Russia and Belarus – doomed to be together

Russia and Belarus (former Belorussia) are just doomed to be together. The current economy of Belarus still can’t survive without Russian market – both in view of the access to energy and sales of products. This alone is enough to make a sound pragmatic foundation for the further development of bilateral relations.

Russia and Belarus (former Belorussia) are just doomed to be together. The current economy of Belarus still can’t survive without Russian market – both in view of the access to energy and sales of products. This alone is enough to make a sound pragmatic foundation for the further development of bilateral relations.

“Vendee of perestroika”

The leadership of the then Belorussia didn’t seek to leave the USSR, it simply didn’t think of any other existence but being a Union member. Moreover Minsk was so blind and fully ignored the changes going on in the other parts of the USSR that after the apt phrase of the writer Ales Adamovich it became known as “Vendee of perestroika” [1] (in the fervor of the Great French Revolution this town was a spot of anti-revolutionary revolt). By putsch of 1991 Belorussia was the most “Soviet” country in view of the inherence to Soviet values. And even the opposition already existing in the country was not much of an obstacle. The People’s Front that in 1989 untied the absolute majority of the Belorussian society pursued only cultural goals and by 1991 with efforts of its leader became a radical organization, antagonized people and turned harmless to the authorities.

Disintegration of the USSR came as a great surprise for Belorussian leadership. Belorussia was nearly the last of Soviet republics to adopt the declaration of independence. So, Belorussia was actually pushed into the independence by the centrifugal processes in the USSR.

Of course, there were due reasons for such a conservative attitude. Belorussia at the time was “an assembly shop” of the Soviet Union and totally depended on the Union market both for the supply of primary materials and sales of finished products. In addition, this situation guaranteed rather good living standards to local population. Consequently any threat to lose this market was a nightmare for the ruling elite of Belorussia.

Running voyage

After the first drop in the living standard in early 1990-ies, that was quite harsh and painful, Belarus still found the formats allowing combining the independence with customary social standards. Initially, the search for the way out was easily predictable – it was the access to the Russian market, which as already stated was the key source of raw materials and sales. The transit status of Belarus has largely simplified the search. The republic was and till the end of 2011 will remain the main transit country for Russian oil and gas. In average up to 80% of oil and about 205 of gas sold by Russia to the West is supplied through the territory of Belarus.  

It was the dependence of the Russian export of hydrocarbons from Belarus and not the industrial potential of the country that played a key role in the generous subsidies provided by Moscow to Minsk. During the independence time Belarus received from Russia about $60 bln. In different years these investment made from 30 to 55% of Belorussian budget and in fact were royalties paid by Russia for the safe transit of hydrocarbons. Thanks to these investments President Aleksanrd Lukashenka managed to restore Soviet social standards in a new post-soviet environment.  

And the restoration of these standards, done with Russian money, but on behalf of Lukashenka, was followed by the transformation of independence, which guaranteed the power to the country leader, into a national super-value. Thus emerged a paradoxical situation in contemporary Russia-Belarus relations – Russian investments that ideally were to link Belarus to the donor accelerated the understanding that Belarus is a separate and culturally different subject.  

This alienation didn’t allow Russian capital to take a prominent place in Belorussian economy. Privatization didn’t take place and occasional transactions directly made between Russian business and state authorities were often subject to unacceptable conditions and defending of rights were getting more and more difficult. As a result Russian capital decided that investment into domestic companies, substituting Belorussian products, was more profitable. This turned two mutually complementing economies into competitors, resulting in the understandable reduction of Belorussian share on the Russian market and consecutive reduction of industrial scale in Belarus. No qualitative modernization was possible in these conditions. In the long run the independence put the industrial potential of Belarus well down.

Dissatisfaction with Russia is uniting

Events around presidential elections in December 2010 demonstrated that Belarus is actually divided. Minsk is in the center, being inter alia the point of concentration for the brain power of the republic, and generally oriented to Europe and European values. But the capital is surrounded by provinces with agrarian culture, mainly oriented on the sub-political traditional values.

This separation didn’t appear today, but it’s today’s problem that those two parts since December 19, 2010 are in a “tacit conflict” with each other, which is demonstrated by the cultural rejection of relevant values. The reason is clear – after the severe squad of protest demonstration, Lukashenka faced a persistent antagonism of Minsk and turned his appeals to the provinces.

The key issue of today’s attitude of Belarus towards Russia is a negative perception of the latter by both conflicting parties – Minsk and provinces, though for different reasons. Minsk sees Russia as the agent conserving the current abnormal situation in Belarus – Moscow subsidies de-facto contribute to strengthening of the authoritarian regime and prevent the long-awaited democratization of the country. The provinces, on the contrary, are ready to see the demonstration of Russian neo-imperialist in the attempts to reduce the amount of subsidies, what Russia is dedicatedly and successfully is doing since 2006.

This goal is pursued also by Russian projects of bypassing oil and gas lines – BPS-2 and North Stream that should be commissioned by the end of 2011. As a matter of fact, with these projects Russia converts a current mutual dependence into a unilateral dependence of Belarus from Russia. No doubt, these projects are regarded by the loyal to power Belorussian community as a devious policy of Moscow aimed, in the long run, to allow Russian oligarchic capital to buy up the Belorussia economy for a peanut. Of course, the public opinion doesn’t care that the price of bypassing lines is above the value of the large portion of Belorussian economy and the latter is simply of no interest for the buy up.

Hostile Belarus

The issue for the post-soviet Russia is its policy towards post-soviet states: Russian interests on the post-soviet space are represented by separate clusters of state and business pressure groups that are difficult to put together into a logical and political unity. And Belarus is no exception.

In the last decade of the XX century the Union became the factor allowing the Russian population to put up with the bitter failure of reforms in early 1990-ies: the demonstration of the integrating attractiveness returned to Russia the self-esteem and confidence. For this reason Belarus for a long time remained on the Russian list of special, really fraternal countries.

To render the justice – the human aspect of the Union that was fully employed contrary to political and economic aspects really strengthened the warmth of international relations. Mutual acknowledgment of proprietary and other rights of Belarusians in Russia and vice versa was the step that built a strong foundation for bilateral relation on the personal level.  

But even this level of affinity doesn’t protect from unfavorable changes. Traditionally limitrophe policy of the Belarus leadership aimed to get profits from the balancing between Russia and the West overlaid with the insatiable urge to convert the fraternal relations into economic advantages to the maximum possible extent at a certain moment brought the expected result – the loss of mutual trust and several oil and gas wars. As a consequence from 2006 Russia dedicatedly started to invest into the minimization of its dependence from Belarus, from the transit aspect up to the military domain. Significant results of these efforts can be seen today.

This success allowed the foreign policy of Russia to move away from the unconditional support of Belorussian regime on the international arena. Sergey Lavrov at least in four statements made between January and August 2011 expressed the solidarity with EU negative assessment of Belorussian authorities’ actions undertaken for the events of December 2010 and afterwards.

Public opinion in Russia also changed. The poll conducted in summer 2011 for the first time detected the readiness of Russians to consider Belorussia as a hostile country, though on the statistically negligible level of 2%.

Can’t be apart

The current economy of Belarus still can’t exist without the access to Russian market. Mere this creates a solid pragmatic foundation for the further development of bilateral relations.

Belarus together with Russia joined a new Eurasian integration project that has to foster the mutual interests of the countries. One of the key components in this project is the Customs Union, which among other things must ensure fast and simplified transit of goods between Asia (China) and Europe. There will be just one customs office on all that huge space. It established yet another pragmatic reason for friendship between Russia and Belarus.  

In other words the countries are doomed to be together and not because we can’t choose the neighbors. But the format of this common future is not yet clearly defined and may cause conflicts. The conflicts can have many different roots – from the alteration of old parameters of interaction (due to the commissioning of BPS-2 and the North Stream) up to the creation of principally new configurations (Eurasian Economic Union). Foreseeable pragmatic bargaining can and shall be superimposed on the existing social and cultural stereotypes and prejudices.  In this case the paradoxes of the past – when Russian subsidies to Belarus instead of strengthening pro-Russian mood contributed to the official anti-Russian propaganda and other mass phobia - can reappear but on a new level.

1. Adamovich A. Oglyanis okrest! // Ogonek.1988. #39. pp. 28–30.