Understanding Belarus: economy and political landscape

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Notes

The author wishes to acknowledge support of the International Research and Exchanges Board (Washington, D.C.) through a short-term travel grant (summer 2002) as well as invaluable advice and help from Drs. Zhanna Zaenchkovskaya and Galina Muzlova (Moscow), Isaac Khasdan (Minsk), and Donald Samson (Radford, VA).

Margarita M. Balmaceda, ‘Myth and Reality in the Belarusian–Russian Relationship’, Problems of Post-Communism, 46, 3, 1999, p. 12.

‘Belorusskaya Sovetskaya Sotsialisticheskaya respublika’, Bol'shaya Sovetskaya Entsyklopedia (Moscow 1969–78), accessed via www.rubicon.ru/bse.

Ibid.

Naselenie SSSR 1987 (Moscow, Finansy i Statistika, 1988), p. 16.

Posledstviya Velikoi Otechestvennoi Voiny dlya Belarusi, www.president.gov.by/gosarchives/vov/spravpos.htm.

Narodnoe khozyaistvo SSSR za 70 let (Moscow, Finansy i Statistika, 1987) contains the following monetary estimates of damage: Ukraine, 285 billion rubles and Belarus, 75 billion rubles in 1941 prices (p. 45). According to Naselenie SSSR (Moscow, Finansy i Statistika, 1987), the 1940 population of Ukraine was 41,340,000 and Belarus was home to 9,046,000 (p. 9).

David Marples, Belarus: A Denationalized Nation (Amsterdam, Harwood, 1999), p. 20.

The Soviet statistics were hard to interpret accurately without insider experience, while the only other option at hand—making sense of them from the Western perspective—was conducive to erroneous conclusions simply because the phenomena in question were often substantively different from their Western counterparts. In fact, the Soviet regime generally withheld statistics rather than falsify them. Ironically, falsifications stemmed more often from ill-advised interpretations.

Narodnoe khozyaistvo SSSR: yubileinyi statisticheskii ezhegodnik (Moscow, Finansy i Statistika, 1987), p. 17.

Ibid., p. 18.

Ibid., p. 132.

Only in Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, which had low initial (1970) levels of industrial investment, was growth in fixed assets more pronounced (380% and 397% respectively); see ibid., p. 102.

Ibid., p. 123.

Ibid., p. 124.

Ibid., p. 142.

Ibid., p. 136.

Ibid.

Ibid., p. 187.

Ibid., p. 231.

Ibid., p. 232.

Ibid., p. 266.

Ibid., p. 227.

G.V. Ioffe, Sel'skoe khozyaistvo nechernozem'ya: territorial'nye problemy (Moscow, Nauka, 1990), p. 17.

Ibid., p. 21.

Ibid., p. 24.

Narodnoe khozyaistvo SSSR: yubileinyi statisticheskii ezhegodnik, p. 514.

Ibid., p. 515.

Ibid., p. 357

Ibid., p. 409: in Russia the 1985–86 life expectancy was 69.3, in Ukraine 70.5 and in Belarus 71.1

Yurii Guralyuk, ‘Novyi Lukashenko: schastlivaya obrechennost’ pobezhdat' ', Evraziiskoe obozrenie, 2001, 3, http://eurasia.com.ru/eo/3–12.html.

Calculated on the basis of Narodnoe khozyaistvo SSSR: yubileinyi statisticheskii ezhegodnik, pp. 548 and 389–392; in 1986 in Russia there were 20 college students per 1,000 population, in Ukraine 16.6 and in Belarus 17.9.

Ibid.

Margarita M. Balmaceda et al. (eds), Independent Belarus: Domestic Determinants, Regional Dynamics, and Implications for the West (Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 2002), pp. 271–272.

Itogi vsesoyuznoi perepisi naseleniya 1970 goda (Moscow, Statistika, 1972), p. 50; Naselenie SSSR 1987, p. 38.

Incidentally, at the same time it became something like a swear word in much of Latin America. This is all the more interesting since liberal Russian social scientists have long likened Russian society and the Russian polity to those of Latin America.

Marples, Belarus: A Denationalized Nation, p. 40.

Ibid.

At the same time consumers cover only a tiny fraction of gas costs. For example, in October 2000 they paid only 6.8% of what it cost Beltransgaz, the Belarus natural gas distributor (Balmaceda et al., (eds), Independent Belarus: Domestic Determinants, Regional Dynamics, and Implications for the West, p. 296).

‘Protivorechivye zhelaniya Lukashenko’, Vesti RTR, 15 September 2002, http://www.vesti7.ru/news?id=1190; Konstantin Ugodnikov, ‘Prem’er-ministr Belorussii byl ne v kurse gazovykh dolgov', Strana.Ru, 11 November 2002, http://www.strana.ru/print/163705.html.

The most important military objects belonging to Russia are located in Brest oblast'; these are the submarine monitoring station in Pinsk and the early missile detection station in Baranovichi.

This statement echoes a similar assertion by Patricia Brukoff (Balmaceda et al. (eds), Independent Belarus: Domestic Determinants, Regional Dynamics, and Implications for the West, p. 110).

Osnovnye pokazateli po gosudarstvam sodruzhestva v 1999 godu (Moscow, Statkommitet SNG, 2000), p. 74.

Ibid., p. 17.

Ibid., p. 99.

Ibid.

Valeri Tsepkalo, ‘The Political and Economic Situation in Belarus Following the Presidential Election’, presentation by Belarus' Ambassador to the US at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Washington, DC, 9 October 2001.

Osnovnye pokazateli po gosudarstvam sodruzhestva v 1999 godu, p. 13

Tsepkalo, ‘The Political and Economic Situation …’.

Osnovnye pokazateli po gosudarstvam sodruzhestva v 1999 godu, pp. 135–138.

Human Development Report 2001, ‘Human Development Indicators’, pp. 210–212, http://www.undp.org/hdr2001/back.pdf.

Personal correspondence with Dr Zhanna Zaenchkovskaya, Head of the Migration in the CIS Laboratory, Institute of Economic Forecasting, Russian Academy of Sciences.

According to Belorusskii rynok, accessed on 30 January 2003 at http://www.br.minsk.by/archive/2003–03/_sc769.stm, net immigration from January to November 2002 was just 4,900, a 40% drop from the same period one year earlier. However, the above number reflects migration from and to all foreign countries, including the so-called ‘far abroad’, net migration from which (mostly Germany, Israel and the USA) is negative. The article cited confirms Belarus' positive net immigration from every post-Soviet country in both 2001 and 2002.

Galina D. Muzlova, ‘Belarus na fone stran tsentral’noi i vostochnoi Evropy: spetsifika regionalizatsii vneshnei torgovli', Regionalizatsiya i tsentralizm v territorial'noi organizatsii obshchestva i regional'nom razvitii (Moscow, IGRAN, 2001), p. 167.

Dean M. Hanink, Principles and Applications of Economic Geography (New York, John Wiley and Sons, 1996), pp. 341–342.

Osnovnye pokazateli po gosudarstvam sodruzhestva v 1999 godu, p. 33.

Ibid.

Ibid., pp. 52–53

Muzlova, ‘Belarus na fone …’, p. 167.

Ibid.

Ibid., pp. 167–168.

Ibid., p. 168.

Andrei P. Tsygankov, ‘Defining State Interests After Empire: National Identity, Domestic Structures and Foreign Trade Policies of Latvia and Belarus’, Review of International Political Economy, 7, 1, 2000, p. 116.

Ibid., p. 112.

Muzlova, ‘Belarus na fone …’, p. 169.

Ibid.

‘Bumazhnyi korol’ ili komu signaliziruet Putin', Belorusskaya delovaya gazeta, 22 August 2002, http://bdg.press.net.by/2002/08/2002.

Elena Novozhilova & Vadim Smekhov, ‘Gazzavat po-Gazpromovski’, Belorusskaya delovaya gazeta, 6 November 2002, http://bdg.press.net.by/2002/11/2002.

See for example Natalya Kornelyuk, ‘Belorusskii kolobok’, Gazeta SNG, 18 June 2003, http://gazetasng.ru/print.php?id=44049.

A detailed analysis of this pipeline is offered by Astrid Sahm & Kirsten Westphal in Balmaceda et al. (eds), Independent Belarus: Domestic Determinants, Regional Dynamics, and Implications for the West, pp. 270–301.

Patricia Brukoff, ‘The Belarusian Economy: Is It Sustainable?’, in Balmaceda et al. (eds), p. 113.

‘Bumazhnyi korol’ …'.

For example, Rainer Lindner notes that ‘Lukashenka is not an aggressive troublemaker, like Saddam Hussein or Milosevic; he is a noisy critic of Western politics … who embodies the particular heritage of his republic’; see Balmaceda et al. (eds), Independent Belarus: Domestic Determinants, Regional Dynamics, and Implications for the West, pp. 78–79.

This fact is corroborated by the IREX 2002 report on Media Sustainability Index, www.irex.org/msi/, p. 104; accessed 19 June 2003.

Lukashenka's February 2002 interview to The Wall Street Journal, full text accessed through www.president.gov.by/rus/president/speech/02wall.shtml; the precise date of the interview is not listed.

The reasoning leading to this conclusion was presented in the previous article in this series.

Ibid.

‘Pobediteli ne poluchayut nichego’, Belorusskii rynok, 24 November 2001, http://www.br.minsk.by/archive2001–46/sk14944.stm.

‘Belarus’ Bitter Election', The Economist, 10 September 2001, accessed through http://www.economist.com.

‘Pobediteli ne poluchayut nichego’.

Ibid.

Dmitrii Vereshchagin & Sergei Lozhkin, ‘Rabota nad oshibkami’, Belorusskaya delovaya gazeta, 13 November 2001; http://bdg.press.net.by/2001/11/2001.

Ibid.; in one paragraph of the article the authors claim that the share of undecided was 20% at the very least, whereas according to another paragraph it could not be more than 15%.

Ibid.; this argument recognises the reality of Russian media being highly influential in Belarus but fails to take heed of the fact that while short of enthusiastically supporting the Belarusian opposition the same media were full of Lukashenka thrashing. For example, just two days before the election, one of the most popular Russian journalists and a prime time TV anchor, Maksim Sokolov, published a column in Izvestiya (currently the most influential Russian daily read by many in Belarus) titled ‘Nash syn’. In it, he criticised the Russian authorities for failing to cultivate ‘mentally sound’ opposition in Belarus. Instead, they throw their support behind a buffoon on the assumption that though he is in fact a ‘son of a bitch’ he is ‘our son of a bitch’. Further substantiating his point, Sokolov reasons that such support is shortsighted and miscalculated: ‘a political pendulum, once swung to one extreme, may swing to the opposite extreme, compared with which even Zyanon Paznyak will look like the utmost Russophile’; see Izvestiya, 7 September 2001, http://www.izvestia.ru/rubr.cgi. Sokolov is a self-proclaimed conservative and a pro-government figure, and his views typically echo those in influential circles inside Russia. Another example is the now Gazprom-owned NTV, a Russian TV channel watched in Belarus, which ridiculed Lukashenka in its acclaimed show ‘Kukly’: a Lukashenka puppet begins his speech in familiar trasyanka, then it becomes gibberish, and eventually it evolves into a monologue by the all too familiar Third Reich leader speaking with the Austrian accent.

Ibid.

Steven Eke & Taras Kuzio, ‘Sultanism in Eastern Europe: The Socio-Political Roots of Authoritarian Populism in Belarus’, Europe-Asia Studies, 52, 3, 2000, p. 536.

Ibid., pp. 532–533.

http://www.iiseps.by/press.html.

Stanislau Shushkevich, Neo-Communism in Belarus (Smolensk, Skif, 2002).

Ibid., pp. 139–208.

Ibid., p. 125.

Ibid., p. 31.

Ibid., p. 113.

Ibid., p. 132.

Ibid., p. 39.

Balmaceda et al. (eds), Independent Belarus: Domestic Determinants, Regional Dynamics, and Implications for the West, p. 134.

‘Table of the Tarnished’, The Economist, 19 April 2003, p. 45.

Shushkevich, Neo-Communism in Belarus, p. 130.

Ibid., p. 75.

Ibid., p. 43.

Ibid., p. 45.

Ibid., p. 74.

Ibid., pp. 34–35.

Ibid., p. 35.

See the previous article in this series.

A. Yaroshuk, ‘Pust’ Putin otchitaetsya', www.bdg.by/newsnews/news.shtml?0871 ,1, 23 August 2002.

Yuri Rabchuk, ‘Uchites’ srazhat'sya za svoyu nezavisimost'!', interview with Valeriya Novodvorskaya, Belorusskaya delovaya gazeta, 29 August 2002, http://bdg.press.net.by/2002/08/2002.

Ibid.

On 21 August 2002 Lukashenka's exact words were: ‘Even Lenin and Stalin did not get as far in their thoughts as splitting Belarus and including it that way in the Russian Federation or the USSR’; see www.smi.ru/02/08/21/683530.html.

Ibid.

Personal interview, 23 May 2002.

Personal interview, 22 May 2002.

Aleksandr Feduta, ‘Lukashenko skazal: “Krugom!” ’, Moscow News, 17 September 2002, http://www.mn.ru/printver.php?2002–36–10.

http://bdg.press.net.by/2002/08/2002_08_27; the respective 1999 response is unknown to this author.

Ol'ga Tomashevskaya, ‘Lukashenka ostalsya bez opory’, interview with Oleg Manaev, Director, Independent Institute for Socio-Economic and Political Research, 27 August 2002, http://bdg.press.net.by/2002/08/2002_08_27.

Ibid.

‘Nekotorye rezul’taty natsional'nogo oprosa obshchestvennogo mneniya, provedennogo NISEPI v marte-aprele 2003 goda', http://www.iiseps.by/press.html, accessed 24 May 2003.

Andrei Okara, ‘Belarus v otsutstvii tret’ei al'ternativy', Russkii zhurnal, 14 November 2001, http://www.russ.ru/politics/20011114-oka-pr.html.

Balmaceda et al. (eds), Independent Belarus: Domestic Determinants, Regional Dynamics, and Implications for the West, p. 98.

Yurii Bogomolov, ‘Narodnyi pomazannik’, Izvestiya, 9 October 2001, http://www.izvestia.ru/rubr.cgi.

M. Voslensky, Nomenklatura: gospodstvuyushchii klass Sovetskogo Soyuza (Moscow, 1991), pp. 140–141.

A.G. Vishnevsky, Serp i rubl' (Moscow, OGI, 1999), pp. 98–99.

Ibid., p. 97.

A peasant commune annually adjusted the distribution of land between member households so acreage would stay proportional to the number of mouths. In such a way economic equality would be maintained. A large body of literature exists on Russian redistributive peasant communes; see for example G.T. Robinson, Rural Russia under the Old Regime (New York, Macmillan, 1932); G. Ioffe & T. Nefedova. ‘Persistent Features of the Russian Countryside: Communal Attachment and Reform’, GeoJournal, 3, March 1997, pp. 193–204; and many others.

Nikolai Berdyaev, The Origin of Russian Communism (London, The Centenary Press, 1937).

Nickolas Vakar, The Taproot of Soviet Society (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1962).

The most influential books written in a corresponding tradition are A.S. Akhiezer, Rossiya: kritika istoricheskogo opyta (Moscow, FO, 1991); Vishnevsky, Serp i rubl'; A.S. Akhiezer, A.P. Davydov et al., Sotsio-kul'turnye osnovaniya i smysl' bol'shevizma (Novosibirsk, Sibirskii Khronograf, 2002).

The driving forces for regime change in the Baltics were different: anti-Russian sentiment and the awareness of once being cut off—by the Russians—from the Western civilisation in which they rightfully belong.

Vishnevsky, Serp i rubl', p. 94.

Personal interview, 23 May 2002.

I do not know when this pithy formulation was coined; however, it has been frequently referred to; see for example Ad Tuteshahchi do natsianal'nai dziarzhaunasti (Warsaw, Embassy of the Netherlands to Poland, 1999), p. 12.

Vadim Labkovich & Dmitrii Drigailo, ‘Kursom nezavisimosti’, interview with L. Barshchevsky, Belorusskaya delovaya gazeta, 23 August 2002, http:bdg.press.net.by/2002/08.

David Marples & Uladzimir Padhol make an interesting point: even the leader of the Belarusian Narodnyi Front finds it necessary to prove to the public that ‘ ”narodnyi” in the name of the party signifies popular, rather than national’; see Balmaceda et al. (eds), Independent Belarus: Domestic Determinants, Regional Dynamics, and Implications for the West, p. 76.

Dmitrii Drigailo, ‘Lider BNF predlagaet sozdat’ “komitety” ', BDG, 3 September 2002, http://bdg.presss.net.by/2002/09/2002.

Marples, Belarus: A Denationalized Nation, p. 49.

Vasyl Bykov (Bykau) and Ryhor Borodulin are Belarusian prose writer and poet respectively.

Irina Khalip, ‘Chtoby bylo muchitel’no bol'no', BDG, 20 November 2001, http://bdg.press.net.by/2001/11/2001.

Pushkin's untitled 1826 verse in full is: Pasites', mirnye narody! Vas ne razbudit chesti klich. K chemu stadam dary svobody? Ikh dolzhno rezat' ili strich'. Nasledstvo ikh iz roda v Yarmo s gremushkami da bich.

Irina Khalip, ‘Mandat—ne roskosh’, a sredstvo peredvizheniya', BDG, 25 January 2002, http://bdg.press.net.by/2002/01/2002.

Ibid.

Balmaceda et al. (eds), Independent Belarus: Domestic Determinants, Regional Dynamics, and Implications for the West, p. 83.

Lukashenka's February 2002 interview with The Wall Street Journal; full text accessed through www.president.gov.by/rus/president/speech/02wall.shtml; the exact words of Lukashenka pertaining to the opposition are as follows: ‘The opposition movement in the republic is 1,500 people strong. These people present no threat to power. If we had a dictatorship, then even for the most zealous dictator, it would not make any sense to dispose of them by such barbaric methods’. The allusion is to the disappearance of five prominent Belarusians.

Anthony D. Smith, The Ethnic Origins of Nation (Oxford, Blackwell, 1999), p. 2.

Ibid.

Rainer Lindner, ‘Besieged Past: National and Court Historians in Lukashenka’s Belarus', Nationalities Papers, 27, 4, 1999, p. 632.

While Filaret himself is a Moscow-born ethnic Russian (Kirill Varfolomeevich Vakhromeev), his perception of native land is effectively shared by many Belarusians.

When in September 2002 the Russian arch-nationalist newspaper Zavtra obtained a tape of a telephone conversation between Boris Nemtsov, leader of the Russian liberal party SPS, and Anatolii Lebed'ko, leader of the Belarus centrist party OGO, the eavesdropping had most probably been organised in Belarus. In that conversation Nemtsov related to Lebed'ko his successful efforts at organising a meeting between Lebed'ko and some prominent members of Putin's administration. The tape revealed nothing extraordinary; even the amount of foul language used was petty by Russian standards. Yet the entire episode was designed to compromise the stance taken by centrist politicians seeking support in the Kremlin. Another attempt to engage ‘the middle’ is being undertaken by the newly-organised parliamentary faction Respublika headed by Major-general Valerii Frolov. Some analysts are already touting him as the most probable presidential contender; see Oleg Manaev, ‘Novaya sila’, Belorusskii Rynok, 28 April–3 May 2003.

This rebuff took place on 16 September 2002 at the European World Economic Forum in Salzburg, Austria, with president Kuchma of Ukraine arguing that Ukraine should be incorporated in the EU as ‘a big Christian nation belonging to a united Europe’ and Guenter Verheugen, a top EU official in charge of enlargement, telling the conference there was little chance of Ukraine even getting a time schedule for accession; cited in http://famulus.msnbc.com/FamulusIntl/reuters09–16100427.asp?reg=Europe.