Belarus, the Springs of a Dictatorship

Lallemand, J.-C., Symaniec, V. (2007). Biélorussie, mécanique d’une dictature. Les petits matins, Paris, 255 pages.

Review prepared by Uladzislau Ivanou, a fellow of the Political Sphere Institute.

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The book Belarus, the Springs of a Dictatorship, written by the political scientist Jean-Charles Lallemand and the theatre scholar Virginie Symaniec, was published back in 2007 and remained almost unnoticed in Belarus. This was, of course, largely because of its loud title. Perhaps it was also because, in the view of Belarusian political scientists, the French perspective on the political in Belarus offers nothing new or relevant. In France itself, however, the book attracted the attention of specialists in Eastern Europe and post-Soviet culture, since for the first time there appeared a book on Belarus that was both analytical and journalistic, and in which the emphasis was placed on examining the country’s political system.

It should be noted that contemporary French Belarusian studies, including political studies, are developing primarily around the publishing house l’Harmattan, where a series entitled “Belarus” has been created. This series publishes books both by Belarusian specialists who have found themselves in France and by important French scholars: Bruno Drweski (Bruno Drweski), Virginie Symaniec (Virginie Symaniec), Alexandra Goujon (Alexandra Goujon), Jean-Charles Lallemand (Jean-Charles Lallemand), and others.

It should be said that the authors themselves define their work as an essay. This removes the grounds for criticizing the publication from the standpoint of “hard” academic political science, where the ideal is a dry analytical and research text with no signs of journalism. Because of this genre definition, the book should not be evaluated according to the strict rules applied to scholarly monographs. The French tradition of the essay, including the political essay, rests on a fairly free and at times highly subjective analysis and interpretation of events, as well as on a synthesis of styles. This is precisely what can be observed in the book by V. Symaniec and J.-Ch. Lallemand.

Part of the work is devoted, as required by the Western democratic canon, to the regular violation of human rights and the slow emergence of local civil society. The French researchers are skeptical about the declarations of Belarus’s official structures regarding respect for human rights. The relevant institutions did not emerge during Lukashenka’s rule, and therefore statements about democracy are clearly declarative in character.

The part of the essay devoted to presidential despotism, as well as to Belarus’s state system, looks exceptionally interesting and unconventional: outwardly social and socialist, but essentially capitalist in its flawed version. The section “The Absent Social State” supports the thesis of the illusory nature of local socialism, which under pressure from neighboring Russia has long since shifted onto the rails of capitalism (pp. 16, 113–115).

The authors’ own interpretation of the Lukashenka regime as a dictatorship is also revealing (pp. 13–16). Although the president came to power as a result of democratic elections, rather than through a putsch or coup, as happens in classic cases, a classic one-man rule with strong vertical subordination gradually took shape. Another feature of dictatorship is violence and the harassment of the opposition, intimidation of the press, movements and parties, and individual leaders, systematic arrests of opposition figures, and the falsification of elections. Like the Latin American dictatorships of the twentieth century, present-day Belarus has had cases of disappearances and abductions of people from the opposition milieu.

At the same time, it should be noted that for the French political tradition the term “dictatorship” is widespread and quite natural. In Belarus the situation is somewhat different: the notion of “dictatorship” has a historical shade and is used very cautiously, mainly in opposition discourse.

In addition, the essay is distinguished by apt and interesting comparative analysis. Belarusian reality is always considered in connection with the general situation in the world, Europe, and the region. The authors suggest being more honest and treating other countries critically as well. In the preface they write: “Belarus is not Hitler’s Germany, not Stalin’s USSR, not Pinochet’s Chile, not the Argentina of the generals, not even Milošević’s Serbia. The president of Belarus is not guilty of as many deaths as Putin’s Russia, implicated in the Chechen war, but it is still the dictatorship of one man who declares that he belongs to no party” (pp. 13–14).

Even within the EU there are countries with manifestations of political culture that can also be observed in Belarus. For example, part of the Polish elite occupies much more conservative positions on such issues as sexuality, the significance of Christian values in politics, and the like. In democratic and European Italy, the prime minister also controls almost all the media, while the state controls internet cafés. Thus, the authors of the essay look broadly at the processes taking place in Belarus and emphasize that to a certain extent they fit into international logic and certain tendencies in the development of the international community (pp. 21–22).

Moreover, this approach shows that the Lukashenka regime, as Symaniec aptly observes, is not simply a repetition and reflection of the Soviet model, but an actualization of that model and its adaptation to the twenty-first century. The authors write: “The Lukashenka regime, although it has preserved all monuments to Lenin, is nevertheless not a mere repetition of history […] The regime skillfully juggles the internet, mobile phones, and other technologies that facilitate the circulation of information within society, while regularly organizing repression against political and trade-union activists, entrepreneurs, and independent journalists” (pp. 16, 229).

In this way, all parts of the essay cover various mechanisms or springs of a fairly durable, real dictatorship, which, despite criticism, is deeply integrated into society and the state. Political, economic, and ideological springs form a single whole and function as a coordinated mechanism, like a mill, because other mechanisms, including democratic ones, are simply not yet known to Belarusians.

For this reason the authors’ forecasts are rather pessimistic, and in the concluding part, “A Long-Term Dictatorship,” the researchers do not hide this. A durable, or long-term, dictatorship functions because the entire system functions and all its mechanisms operate. Dictatorship is not simply the result of a strange coincidence of circumstances, but a purposeful project: what constitutes its current strength is also its future weakness.

The part on Belarusian culture under authoritarianism also deserves attention. The cultural situation clearly reveals the general political tendency of harassing people in general and creative people in particular (p. 221).

Finally, a major advantage of the work is the authors’ decolonial approach, not entirely typical of the French, to conveying Belarusian specificity, for example proper names. The authors (Virginie Symaniec has a good command of Belarusian) are sensitive to the language issue in Belarus. They made a rather bold attempt to ignore the Russian-centric tradition of rendering Belarusian names in official French usage. In the preface the authors note that they give proper names, for example the president’s surname Lukashenka, not in the Russian transcription (Loukachenko), but in the Belarusian transcription (Loukachenka) (p. 12). The authors also use the non-academic form of the adjective “Belarusian” (biélorussien instead of biélorussе). The latter form is a neologism created, as the authors of the essay write, in the 1940s under the influence of Russian (p. 12), whereas the authors grant Belarus full rights to the Rus’ or Ruthenian heritage and therefore insist on biélorussien.

If the essay is perceived exclusively in the French context, then for a Francophone reader it is indeed the best introduction to the Belarusian world, as Le Monde diplomatique noted in 2007. The authors undoubtedly took into account the French reader’s lack of familiarity with the Belarusian question, and therefore decorated the essay with detailed explanations. For this reason the essay may seem too correct, and at times too simple, to a Belarusian reader and especially to a Belarusian political scientist. Nevertheless, I believe that the freshness of an outside perspective can only be beneficial, because in this way new perspectives and previously unknown observations and dimensions of the political emerge.