A lot, and sometimes even life itself, can depend on an individual official in the life of an ordinary person.

But very little depends on the bureaucracy as a community in today's Belarus.



The other day it became known that the "Wagner's sledgehammer" was delivered to the museum of the "military-patriotic center" in Rechit as an exhibit.

A copy of the sledgehammer with which a man's skull was broken on video for escaping from a trench or not attacking.



In one of the discussions on social networks, someone asked: is such an "exhibit" coordinated with the authorities of Rethymno, with the education department of the local executive committee?

In response, someone more informed wrote that the pro-Russian "patriotic center" is patronized by local Chekists - and this information was enough to consider the issue exhausted.

Really, can any boss there, even the chairman of the executive committee, go against the KGB?

SEE ALSO: Museum of Rechitsk Military-Patriotic Center "Skif" received a sledgehammer of PMK "Wagner"

Lost chances of nomenclature

And has there always been a similar situation?

Did the Belarusian nomenklatura, for example, ever have real opportunities to remove Lukashenka from power?



Yes, it was.

For example, in 1996, when

Lukashenka

was close to impeachment, and a group of security forces was ready to speak on the side of the Constitution.

Then, the signatures of the Chairman of the Supreme Council

Semyon Sharetskyi

and the Chairman of the Constitutional Court

Valero Tikhini

under the "appeasement" agreement put an end to the impeachment procedure.

SEE ALSO: Generals in 1996: We will bring you Lukashenka in chains

It happened in 2001, when the united opposition supported the nomination of

Vladimir

Honcharik

as an alternative candidate in the presidential elections .

He had a typical party career - the first secretary of the district committee, the second secretary of the Mogilev regional committee, finally, the head of trade unions and a member of the highest body of real power in the BSSR - the Bureau of the Central Committee of the CPSU.

It seemed that he was quite acceptable for the nomenclature.

He immediately made it clear that there will be no "recalculation" of personnel, not to mention lustration.



In addition, state officials knew that

Vasil Lyavonov

, the former first secretary of the Mogilev district of the party and the former minister of agriculture, was coordinating the election campaign.

SEE ALSO: Honcharik about the sold documents about the disappeared, mistakes in the 2001 elections and about the open letter to Lukashenka

An important point: just before voting in the 2001 elections, documents were made public about the "shooting gun" with which Viktar Hanchar

and

Anatoly Krasouski

were allegedly killed

.

There were still enough people in the law enforcement agencies, and in high positions, for whom the killing of political opponents was unacceptable from any position.

This is to the point that in a critical situation the support of Lukashenka by the security forces would be far from guaranteed.

All that was required from the nomenclature was to hold elections in accordance with the law.

However, there was not enough determination for this (let's not talk about such high matters as concern for the fate of Belarus).

SEE ALSO: ""From above" did everything to prevent real searches."

The former policeman told how they were looking for Zakharanka, Honchar and Krasouski

There were certain chances at the time of the so-called referendum in 2004 on amendments to the Constitution, which were supposed to remove the limits on the number of presidential terms for the same person.

There is no doubt that in order for Lukashenka to remain the president for life, two-thirds of the country's citizens did not speak out (a constitutional decision requires not a simple (50% plus one vote), but a qualified majority (at least two-thirds of the votes). In that case it was enough to count the votes honestly. Everything depended on the nomenklatura — employees of the district and regional executive committees, who supervised the work of the commissions at the polling stations and in the district election commissions.



It is absolutely impossible to keep everything a secret, and even then there was information that the local people responsible for the vote (or rather, for falsification) received good support from the family budget.

It is known that the work of some members of the Central Election Commission was marked much more sensitively - up to the point of having their children become members of the House of Representatives.



In the following years, the system of falsifications was more and more perfected - with the full support of the authorities and under the increasingly close supervision of the security forces.

SEE ALSO: Referendum 2022 ballot: exclusively in Russian and with protection against forgery

Not with the people

In 2020, the rejection of Lukashenka in society reached its apogee, first of all, of course, due to the insulting indifference to people's health during the coronavirus epidemic.

This also applies to the attitude towards Lukashenka among the officials.

It was the officials on the ground who saw the real terrible picture of the epidemic and knew that in any district the number of deaths in one day significantly exceeded the number reported by Minsk throughout the country.

It was the local authorities, the employees of district and regional executive committees who had to urgently and under extraordinary conditions solve a lot of issues related to the lack of places in hospitals and the lack of necessary equipment.

And then collect signatures for Lukashenka at enterprises, listening to all the things for which in the first half of 2020 they have not yet been arrested.



I don't want to analyze the schedule of political and electoral interests in the election campaign (of course, the interests of Moscow were also present there).

I will only note that the nomenklatura did not nominate its representative, conditional

Rumas,

as an alternative to Lukashenka.

Including the fact that little was decided, being under the full control of the law enforcement agencies, especially the special services.



During the voting, the authorities acted exactly as Lukashenka demanded: they resorted to large-scale total falsifications.

Let's speak plainly: betraying our people (which is true, not the first time already).

SEE ALSO: Public repentance, Guard Corps as Iran's GUBAziK, life under sanctions.

How similar are the regimes in Belarus and Iran

When the intelligence services were under control

The period after August 2020 recorded the complete subordination of the nomenclature to the special services.

The same thing happened in Russia for the first time in its history.

Neither under the tsarist monarchy nor under the communist regime did the secret police control officials.



In the USSR, the Cheka-NKVD-KGB were subordinated to the party apparatus, both at the central and local levels.

Here is a remarkable excerpt from

Boris Yeltsin's

book "Confession on a given topic", where he describes an episode in the late 1970s.

The scene takes place in Yeltsin's office, at that time the first secretary of the Sverdlovsk Regional Party Committee.

Other participants are the guest from Moscow, the deputy chairman of the KGB of the USSR,

Uladzimir Pirazhkov

, and the head of the local regional office of the KGB,

Yury Kornilov

.



"There were three people sitting at my place - me, Pirazhkov, and Kornilov.

There was a calm conversation, and among other things, Kornilov said that the KGB office works in harmony with the party's regional committee.

And suddenly Pirazhkov yelled: "General Kornilov, get up!".

He jumped up, his hands in stitches.

I am also surprised.

Pirazhkov, waiting for each sentence, uttered: "Keep your head down, General, in all your activities you must not "work together" with the party bodies, but you are obliged to work under their leadership, and only that."



Where did General Pirazhkov come from in the KGB?

From the post of second secretary of the Altai Krai CPSU.

And General Kornilov himself?

Before wearing shoulder straps, he was the first secretary of the district committee.

Well, who was the then chairman of the KGB

Andropov

before he became Lubyanka's owner?

Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU.

Since the time of

Khrushchev

only former party workers were appointed to the post of chairman of the KGB of the USSR, from

Shalepin

to

Chebrykov

(with a half-year exception in 1982), half of the deputies of the chairman of the KGB of the USSR were secretaries of regional committees.

Every 5-7 years, "Komsomol" and "party" "drafts" were held in the KGB - the relevant department of the Central Committee of the CPSU strove to ensure that the "grandsons of Dzerzhinsky" had a fatherly, caring, but vigilant party supervision.

SEE ALSO: The FSB of Russia refused to disclose the court records of the "troika" "so as not to incite hatred"

Perhaps this habit of Yeltsin's perception of the Chekists as subordinates, developed even in the Sverdlovsk Region, played a fatal role in the selection of his successor in 1999.

Yeltsin did not take into account that the KGB apparatus only changed its name, but the methods remained the same.

However, new opportunities appeared - it was possible to steal former state property.

In this fascinating process, the Chekists quickly outstripped the bureaucracy, and their protégé

Putin

created a Chekist-oligarchic system that took control of all of Russia and began the restoration of the Soviet empire, only without any control.



In Belarus, the process of promotion of people in epaulettes had its own peculiarities, but today the situation is very similar to that of Russia.



Of course, we cannot operate with documents or regulations, they are secret, but everything indicates that the Belarusian special services are managed from Moscow.

In any case, the KGB pursues the policy of "Russian peace" and competes with GUBAZIK in burning out of public life everything that can contribute to the Belarusian national identity.

SEE ALSO: "The KGB said that I disgraced the military from Russia."

The story of a Belarusian arrested for photographing Russian soldiers

Instead of local, Tambov

As for the bureaucracy, the repetition of the scene that took place in the office of the head of the Sverdlovsk region, in the office of the chairman of the Mogilev or Brest regional executive committees is absolutely not real.

Today, local authorities work under the leadership of the KGB and other special services.

I was told how a second- or third-ranking official in one of the regions rushed to carry out the order of the local Chekist, who was far from the highest level.

For a long time now, no appointment to any significant position has taken place without the agreement of the KGB.

Now, as far as is known, Chekists are checking officials and their family members for the presence of surnames in signature letters for alternative candidates during the 2020 presidential campaign.

With the following "argvysnov", you need to think.

SEE ALSO: KGB — 10,000, Lukashenka's security — more than 1,000. How many people work in different special services of Belarus

And, finally, the question: to what extent does the Belarusian nomenclature support the independence of Belarus from Russia?

At the beginning of the 1990s, it mostly did not support it - both the majority of the parliamentary deputies and the apparatus of the Kebicha City Council had clearly pro-Russian sentiments.



Today, the authorities understand that in case of annexation of Belarus by Russia, people from Tambov, Yaroslavl or Kemerov provinces will occupy key positions up to and including district executive committees.

It is quite possible (and even likely) that veterans of the "special military operation" and even Wagnerites - with their peculiar perception of the value of human life - will occupy the warm seats.



The mentality of a Russian official is significantly different from that of a Belarusian official, not to mention appetites - nothing has changed in this sphere since Saltykov-Shchadrin's time.

In a word, the prospect of being under people from Tambov or Bashkiria does not inspire a Mogilev or Polotsk official.

Well, that's the problem - no one will ask them.

SEE ALSO: The Russian Corporation of Assassins: How the Kremlin, intelligence services and killers are connected

This is not to say that sentiment in the nomenclature environment does not matter at all, but it does not matter at all like it did in 1996 or even in 2004.

We can safely assume that the nomenclature as a separate political class no longer exists.

It is just as subordinated and controlled by the security forces as, for example, teachers who are assigned a certain mission during election campaigns, or those who were previously considered to be the "working class".

Not much really depends on today's nomenclature.



The same individual officials who dare to show a civil position are not just fired, as ten or twenty years ago, but the sledgehammer of repressions, which are becoming more and more large-scale and merciless.



The opinions expressed in the blogs represent the views of the authors themselves and do not necessarily reflect the position of the editors.

SEE ALSO: "Repression is the mode of existence of the regime."

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  • Siarhei Naumchyk

    Radio Svaboda journalist

    navumchyks@rferl.org

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