On August 9 there were presidential elections in Belarus. They were once again a staged theater for Lukashenko to be reelected. However, on this occasion, they backfired, as a popular rebellion broke out that has cornered the dictator and his regime. The anger spilled over due to a combination of democratic and social issues. Faced with this, there are Stalinists around the world who support Lukashenko and his authoritarian regime and try to discredit the struggle. Our place is next to the workers and mobilized people. For an working-class and people´s political solution independent of bureaucrats and the bourgeoisie.
By Ruben Tzanoff
Throughout the electoral process, opponents were imprisoned to impede them running, activists were persecuted and repressed. During voting days, the presence of impartial observers was prevented and there were all kinds of irregularities that were reported, but not addressed. Our comrades have pointed them out from the center of the struggle in Belarus. The vote count yielded a result of 80% of the votes for the ruling party and 10% for Svetlana Tijanóvskaya, a teacher and wife of the jailed opposition blogger Syarhei Tsikhanouski.
The Rebellion
In Lukashenko’s sixth term, things did not turn out as expected. The vast majority of the population did not believe the results that were produced. For this reason, the same night that they were revealed, thousands and thousands of people took to the streets during several hours, being met by a response of brutal repression. The next day, anger and disbelief took hold of the meetings and assemblies in factories, offices and establishments where workers asked who voted for Lukashenko and who voted for Tijanóvskaya, and the results had nothing to do with the official data.
After six days of mobilizations and strikes in the country´s main factories, on Sunday 16 hundreds of thousands of people expressed themselves around the obelisk that commemorates the resistance against the Nazis in World War II. It was a historical manifestation that was also reproduced in the country´s main cities. On the other hand, the march called by Lukashenko was extremely weak, with a few thousand people, despite the state apparatus pressing to force assistance. The “80%” of the votes assigned to him does not appear anywhere.
So strong and massive has the working people´s participation been in the events that for several days the regime has had to stop the open repression of the demonstrations, though a repression focused on activists through the intelligence services continues.
The electoral fraud lit the fuse of the uprising, but the gunpowder had been accumulating for a long time for different reasons. The lack of democratic freedoms was combined with the advance of the capitalist economic crisis, the deterioration of living conditions, social inequalities, the lack of a future for young people, job insecurity and poor management of the pandemic, since Lukashenko is a denier, like Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro. And there is another unavoidable component: the contagion effect caused of the rebellions that sweep the world over and have a new impetus from the anti-racist rebellion unleashed in the bowels of imperialism.
An Authoritarian Regime
After 26 long years in power, each term implied more authoritarianism against the population, in particular against opponents. The labor movement was a victim of this situation: to exercise the elementary right to protest, you have to ask for permits that are not granted, and organizing a “legal” strike became a practically impossible task.
The actions of the government are based on an authoritarian regime, with Stalinist characteristics. Every last institutional loophole is managed from above by Lukashenko. The repressive forces are the fundamental pillar of the authoritarian scaffolding that, like a remnant of the past, keeps intact the structure of the KGB, responsible for internal espionage and the persecution of opponents. Formally, there is no single party, but that is what exists in reality, since only the organizations of associates of power or those used to justify that the opposition exists are legalized.
The People´s Decision Does Not Respond to a Foreign Plan
Stalinists of all colors who defend Lukashenko and his regime argue that there is a foreign conspiracy, thoroughly planned to overthrow them. But it was not a move of an imperialist piece on the international board that provoked the protest. The people said enough to the 7,000 incarcerated, the hundreds injured, the tortured, the two protesters killed during the repression, fraud and much more.
The workers in their helmets and work uniforms, holding assemblies, leaving the factories mobilized, organizing Strike Committees, are not mere actors in a script written by imperialist authors abroad. The mobilized women, dressed in white with flowers in their hands, are not the expression of a reactionary ideology that imitates the anti-Cuban “worms”, as some counterrevolutionary agents in the service of the dictator try to establish, but they embody the existing anger and the vanguard role played by women in the rebellion.
In Its Own Right
There are those who compare the 2013-2014 demonstrations in Ukraine, known as Maidan, with what is currently happening in Belarus. They do so not for illustrative purposes but with the intention of vilifying the ongoing struggle. In our opinion, an equal sign cannot be placed between the two processes. The demonstrations in Ukraine were divided between “Europeanist” and pro-Russian wings. The students started them, but later it was the right and the ultra-right that acquired a strong influence and provoked reactionary violence, which later had its institutional correlate in the government of that time.
In Belarus things are different. The center of the protest is aimed at recovering democratic freedoms that they never had and improving the social conditions of life. There is a dynamic and changing reality, since the main opposition candidate was at the time the banker Babariko and later he was displaced by the popular support that the blogger Tijanóvskaya achieved. At first, the youth was the exclusive protagonist along with the so-called “creative class” made up of sectors of the urban petty bourgeoisie. With the repression, the labor movement entered the scene in factories like BelAz, Grodno Azot, in mining cities like Saligorsk, in the Minsk Metro and the railways, in hospitals and other sectors. The far right does not have a determining influence, it has not imposed its provocations on the mobilization, nor a regressive program. At the global level, the protest is in tune with the rebellions and strikes that give the situation a positive tint, far removed from a “turn to the right”. As every popular movement is heterogeneous, that is why it is necessary to fight against the liberal and right-wing tendencies, so that they do not take over the popular struggle or lead it to a dead end. In this sense, as our comrades inform us, it is very encouraging that in sectors of the labor movement the debate of the need to build a Workers’ Party, independentl of bureaucrats and bosses, has accelerated.
Imperialists Out
Senior EU representatives have announced sanctions against Belarus and the US government has expressed “deep concern” about the development of events. They are cynical. They must be prevented from getting their political, economic and military claws into Eastern Europe.
This assessment does not imply supporting Chinese imperialism or Russia. The latter executes an aggressive foreign policy that some try to soften by falsely presenting it as the recreation of solidarity ties “with the former Soviet republics.” The aggressions it carries out in eastern Ukraine are a clear example of its expansionism. Therefore, it cannot be believed that Vladimir Putin’s intention to deepen the Union State (Russia-Belarus) is aimed at establishing a solidarity project: what he seeks is the annexation of the neighboring country. The growing presence of Chinese capital in Belarus is not due to a selfless and fraternal agreement, but rather to the interest of the Asian power in taking advantage of the strategic location of Belarus as a bridge between the EU and Russia, as one more link in the chain of countries that are found on its “Silk Road.”
In the midst of the increasing friction and inter-imperialist confrontations in the dispute for world hegemony, all play a nefarious role for the peoples. There are those who want us to believe that it is necessary to position ourselves in the Russian-Chinese camp, as if it were a “lesser evil” or even a progressive alternative to the EU and US blocs.
Justifying repression and the lack of freedom by prioritizing one camp over another is not an original policy for the East. It was carried out to support the butcher Al Azad and it is the same that Stalinist sectors develop when they defend the regime of Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela, responsible for reversing all the achievements of the “Bolivarian Revolution,” or when they justify the subjugated, hunger imposing and repressive regime of Ortega-Murillo in Nicaragua, in both cases, taking refuge in the sinister aggressions and campaigns of US imperialism and in the false idea that the previous are “socialist” countries.
A Semi Colonial Capitalism That Worsens Living Conditions
Belarus was part of the USSR until 1991 and Lukashenko, who was a member of the Communist Party, has on some occasions displayed a discourse partially critical of Western imperialism and its international organizations; prioritizing greater integration with Russia and China. Based on these facts, there are Communist Parties that defend the regime and also affirm that “Soviet gains” persist in Belarus.
The truth is that the Stalinist bureaucracy of the USSR, which always propped up authoritarian regimes, was destroying social conquests during decades, with its bureaucratic, privileged and corrupt management. Mikhail Gorvachev consummated that process when he dissolved the Soviet Union in 1991 to open the doors wide open to capitalist restoration. Many bureaucrats were recycled and became bosses or junior associates of capitalist companies, multinational companies expanded, private ownership of the means of production returned and with it the exploitation of workers. With more or less contradictions, all the countries that made up the USSR and were led by the CP embarked on the path of restoration.
Neither Belarus nor Lukashenko were the exception to the rule. The country quickly became State Capitalist, like China, which recreates the worst of the system of exploitation of man by man, both politically and socially. Year after year, international organizations rated Belarus with greater capacity to boost business, due to favorable tax laws and simple company registration procedures, among other advantages for capital. The government has taken measures to adapt to the market, for example, the joint venture with China to create the Great Stone industrial park, a link in the new “Silk Road” so that the Asian power´s products can reach Europe. Currently, in the country you can find Zara, Oysho, McDonalds, Redpath Mining and a growing presence of capitals of Serbian origin in construction, among other capitalist businesses.
The correlate of this process of capitalist restoration is the deterioration of the economic and social situation for the great majority. In 2017, Lukashenko went to the extreme of attacking the poorest, when he imposed a “Law against Vagrancy,” applying fines on the unemployed. Massive mobilizations forced him to back down, but they were a clear sign of his intentions, as were the attacks on the pension system. It is an easily verifiable fact that the bureaucracy enabled the bosses to exploit workers and obtain profits.
The most widespread contracts in Belarus are short-term contracts, 90% of the working class, which constitutes a precarious system, closer to servitude than to labor dignity. Each new contract for one year implies total defenselessness against employers. Additionally, independent union organization is persecuted, in favor of the official unions. The lack of state investment in public health exposed by the pandemic is also a sign that life is not prioritized. After the disasters of the bureaucratically planned economy, the introduction of capitalism has not caused, and will not cause, better living conditions, but more crisis, poverty, social inequality and suffering.
Solidarity With the Working People
There is a tough fight underway, although Lukashenko is cornered and is considered even by his allies as “a political corpse,” he has said that he will not repeat the elections or leave, at the same time that he has received the commitment from Vladimir Putin to “provide help needed to solve the problems” of Belarus. Against all odds, the mobilization continues with extraordinary strength. Faced with this, supporting Lukashenko or keeping silent in the face of repression is a shameful attitude that has nothing to do with the left or with progressivism. We stand with the Belarusian people, the workers who raised their voices and mobilize, we stand with our comrades who fight and organize in that country. For this reason, the International Socialist League has carried out various solidarity actions. We call for the solidarity of the peoples of the world, as has also been expressed by the Ukrainian Independent Trade Union “Labor Protection” and different sectors of the working class in the region. We demand an immediate end to repression, freedom for political prisoners, punishment for repressors and murderers of protesters, free elections and democratic liberties. Permanent mobilization and the active general strike mark the way for Lukashenko and his repressive regime to leave.
We stand for a government of the working people, with full workers’ democracy to decide everything. We say without ambiguity or half measures: US and European imperialism out of Belarus, NATO out of the East, no to the interference of Russian and Chinese imperialism. The situation poses the need to build a political organization of the working class, independent of the bourgeoisie and bureaucrats, that fights for a social model without capitalist exploitation or bureaucratic oppression, to build a socialist society at the service of the popular majority.