EUROPE IS GOOD, BUT NOT FOR US

Also, the majority of respondents (although only relative one this time) expressed their wish for their country to change its policy and approach the EU (Graph 2).

When you look only at the results of Graphs 1 and 2, you may imagine that Belarusians are not so different from “good students” of Eastern Partnership (Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine): they understand that life in the West is better and they aspire for their country to set up good relations with this source of prosperity.

In reality this is all quite different. During the summit of Eastern Partnership in Riga representatives of Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine insistently tried to make the EU express at least conditional and abstract European prospect for them. We can imagine that they were doing this expressing the will of their people. V. Makey, the Belarusian Minister of Foreign Affairs, representing his country during the summit, had no similar requests to European partners. We have strong reasons to think that his restraint was not dictated by public opinion of Belarus. However, it should be noted, that this public opinion is not so keen to join the united Europe (Graph 3).

In comparison with the March survey changes are insignificant, but their direction is quite evident. There are twice as little of the supporters of Eurointegration as of its opponents. The number of opponents is almost the same as it was seven years ago, right after the war between Russia and Georgia, and the number of “Euro-Belarusians” is oscillating around 25% for about a year.

Formally, this is not a contradiction to the results of Graph 2: 40% want just a rapprochement with the EU, while 25% wish for closer relations. However, at first sight Graph 3 results contradict evaluations from Graph 1: 60% think that their life is worse than in the West, but only less than a half of them want their country to join this source of prosperity and well-being.

One of explanations of this paradox is that for many Belarusians there is another geopolitical “magnet”, i.e. Russia. However, not so many of Belarusians want to integrate with Russia as well, although this number is bigger than the number of those advocating joining the EU (Graph 4).

It’s interesting to note that in answers to a question formulated as “either… or”, the shares of both “Euro-Belarusians” and “Belo-Russians” increase comparatively to “one-sided” questions of Graphs 3 and 4 (Graph 5).

As you can see, in comparison with Graph 5, the share of “Belo-Russians” almost doubles. The factor of comparative evaluations of life standards in Belarus and in the West plays an important but not crucial role in this (Table 1).

“People in Belarus live worse than people in Western countries?”	“If you had to choose between integration with Russia and joining the European Union, what choice would you make?”
	Integration with the RF	Joining the EU	DA/NA
Yes	53.0	73.8	55.7
No	36.4	21.7	30.5

As you can see, among “Euro-Belarusians” prevail those who prefer the West in their evaluations of well-being. However, even among “Belo-Russians” and “isolationists” distinct majority shares this point of view. So we can say that at least there is something more except for these evaluations.

Table 2 results explain this paradox slightly better. These results describe the dynamics of social distance between different ethnos.

Variant of answer	Ready to become relatives	Ready to work together	Ready to live in the same neighborhood	Ready to live in the same town	Ready to live in Belarus	Index (04’06)	Index (03’11)	Index** (06’15)
Russians	39.3	23.1	22.5	7.7	7.0	2.05	2.08	2.20
Ukrainians	22.9	21.7	33.3	10.3	10.8	2.44	2.55	2.64
Polish	18.3	25.5	30.0	12.9	12.4	2.46	2.78	2.75
Western Europeans (English, French, German and others)	16.0	26.0	26.4	16.4	14.1	2.74	2.89	2.86
Central Europeans (Czech, Slovak, Hungarian, Serb and others)	9.8	26.8	28.0	18.3	16.1	2.95	3.12	3.04
Americans	9.3	24.0	30.2	16.1	18.9	3.08	3.12	3.11
Latvians	8.1	19.8	34.4	17.3	19.1	3.06	3.32	3.20
Lithuanians	7.5	20.9	30.5	19.8	19.7	3.00	3.39	3.24
Jews	7.5	18.0	34.0	18.1	20.7	2.98	3.33	3.27
Natives of Central Asia (Uzbek, Kazakh and others)	1.9	16.5	27.8	21.1	31.1	3.52	3.61	3.64
Natives of South-Eastern Asia (Vietnamese, Chinese and others)	1.9	18.3	25.0	19.5	33.4	3.83	3.72	3.65
Natives of Caucasia (Azerbaijanian, Armenian, Georgian, Chechen and others)	2.3	11.5	28.9	19.0	35.9	3.80	3.77	3.77
Arabs	2.3	10.5	28.2	17.6	38.6	3.81	3.78	3.82
Africans	1.8	9.8	28.9	17.1	39.4	3.83	3.81	3.85

Over 4 years (in fact, over 9 years) the hierarchy of nations according to the extent of proximity has almost not changed. But even in the framework of unchanged hierarchy there were some revealing changes. The distance to the closest nationalities (Russians and Ukrainians) became bigger. Attitude towards Lithuanians and Latvians improved; despite rumors of mass import of Chinese workers, attitude towards them and other natives of South-Eastern Asia improved as well.

But, as you can see, in the down-to-earth sense Russians are still the closest ethnos for Belarusians. Europeans, both from Eastern and Western Europe, and even the closest Polish, Lithuanian and Latvian neighbors, are significantly father away. And this is a factor that influences geopolitical preferences (Table 3).

“To what extent do you accept Russians?”	“If you had to choose between integration with Russia and joining the European Union, what choice would you make?”
	Integration with the RF	Joining the EU	DA/NA
Ready to become relatives	47.7	25.5	38.9
Ready to work together	20.2	26.5	25.2
Ready to live in the same neighborhood	20.2	29.3	16.8
Ready to live in the same town	5.3	10.7	9.2
Ready to live in Belarus	6.2	7.8	8.4
Index of social distance	2.02	2.49	2.22

The relation is easy to notice. “Euro-Belarusians” express a much colder attitude to Russians. What’s interesting is that greatest differences are registered for the closest types of relationship: readiness to become relatives. This share is twice as low among the supporters of Eurointegration as among supporters of integration with Russia.

Another indication of attitude of respondents to close and far countries is their attitude to the leaders of those countries. Naturally, these indices don’t completely coincide; there may even be cases when negative (or positive) attitude to the leader of some country is combined with positive (or negative) attitude to the people, culture or economy of this country (Table 4).

Variant of answer	Positively	Negatively	Balance of evaluations
The President of Russia Vladimir Putin	60.0	20.3	+39.7
The President of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbaev	43.7	23.8	+19.9
The President of the People’s Republic of China Xi Jinping	35.4	24.2	+11.2
The German Chancellor Angela Merkel	34.6	32.0	+2.6
The President of Poland Bronis?aw Komorowski	24.8	31.6	–6.8
The President of France Fran?ois Hollande	23.4	30.3	–6.9
The President of Lithuania Dalia Grybauskait?	23.4	31.4	–8.0
The President of the USA Barack Obama	13.5	59.1	–45.6
The President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko	10.1	67.0	–56.9

However, there is a certain relation which can be seen. The recent multinational survey conducted by Pew Research Center in 40 countries and dedicated to the investigation of attitude to the USA, demonstrates a certain correlation between the evaluations of the US and of the President Barack Obama (http://www.pewglobal.org/2015/06/23/global-publics-back-u-s-on-fighting-isis-but-are-critical-of-post-911-torture/).

Ad for the leaders, Belarusians clearly prefer the East: even recently elected Xi Jinping, who is not well-known to Belarusians, has a positive balance of evaluations. At the same time Belarusians’ evaluate Western leaders much more frostily.

These evaluations may be explained by the influence of Russian propaganda. Indeed, every day they diabolize the Western leaders, especially the US and “Kiev junta”. The influence of Russian mass media is a topic of a separate research, and earlier IISEPS analytical materials demonstrated that this influence is not so explicit. You can see it even in the results of the June survey: Russian and Belarusian propaganda together didn’t manage to convince Belarusians that they live better than in the West (see Graph 1). And if they managed to convince them of something else (in particular, that Western leaders are not good), then possibly this efficiency was determined by the fact that those grains of propaganda had fallen on the fertile ground. It seems that Belarusians shared this opinion even without propaganda – or they were ready to share it.

Table 5 results show that evaluations of leaders of corresponding geopolitical centers are significantly correlating with the geopolitical choice.

“How do you evaluate work of the following national leaders?”	“If you had to choose between integration with Russia and joining the European Union, what choice would you make?”
	Integration with the RF	Joining the EU	DA/NA
V. Putin
Positively	79.2	32.7	52.5
Negatively	10.6	38.4	16.1
A. Merkel
Positively	23.2	53.8	33.6
Negatively	42.7	19.0	23.7
F. Hollande
Positively	19.0	31.9	21.0
Negatively	35.5	26.2	22.5
B. Komorowski
Positively	18.1	36.8	22.2
Negatively	39.1	23.4	24.5
D. Grybauskait?
Positively	15.1	37.3	23.0
Negatively	40.4	22.2	21.5

Supporters of Eurointegration evaluate EU leaders much better than their geopolitical “opponents”. It is notable, that “Euro-Belarusians” prefer most of all A. Merkel, and not the leaders of Lithuania and Poland, who claim to advocate Belarus in the EU. It also should be noted that among “Euro-Belarusians” the balance of V. Putin’s evaluations is negative, but only insignificantly. However you cannot compare enthusiasm of “Euro-Belarusians” towards Western leaders with the level of support of V. Putin among “Belo-Russians”. This rating of the Russian President almost reaches the high peaks (90% according to Levada-Center) of his rating in Russia.

In conclusion let us mention the trends of answers to the question on readiness to resist hypothetical military threat from the West and the East (Graphs 6-7).

There is a complicated correlation between the readiness to resist a hypothetical military intervention and attitude to the source of this hypothetical threat. However, Graphs 6 and 7 demonstrate that Belarusians are more ready to resist (and less ready to greet) an intervention form the West than form Russia. Over the quarter (since March to June) the readiness to resist “NATO aggressors” slightly increased, which corresponds with a certain cold snap in relation to the EU (see Graph 3). But in general Graphs 6 and 7 results reflect the ambivalent character of Belarusians’ attitude to their neighbors: they don’t hate Europeans, they want Belarus to cooperate with them, but Russian “magnet” is still strong.