Whenever the subject of the colour revolutions comes up in conversation here in Russia, it's not easy to find the golden mean; that is, the conversation sooner or later gravitates to the extremes: either all the street protests are manipulated by the West in a conspiracy against Russia or that Western intervention was less instrumental in the success of the uprising than the spontaneous explosion of long-festering popular discontent.
Having had a similar experience in my teens and yet again just a few years ago, I tend to hew to the second camp — with all the romantic implications. However, the years since our own little popular revolt in 2001 have not been kind to my people and have taught me harsh lessons.
While Ukraine provided the world a dramatic example in 2004, even more so than that in Georgia the year before that, the supposed rush for a democratic outcome in the Kyrgyz Republic was in no way clean or ideal. There were no made-for-media heros this time, and victory itself came at a price. The violence in Andijan, Uzbekistan and the Kazakh government's effective outmaneuvering of the opposition in presidential polls late last year served as warning that there was no inevitability to the democracy domino theory and that the rose-tinted days of people people revolts might soon be over. The Ukrainian political theatre, much degraded last September before descending into farce in February, continues to appall for its pettiness.
In the weeks leading to its presidential elections, with the score leveled at 2-2, Belarus was shaping up as the ultimate showdown between the "dark" forces supporting the old Evil Empire (now symbolised by Russia) and the "light" forces represented by the US and Europe. Like in the battle between the two Viktors in Ukraine, the battle between the two Alexanders in Belarus was portrayed in stark contrast. With the US shrilly repeating to any who bothered to listen that Lukashenko was "Europe's last dictator" it doesn't take a Mandela to figure out who's who. The rest, supposedly, is history.
The only problem was, history didn't occur as expected. Rather, it unraveled. More than a month after the presidential elections in Belarus on 19 March, it would now flummox those very same champions of the Rose, Orange and Tulip Revolutions to admit that the democracy movement failed miserably against the "evil dictator".
My sentiments lie inevitably with the protesters, who I believe were sincere in their intent. In fact one of my Belarusian friends is part of the protest movement. We have only been acquainted for a year, but I can tell in the period I've known her that she aspires only for a bright future for her homeland. However, I have my doubts about the purity of the objectives of the opposition leaders — Milinkevich included.
The first cracks in my belief appeared when a Moscow-based Belarusian friend of mine some days into the poll protests replied to an SMS from me wishing her family and friends well. Although I had known her and her family to be anti-Lukashenko, it had been a while since we exchanged thoughts about the domestic situation in Belarus. So I merely registered neutral concerns about the crisis. It was fortuituous, in hindsight, to have sent a moderately worded SMS: her reply, which could not conceal her contempt, expressed no sympathy for the demonstrations and pointedly suggested that the results were karmic retribution for the self-righteous conceit with which the opposition operated throughout the whole campaign.
While my friend is not exactly the most politicised person in the world, her turnaround in a little over a year from a seething critic of the Belarusian establishment to a damning disapprover of its fractured-then-united opposition was telling.
A week after that text message, I had a guest at home who works as a contractual consultant for UN- or EU-funded human rights and development projects in troubled spots in Eastern Europe and Africa. While his work on those projects strikes one more as mercenary than mécène, this guest of mine evidently carried the baggage of the civilising missionary. So when he raised the topic of Belarus (he has traveled extensively in the former Soviet Union and had lived a couple of years in Minsk) I more than half expected him to launch on a harangue against Lukashenko. To my surprise he turned his contempt toward the other Alexander: "That Milinkevich is a real bastard, eh?" He related something else apart from this, but for me, that one sentence put me off the whole democracy-for-Belarus project in its current incarnation.
While the jury's still out on the opposition's intent, a decision apparently has been reached regarding their tactics. In today's Kiev Post, Lionel Beehner, a staff writer with the Council on Foreign Relations' website, wrote a quotable piece about how the opposition in fact did itself in. Beehner, who was in Belarus on a German Marshall Fund Journalism Fellowship, attributes the failure to a lack of focus. Despite having the advantage of reading from a well-worn playbook, the opposition was too disorganised, he said, to even light a revolutionary spark. A real Slavic damp squib.
Having had a similar experience in my teens and yet again just a few years ago, I tend to hew to the second camp — with all the romantic implications. However, the years since our own little popular revolt in 2001 have not been kind to my people and have taught me harsh lessons.
While Ukraine provided the world a dramatic example in 2004, even more so than that in Georgia the year before that, the supposed rush for a democratic outcome in the Kyrgyz Republic was in no way clean or ideal. There were no made-for-media heros this time, and victory itself came at a price. The violence in Andijan, Uzbekistan and the Kazakh government's effective outmaneuvering of the opposition in presidential polls late last year served as warning that there was no inevitability to the democracy domino theory and that the rose-tinted days of people people revolts might soon be over. The Ukrainian political theatre, much degraded last September before descending into farce in February, continues to appall for its pettiness.
In the weeks leading to its presidential elections, with the score leveled at 2-2, Belarus was shaping up as the ultimate showdown between the "dark" forces supporting the old Evil Empire (now symbolised by Russia) and the "light" forces represented by the US and Europe. Like in the battle between the two Viktors in Ukraine, the battle between the two Alexanders in Belarus was portrayed in stark contrast. With the US shrilly repeating to any who bothered to listen that Lukashenko was "Europe's last dictator" it doesn't take a Mandela to figure out who's who. The rest, supposedly, is history.
The only problem was, history didn't occur as expected. Rather, it unraveled. More than a month after the presidential elections in Belarus on 19 March, it would now flummox those very same champions of the Rose, Orange and Tulip Revolutions to admit that the democracy movement failed miserably against the "evil dictator".
My sentiments lie inevitably with the protesters, who I believe were sincere in their intent. In fact one of my Belarusian friends is part of the protest movement. We have only been acquainted for a year, but I can tell in the period I've known her that she aspires only for a bright future for her homeland. However, I have my doubts about the purity of the objectives of the opposition leaders — Milinkevich included.
The first cracks in my belief appeared when a Moscow-based Belarusian friend of mine some days into the poll protests replied to an SMS from me wishing her family and friends well. Although I had known her and her family to be anti-Lukashenko, it had been a while since we exchanged thoughts about the domestic situation in Belarus. So I merely registered neutral concerns about the crisis. It was fortuituous, in hindsight, to have sent a moderately worded SMS: her reply, which could not conceal her contempt, expressed no sympathy for the demonstrations and pointedly suggested that the results were karmic retribution for the self-righteous conceit with which the opposition operated throughout the whole campaign.
While my friend is not exactly the most politicised person in the world, her turnaround in a little over a year from a seething critic of the Belarusian establishment to a damning disapprover of its fractured-then-united opposition was telling.
A week after that text message, I had a guest at home who works as a contractual consultant for UN- or EU-funded human rights and development projects in troubled spots in Eastern Europe and Africa. While his work on those projects strikes one more as mercenary than mécène, this guest of mine evidently carried the baggage of the civilising missionary. So when he raised the topic of Belarus (he has traveled extensively in the former Soviet Union and had lived a couple of years in Minsk) I more than half expected him to launch on a harangue against Lukashenko. To my surprise he turned his contempt toward the other Alexander: "That Milinkevich is a real bastard, eh?" He related something else apart from this, but for me, that one sentence put me off the whole democracy-for-Belarus project in its current incarnation.
While the jury's still out on the opposition's intent, a decision apparently has been reached regarding their tactics. In today's Kiev Post, Lionel Beehner, a staff writer with the Council on Foreign Relations' website, wrote a quotable piece about how the opposition in fact did itself in. Beehner, who was in Belarus on a German Marshall Fund Journalism Fellowship, attributes the failure to a lack of focus. Despite having the advantage of reading from a well-worn playbook, the opposition was too disorganised, he said, to even light a revolutionary spark. A real Slavic damp squib.
Earlier this month, the opposition in Belarus unveiled a new strategy. “We are switching from the wonderful romantic sentiments of a brave minority to everyday educational and informational efforts involving tens of thousands of freedom volunteers,” said opposition leader Alexander Milinkevich in a statement. Unfortunately, this shift in strategy may be too little, too late.This is not to suggest that we should go the other way, of course. I think I'm too sentimental and idealistic a chap in any case to start cheering for dictators. More than anything it serves as a warning that things are never black and white as they seem. Now I get a bit leery when I see scenes of smiling young girls handing carnations to stern-looking soldiers or candle-bearing, pious-looking oppositionists. The cringe factor has now been raised; I am a tad -miniscule in cosmic terms, of course- readier to lend an ear to accusations of conspiracy by anti-Kremlin individuals.
Belarus’ opposition missed a golden opportunity after last month’s presidential elections, if not to force the regime of Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko to its knees, then at least to force a second round of voting. Civil society and youth groups there had had months, even years, to plan for this moment, as well as playbooks handed to them by their pals in Ukraine, Georgia, and Serbia.
But the opposition was too disorganized and too focused on what Milinkevich calls “romantic sentiments” and symbolic gestures, like lighting candles and wearing blue denim, instead of mobilizing more people, particularly adults, to take to the streets in protest. In the end, numbers matter more than gestures.
Sure, the opposition was up against a number of hurdles, including a lack of access to state-run airwaves, imminent threats of arrest, and a populace anemic after 12 years of dictatorship. Not to mention that many of its leaders were either behind bars or hiding abroad. And unlike Ukraine, these groups could not rely on domestic oligarchs for their funding, and most Western civil society groups had been booted out years ago, making financing tricky to navigate. But the opposition, particularly on the night of the March 19 elections, made a number of avoidable mistakes.
Around 8 p.m., responding to fliers and text messages posted by activists, thousands flocked to October Square —declared a no-go zone by the authorities— to hear opposition candidate Alexander Milinkevich address the masses. The trouble was that though he said all the right things, no one could hear him. The opposition did not think to bring an adequate sound system or generator to power it, just an inaudible bullhorn.
Also absent from the square were tents, which emerged as a poignant symbol of Ukraine’s Orange Revolution in 2004, when tent cities sprouted along Kyiv’s main thoroughfare, symbolizing the protesters’ willingness to camp out for weeks. Subzero temperatures and a biting wind in Minsk, more so than the threat posed by riot police, sent demonstrators home early. No plan was in place to keep protesters cozy or to supply blankets, thermoses of hot tea, or, most importantly, the tents themselves until the next day. By then it was too late.
Then, as the night wore on and the crowd thinned, a decision was hastily made to march a few blocks to Victory Square to lay carnations at a monument. This was a nice gesture symbolically, but not exactly tantamount to storming the Bastille or standing in front of a tank on Tiananmen Square. Only a few hundred bothered to march.
Next, came the opposition’s most disastrous decision: to postpone the protests until the following night. This killed any chance of reaching critical mass. Momentum was lost, as the next night’s crowd dwindled to only half of what it had been the previous night. By midweek, most of the foreign media had skipped town. Motorists passing by no longer honked in support. Even protesters’ chants of “Long live Belarus!” had lost their oomph.
Then there was the opposition’s odd rallying symbol: blue denim. Opposition leaders, trying to replicate recent revolutions in Ukraine and Georgia, were groping for a symbol, a color, a flower—anything to attract foreign media attention to their cause. They found such a symbol last year after a young Belarusian protester, his flags confiscated by police, held up a swatch of denim. Also, denim during Soviet times was evocative of the West. So, whenever Milinkevich appeared in public, he draped himself in a blue scarf to promote the spirit of what he hoped would become the “denim revolution.”
But the symbol failed and always felt a bit forced, like a marketing gimmick conjured up by Western NGOs. Not to mention, it was generic, the equivalent of Russian protesters donning fur hats or French rioters – berets. And while throngs of Ukrainians bedecked in bright orange might make for nice media coverage, protesters clad in blue jeans resemble just that: protesters clad in blue jeans.
Looking back, the opposition may have squandered its brief chance to bring reform to Belarus. They had the world’s undivided attention, but in the end, they were disorganized, improvising as they went along, instead of having a strategic plan in place. In the end, greater numbers were needed, not just pithy slogans, colorful flags, or gimmicky symbols to rally around, like denim.
Perhaps a repeat of a velvet revolution was never in the cards. But without an organized opposition, Belarus will never find out.
