Dignity, arbitrary rule, and emancipation in an authoritarian regime: ethnographic remarks on the uprising in Belarus

ABSTRACT

The protest movement in Belarus has been presented by some of its protagonists and analysts as a struggle for dignity, implying a contradiction between dignity and authoritarian rule. However, the author’s ethnographic work carried out between 1999 and 2013, which focused on the dachas of city dwellers on one hand and on everyday life in the kolkhozes and villages on the other, revealed examples of the attainment of dignity within the repressive system itself. Although the system is based on violence and arbitrary rule, it simultaneously generates means of establishing forms of dignity. Dachas enable the affirmation of an enhanced representation of oneself. In the collectivized countryside, certain moral qualities – endurance, resourcefulness, and self-reliance – can be manifested in daily activities and provide access to a sense of self-worth. Since 9 August 2020, these forms of dignity have been polarized into a form of defensive dignity, in which arbitrary rule and recognition are not antinomic and which is expressed as loyalty to the incumbent regime, and an offensive dignity, for which personal dignity can be complete only if the demonstrators’ demands for collective dignity are met.

RÉSUMÉ

Le mouvement de contestation en Biélorussie a été présenté par certains de ses protagonistes et de ses analystes comme un combat pour la dignité, ce qui implique une contradiction entre dignité et régime autoritaire. Or, le travail ethnographique mené par l’auteur entre 1999 et 2013 en Biélorussie, et qui portait d’une part sur les datchas des citadins et d’autre part sur la vie quotidienne dans les kolkhozes et les villages, montre des formes d’accession de la dignité au sein même du système répressif. En effet, le système, qui repose sur la violence et l’arbitraire, génère dans le même temps des supports permettant le déploiement de formes de dignité. La datcha permet l’affirmation d’une représentation valorisée de soi-même. Dans la campagne collectivisée, certaines qualités morales – l’endurance, l’ingéniosité, l’autonomie - peuvent se manifester dans les activités quotidiennes et autorisent l’accès à un sens de la valeur de soi. Depuis le 9 août 2020, ces formes de dignité se polarisent en une dignité défensive, pour laquelle arbitraire du régime et reconnaissance ne sont pas antinomiques, et qui se traduit par une loyauté envers le régime en place, et une dignité offensive, pour laquelle la dignité personnelle ne pourra être complète que si l’exigence de dignité collective portée par les manifestants est satisfaite.

KEYWORDS:

• Belarus
• dacha
• kolkhoz
• dignity
• authoritarianism

Acknowledgments

Dean Frances at the Maison de la Traduction in Bordeaux (France) translated the manuscript from French into English. The translation was made possible thanks to the support of the Centre Émile Durkheim (UMR 5116).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Zelenko, “Khronotop protestnogo plakata,” 309–22.

2. Dorman, “Crise biélorusse.”

3. Dragokhroust, “Le prix Nobel.”

4. Filipenko, “Biélorussie: ‘Nous vivons’.”

5. Smolar, “Révolte biélorusse”; Vitkine, “Biélorussie: ‘Ce qui est impressionnant’.”

6. Reznik, “From the Orange Revolution”; Aleya-Sghaier, “Tunisian Revolution.”

7. Narotzky, “Between Inequality and Injustice”; Lamont, Dignity of Working Men, 245.

8. Hervouet, Datcha blues.

9. Hervouet, Taste for Oppression.

10. Gapova, “Class, Agency, and Citizenship,” 47.

11. Twenty years ago, even if it is difficult to access precise data, a large majority of urban Belarusians owned a dacha. For example, in 2002 in the Minsk region, city dwellers cultivated 225,000 usually familial plots of land (related to a population of around two million individuals). Hervouet, Datcha blues, 22.

12. To guarantee their anonymity, all names of persons met in the fieldwork and mentioned in the article have been changed, along with the names of the villages and towns in which they reside.

13. Castel and Haroche, Propriété privée, propriété sociale, 13, 36, 48.

14. Lamont, Dignity of Working Men, 9.

15. Weber, Le travail à-côté, 199.

16. Lamont, Dignity of Working Men, 4.

17. Weber, Le travail à-côté, 216.

18. Ledeneva, Russia’s Economy of Favours, 1.

19. Ibid., 56, 162, 58.

20. Engels, Housing Question.

21. Isaac, Fritsch, and Battegay, Disciplines à domicile.

22. Levkov, “Oda dache.”

23. Statement by Lukashenka quoted in Nasha svoboda, 10 April 2001.

24. Lapatniova, Biélorussie, 60.

25. Weber, Manuel de l’ethnographe, 246, 245, 237.

26. Lüdtke, “La domination au quotidien”; Weber, Manuel de l’ethnographe, 223.

27. Dubet, Injustice at Work, 5.

28. Ibid., 7.

29. Allina-Pisano, Post-Soviet Potemkin Village, 189.

30. Dubet, Injustice at Work, 8.

31. Ibid., 11.

32. Lamont, Dignity of Working Men, 9.

33. Ibid., 6.

34. Ousmanova, “Pouvoir, sexualité et politique.”

35. Shevchenko, Crisis and the Everyday, 81, 108.

36. Bourdieu, Practical Reason, 98.

37. Galtz, “Space and the Everyday.”

38. Clément, Les ouvriers russes, 181–83.

39. Hirschman, Exit, Voice, and Loyalty.

40. Astapenia, “Belarusians’ Views.”

41. Tallès, “Biélorussie: La timide mobilisation.”

42. Nowak, “Loukachenko a remis.”

43. Shukan, “Pour la Biélorussie.”

44. Rosanvallon, La société des égaux, 82.

45. Clément, “Mobilisations sociales à Astrakhan,” 127.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ronan Hervouet

Ronan Hervouet is a professor of sociology at the Université de Bordeaux and a member of the Centre Émile Durkheim. He has published two books on Belarus: Datcha blues: Existences ordinaires et dictature en Biélorussie (Belin, 2009) and A Taste for Oppression: A Political Ethnography of Everyday Life in Belarus (Berghahn Books, 2021).