Will a Solidarity-type revolution overthrow Lukashenko in Belarus? Carl:
www.polskieradio.pl/polonia/article.asp?tId=34403&j=2 Politics: the art of the nearly impossible
Listen to audio at the site.
Twenty five years ago this week the Solidarity trade union called
for a four hour warning strike, with a general strike threatened to
follow four days later. Participation in the warning strike was 100
percent. Maybe the Belarusian opposition should take note..?
Letter from Poland
By Peter Gentle
21.03.06
On the March 27, 1981, at 8 a.m., workers all over Poland downed
tools and stopped work for four hours. Communist Poland came to a
standstill. In the streets the flags of Poland and Solidarity hung
from every conceivable point, fluttering in the early spring breeze.
Every second person was wearing a badge - the red and white of the
local branch of the trade union, the silver and black of a specially
made image of the Solidarity monument, which now stood proudly near
the gates of the Lenin Shipyard in Gdansk, the home of Solidarity.
At 12 noon workers all over the country picked up their tools again
and re-started work. The message was clear to the communist
authorities. Solidarity now had the power, and the solidarity, to
bring the regime to its knees. Would they heed that warning in
Spring 1981 and stop breaking the promises that they had made in the
August Agreement the previous year, which officially recognized
Solidarity as the first free and self-governing trade union in the
communist block?
But just how was it possible to organize such a strike in what were
extremely oppressive circumstances?
This is a question maybe the opposition in Belarus might be asking
themselves today. The presidential election last Sunday ended in a
landslide for what many call the 'last dictator in Europe',
Alexander Lukashenko, a strange figure who seems nostalgic for the
good old days of the Soviet Union. This Charlie Chaplin-esque
character, who would indeed make a great comic supporting actor in a
Buster Keaton or Keystone cops movie, if he wasn't so paranoid and
oppressive a personality - received 86% of the vote, according the
Belarus electoral commission, that is.
Landslide?
Of course, nobody believes this figure, maybe not even Lukashenko
himself. The OECD has said that the elections were anything but
'free and fair'; the opposition candidates received very little
coverage on the state controlled television channels at all;
candidates were harassed, and in some incidences, beaten.
Independent newspapers and other media have been shut down.
Lukashenko was not taking any risks with the actual result of the
election, so he appears to have all but fixed it before hand.
Many in the West and certainly Poland were waiting, hoping, that
another Orange or Rose Revolution would take place as it did in
Ukraine or Georgia, with hundreds of thousands taking to the streets
in a show of 'People Power'.
On the night of the election, about ten thousand filled the main
square in Minsk, the capital. The next day, however, the numbers had
slipped to only around five hundred.
It looks certain there will be no 'Denim Revolution' this time.
But why? The opposition complains, rightly, that there isn't a level
playing field and that people are scared to say and act as they
really feel.
All true, but how did Solidarity do what they did in even more
difficult circumstances 25 years ago?
Between August 1980, the beginning of Solidarity, to just eight
months later in March 1981, the union had organized itself into what
was an alternative civil society in waiting. Out of 12.5 million
workers eligible to join, the Solidarity trade union had nearly ten
million members. It had nearly 40,000 full time staff.
There were underground newspapers: Solidarnosc printed in Gdansk,
Niezeleznosc (Independence) printed in Warsaw. There was Nowa, an
underground printing works churning out translations of Orwell's
Animal Farm and other forbidden reading material. There was what
they called 'Solidarity Radio' in Wroclaw, which was actually a
cassette recording duplicated and played over the works radio all
over the region. There was a Solidarity Press Agency. There was
telephone and fax networks connecting up all parts of the union,
which was organized into regions and local chapters, with a Central
Committee coordinating the whole thing, and Lech Walesa sitting,
almost king-like, at the top of the pyramid.
Geo-political reality
After the warning strike on the Friday, twenty-five years ago, a
hectic weekend of negotiations with the communist government
followed. Eventually, and at the very last minute, Walesa decided
that the risk of a general strike was just too great. Not because he
thought that the strike would not get the support it needed - people
were ready to take the plunge - but because of what they called then
the 'geopolitical reality'. That meant the Soviet Union and the
tanks on the border; that meant 1956 in Hungary, it meant 1968 in
Prague.
But it shows that in Poland then, politics was not the art of the
possible but the nearly impossible. If it weren't for the constant
threat of an invasion from the East, the communist state in Poland
would have been history.
Today, for sure, President Putin would not have been too happy about
the prospect of another show of 'people power' on Russia's borders,
but nobody is suggesting that he would have sent in the tanks if he
didn't like the result of the Belarus presidential elections.
The reality in Belarus is that, though Lukashenko definatly doesn't
have 86% of the people behind him he does have a significant amount
of popularity - especially among the old, the unemployed and in
rural areas. He is also faced with a fragmented opposition.
In those circumstances it's a mystery why he feels so paranoid that
he has to use the oppressive measures he does. Maybe he could have
won the election without them.
The difference between Solidarity twenty-five years ago and Belarus
today is one of imagination, organization and ultimately,
Solidarity.