Partisans or Workers? Figures of Belarusian Protest and Their Prospects

[The Reposter]

Article on Belarus published on the 4th Internional site.

http://www.internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article6771

by Volodymyr Artiukh
<http://www.internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?auteur2104>

These week’s protests in Belarus have clearly overcome their initial
electoral focus and morphed into an expanding dissident movement of
urban middle class and workers. In a recent (August 4) article for /Open
Democracy/ platform on the presidential campaign in Belarus I tried to
explain why the opposition candidates from the ruling elite and the
“creative class” attracted a record number of supporters, which led to
mass demonstrations unseen in this country for decades. [1
<http://www.internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article6771#nb1>] I
argued that these were the culmination of a protest sentiment simmering
in Belarusian society since the economic crisis of 2009, that found
expression in 2017 in the form of grassroots populist protests
challenging Lukashenka’s degrading populist rhetoric. [2
<http://www.internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article6771#nb2>] Before
the most recent elections, his main opponent, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya,
began to articulate an anti-authoritarian populist discourse that
appealed to a cross-class alliance of entrepreneurs, young
professionals, and workers. In this article I reflect on the questions I
asked two weeks ago, about the role of the leadership and the masses in
the current protests, the forms of their organization and the reaction
of the Belarusian state. My reflections are based on a six-day marathon
of digesting shreds of information coming through the fog of censorship,
Internet disruptions and propaganda, as well as from communications with
my comrades in Belarus. I am also building on my fieldwork experience
among Belarusian workers and trade union activists in 2015-2017, which I
conducted as a social anthropologist.

After a nervous election day on August 9, when observers reported
numerous irregularities at polling stations, pro-government exit polls
gave Lukashenka his traditional 80% of the vote, while his main rival
Tsikhanovskaya was awarded almost 7%. This infuriated opposition
supporters united under the slogan “I/We are the 97%”, with data drawn
from their alternate count suggesting that Tsikhanouskaia got 45%. Both
sides started preparing for a confrontation: the center of Minsk was
cordoned off, Internet and mobile connections were disrupted, and paddy
wagons and riot police appeared on the streets. Both Tsikhanovskaya and
Lukashenka asked Belarusians to abide by the law and refrain from
violence, although state TV channels accused the protesters of preparing
provocations, while opposition Telegram channels called for resistance
to the police.

Full article at: http://www.internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article6771