THE WARM WIND FROM THE WEST

Careful signals about the desirability of relations normalization with the West which Minsk began to give at the beginning of 2007, have acquired at the present time the character of a geopolitical revolution. No, Belarus has not at all become "the outpost of the West" in the East. The level of relations between Minsk and Europe has not even reached yet the relations level of Baku, Astana or Moscow with Brussels, to say nothing about Kyiv or Tbilisi. However, cognition comes through comparison – retreat of the parties from the previous state of the "cold war" is obvious. If one talks about the political sphere, then it has not cost Minsk much so far: in 2008 all prisoners of conscience, including the former presidential contender A. Kozulin, were released; two newspapers "Narodnaya Volya" and "Nasha Niva" were returned into the legal circulation (distribution through the state network of subscription and retail was allowed); political movement headed by another presidential contender A. Milinkevich was registered. That is all, in fact. At the same time, in spite of some procedure improvements, the parliamentary elections in Belarus in September of 2008 were held by the best traditions – none opposition candidate got into the parliament. Nevertheless, the European Council in October, 2008 suspended for half a year visa sanctions imposed in 2006 upon the president of the country and several dozens of eminent representatives of the Belarusian authorities. At that time Belarus was also invited to participate in the Eastern partnership – an initiative of the EU on collaboration with the post-Soviet countries – although on conditions of considerable democratization.

At the end of 2008 and the beginning of 2009 Belarus, which for many years practically had not had any contacts with the West at any high level, virtually became a place of political pilgrimage for the European emissaries, and the visit to Minsk of the EU foreign policy coordinator J. Solana became its peak.

In the middle of March foreign Ministers of the EU decided to extend the suspension of visa sanctions regarding the Belarusian leaders for 9 more months, and on March, 20^th at the EU summit Belarus was officially invited into the Eastern partnership already without any conditions.

In what way did the sharp bend of Minsk foreign policy tell on the mass consciousness? The data of Table 1 partly answer this question.

Table 1. Dynamics of answering the question: "If a referendum on Belarus entering the European Union was being conducted in Belarus now, what choice would you make?", %

Variant of answer	12'02	03'03	09'05	11'06	12'07	03'08	12'08	03'09
Yes	60.9	56.4	38.0	36.6	37.1	35.4	30.1	34.9
No	10.9	11.9	44.0	36.2	35.0	35.4	40.6	36.3

Striking as it might seem, but it looks as if the public consciousness did not actually notice the geopolitical bend of the official Minsk. If before quite low indices of pro-European attitudes could have been explained by the massive anti-Western state propaganda and by the fear to express an opinion which did not coincide with the official one, then now the tone of the official mass media at least with respect to Europe has become moderate and sometimes even favorable, and at the same time the level and frequency of the official Minsk and Europe representatives’ meetings do not testify to the continuation of confrontation. However, we do not observe a sharp increase in pro-European attitudes. It stands to reason, that the attitude of the Belarusians to the membership in the EU is only one although a rather powerful indicator of the Belarusians’ attitude to Europe. As a rule, though, all these indicators demonstrate coordinated dynamics.

The European shift becomes a little bit more apparent in the answers to the question about the choice between the two geopolitical "magnets" of Belarus – Russia and Europe (Table 2).

As it can be seen the number of pro-Europeans has slightly grown for the last three months (by 5 percentage points), and the share of the eastern vector adherents has decreased approximately to the same degree. The data of Table 3 also confirm that the interest to the integration with Russia has somewhat decreased.

The European Union through its high representatives (Czech Minister of Foreign Affairs K. Schwarzenberg, European Commissioner B. Ferrero-Waldner, head of the EU foreign policy J. Solana) announced that the real condition of Europe collaboration with Belarus is non-recognition of Georgian autonomies – Abkhazia and South Ossetia. The Belarusian authorities demonstrate wonders of inventiveness in procrastinating of this question in order not to close the way to Europe for themselves, on the one hand, and not to infuriate Moscow too much, on the other hand. Meanwhile the relative majority of the Belarusians is for the recognition of the Georgian autonomies independence (Table 4).

However, in September, 2008 63% of respondents declared for recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia independence, and other 16.7% – for their simple joining Russia. Since then the number of supporters of such actions has decreased a lot, but still remains quite large.

Do these data as well as the data of Table 2 mean that in the Belarusian mass consciousness they as before speak with the words of Mao Zedong: "the wind from the East weighs upon the wind from the West"? Not everything is so simple.

It should be mentioned that the Belarusians do not feel any Euro-phobias. For instance, more than a half of respondents (51.6%) mark that the population in the EU countries lives better than in Belarus. 16.4% of respondents hold to the opposite opinion (Table 5). Almost every second respondent treats positively the fact that some Belarusians work in the European countries permanently or temporarily (negatively – 13.8%); and answering the question where threat for Belarus comes from one third of the respondents does not see such a threat at all, and the same number of respondents see such a threat on the part of the West as well as on the part of the home authorities (16%).

Answers to the question concerning the mentioned above subject – visit to Minsk of the head of European diplomacy J. Solana are quite revealing (Table 6).

It is interesting to compare these data with Table 2. The relative majority is notionally for the eastern vector. However, the ratio of the opinions changes when the choice is offered in a practical context.

At the same time the majority of the Belarusians feel their distance from Europe. At that the cultural distance is felt much more than the political one. To the question "Do you perceive yourself as a European, do you feel your belonging to the culture and history of the European society?" 37% answered in the affirmative and 53% – in the negative. It is interesting to note that the same question was asked exactly three years ago when the presidential campaign was in full swing and was accompanied by tough confrontation of the official Minsk with the West. However, the shares of those who answered in the affirmative and in the negative have not changed during this time. In other words, such civilized identification is an invariant, which does not change much following the current political situation.

The data of Table 7 illustrate the ambivalent attitude to the West, too.

As it can be seen the feeling of the West hostility is peculiar to the Belarusians to a rather small extent. However, the feeling of difference against the West is perhaps the most widespread.

On the other hand, all the indicators enumerated above are by implication connected with the estimations of the present sharp bend in the policy of Minsk. And what is the attitude to the foreign policy "volte-face" itself?

Before we pass on to an analysis of answers to the corresponding question, we should mention that rapprochement of the official Minsk with Europe not being accompanied by a significant change of the political climate in the country has provoked a rather critical attitude of the largest part of the opposition: in the opinion of these critics, Europe has betrayed its principles and Belarusian democracy with the help of such a policy (Table 8).

Purely arithmetically the new policy of Minsk, or more precisely the new policy of Europe, is supported by the majority – 53.6% have chosen either the first or the second variants of answer. At that the same positive estimation turns out to be conditioned on two fundamentally different motives: in spite of the fact that respondents could choose several answers, only 1.9% of the general number of the polled chose the first as well as the second variant of answers simultaneously.

This "unity in a split" becomes especially visible if one regards the answers to the question of Table 8 in the context of political and geopolitical preferences of respondents. For the sake of simplification the data are given only regarding the groups with particular positions (Table 9).

The data of Table 9 demonstrate that the majority of the Belarusians approving of the new policy of Europe is formed across the traditional political and even geopolitical partitions. More than a half of the present authorities’ supporters approve of the Europe’s bend following the standard formula of the Belarusian official paradigm – the world and Europe in particular should recognize us the way we are. The fact that "recognition" may prove to be a mechanism leading Belarus out of the Russian sphere of influence turns out a less important circumstance not only for the supporters of the authorities, but even for the adherents of integration with Russia. Among them the share of those who reject the new policy of the EU exactly owing to its supposed anti-Russian character is highest possible; however, in a sense, loyalty to the authorities turns out to be a stronger factor in this group, too.

Distribution of motives by the opponents of the authorities and supporters of Euro-integration is evener. The main motive according to which they favor the new policy of Brussels is a desire for Belarus to find itself as far as possible from Russia. Nevertheless, the motive of recognition of the present authorities on the part of Europe proves to be important for many of its opponents – so to speak, though the authorities are bad, they are still ours. It is not surprising that the share of those who suppose that Europe has betrayed its principles by way of pacifying A. Lukashenko is highest possible exactly in the group of the authorities’ opponents. On the other hand, the desire to find themselves farther from Russia and closer to Europe even with the unloved president is a stronger factor among them.

The data of Table 9 let us give an additional explanation to the paradoxical fact that the evident normalization of relations between Minsk and Brussels did not arouse any visible growth in the number of Euro-integration supporters (see Table 1). Perception of the new policy of Europe as a betrayal could even have alienated the Belarusians disposed in a pro-European way from their traditional choice. At the same time it is unlikely that a large share of the authorities’ adherents could have managed to pass from the approval of the new EU policy to the deep pro-European aspirations for a short period of time. Thus the absence of growth in the number of “Euro-Belarusians” might be caused by the influence of the opposite tendencies, by the reorganization in the group of supporters of this geopolitical choice.

The EU Eastern partnership program provides for the strengthening of Europe’s influence in the countries to which this program is offered, including in Belarus. It is a vexed question whether this means belittling and weakening of the influence of Russia, if one does not consider international policy to be a game with a zero sum. The above given data show that the Belarusian society, as a whole, does not consider it to be so. In spite of the remaining high level of sympathy for Russia, the new policy of Europe enjoys in Belarus support of the majority, although it is formed on the basis of rather different motivations.

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