Monthly Archive: February 2012

In April 1992 IISEPS held its first national opinion poll. Twenty years is a standard space of time during which a generation change occurs. However, one should not approach the question without thinking. In the opinion of the culture expert I. Yakovenko: “Generational change is set not so much by a natural process of replacing fathers with children, as by convulsions of our country’s history. New generations emerge in crucial, crisis times when the process of state leveling slackens, the maxim “left step, right step is considered an escape” temporarily forfeits its currency and a potentiality for diverse behavior comes into existence, an opportunity for to some extent unconventional self-realization”.

As Mao Zedong used to say, “The wind from the East weighs upon the wind from the West”. With the help of this phrase it is possible, at least partly, to describe the results of the IISEPS latest opinion poll concerning the geopolitical choice of Belarusians (Table 1).

As it is known, over half a million of the disabled live in Belarus at the moment. It means that every twentieth fellow countrymen of ours has these or those problems which limit his/her physical, psychological or intellectual abilities to some extent. This is quite a large number and it is, of course, impossible not to notice it. Hence the social problem of disability should be known to society. As the data of Table 1 show, three out of five adult Belarusians have first-hand knowledge of the problem.

In the opinion of philosopher A. de Jasay, “A state usually begins with someone’s defeat”. The Republic of Belarus owes its appearance on political maps to “the greatest catastrophe of the XX century”, i.e. to the defeat of the USSR in the “cold war”. The same defeat allowed A. Lukashenko to turn from a director of a decayed sovkhoz “Gorodets” into a head of state within several years.

To European measure Belarusians can be safely attributed to an electoral nation. They love to vote. Such is the tradition dating back to the Soviet past. A Soviet person was trained to participating in two types of mass political actions: to voting and to passing in festive columns of demonstrators past the tribunes from which representatives of bureaucratic establishment of the proper administrative and territorial level greeted him. In independent Belarus the second tradition was considerably devaluated, that is why voting remained the only officially allowed mass political action.

To have a good reputation by oneself is human. In the social psychology language it is called “disposition in favor of one’s own Ego”. The given disposition is registered not only on the everyday level, but also when respondents answer questions connected with social and political range of problems. Let us refer to the data of Table 1. As it can be seen, the absolute majority of Belarusians (68.1%) are law-abiding citizens who meet their commitments owed to the state. The share of the population “irresponsible” in the civic sense is extremely insignificant (7.6%).

A growth in the positive mood accompanied by a growth in trust to the person personifying power did not lead to a decrease in the level of opposition attitude in March relative to December (Table 1). It is possible to talk about some increase in the level of polarization in the split Belarusian society owing to a reduction in the share of respondents who found it difficult to answer. The record since December, 2010 percent of Belarusians who do not consider themselves to be in opposition to the authorities (66 %) follows from here. This is a direct outcome of the anti-European and anti-opposition propaganda which has been actively discussed by state mass media since the beginning of the year.

During the last year’s unprecedented fall of A. Lukashenko’s rating some political scientists began talking about forming of a new anti-Lukashenko majority. Formally, the arithmetical anti-Lukashenko majority emerged when the rating fell much lower than 50% and the number of those who did not trust the president made up over a half of all respondents. However, experts, to all appearances, put into the invented notion a much deeper sense – the president had lost support of the majority of the population for good, the majority had once and for all turned away from him and from this time onward would look for other idols.

(Русский) Анализируя в декабре динамику социальных индексом, мы отмечали, что сентябрьский робкий намек на рост позитивных настроений в декабре оформился в четкую тенденцию. В марте четкая тенденция продолжила свою победную поступь. Все три индекса по-прежнему остаются в отрицательной зоне (табл. 1-3), но до нулевого уровня, соответствующего формальному равенству позитивных и негативных оценок, осталось уже немного.