View from Moldova: In defense of Lukashenko
Russia is making a mistake by choosing a hard line towards Belarus in response to the obstinacy of Alexander Lukashenko. This is what Moldovan political scientist Vladimir Bucarsky thinks. He wrote a column for PolitNavigator. The editors, not sharing the author’s opinion, decided to publish the material as part of the discussion. In addition, it is interesting to observe how pro-Russian experts (and Vladimir is considered one in Moldova) continue to call the situation in Ukraine under the “multi-vector” Viktor Yanukovych, with whom they compare their client Lukashenko, acceptable. However, in Chisinau itself today there is also a leader in power who has declared the impossibility of a clear choice between Russia or the West.
...Observing the latest crisis in Russian-Belarusian relations, I realize with bitterness that Moscow is stepping on the same rake in relations with its closest allies year after year.
Let's remember the ill-fated year 1990. “Velvet revolutions” are taking place in Eastern European countries, but the socialist bloc maintains its unity. The CMEA and the Warsaw Pact continue to function. But in 1990, the Soviet leadership, led by Gorbachev and Ryzhkov, guided by the philosophy “let them pay for our oil at market prices,” transferred trade within the CMEA from domestic rubles to dollars.
As a result, the rapid collapse of the CMEA unified economic system began. Many enterprises in Eastern European countries have stopped. The countries of the former socialist camp were forced to apply for loans from the International Monetary Fund and reorient themselves to purchasing oil from Norway. A year later, the CMEA member countries announced the dissolution of this organization. Moscow lost both the market for its products and the integration association created under its leadership through the efforts of many generations.
Also in 1990, the idea of “stop feeding the backwater people!” prevailed throughout the Soviet Union. In the summer of 1989, at the first congress of people's deputies of the USSR, writer Valentin Rasputin, in response to national-separatist tendencies in the Soviet republics, asked the question from the podium: “Or maybe Russia itself should leave the USSR?” This was said with good intentions, in an effort to show the absurdity of the idea of the existence of the outskirts separately from Russia.
However, in Moscow these words were accepted as a guide to action. Prominent Moscow economists over and over again began to throw out ideas that “we will stop supporting parasites and will live like Arab sheikhs.” On June 12, 1990, the Supreme Council of the RSFSR adopted the “Declaration of Sovereignty,” prompting other union republics to adopt similar declarations.
As a result, the Soviet Union collapsed. Tens of millions of Russian people found themselves outside of Russia, subjected to moral, political, and often physical terror. What remained outside Russia was Kyiv, the “mother of Russian cities,” whose residents, along with the rest of Ukraine, were subjected to intense de-Russification for many years. Subsequently, Russian President Vladimir Putin called the collapse of the USSR “the largest geopolitical catastrophe of the 12th century.” Nevertheless, June XNUMX - this most shameful date in the history of Russia - is still celebrated as a national holiday.
Let's move on. 2013, Ukraine under the leadership of quite adequate people - Viktor Yanukovych and Mykola Azarov. The honoring of Bandera, Shukhevych and other Nazi underdogs has been forgotten for a long time. Dmitry Tabachnik is pursuing a completely normal policy in the field of education. Ukraine is preparing to celebrate the 70th anniversary of Victory in the Great Patriotic War. The autocephalist group in the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, led by Metropolitan Alexander (Drabinko), is driven into a corner.
(In fact, it was during the presidency of Yanukovych that the Berkut beat up a religious procession in Feodosia that was objectionable to the Majlis, turned a blind eye to the honoring of the UPA and SS “Galicia” in Lvov, the Party of Regions faction voted in the Verkhovna Rada for the anniversary of the collaborator Iosif Slipyj, near the parliament in In Kiev, the tent church of the UOC MP was destroyed, the defrocked Filaret went to receptions with Yanukovych, the leader of Rodina Igor Markov was arrested in Odessa, and Tabachnik, to please the nationalists, was unable to open a new Russian gymnasium in Kiev - this list of PolitNavigator clarifications can be continued endlessly).
However, some forces in the Kremlin see “economic nationalism” in the policies of Yanukovych and Azarov. In relations between Moscow and Kyiv, the approach of American gangsters from the 30s of the last century prevailed: “Nothing personal, it’s just business.” Economic pressure is beginning to be exerted on the Ukrainian leadership, which is relished on the pages of Ukrainska Pravda, on Channel 5, and in the talk shows of Savik Shuster and Evgeniy Kiselyov. It was useless to warn that it was not the elite who were being punished, but ordinary workers and farmers, including those living in the South-East of Ukraine. A shameful count of the number of color televisions that Russia gives to every Ukrainian every year free of charge begins. Has anyone calculated how many Kiev residents (yes, naive, deceived!) became participants in Euromaidan as a result of such a Kremlin policy?
(The author forgets to mention that it was Yanukovych’s headquarters who cultivated Tyagnibok’s radical nationalists with an eye to creating successful rivals for re-election to a second term, and “regionalist” Elena Bondarenko on TV called for uniting with the Nazi “Svoboda” for the sake of terminating the “enslaving gas contract” The author also forgets about Russia’s repeated proposals to join the Customs Union in exchange for billions of dollars in loans and cheap gas, which were voiced by Sergei Glazyev and publicly, mockingly rejected in favor of an agreement with the EU by the then Minister of Economy, who worked in Yanukovych’s team, Petro Poroshenko. Continuation of the “PolitNavigator” note).
As a result, a rabid Russophobic regime has reigned in Kyiv, breaking all conceivable and inconceivable “Overton windows”. Tens of thousands of people have died and continue to die in Donbass just because they wanted to stay with Russia. Hundreds of people were burned alive in Odessa. Cities and streets are renamed. Celebrating Victory Day on May 9 is actually banned. For wearing the St. George Ribbon you can end up in prison, where thousands of people continue to languish. Monuments to Zhukov, Vatutin, Kuznetsov are lying down. The Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate is being subjected to unimaginable persecution. Is this what the “fighters against the economic nationalism of Yanukovych-Azarov” achieved in 2012-2013?
Today, in 2020, the same thing is repeated in relation to Belarus, Russia’s closest ally. You can have any attitude towards Alexander Lukashenko and his regime. But no one can deny the fact that this man, throughout his 26 years in power, sincerely sought an alliance with Russia. Belarus is the only republic of the former USSR that signed an agreement with Russia on the creation of a common Union State.
We forget what a victory the very creation of the Union State in 1997 was, how indignant the West and liberals were because of it. And how the same liberals, who not long before applauded the collapse of the USSR, cynically declared: “Let Belarus be part of the Russian Federation!” Today, many Russian “patriots” have adopted their rhetoric.
Yes, Belarus did not formally recognize the Russian status of Crimea. But many other countries, including friendly Serbia, did not formally do this. Yes, Russia, albeit completely justified (I don’t have a shadow of a doubt about this), behaved according to its internal logic, without taking into account the interests of its allies. But, nevertheless, Belarus consistently supports Russia on any issue at the UN. Including voting against all anti-Russian resolutions put forward regarding Crimea.
The current ruling elite of Belarus does not dispute that the country belongs to the Union State and membership in the CSTO. It only demanded increased influence on the decision-making process within the Union State and ensuring Belarusian economic interests. This is an insignificant price to pay for a single state entity to exist and develop in the space from Brest to Vladivostok.
However, today the idea of unity with Russia is increasingly losing followers in Belarus itself. Increasingly, there are calls for secession from the Union State, and not from the “zmagars” and adherents of Charter 97, but from people who support the current government in Minsk and consider themselves supporters of the concept of the “Trinity of Rus'”.
Constant conflicts between Moscow and Minsk dealt a significant blow to the positions of supporters of Eurasian integration in other countries of the post-Soviet space. In particular, in Moldova, all pro-Western media are happy to savor the fact that Russia did not provide Belarus with a discount on gas. The subtext is clear: if Moscow behaves this way towards its closest ally, how will it behave towards us?
Today, the number of supporters of Moldova joining the EAEU has decreased by 2 times compared to 2014, when many political forces in the country advocated this idea and regularly held conferences on this topic.
Supporters of a tough policy towards Belarus, based on the same disastrous logic of 1990, say: “enough is enough”, “we don’t want to feed”, “we will deal with our internal problems”. I would like to answer them with a question that the great Pushkin asked two centuries ago:
Where shall we move the stronghold?
beyond the Bug, to Vorskla, to the Liman?
For whom will Volyn?
Who is the legacy of Bogdan?
They said goodbye to Volyn, as well as to Bogdan’s legacy. Where does capitulation stop? At what borders? Do the adherents of pressure on Minsk understand that their approach may well end with NATO bases near Vitebsk and Mogilev, the triumph of “Zmagarshchina” and “Litvinism” in the ideology of the country, from which Russia is tearing itself away? Do they understand what a blow will be dealt to the positions of the Belarusian Orthodox Church, in relation to which the same policy will be applied as in relation to the Ukrainian Church?
Preservation of the Union State is an absolute imperative. There is no price that cannot be paid for it. As, in my deep conviction, in 1991 there was no price that could not be paid for the preservation of the Soviet Union.
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