On March 19, Alexander Lukashenko was re-elected president of the Republic of Belarus with nearly 83 percent of the popular vote. The result confirmed all the pre-election polls, which predicted a lopsided Lukashenko victory.
This did not stop the imperialist countries and their faithful media outlets from asserting that the Belarus elections had been rigged. They demanded the annulment of the elections and called for new elections along “democratic” principles. Bush called President Lukashenko “Europe’s last dictator.” Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice identified Belarus as an “outpost of tyranny.” Belarus has been moved near the top of the list of nations due for “regime change.”
In the days following the elections, foreign-funded opposition forces held demonstrations in Minsk, the capital of Belarus, demanding that Lukashenko step down. These well-planned protests were designed to create instability and question the legitimacy of the elections.
On March 24, President Bush offered his support for the demonstrators, declaring that the United States government would “continue to stand with the people of Belarus and all those who are working to help Belarus take its rightful place in the community of democracies.”
Imperialist media outlets gave generous coverage to the choreographed opposition protests. The demonstrations—comprised primarily of people from the more privileged strata—did everything possible to provide the media with images of the “repressive” Belarus police violently putting down the protests.
This effort largely failed. Belarus police largely avoided the trap and deprived the capitalist media of the images that could be used to stimulate an international anti-Lukashenko hysteria.
Belarus is a country of 10 million people. Despite months of planning and generous financial support from abroad, the best the opposition could muster on election day was 10,000 protesters. That number dwindled down to mere hundreds in subsequent protests. Outside of the well-organized and well-funded circle of government opponents, the protests failed to gain any support from the general population.
There was nothing spontaneous about the post-election demonstrations. Months before the elections, it was obvious to all that Lukashenko was going to win. Polls conducted by various institutes, including ones funded by the International Republican Institute and other Western sources, had shown that Lukashenko was by far the most popular candidate.
U. S. plans ‘revolution’ for Belarus
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The imperialist objective was to emulate the model of “revolutions” that had been implemented in other former Soviet Republics. Over the last few years, the United States has supported staged street demonstrations to destabilize the governments of the Ukraine, Georgia and Kyrgyzstan. These “revolutions,” which have been deemed the “Orange Revolution,” the “Rose Revolution,” and the “Tulip Revolution” respectively, always resulted in the U.S.-favored candidate coming to power. The U.S. government had drawn up the same plan for Belarus.
David J. Kramer, U.S. deputy assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, shed light on this plan in his February visit to Belarus. Kramer called on all sides to avoid violence in the upcoming elections, but stated that “there is a bigger responsibility on the part of the government—since they are the ones with security forces, they are the ones with guns, batons and other means, tear gas.”
Responding to Kramer’s statements, Belarusian Foreign Ministry spokesman Andrei Popov said: “One can only express surprise at the State Department representative’s insistence on possible violent protest actions in Belarus during the election campaign. … It’s obvious to anyone who lives in Belarus that there is no basis for this. Everybody notices that the election campaign is going calmly, within the framework of the law.” (UPI, Feb. 25) Popov insisted that the United States share any information on possible violence during the elections.
The crime: resisting privatization
There is, of course, a history behind the U.S. government hostility towards Belarus. One of the founding republics of the Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics, Belarus was one of the first regions to be invaded by Nazi Germany. Remaining under occupation until 1944, the German imperialists killed approximately 3 million Byelorussians and destroyed much of the infrastructure. Only in 1971, 26 years after the end of the war, did the population of Belarus reach its pre-war levels.
Under the direction of the Soviet planned economy, Belarus became one of the industrial centers of the Soviet Union, gaining relative prosperity. With the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, capitalist reforms swept across the former Soviet Republics. State-owned industries and lands were privatized and sold to foreign and domestic capital at dirt-cheap prices. The privatizations and shutdowns of factories judged to have insufficient profit potential brought about massive unemployment and a huge drop in the standards of living.
The same process ravaged Belarus. “During 1991-1995, with the support of international organizations, Belarus initiated preliminary reforms toward transforming into a market economy,” according to the World Bank’s 2003 Belarus Country Brief. The country’s gross domestic product declined by an estimated 40 percent during this period.
“From late 1995 onwards, however,” the World Bank report continues, “the Government sought to insulate its population from the pain of reform by protecting jobs and wages. The state retained control over most production resources, and a significant share of GDP was allocated to social expenditures and subsidies. Market-oriented reforms were very limited.”
Under the leadership of Lukashenko since 1994, Belarus put a halt to the privatizations and proceeded to use the country’s resources to maintain the government’s social programs and social infrastructure. The World Bank describes the outcome: “The country retains many features of a planned economy, with the Government wielding significant control over the factors of production and the decisions of economic agents, a high tax burden and major budget redistribution of funds aimed at supporting traditional companies and employment. The agricultural sector remains largely unreformed, small and medium enterprises have undergone a minimal level of development, and a considerable share of GDP is allocated to social expenditures.”
In 1995, the IMF and the World Bank stopped loaning money to Belarus, citing the country’s refusal to implement free market reforms.
A strengthening economy
The strategy to financially isolate Belarus backfired. Not only did Belarus avert financial and social crisis, its economy flourished. Since 1996, the economy has gone through a steady period of expansion averaging an annual growth of 6.6 percent. (World Bank, “Belarus: Window of Opportunity to Enhance Competitiveness and Sustain Economic Growth,” November 2005)
This growth persisted while the rest of the former Soviet republics experienced economic decline. In 2003, Belarus’s rate of economic growth was 7 percent. It increased to a staggering 11 percent in 2004.
Social and health indicators demonstrate that Belarus’s economic growth has translated into impressive gains in the people’s standard of living. Belarus has the lowest poverty level in the region: 2 percent, compared, for example, to 11.5 percent in Latvia and 31.4 percent in Ukraine. (European Bank for Reconstruction and Development Transition Report 2005) Belarus has the lowest infant mortality rate in the region, 6.9 deaths per 1,000. Belarus spends 6.1 percent of its budget on education and vocational training and 4.9 percent of GDP on health—the highest in the region. (United Nations Statistical Yearbook, 2005)
To the imperialists, these are the crimes of the Lukashenko regime. It has refused to privatize, erected barriers against imperialist capital penetration, and maintained a high standard of living for its citizens, along with a relatively equitable distribution of wealth. All of these factors present substantial barriers to international investors who view mass poverty and high unemployment as favorable conditions for their investments.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union—following decades of imperialist strangulation—the economies of former Soviet republics were still largely integrated into the economy of the largest Soviet republic, Russia. Western imperialists, headed by the United States, have successfully curtailed the economic and political influence of the now capitalist Russia in the former Soviet republics.
In the case of Belarus, however, the imperialist drive to conquer the country is about more than competition against the Russian capitalist state. For the imperialists, the Belarus economy has never been sufficiently privatized. Approximately 80 percent of the Belarus economy is owned by the state. (Eastern European Mission www.eem.org/Belarus.HTML) About 95 percent of agricultural land remains state owned and is farmed under collective farming. (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations)
Not only does the development of the Belarus national economy present an obstacle to imperialist capital penetration, it sets an example to the peoples of the region. It flies in the face of the capitalist propaganda, which maintains that the only path to economic prosperity is to yield to the wishes of the IMF and the World Bank, open up the national economy to international capital, and succumb to “free” competition.
Demonizing Lukashenko
The imperialist campaign against Belarus’s national development would not have been complete without the customary demonization of its leader, Alexander Lukashenko. “Dictator,” “autocrat” and “tyrannical” are some of the common terms used to describe Lukashenko. He has been likened to many previously demonized leaders, most of all to Yugoslavia’s Milosevic.
Lukashenko was a member of the Young Communist League in his youth, a deputy chairman of a collective farm in the early 1980s, and then the director of a state farm and construction materials plant in the Shklov district. In 1990, Lukashenko was elected to the Supreme Council of the Republic of Belarus. In December 1991, Lukashenko was the only deputy of the Belarusian parliament to vote against the breakup of the Soviet Union.
In 1994, as Belarus plunged into the “free” market capitalist economy and its state industries were sold off, Lukashenko ran on a campaign of fighting corruption, saving jobs, and protecting the interests of the common people. He won the elections with 80 percent of the vote.
White House supports opposition forces
In the March 2006 elections, the opposition’s best-known candidate was Alexander Milenkevich. Even so, he scored low in pre-election polls, frequently receiving single-digit percentages. But whatever Milenkevich lacks in domestic popular support, he makes up for with external support from imperialists. In April 2005, Milenkevich met with U.S. secretary of state Rice. She assured him of Washington’s support, and advised other opposition forces to unite behind him.
In 2006 alone, the Bush administration dedicated $12 million to fund opposition forces within Belarus. (New York Times, Feb. 26, 2006) Milenkevich and others have received generous financial contributions from the U.S. National Endowment for Democracy and similar organizations in Europe. The European Union has spent $2.4 million for broadcasts of anti-government programs into Belarus. Among his top campaign advisors, Milenkevich has enjoyed the services of American Terry Nelson, who directed the 2004 campaign of George W. Bush.
Imperialism and ‘democracy’
Belarus is a clear illustration of the approach of the imperialist bourgeoisie toward elections and democracy. With the dominance of bourgeois institutions over society, the capitalist class relies on elections to promote its class agenda and to keep class antagonisms in check. While the electoral process may force the bourgeoisie to make concessions to the working class, it structurally precludes the working class from gaining power and challenging the existing productive relations. This is why the terms democracy and capitalism are used almost interchangeably by bourgeois mouthpieces.
But the commitment of the bourgeoisie to its own form of democracy ends the minute elections generate an outcome that is unfavorable to its class interests. In Venezuela, for example, when Hugo Chavez was elected and re-elected with strong popular support, the imperialists cry foul. The same is true of Palestine and the election of Hamas.
In 1993, when the Russian Parliament voted to impeach Yeltsin, Yeltsin dissolved the parliament and used the military to nearly demolish Russia’s White House, where the parliamentary representatives had deliberated. The imperialist media did not condemn Yeltsin for his authoritarian and anti-democratic actions. To the contrary, they praised him for his courageous commitment to reform against the hardliners, the hardliners being representatives of the Russian Parliament elected in the early post-Soviet era.
From a Marxist perspective, all states are instruments of class domination, representing a class dictatorship, whether they are democratic or autocratic in form. Bourgeois politicians understand it too well. In fact, they operate on the basis of this principle.
It is against international law for states to finance and support political forces in other countries. But that has not stopped the imperialists from funding “opposition” forces and fomenting instability and unrest whenever necessary for their class interests.
The United States and its European allies have indicated that they would impose punishments against the Belarus state, starting with a travel ban on Lukashenko, his top officials and even some journalists. Other forms of legal and extra-legal measures will be implemented to further pressure Byelorussians into submission.
The people of Belarus, however, have withstood these threats. They have continued to follow an independent path of development, resisting imperialist pressures and refusing to yield to the dictates of globalized capital. The gains they have made are the current cause for the imperialists’ threats and rage.
