CITIZENS OF THE FAMILY CIRCLE

Those who watch the development of the political process in Belarus will remember the autumn of 2009 by indefatigable activity of the Central Election Commission with its permanent leader L. Ermoshina at the head, directed at perfecting of the electoral legislation. The former opposition publicist and present constant author of the newspaper "Sovetskaya Belorussia" philosopher V. Orgish managed to capture this activity with the brightest colors possible: "Critics of the Belarusian political system may rub their hands – the Belarusian authorities began to voluntarily demolish one of the main, in their opinion, lawful and political obstructions on the way of the democratic process in the country". Simultaneously the same author expressed some doubts concerning the ability of the opposition to estimate the legislative initiative of the CEC at its true worth: "According to the logic of things opponents of the political regime must plunge into the struggle for power with doubled energy widely using the system political opportunities and legal procedures granted by the reformed electoral code. We would like to believe that it is going to be exactly this way, however experience and observations of many years suggest that more likely it is going to be vice versa".

Experience did not let Mr. Philosopher down: everything happened "more likely vice versa", just as he supposed. We are not going to deprive political scientists of their bread and analyze numerous comments of opposition representatives regarding demolishing by the authorities of one of the most important obstructions "on the way of the democratic process". Let us refer to the public opinion. The December opinion poll allows us to do it.

The public opinion did not support optimism of the author of the newspaper published in the largest editions in Belarus. It is possible that it was guided at that by its own long-term experience of watching the CEC activity. It is clear that examining of the public opinion through the prism of trust/distrust to A. Lukashenko revealed its traditional heterogeneousness (Table 1). However, even among the respondents who trust the head of state 26.9% did not agree that changes in the electoral legislation undertaken by the authorities would raise the level of elections democracy character in Belarus.

Any political science notion is ambiguous. There exist, for instance, hundreds of scientific definitions of such fundamental concept as "culture". We suppose that there are also a lot of definitions in case of democracy, too. In the course of the December opinion poll respondents were offered "to play" at associations with the set of eight the most common ideas connected with the concept of "democracy". Answers of the respondents are represented in Table 2.

Almost a half of respondents chose the definition that was quite close to the classical one interpreting democracy as people’s power which is the metaphase from Greek. To all appearance mentioning of justice played its part in the popularity of the given choice. Only in two cases percentage contribution of the respondents who trust A. Lukashenko turned out to be higher than by the respondents who do not trust the head of state: "Chaos, disorder and anarchy" – 11.7% vs. 7.7% and "Absence of a firm hand in governing the country, dissipation of responsibility" – 9.7% vs. 7.2%. The largest divergence to the benefit of those who do not trust A. Lukashenko was caused by the variant of answer connected with the division of powers and accountability of the authorities to the citizens – 25.7% vs.16.1%. Power is sacral in the opinion of the majority of A. Lukashenko’ supporters and hence indivisible and finds itself beyond control of the "mere mortal". Finally we can mention that supporters and opponents of A. Lukashenko have surprisingly close democracy concepts.

And now let us refer to the data of Table 3. Answers to the question: "How should the relations between the state and its citizens develop, in your opinion?" are peculiar test on paternalism. Respondents who do not trust A. Lukashenko have formally passed this test. However, they have passed it indeed formally as even in their allegedly advanced midst supporters of a careful state which must take care of its citizens and provide at that a decent level of life for everybody prevail.

The Belarusian state acts within the framework of the mentioned social mandate – blockading in particular, even under the conditions of the crisis, any attempts on the part of the plant directors to discharge their staff. Similar practice existed in the USSR. As a result no state plants had become bankrupt for 73 years; instead the whole country went bankrupt.

It is clear that mass demand for the state paternalism did not develop in Belarus out of nowhere. It has got a long history. This, however, does not make the Belarusian ruling elite abdicant of its responsibility for having carried out the purposeful work on blockading development of the modern society during all the years of independence. Serious progress was attained here; however it was transformed into defeat (Table 4). Today the authorities have to modernize economy in order to survive, but for this purpose they do not need obedient executors, they need citizens who realize their economic and political interests.

Table 4. Distribution of answers to the question: "What influence can you exert upon what is going on?"*, %

Variant of answer	Decisive	Quite large	Quite little	None
In the country as a whole	0.8	2.5	22.9	72.7
In your city (district, village)	0.9	4.0	31.2	62.7
In your community, in your street	1.3	9.2	36.4	51.8
At work	6.0	30.2	28.5	33.3
In your family	29.6	52.4	12.0	5.0

* The Table is read across

As historical experience proves, only citizens can be responsible for the development of the country and the state and not only for the destiny of their household. However, responsibility walks hand in hand with the rights. As for the Belarusian "state for people" the people themselves are purely an object for manipulating on the part of the unified and indivisible authorities which is confirmed by the data of Table 4. The family is perhaps the only point of application of the Belarusians’ "civil" virtues. Work can also be entered in the asset, however with some reserve. As far as the higher social levels are concerned, civic consciousness wears here out. It is not publicly demonstrated even by businessmen owing to their complete dependence on the arbitrariness of the officials.

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