Frants Charnyshevich

Once during a seminar, dedicated to the Polish experience of political and economic transformations I heard a phrase from a Polish participant that arose a feeling of genuine surprise and even inner protest in the present Belarusians’ minds. The phrase was articulated as follows: “These Belarusians are bad students. We’ve been teaching them how to build democracy and issued a lot of money to them. However, they failed to make a revolution, despite having just the same situation the Poles used to have during the martial law period in Poland.” It wasn’t so embarrassing to hear the words about “bad students” than to perceive direct comparisons between the current political situation in Belarus and the times of “Salidarnasc” in Poland.
Historical precedents often help to realize the situation. However, sometimes they can seriously disorientate people. It is much easier for the Polish experts and politicians to regard the processes in Belarus trough the prism of the Polish experience in the 1980-ies. Consequently, they work out corresponding recipes for its improvement. However, nobody guarantees that the remedies will be acceptable in the present Belarusian conditions.
The year of 1989 in Poland was the time of dialogues between the opposition and the governmental authorities. The society was looking for the ways out of the political and economic crises. Quite a few Polish experts note that neither of the sides concerned was able to correct the situation on its own.
It wasn’t the time of splits. It was the time of dialogues and mutual agreements as well as the time, when the whole Polish nation understood that it was impossible to exist in such conditions further on. There was an absolutely different situation in Belarus then. The Belarusian society got trapped by the economic and political crises after the trouble-free 1980-ies.
The majority of people in Belarus have a very vague notion about the events in Poland in 1989. If you ask my mother, relatives or my friends’ relatives about that, most of them will shrug their shoulders, saying: “God knows what was there!” The Polish “round table” as an information event doesn’t exist in the majority of my compatriots’ memories. They aren’t to be blamed for that ignorance, as even close to the end of the Soviet empire; the information flow was restricted and censored if required.
However these people do remember their personal feelings of changes in Poland. Quite a few Belarusians could observe their consequences with their own eyes. Numerous buses with business tourists, organized by the Komsomol and trade union organizations were crossing the Bug River in the western direction in the autumn of 1989. The economic “shock” after hasty market reforms in the late Soviet period, initiated by the transition government, led by the Polish Prime-Minister Baltserovich’s friend and supporter Yahor Gaydar, made numerous Belarusians take up trans-border trade as a temporary career. The citizens of a newly announced country had an opportunity of evaluating the whole scope of transformations in the Polish society. The range of emotions in relation to Poland astonished. Common people admired and hated Poland at the same time. The Poles were envied and sympathized. The country was surprising and scaring. On the one hand, the people were scared with the misery of pensioners and employees from the closed down industrial enterprises. On the other hand, they were charmed away with colourful boxes on the shelves of stores in Poland. The Belarusians envied the Polish economic miracle and wondered why the Poles got such happiness.
Could the Polish experience of transformations become a catalyst of motivation for social changes in the Belarusian society? The Polish experience gave additional power to the socially active part of society, i.e. the opposition in the broad sense of this word only. The rest of people in Belarus either failed to notice this experience or treated it negatively.
Development of situation after 1991 brought the necessity of making a real choice between different coordinate systems. The result of such a choice was a certain indicator of maturity of Belarusian nation as well as an indicator of its readiness to accept the new realities. However, one should look into the past and find your place in it in order to move further.
The Communist government in Poland was made to cooperate with the civil opposition, formed by the community for almost 40 years in a row. It couldn’t be the other say, as the two parts were in one undivided state of Poland. The system of coordinates was common both for the authorities and broad civil opposition.
The opposition and government in Belarus were divided from the very beginning of independent Belarus and the split broadened with the time passing after 1991. The parts were different elements of different coordinate systems. The authorities represented the majority of common people, who treated that year as a real tragedy as their welfare depended directly on the state and its paternalism. It couldn’t be the other way. Personal welfare was the main value for the people, who fled from the Belarusian villages to cities and towns during the so-called “great migration of people” in the 1960-1970-ies and totaled around 70% of residents in the capital as well as in the regional centers then. The appearance of the new Belarusian independent state instead of the USSR “buried” hopes of those people, who were planning to buy a new car or to move from a rundown hall of residence to a newly-built apartment etc. The society became disorientated, as the tool of putting their interests into life that used to exist due to the Soviet state broke down and disappeared completely later on. The active minority was dreaming about a new European state. However, it was unable and, logically, failed to seize power in that situation.
All important decisions were taken in Moscow during the time of the BSSR. The Kremlin provided its Western province with everything necessary, including money, its status, its extraordinary rights of “a partisan republic”, and its seat at the UNO. It was during the BSSR period of time that the Belarusian people realized the dream of their parents to escape from the world of poverty by means of moving from villages to urban settlements. The Great Duchy of Litva, the Rzecz Pospolita of two peoples, the Belarusian Popular Republic meant nothing to them. Belarus was their “small motherland”, while the USSR was their “large Motherland”. Consequently, the manifestation of their tender feelings to the “small Motherland” was always starting from manifestation of their admiration and gratefulness to their “large Motherland”. The new state didn’t evoke trust, as nobody could guarantee that it would ensure everything the Union center used to provide before. The problem was that the “small motherland” didn’t exist in the Belarusian people’s minds separately from the “large” one.
It might have been due to this problem that the local dwellers had a question that could be treated as nonsense by any participant of the Round Table in Poland. They wondered whether they really needed a state of their own and pondered over its advantages.
As soon as the usual frame of reference was about to disappear, the disoriented Belarusians started to look for anyone to lean against. The arguments for changes didn’t prevail over the losses, caused by the system collapse.  Being accustomed to getting constant assistance from the Soviet Union structures, the nation appeared at the crossroads.
Belarus is a country at the borderline of Latin and Byzantium cultures. Subject to this peculiarity, quite a few people in Belarus cannot determine their origin nowadays. Some Belarusians note that they are the Soviet people. Others name themselves as Litvins or ‘Tuteyshyja’ (‘People from Here’). Thus, it appears that the nation-building process in Belarus is still in progress. The fact of living in an independent state will help next generations of Belarusians to separate the Soviet past from their modern life and facilitate searches for the ways of arranging the house of their own. As soon as it happens, a completely new frame of reference will appear in Belarus. Consequently, the state authorities and the political opposition will find it possible to sit down around a round table, like it was in Poland in 1989 in order to agree upon the further common strategy of national development. The Polish lessons from the year of 1989 will be highly useful for the Belarusian people at that time, as they will hint about concrete ways of searching for compromises and putting them into life.