“Which currency do you have? – they say. – Don’t be afraid, – I answer, – not dollars”. The sense of fears of V. Vysotski’s lyrical hero of is not so clear for young Belarusians today. To make ends meet today most people have to follow the head of the state’s example, that is to take decisions “as life goes by”, while life taught to follow attentively the exchange rate of Belarusian ruble to US dollar, otherwise you could get into a big trouble. The last lesson our native state gave to its citizens in 2011, when national currency was devaluated by the factor of three, so that ruble savings of its electors were decreased in the same proportion.
The crisis of 2011 started with the stopping of currency selling in exchange offices and stopped with the re-starting of the open currency market. So it’s not a surprise that almost two thirds of Belarusians follow the ruble/dollar exchange rate (Table 1), and every sixth of them indulge in this several times a week. In this sense Russians are not rivals to Belarusians, so they are unable to evaluate the price of their cars and flats in dollars. Strange and careless people they are, aren’t they?
* Data from “Levada-Center”, June 2-13
Regardless of rascals and “conscious”, who “bubble rubbish” in all mass media (those juicy epithets we borrowed from the head of the state), Belarusians’ confidence in dollar end euro slightly decreased during the last six month (Table 2). We cannot offer any other explanation but the anomalous activity of national mass media in the first half of August, caused by the arrest of the CEO of Russian potash producer Uralkali.
Our supposition is also supported by the increase by 7 points (from 28.1% to 35.1%) of trust in national mass media in September comparatively to June, while the trust in not-national mass media increased only by 0.8 point (from 28.8% to 29.6%).
The answers to the question “Do you fear a new devaluation of Belarusian ruble within the next few months?” didn’t record an increase in anxious waits (Table 3) as well, but at the same time they permit to formulate an additional hypothesis of Belarusians’ anxiousness rate stabilization, and of decrease of trust in dollar and euro too.
Table 3. Dynamics of answers to the question “Do you fear a new devaluation of Belarusian ruble within the next few months?” depending on attitude towards the president A. Lukashenko, %
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Variant of answer
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03’13
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09’13
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Attitude towards A. Lukashenko
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|
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Trust
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Don’t’ trust
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|||
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It’s a real threat
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32.1
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32.3
|
17.2
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51.3
|
|
It’s possible, but unlikely
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42.7
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39.7
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43.8
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34.5
|
|
It won’t happen
|
19.4
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20.5
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29.9
|
10.8
|
|
DA/NA
|
5.8
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7.5
|
8.8
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3.4
|
The point is that the currency problem in Belarus is extremely politically loaded. Pay attention to the first line in Table 3. The share of respondents fearing the threat of devaluation of Belarusian ruble is three times higher among the opponents of A. Lukashenko than among his supporters. But during the gap between two polls trust rating of the head of the state increased by 3.3 points (from 43.4% to 46.7%) and electoral rating increased by 9.2 points (from 33.4% to 42.6%). Correspondingly an equal shift happened in the answers to politically loaded questions.
We had already mentioned repeatedly that the support of the national currency’s stability is the area of responsibility of the state. That is why public attempts of A. Lukashenko to shift the responsibility on people are equal to admitting his own failure. In any democratic country that would write off the career of a politician. But there is a special type of democracy which is cultivated in Belarus. It doesn’t anticipate the responsibility of politicians for their deeds.