time, Lukashenko criticizes lockdowns elsewhere as “frenzy and psychosis” and he has blamed the victims of COVID-19 for their own deaths, mocking people’s weight or their age and calling them “weak.”
Civil Society
In the absence of the government, Belarusians organized citizen initiatives to combat the coronavirus pandemic. Individuals chose to stay home for the health and safety of their communities and they began dozens of local-level initiatives, including crowdfunding efforts, donations, and personal protective equipment drives, to protect their country. Civil society organizations created during the growth of the internet space in Belarus have taken a front and center role during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Anti-COVID organizations, including crowdfunding and messaging platforms, were activated as the “political engine” of the country after the August 9 elections. Crowdfunding websites, like Protect Belarus, which raises money for police officers who leave the state, became hubs to provide for protestors. Networking channels, some of which were focused on COVID relief, on the popular messaging app Telegram have also become the main way that protesters facilitated the protests.
Shraibman points to another factor leading to the growth of civil society: For the last four to five years preceding the 2020 election, there were no political prisoners in Belarus. There were political arrests, but none went to criminal prosecution. Shraibman said that this political climate “created relative impunity for political activism.” The “choice to go to the street” became significantly easier than it is now.
This general atmosphere of political security has led to slow, but steady, liberalization over the past decade. Apolitical platforms for crowdfunding and connecting with others have, if not flourished, at least become a major presence in Belarus. According to Shraibman, greater than 70% of Belarusians who are online in an internet environment where “non-state oppositional media and social networks basically dominate the field.” On the internet, “there [is] no meaningful pro-state presence.”
The Rise of Women
Another reason the protest movement has been so expansive is that women have stepped up to unify the country behind a call for democracy. Lukashenko’s government imprisoned or drove out the male candidates he considered a threat to his candidacy. Tikhanovskaya’s husband was one of these candidates, and she stepped up to take his place. Lukashenko failed to anticipate the power of women. He wrote off Tikhanovskaya, calling her a “little girl” and insulting her for being a housewife and a mother.
And yet, Belarus united behind Tikhanovskaya. In many ways, she is a unique individual for Belarus. She was authentic on the campaign trail, with no scandals behind her, and she spoke to the few objectives that almost all Belarusians could agree on. Tikhanovskaya had no political goals, so, as Shraibman put it, “she managed not to alienate any groups of voters.” Being this blank slate candidate pushing against Lukashenko, and actually appearing on the ballot, made her a massively effective opposition candidate.
Women have also largely been at the forefront of the protest movement, broadening the movement where men have failed. Maria Kolesnikova, the campaign manager of an imprisoned banker who has hoped to challenge Lukashenko, and Veronika Tsepkalo, another opposition wife turned leader, have both been instrumental figures in the fight against government oppression. Lukashenko dismissed these women as “too fragile,” to hold political office or run the country. Lukashenko failed to recognize the strengths of women, so he did not address the threat they posed to his power.
A New Beginning
Although the populace has turned against Lukashenko’s rule, higher-ups in the military and security forces still support his government. It may take months, or even years, for substantive reform to come to Belarus, but there is still plenty of hope for change. In October, after months of protest, Lukashenko sat down with political prisoners to discuss constitutional reform, a sign that he may be ready to provide concessions.
According to the pro-democracy opposition, however, holding talks with imprisoned people is not enough for dialogue and substantive change, the main goal of the movement. Opposition leader Tikhanovskaya sees herself as a transitional figure to free and fair elections. She, and the others who stand by her, demand constitutional reform and Lukashenko’s resignation as president.
A stagnant economy, a mismanaged pandemic, and brutal repression have collectively led to this moment in history, a moment of transformational change and nation-building. After 26 years of dictatorship, the Belarusian people have stepped up for democracy in a massive movement led by women and supported by people of all backgrounds, ages, and classes.
Lukashenko may keep power for many more months, or even years before he eventually steps down. Although Lukashenko can maintain his position through force and repression, even the semblance of his political legitimacy is finished for the Belarusian people.
Image Credit: “20-09-21 AFET with Svetlana Tikhanovskaya-68” by EPP Group is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.
