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FOES ALL AROUND?

Tolerance of the Belarusians has already become proverbial. Are they truly that tolerant? To study tolerance/intolerance towards various social groups, social studies use the scales of social distance. In the given poll, respondents were asked to define their attitude to different nationalities, on the five-point scale, from readiness to ally by marriage (or get married) and accept them into their families to simple readiness to live in one country. Table 1 presents the data obtained during polling.

Table 1. Distribution of answers to the question “To which extent are you ready to accept the following nationalities?”, % *

Variant of answer

Ready to ally by marriage

Ready to work together

Ready to live as neighbors

Ready to live in one city/town

Ready to live in Belarus

Index of social distance**

Russians

52.4

16.7

15.1

4.6

7.4

1.918

Ukrainians

30.9

21.3

26.0

7.6

9.9

2.417

Poles

29.0

23.5

23.6

7.5

11.9

2.474

Western Europeans (Englishmen, Frenchmen, Germans, etc.)

17.0

23.7

21.9

12.7

20.1

2.949

Central Europeans (the Czech, Slovaks, Hungarians, Serbians, etc.)

12.6

23.2

24.0

13.0

22.3

3.096

Lithuanians

11.5

21.1

26.7

13.3

21.8

3.135

Jews

10.7

23.4

24.5

12.4

23.9

3.164

Letts

10.5

21.1

25.7

13.8

22.9

3.186

Americans

11.1

22.3

17.1

11.4

31.5

3.322

Immigrants from Central Asia (Uzbeks, Kazakhs, etc.)

3.0

17.5

21.4

15.9

35.3

3.676

Arabs

2.0

13.1

17.6

12.7

45.6

3.953

Immigrants from Caucasus (Azerbaijani, Armenians, Georgians, Chechens, etc.)

2.0

12.9

17.3

13.4

46.1

3.967

Africans

1.1

13.1

18.1

12.0

46.7

3.990

Immigrants from Southeastern Asia (Vietnamese, Chinese, etc.)

1.0

13.8

16.3

12.5

47.8

4.009

* Table is read across
** Index of social distance is an average value of distance indexes: if the percentage of respondents is distributed on the scale as A, B, C, D, E, the index is calculated as (A + 2B + 3C + 4D + 5E) : (A + B + C + D + E). The index may receive the value from 1 – when all respondents are ready to become allied by marriage with a representative of the nationality given, to 5 – when all respondents are ready to tolerate him/her as a citizen of Belarus only.

As one can see, this data doesn’t fit the general idea of ethnic tolerance of the Belarusians. Actually, this tolerance appears rather selective. Russians stand in the first place and leave all others far behind. In general, all Belarusians agree to have them as their colleagues at work and every second is ready to accept them into their families. Southern and western neighbors-Slavs stand on almost the same distance. Noteworthy, mostly Orthodox Ukrainians as well as Catholic Polish in different ways are placed among “us.” It is unexpected that so common in Belarus Jews and Baltic nationalities lag behind so far-away Western Europeans and Central Europeans. This affinity is hardly explained by well-being of the Europeans. The Americans are in no way poorer but the distance from them is much greater. The Americans fall between two groups of nationalities – Europeans and non-Europeans. As regards social distance, there’s a great gap between the first and the second. While attitude to immigrants from the countries of Central Asia is comparatively tolerant, still the Belarusians are ready to tolerate other nationalities as citizens of the same settlement area only. Almost every second respondent will tolerate Arabs, Caucasians, Africans and natives of South-East Asia only as citizens of Belarus living somewhere far away from them.

We come to several important conclusions from Table 1. First, the data proves that the Russians are the nationality the most congenial to the Belarusians as regards both human level and everyday life.

Second, Slavic affinity combined with at least neighborhood is appreciated while denomination doesn’t play a crucial role.

Third, even though via politically incorrect intolerance but Belarusians clearly identify themselves as Europeans and as a part of “we-whole” the distance within which is by far less than between “us” and global “them”.

Fourth, extremely high level of intolerance to the last five nationalities should become a serious source of concern for both the state and civic society. Grounded on this data, assaults of skin-heads against natives from Asia and Africa appear not just disruptive behavior but mass attitude in its extreme form.

Another indicator of tolerance/intolerance is attitude of citizens to foreign states, i.e. whether they take them as a foe or a friend. In particular, in the given polling we asked respondents to pick-up from the given list the countries most friendly and most unfriendly to Belarus. The same question was asked in May of 2005 during the All-Russian opinion poll conducted by the Center of Y. Levada. The results of both polls are given in Table 2.

Table 2. Distribution of answers to the question “List five countries which, in your opinion, are the most friendly to Belarus (Russia) and five countries which are the most hostile to Belarus (Russia)”, %

Country

Belarus (09’05)

Russia (05’05)

Friendly

Unfriendly

Index*

Friendly

Unfriendly

Index*

Russia

71.4

2.3

0.691

Belarus

–**

46

2

0.44

Ukraine

33.8

10.0

0.238

17

13

0.04

Kazakhstan

21.0

1.0

0.200

20

1

0.19

China

21.9

2.8

0.191

12

4

0.08

Germany

20.4

7.3

0.131

23

4

0.19

Cuba

13.5

2.6

0.109

Italy

12.0

1.6

0.104

6

1

0.05

Bulgaria

11.6

1.7

0.099

11

0

0.11

Moldova

11.8

2.9

0.089

4

4

0.00

Uzbekistan

6.6

1.0

0.056

4

1

0.03

Israel

8.2

3.1

0.051

5

3

0.02

Japan

6.5

2.8

0.037

4

6

–0.02

North Korea

5.1

1.8

0.033

3

1

0.02

Armenia

5.7

2.5

0.032

9

4

0.05

Iran

8.4

5.4

0.030

2

6

–0.04

Czech Republic

6.5

3.7

0.028

2

1

0.01

Kyrgyzstan

4.3

1.8

0.025

5

3

0.02

Serbia

3.7

1.3

0.024

3

1

0.02

Azerbaijan

4.4

2.9

0.015

5

5

0.00

Turkey

3.7

2.2

0.011

2

1

0.01

Turkmenistan

2.7

1.8

0.009

2

1

0.01

Slovakia

2.4

1.7

0.007

2

0

0.02

Romania

2.5

1.9

0.006

0

2

–0.02

Switzerland

2.2

1.9

0.003

3

0

0.03

Syria

0.9

0.9

0

1

1

0.00

Iraq

6.1

7.7

–0.016

2

10

–0.07

Lebanon

3.0

4.7

–0.017

Georgia

5.6

11.7

–0.061

2

38

–0.36

Estonia

2.2

11.0

–0.088

0

32

–0.32

UK

4.0

13.9

–0.099

5

3

0.02

Lithuania

8.7

22.6

–0.139

1

42

–0.41

Poland

13.2

28.9

–0.157

5

4

0.01

Latvia

6.6

23.8

–0.172

2

49

–0.47

USA

2.6

56.0

–0.534

11

23

–0.12

* Index is a difference of percentage between those who marked this country as friendly and as non-friendly divided by 100
** These countries weren’t included in the polling list

The first really striking thing is intensity of attitude to leader and outsider on the list. Overwhelming majority of respondents in Belarus estimates Russia as a friendly country. Although the Russians also put Belarus on the first place in the list of friends, they are more reserved in their estimate. As it goes from Table 1, attitude of the Belarusians to Russia is based on cultural and ethnic affinity and not on merely political.

On the other hand, more than every second Belarusian estimates America as a major foe or at least an ill-wisher. In Russia, approximately every fourth stands to such a viewpoint. In this regards, the Belarusian public opinion is a mirror of the official propaganda which, in its turn, has to break up generally tolerant attitude of Belarusians to Americans: According to Table 1, social distance from America is not very large but the image of America as “Foe No 1” has been politically built.

The same is the scheme of attitude formation to neighboring Poland, Lithuania and Latvia. This is especially true to Poland the citizens of which, according to Table 1, are within the third of “us” for the Belarusians. In addition, Russian mass media issue denunciations against these countries.

Remarkably, after bitter rows on the World War II results the Russian publicity took by far lesser offence against Poland than the Baltic States.

It is hard to say if the trend was the same in Belarus this May but Belarus-Poland conflict on the Union of Poles as well as escalation of Russia-Belarus relations undoubtedly influenced September estimates. At the same time, attitude of Belarusians to Poland is the most contrasting: Poland is the second in the list of foes and the seventh in the list of friends.

Baltic States and Poland appear the most unfriendly countries after the USA in the eyes of public opinion. Presence of a far-away Georgia among major foes is probably expounded not only by the conflicts over deported KMARA activists but also by activity of Russian mass media which took Georgia as a worst enemy long before the Rose revolution. Also, according Table 1, such information campaigns hit already prepared general mentality: the Georgians associated with their region aren’t the most welcomed people in Belarus.

The degree to which state-run mass media influence the image-formation of the foreign world available to most Belarusians in the television is shown in Table 3.

Table 3. Distribution of answers to the question “In your opinion, how do Belarusian state-run mass media cover activity of and life in Western countries?”

Variant of answer

%

Show them better than they are

9.1

Show them truly

42.4

Show them worse than they are

30.2

The most impressing is the number of respondents – almost every tenth – who think that Western policy and standard of living is even worse than featured on Belarusian television.

However, some estimates of respondents don’t fully correspond to the state mass media “messages”. Despite criticism of Ukraine and information war with “orange virus”, this southern neighbor takes second place after Russia in the list of friends. What works with Poland, doesn’t work with Ukraine. Attempts of the Belarusian authorities to hustle up the regimes like Libyan, Iranian and Syrian into allies and their proper coverage in the state-run mass media don’t find response in the hearts of Belarusians. Actually, attitude to these countries is extremely unfavorable.

Comparing attitude of the Belarusians and Russians to the surrounding world, Belarusian attitude is more Soviet-like. Bipolar world which broke up after the cold war still remains a reality in the mass Belarusian mentality. There’s a hostile camp headed by America, next to it – UK (by the way, Russians give positive estimates of the UK which are greatly different from Belarusian). Northern and western neighbors of Belarus posing immediate thread make an avant-garde which stands next to Belarus. Also, there’s our camp – Belarus and Russia and taking our side China and Kazakhstan. Noteworthy is very good attitude to China unlike to widely promoted by the official Minsk Iran, Syria and Lebanon. The Belarusians don’t know much about China and are not willing to. The social distance with the Chinese, according to Table 1, is very large. Such estimation of China makes sense within the framework of bipolar model: my enemy’s strong enemy is my friend. Russians don’t place China among its foes but take it even less friendly: the Amur River only divides Russia from China and almost nothing protects Russia from immigration of the Chinese which makes attitude of the Russians to its south-eastern friend so to say unambiguous. However, there are several countries which fall out from the cold war scheme of attitude shown by Belarusians. As we’ve already mentioned, one of them is Ukraine longing into Europe but still remaining a friend. We should like to draw your attention here to a radical difference in attitude of the two Slav nationalities to the third: the number of Russians considering Ukraine a “friend” or a “foe” is almost equal. In Belarus, the number of the first is threefold higher that of the second. Perhaps, the reason is in the last-year Russia’s battle for Ukraine which wasn’t Belarusian and the Belarusians couldn’t score for their team the failure of V. Yanukovich already congratulated with the victory by A. Lukashenko and V. Putin.

Several more exclusions from the bipolar scheme are Bulgaria and Czech Republic enjoying positive estimates of NATO, Moldova opposing Russia’s influence and therefore defamed in Russian mass media, deeply pro-NATO and pro-American Italy and, of course, Germany. Every fourth Belarusian fell in the war with Germany and it is still among the five countries-friends!

It should be mentioned though that these countries aren’t main curse goals of the Belarusian state-run mass media and this expounds for their exclusion from the foe list. Regarding Germany, it goes right after Belarus in Russia’s list of friends. Still estimates of Germany given by both Russia and Belarus are very close. V. Putin met as many times with G. Schroeder as A. Lukashenko but Moscow and Berlin play single geopolitical game while Minsk isn’t a partner for Berlin in any global game. Still, Germany is a friend for Belarusians.

Apart from other things, the above mentioned data defines the borders of external promotion of democratization movement in Belarus. Over lately, the idea to initiate such promotion through closest Belarusian neighbors Poland and Baltic States has been very popular. However, Table 2 shows that the authors of this idea obviously exaggerated sympathies of the Belarusians to these neighbors. At least, Belarusian state propaganda has efficiently built their image of “enemies.” Finally, according to Table 2, Ukrainian or German assistance would be taken more positively.