BLURRING OF THE BLANK SPOT

The seminar “National Identity of Belarus” held under the auspices of Friedrich Ebert Foundation took place in Minsk in 2003. The collected articles of the seminar included the article “Belarus: Collective Identity or Pluralist Identity?” by German political scientist T. Bayer. We should like to quote the first two paragraphs of the article. “Contrary to the trend in most Eastern European countries under transition, which realized their national identity in the 90-ies, there’s the country that presents a special case. This is Belarus.

It is almost impossible to mobilize its population with the national idea, which has become the reason for appearance of a strange blank spot at the map of national self-consciousness. Some of political scientists are bewildered by this unique case in the post-colonial world since the country that received independence surrenders this independence. Widely spread scientific attitude to this phenomenon lies in understanding of the weak Belarusian nationalism as the deficit overcoming of which is the objective of the transformation science. According to it, in view of his too strong orientation at Russia President A. Lukashenko impedes search for national identity to its people.”

It has been three years now from publication of the above quoted article. It seems this is a short term to see significant changes in such a fundamental field like formation of national identity. However, practice has once again disgraced the theory. This has become possible to a great extent due to changes in the behavior of the elite. USSR collapse and the following elimination of the single coordination center pushed the Belarusian elite into the field of independent decision taking which brought to its gradual transformation from the elite subordinate into the elite responsible. This transformation certainly influenced the identity change.

What the German political scientist failed to see in 2003, the Belarusian elite understood even two years earlier. Speaking on May 19, 2001 at the Second All-Belarusian Assembly, President A. Lukashenko pointed to the formation of independent Belarusian state as to a major achievement of the previous five years. “There were both achievements and failures over the past five years. We shouldn’t miss the major achievement of these five years at the background of miscellaneous (even very important) problems. For the first time over the long history of our people, Belarus is an independent and sovereign state.”

The opinion of the Belarusian elite often differs significantly from the public opinion registered during nation opinion polls. Data in Table 1 is well show that the question about the “major achievement” is not the case.

Quite expectedly, public sector employees appeared more advanced. Belarusian statehood starts with administrative independence rather than with culture. Under such a model, an official will become not just a key bearer of the national idea but also its key implementation agent. Certainly, a key agent of transformations should receive the first prize. Data in Table 2 fully prove this statement. Look at the line DA/NA. Its informational capacity is rather unique for the mass opinion polls.

The question about benefit and loss from independence appeared fairly complicated for the public opinion, especially under conditions when the mass media don’t give any open hints. The state elite don’t need the hints of this kind, and it didn’t see any difficulty to answer the question in Table 2.

Clearly, asked the question “What is the Belarusian nation for you?” (see Table 3) public sector employees who are statesmen by their position make emphasis on the statehood approach in definition of the nation. For the majority of them, such approach isn’t the result of abstract reasoning at rest but the product of daily exercise. Private sector employees are not so much restricted by stiff routine in their opinion formation, this is why their answers aren’t so rigidly determined. However, answers of both groups of the elite greatly differ from “the average on the hospital.” The reason is still the same: representatives of the elite and common citizens stand on different levels of involvement into the state formation.

Difference in the pace of national identification within the elite and within the society in general is seen in the attitude to “the other.” Actually, the very fact of comprehending “the other” is a good indicator that the process began. Thus, it is clear that for Belarusians their attitude to Russians is important. The data of opinion poll let us understand that the process began and the elite are able to head it.

As it has been mentioned above, cultural component is not dominant in the formation of national identity of Belarusian citizens. Hence, the question “To what cultural tradition do you relate yourself?” split the Belarusian elite. There’s no trace of earlier unanimity. The Belarusian elite (both public sector employees and their colleagues from private sector) identify themselves first of all as representatives of all-European culture and this way they expressed their disagreement with the public opinion. Noteworthy, percentages of “all-Europeans” among private and public sectors are nearly the same, yet several variants of answer were allowed in Table 4.

Private sector employees didn’t use actively this opportunity. The total amount of their answers made 115% while this same figure for the public sector is much higher – 150%. What variants of answer were duplicated? It is easy to understand that public sector employees who paid tribute to the Western direction of cultural identification certainly remembered about their Belarusian roots. Judging from answers, this combination seemed quite logic for them.

Substantial difference in the answers of elite and the results of the nation opinion poll about “all-European culture” can have several interpretations. On the one hand, elite’s cultural orientation for European values let us hope for transformation of the Belarusian society in favor of the united Europe. On the other hand, such deep socio-cultural gap between the elite and the society can bring to mutual misunderstanding in the conditions of a socio-economic crisis, probability of which has greatly increased over lately. Elite and masses can simply fail to come to an agreement at an acute moment and will thus create conditions for appearance of one more ‘populist devil from the snuff-box.’

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