By: Tony Barber / The Financial Times


Translated by: Agron Shala / Telegrafi.com

The peaceful pro-democracy protests that swept Belarus in August 2020 awakened memories of Solidarity – the mass movement that 40 years ago was born in neighboring Poland.

The focus of discontent was identical: the repressive Moscow-linked regime that mistreated citizens and brought shame to the nation.

Even the patriotic colors displayed in the protests were the same in Minsk as in Warsaw – white and red.

Two years later, the parallels between Belarus and Poland seem even more striking.

Just as in December 1981 when Polish communist authorities crushed Solidarity with martial law, Alexander Lukashenko's regime led the brutal crackdown on Belarus' democratic opposition.

The prospect of any easing seems as remote as it did in Poland four decades ago, not least because relations between Western countries and the Kremlin are now as bad as they were in the early 1980s – or worse, when we have a war raging in Ukraine.

However, in 1989 Poland was freed from communism without a single drop of blood being shed.

It was the prelude to a "spring of nations" in Central and Eastern Europe, whose peoples rose for national independence and civil liberties.

Given today's desperately bleak outlook, is there any chance that something similar could happen in Belarus by the end of the 2020s?

Since the events in Poland and Belarus are similar, the differences are important.

The prerequisite for Poland's turn towards freedom was the rise to power, in 1985, of Mikhail Gorbachev - a Soviet leader who, unlike his predecessors, did not suppress with tanks the dissent of formally friendly countries, as in Budapest in 1956 and in Prague in 1968. As long as Vladimir Putin rules Russia, the prison-like conditions currently prevailing in Belarus are unlikely to change.

Another difference is the extreme strategic vulnerability of Belarus.

It has been locked in a "united state" with Russia since 1999. Lukashenko two years ago received Russian financial and political support to quell protests that followed his fake election victory.

As a result, it fell into debt to Putin – more so than at any time since his dictatorship began in 1994. Along with the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Putin has placed Belarus under Russian military control.

The third point is that although Wojciech Jaruzelski – the general who served as the leader of the Communist Party of Poland – was criticized for imposing martial law, he did not use the methods of rule as Lukashenko's gangsters.

Last year, the tyrant of Belarus ordered the hijacking of a Ryanair plane to arrest an opposition activist.

At the border of Poland, he orchestrated the increase of Iraqi, Syrian and other immigrants.

As the prisons of Belarus are full of Lukashenko's critics, in July 1984 Jaruzelski announced an amnesty that freed hundreds of political prisoners.

To be precise, it was limited.

Dissidents like Adam Michnik are soon back in jail.

The regime's secret police kidnapped and killed Poland's most prominent pro-Solidarity priest.

But the amnesty preceded the era of Soviet liberalization under Gorbachev.

It was a sign that with Polish society Jaruzelski was looking for a way out of the deadlock created by the ban on Solidarity.

Nothing similar is expected from Lukashenko.

At the same time, there are reasons not to lose all hope for the people of Belarus.

Their desire for change represents the belated awakening of a nation for which independence came as something of a surprise when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. This process is now irreversible.

Moreover, the anti-Lukashenko mood of Belarusian society is not anti-Russian.

A more sober leader in Moscow can understand this.

The differences with Poland in 1980-81 are instructive.

Unlike the Belarusian democratic opposition, under the influence of radical activists Solidarity became more and more pronounced.

At a national congress in September 1981, Solidarity issued a call for Eastern European workers to follow the Polish example and form free trade unions.

Tass – the official Soviet news agency – denounced the appeal as the work of "a whole conglomerate of counter-revolutionaries, including agents of the imperialist secret services".

Although its leaders are either in prison or have fled the country, the Belarusian opposition is not radicalized.

Its basic demands are free elections, individual freedom and justice.

Today these rights seem very unattainable in Belarus.

But, they are not forever out of reach.

If change is to come, it will probably be because they are the same rights that Russia itself desperately needs.

/Telegraph/