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SOCIAL INTERFERENCE

As they say, we learn wisdom by the follies of others. This applies to the Belarusians as well. Inflation of early 90-ies is still alive in people’s memory, and so when the lords of the Union State started bickering, their villains without going into details of who was right fled to exchange offices to purchase hard currency. Such financial activity of population affects currency rates. During the January opinion poll sociologists registered a turn in currency preferences of Belarusians. (See Table 1).

To explain, we shall give an excerpt of the IISEPS report for September of 2005: “Half a year ago over half of adult population preferred the green money and today their number has gone down to 43.5%. At the same time the number of those who trust the national currency has increased from 28% to 33.7%. As regards the sole European currency, it hasn’t won common trust so far. On the contrary, trust to euros has slightly decreased”.

Table 1. Distribution of answers to the question: “What currency do you give the most credit?”, %

Variant of answer

03’04

09’05

01’07

US dollar

50.1

43.5

40.5

Belarusian ruble

28.0

33.7

32.0

Euro

17.5

16.2

23.3

Russian ruble

0.8

2.0

1.6

As Table 1 shows, victorious march of the Belarusian ruble seems to have stopped for a moment. Its future in the eyes of public opinion will be determined by much more trivial things than reports of the National Bank’s Head. It’s not the president only who has the skills of “basing his actions on life” in Belarus after all. The growth of euro’s rates well illustrates this sociological conclusion.

Table 2 shows distribution of answers to the question “How will socio-economic situation in Belarus change in the near future?” To a certain extent, it can serve a generic indicator of attitude to Russia-Belarus conflict. It is now less than three months after the previous opinion poll (November of 2006) but occurrence of answers typical for the period of stability has been broken: the number of optimists has reduced by 11.9 points and the number of citizens expecting aggravation of socio-economic situation in this year has increased by 14.9 points.

Table 2. Distribution of answers to the question: “How will socio-economic situation in Belarus change in the near future?”, %

Variant of answer

04’06

08’06

11’06

01’07

Improve

44.3

40.8

42.5

30.6

Won’t change

34.4

36.2

37.7

33.0

Aggravate

14.9

12.0

10.7

25.6

DA/NA

6.4

11.0

9.1

8.6

Concern about the future also affected respondents’ attitude to changes in their personal welfare. Contrary to the real growth of wages that in accordance with instructions of authorities exceeded the symbolic line of $300 in December, the number of citizens who noted aggravation of their welfare increased from 10.7% in November to 16.8% in January of 2007.

Data in Table 3 let us analyze expectations of Belarusians for this year. The answers are ranged as per the results of the nation opinion poll. Thus, juicy corruptibility scandals stay on top. This is not fortuitous. A. Lukashenko’s statements to increase responsibility of officials at all levels were one of the information constituents in oil and gas war. There’s no need to explain to Belarusians the goal of such statements: for 12 years they have already acquired reflex to suchlike firestorms. In the opinion of every second respondent, loss of moral values, growth of drug and alcohol abuse are quite probable. As everybody knows, fish rots from its head. Although the Belarusian head has the monopoly of building his image via mass media, public opinion well feels hidden overtone.

Table 3. Distribution of answers to the question: “In your opinion, are the following events possible in Belarus in 2007?”, %

Variant of answer

All population

Among them:

Trusting/Distrusting

Trusting to A. Lukashenko (55.4)

Distrusting to A. Lukashenko (28.5)

Juicy corruptibility scandals

49.4

38.2

69.1

1.81

Loss of moral values, expansion of alcoholic abuse, etc.

48.0

38.2

68.9

1.80

Bank crisis, loss of deposits and savings

46.0

30.9

74.9

2.42

Sharp restriction of democratic rights and freedoms

43.1

23.0

79.8

3.47

Criminalization of the society, crime growth

39.3

27.8

62.0

2.23

Mass disorders and actions of protest

38.6

27.1

61.6

2.27

Mass unemployment, rising prices and impoverishment of population

37.9

18.4

74.0

4.02

Large-scale technical catastrophes

34.6

28.2

50.5

1.79

Merging with Russia

29.3

31.5

27.5

0.87

Military attack of some other state

15.9

14.2

20.4

1.44

A. Lukashenko’s resignation ahead of term

14.1

7.7

26.6

3.45

Bank crisis, loss of deposits and savings were put on the third place. We deliberately began this article with the currency rates. The Belarusians like skilled stock gamblers have become sensitive not only to direct but also to indirect stock information.

The rightmost column shows the ratio of citizens trusting and distrusting to A. Lukashenko. It has its own hierarchy, but what is in general obvious, this is optimism of respondents trusting to the president. This is quite natural. Authoritarian leaders strive to inspire confidence in the near future into their nationals.

The greatest disparity between answers concerns expectation of mass unemployment, rising prices and impoverishment of population. As we’ve already mentioned, attitude of population to the power in general and to A. Lukashenko in particular is first of all determined by personality resources. Clearly, possible difficulties at the labor market appear more painful for young and educated opponents of A. Lukashenko. They regard president’s pre-term resignation as a hope for changing the course rather than as a simple replacement at the top state position. Also, this explains concerns about restriction of democratic rights and freedoms.

Merging with Russia is the only event from the list below the probability of which is given higher estimates by those who trust the president. It is entirely possible that apart from different number of opinions on this event there are differences in a qualitative sense: merging into a sole state is an advantage for many respondents in the first group but it is undoubtedly a disadvantage for the majority in the second group.

Possibility of financial destabilization noted by the public opinion looks especially expressive if we turn to the results of Eurasian Monitoring (April-May of 2006). The polling was at one and the same time conducted in Belarus, Russia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan. In spring Belarusians along with the Kazakhs demonstrated steady optimism. Thus, 14.7% considered bank crisis absolutely improbable, 44.8% – improbable and 23.0% – quite probable while 0.8% were certain that the bank crisis would take place for sure and 16.7% found it difficult to answer.

Oil and gas war between Russia and Belarus hasn’t been finished yet, but the information flows it caused are already blundering into public expectations (rising prices, growing inflation, etc.) Consequently, we observe a complicated interference situation that the first nation opinion poll of 2007 did reveal.