In the manner of Brezhnev’s epoch the last year of the fourth five-year period could be logically named “final”. However, using formal characteristic in this case would be precipitant, because in the manner of Stalin’s epoch this year should be considered crucial. This year brought closure to the “fat” years of steady growth of people’s incomes, and this made A. Lukashenko abandon the previous social contract which stipulated that loyalty was rewarded by incomes’ growth. According to new social contract loyalty will be rewarded by security and survival.
The new contract was made official in the New Year speech of the head of state in the last minutes of 2014. Here is the key quotation: “We saw for ourselves what internal feuding, hatred and intolerance lead to. The line between bright and loud slogans and society split is very thin. The line between this split and a war is even thinner. And if people forget about the value of peace and consent, they cross all these lines in a blink of an eye”.
Judging by the results of Graph 1, Belarusian society didn’t notice the change of social contract. Despite the decrease of real incomes, the total of answers “Accomplishes to the full extent”/”Accomplishes mostly” didn’t seriously change in 2015: 2012 – 32.5%, 2014 – 35.9% and 2015 – 34.2%. It is natural that A. Lukashenko’s supporters assess state’s ability to accomplish its obligations four times as high as his opponents – 55.2% vs. 13.8%. This “arithmetic” permits us to evaluate the slogan “State for the people”. It is certainly true, but not equally for the “majority” and the “minority” of Belarusian society.
Judging by the dynamics of answering question of Graph 2, Belarus is inhabited not by population, but by Citizens (capital letter is appropriate here). More than half of them accomplish their obligations to the state fully or mostly. In December 2015 they evaluated their own level of responsibility before the state 1.8 times as high as the level of responsibility of the state itself.
Evaluations of people’s responsibility are not politically charged, unlike the evaluations of state’s responsibility. 58.1% of the head of state’s supporters and 63% of his opponents positively evaluate their own responsibility. Therefore, A. Lukashenko’s opponents consider their relations with the state asymmetric. And we cannot disagree with this. Belarusian state is a state of peripheral social groups, a state of the so called “majority”. Economically and socially active groups in Belarus are considered marginal.
Majority of Belarusians don’t have resources to independently solve everyday problems related to lodging, education and health. The only source of hope is the state. But statism and paternalism regarding the state should be interpreted as the perfectly rational form of adaptation to the situation where state bureaucracy is almighty and uncontrollable.
In the situation, where nothing depends on a person, he or she adopts the perfectly rational paradigm: “NO FUSSING”.