Will Sasha stay with us? In Belarus, T-shirts with quotes from Lukashenko are being sold out with a bang

A T-shirt store with quotes from Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko opened last weekend in Minsk.

Light industry products are marked with well-known aphorisms of the Belarusian leader: “You can’t bend us,” “Facts are on the table,” “They don’t give away what they love,” “They don’t become presidents, they are born presidents,” “Undress and work,” “No emergency.” It is planned to open similar stores in regional centers.

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The fugitive opposition claims that the excitement in the store on the opening day was created by officials, deputies and journalists from state media. Indeed, it was this public that boasted about updates from social networks.

“There wasn’t enough ritual. Previously, the shame of having to demonstrate loyalty could be hidden in the quiet of your offices and at meetings, but now you will have to carry this shame on yourself financially, demonstrating it to everyone else. Everything is constructed according to the patterns of any religion: faith must be testified,” fugitive opposition economist Sergei Chaly said in his video blog.

However, not everything is so simple. Lukashenko’s quotes will be worn with pleasure on the chest in villages where the president remains popular. Collective farms buy T-shirts in bales for bonuses for shock workers.

Some apolitical youth will not refuse the presidential merch either.

The irony is that the opposition itself hooked its audience on quotes from the “dictator.”

Last year, Polish extremist channels distributed collections of stickers with Lukashenko’s aphorisms. From there they migrated to amateur Belomaidan posters.

_{But the fashion for Maidans with the active participation of the security forces in Belarus has passed, but the habit of quotations remains. The government will now try to make it a new fashion. And it cannot be said that this project is doomed to failure. “For fun,” new products can be worn by that third of society that, even according to Western sociological polls, does not support either Lukashenko or the opposition.}

By the way, about surveys. Last week, the government published a large-scale study, “Belarus: Opinion about the Future,” according to which 72% of respondents trust Lukashenko to some extent. It is noteworthy that the opinion poll is publicly commented in the following terms: society has changed and come to its senses over the past year. It is not clear how this compares with the official results of the presidential elections, after which White Maidan began. Then Lukashenko was counted at 80%.

If we assume that everything was correct in 2020, then the president lost 8% in a year and a half. But everyone understands that neither the elections of that time nor the current opinion poll reflect the real situation.

In the absence of objective sociology, we have to assume that Western researchers are closer to the truth, who semi-undergroundly found out: Belarusian society is divided into three relatively equal parts - Yabatki (Lukashenko’s supporters), Zmagars (opposition) and the “swamp”.

Commentators trying to be objective differ only in which of the thirds is slightly larger. But the main question for Belarus is where the “swamp” will flow. In this sense, the new “soft power” of the authorities with the distribution of Lukashenko’s merchandise while continuing to roll zmagars into the asphalt can strengthen the presidential position.

The guarantor himself, at a meeting with activists of the Vitebsk region, spoke out against early presidential elections under OSCE supervision. The enthusiasm with which his supporters received this statement creates a strong feeling that there will be no early elections at all. Lukashenko himself recently made it clear in an interview with RIA Novosti that he might have to wait another three years for the next campaign. But even in it, despite all the promises of the past year, he can take part. It’s not in vain that money is spent on visual propaganda in the form of quotes on T-shirts.