Civil Society in Belarus: Towards Active Democracy

No one would dispute that Belarus is currently in a difficult situation. It is obvious that the systemic crisis has both its sources and its consequences in the condition of civil society. The most elementary step in analysing the situation is to reduce civil society to a set of non-governmental organisations and once again repeat the familiar rhetoric: pressure from the authoritarian regime, lack of resources, and so on. Yet it makes sense to broaden the framework for understanding civil society and to include other aspects, such as positive norms and values of cooperation and activism, as well as the existence of a public sphere.

In this broader understanding, the main difficulties for the development of civil society stem from much deeper, historically and socially grounded preconditions.

First of all, this is the state of social capital, which, among other things, requires the relevant skills for forming associations and defending a civic ethos. Unfortunately, in Belarus today we are dealing with a highly atomised society, where horizontal ties are almost completely broken and trust has a very limited sphere of application, mostly within the family. Historically, the elites that in the early modern period acted as the main carriers of civic values were Polonised and to a large extent excluded from the processes of forming the Belarusian nation. This forces us to work from the very foundations: from basic knowledge and forms of collective work, from the revival of local communities and voluntary associations.

The Belarus we have today is, to the greatest extent, the result of the communist experiment, with destroyed traditions of urban culture and political self-organisation. The influence of the Soviet legacy is felt not only at the level of mass consciousness: the programming and control of civil society by the state, as happened in the USSR, still continues in the independent Republic of Belarus. Therefore, what outwardly appears as “civil society” is very often an artificial artefact created by the authorities. This requires constant procedures of recognition and demarcation, separating the grain from the chaff.

The already existing forms of organisation also have to balance between solidarity and diversity. Civil society must represent the whole range of different interests and values, group identities and social movements. No society, including Belarusian society, is homogeneous; it cannot exist and develop without conflicts, but also not without procedures for resolving them. Yet the heightened pressure from the Belarusian state, which indeed exists, forces an extraordinary degree of solidarity. In this respect there is a good example: the National Platform of the Civil Society Forum. We should not be frightened by the conflicts and struggles that unfold there, because it would be unfair and cynical to demand unanimity from something that is supposed to exist precisely as a place for articulating conflicting interests.

The social ties disrupted over centuries as a result of the deliberate policies of the Russian Empire and then the USSR, together with the Belarusian authorities’ desire for maximum control over the whole life of society, create conditions for a hypertrophied dependence on external support. This is not only about limited financial resources; that is only half the problem. In fact, civil society becomes dependent on the goals and tasks set by donors, naturally with a very limited understanding of the situation in Belarus. Often a significant segment of civil society not only adapts itself to the rhetoric of European bureaucratic structures, but simply formally implements recipes prepared from outside. This forces those who are dissatisfied with such a situation, and fortunately there are many of them too, constantly to fight for their own interests and visions of activity, ones that would be truly authentic and contextualised.

Another very dangerous tendency is also taking shape: the politicisation of civil society. Unfortunately, it is very often perceived exclusively in a reduced version, as an instrument for “fighting the authoritarian regime”. This largely determines the situation with the distribution of resources and, as a result, leads to an aggravation of confrontation with state bodies. Yet it is forgotten that, despite civil society’s inevitable involvement in current political processes, ideally it should be transcendent in relation to politics. A reshuffling of those in power will change little in Belarus if society is not ready for active democracy and does not possess the corresponding values and norms.

The above-mentioned forms of intellectual and organisational dependence stem from an insufficient internal reflection and understanding of the Belarusian situation. What is Belarus in Europe, what is democracy in Belarus? These are extremely complex questions, and references to the works of European thinkers and documents of European institutions can hardly be considered a satisfactory answer. It is no accident that for about a decade the idea of creating a national university has been circulating in Belarus, one that would become a genuine platform for the development of the public sphere and intellectual activity. In recent years there has been obvious and significant progress in this direction; I mean the creation of the Flying University, which has serious potential to become a centre of reflection and programming for Belarus’s development. Europe itself also needs critical reflection not only in its centre, but also on the frontier, where conventional values and recipes for action are tested in practice.

From the outside it may seem that Belarus has been preserved in the state of the “last dictatorship in Europe”, but this is a very superficial view. A difficult organic work is being carried out here by civil society, and it already has its positive results. What is required from Europe is not so much more money as a willingness to understand and accept the specificity of the Belarusian experience.

This is the author’s version of an article first published in Slovak: Občianska spoločnosť sa v Bielorusku musi pripraviť na aktivnu demokraciu a na zdieľanie potrebnych hodnot // Pontis Newsletter. 2012. #1.

Aliaksei Lastouski