Authoritarian populism in rural Belarus: distinction, commonalities, and projected finale

ABSTRACT

The paper inspects how agrarian debates apply to rural Belarus. Following the ‘persistence versus disappearance’ debate, it finds the moral economy alongside request for change. Pursuing the ‘adaptation versus resistance’ debate, it spots adaptability and exclusion of those failing to adapt. Here ‘lukascism’ surfaces resting on constructing the ‘other’. A rare case of agrarian populism employed by top authority, lukascism is otherwise humdrum. Proclaiming some principles of the moral economy while disregarding others, inconsistent lukascism undercuts the ‘coexistence scenario’ of households with large-scale farming. Change avoidance is a commonplace foretelling lukascism’s finale: its appeal is limited by the older generation..

KEYWORDS:

• Rural Belarus
• moral economy
• authoritarian populism
• lukascism

Acknowledgements

The author is grateful to Gordon Pirie, Chris Pickvance, and Bruce Grant who advised him on the initial text and who had played a decisive role in his becoming a researcher. He would never dare to focus on the Belarusian countryside without a research stay with the Roosevelt House Pubic Policy Institute. The author is indebted to five anonymous reviewers who considered the paper at its various stages. He understands that the paper would never materialise without Oane Visser, Natalia Mamonova, Jun Borras, and Marc Edelman.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

ORCID

Aleh Ivanou http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6908-2353

Notes

1 Previously, ‘lukascism’ was in colloquial use as a pejorative term consonant to ‘fascism’. I give it a precise meaning.

2 There is an objection that Chayanov’s idea of drudgery was that it was the point after which people stopped working, and that the Lomuš women apparently accepted the necessity of hard work and kept working, which is different. As a counterclaim, the peasant habits and practices that once had inspired Chayanov’s ideas were later ruthlessly bent by the repressions of the 1930s (Chayanov himself fell victim to) and afterward.

3 ‘Culture is what we know about what people like us do’ (Ulrich-Schad and Duncan 2018, 7).

4 January 2018, Aliaksandr Kupryjenka (‘Vjetnam’) died.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Aleh Ivanou

Notes on contributor

Aleh Ivanou is a Belarusian independent researcher with PhD in Environmental Social Science (University of Kent).