It is not over yet. Will Lukashenko survive? Since the presidential elections of 8/9/2020, Belarus has experienced a wave of protests. The protesters claim the elections were rigged, as did the pussy-hat ladies with Trump in 2016. The protests are presented to the world through the lens of the fake news machine. There are dozens of media channels, all elaborating on the themes of election rigging and protest suppression.

This suppression is not something to write home about. The crowds aren’t big, for Belarusians are quite civil and obedient folk; they wait for the green light (a rare quality in the East). Despite provocateurs and Soros-trained revolutionaries, there are few injured people, much less than in an average confrontation of the Gilets Jaunes with Macron’s police, Occupy Wall Street or any Moscow unrest. One man tried to throw a hand grenade into police; by his own misfortune the grenade exploded in his hand and he died of his wounds. This incident is already presented as “mass murder” and even “genocide”. EU ambassadors came to place flowers at the site of his martyrdom. The deceased is being turned into a new George Floyd, an apt comparison, for the unfortunate Belarusian bomber also had a long criminal record. They made a BLM sticker with B is for Belarus. Should it be called “cultural appropriation” or just copycatting?

The Presidents of Poland and Lithuania offered their mediation implying that Lukashenko should step down. It is hardly a tempting offer. In 2014, the then Ukrainian president accepted the European offer of mediation and in a few days he was forced to flee to Russia.

Lukashenko is made of sterner stuff; his policemen succeeded in putting the protests down, and the protests weren’t that impressive anyway. It is too early to say whether the colour revolution will definitely fail or succeed. What is the cause of the protests, beyond complaints that life is unfair?

Well-endowed Belarus has a few suitors. The NATO enemies of Russia want to move their tanks within shooting range of Smolensk; Poland wants to regain its old dependency (Belarus was under the Poles for hundreds of years). Russia wants to swallow Belarus, and AGL is too hard and unyielding for them.

An additional enemy of Belarusian sovereignty is the murky and mighty body that has organized the worldwide over-reaction to coronavirus and forced billions of people into detention. Lukashenko is the hero who rejected all demands for lockdown; Belarus remained free. They even had football games; Easter, and Belarusian churches remained open and mass was celebrated. On May 9^th, VE day, Belarus had its Victory Parade, while Putin cancelled his usual parade in Moscow. Such disobedience had to be punished.

Like Fidel Castro, AGL has ruled his country for many years, allowing an election poll every five years to reconfirm him or to choose someone else. Each time, since 1994 when the youngest politician of Europe defeated the incumbent Prime Minister, AGL has won. This time, too. His results in Minsk, the capital city, were over 60% of the vote; his main competitor received 15%, while for the whole country he got about 80%, an impressive result. Too impressive, his enemies say. But there is no doubt he carried the majority of his countrymen.

Belarus is a mono-ethnic state, with very little diversity; there are no strong political parties, no powerful and independent media, no oligarchs or superrich. It is very Soviet-like, but very neat, clean, modern, well repaired, while the SU was quite shabby. The USSR had its ruling Communist party, while AGL has no party of his own. He doesn’t like parties at all for they separate people, while he wants people to be united – and it works. There is no significant opposition party, though there is some unstructured opposition. The opposition says, “AGL go away, you have ruled for too long, we are tired of you”. A sane citizen won’t vote for people with no agenda beyond power lust. Being tired of a president is not really a good enough reason for change.

After the first exit poll, “rigged elections” became the battle cry of the opposition. Like the Clintonites, who could not believe somebody would vote for Trump, the opposition in Belarus could not imagine why people would vote for this old (he is 65) man. Indeed such claims are a staple of modern politics; there is hardly a country on the globe where such claim have not been made. So we hear that either the results were falsified, or people were misled, or the elected president didn’t deserve to be elected; or he was voted in by racist rednecks; or Russia swung the polls. We are offered so many reasons why the results shouldn’t be recognised.

AGL’s election results had been recognised and he was congratulated by the presidents of China, Russia and Turkey as well as by the Moscow Patriarch Kyril (Belarus Church is an integral part of Russian Orthodox Church). The opposition is now trying for regime change according to Gene Sharp’s textbook, beginning with attacks on the police and continuing with girls in white sharing flowers, the technique that worked successfully in many countries, and probably will be tried this November in the US.

Belarus shows what foreign meddling in elections really means. It is not placing a few ads on Facebook. It is training abroad hundreds of young men in the arcane arts of inner city warfare: mixing Molotov cocktails; car-ramming policemen; infiltrating them back into Belarus; bringing in hundred of thousands of dollars in cash; running 24 hour crisis centres from abroad; instructing the infiltrated heavies where and how to assault police; preparing and running the script for a colour revolution – this is foreign interference in Belarus elections.

What do the protesters want beyond removal of AGL? They have an agenda: they want to make it easy to hire and fire workers, to end trade union protection and state labour laws, to end price regulation; the usual neoliberal ideas, but most importantly, they call for the country’s assets to be privatised and sold off. Pro-Western opposition wants these assets to be sold to Western investors. Pro-Russian opposition wants them to be sold to Russian oligarchs. These assets are rich and plentiful. 80 per cent of all industry and agriculture remains in public hands, more than in any European state.

Belarus is the last surviving remnant of the Soviet Union, the last Soviet Socialist republic. The SU was based on the state ownership of the means of production; that is, factories, research, industry, agriculture. In the Russian Federation, these national treasures were privatised by Boris Yeltsin and given away to a few oligarchs. Not so in Belarus. Their industry is still public owned; their farms still belong to farmer cooperatives and not to agro holdings.

Belarus is quite wealthy; its industry has been modernised, and so is its agriculture. They produce and export a lot of everything, mainly to neighbouring Russia. Europe won’t buy Belarus lorries or sausages, for they have a lot of their own lorries and sausages, but Russia buys them, as they are familiar and good value for money. Belarusian dairy products, furniture and fashion are popular in Russia.

Belarus inherited two huge refineries, in Mozyr and in Novopolotsk, capable of turning raw oil and gas into the finished products. Russia produces raw oil and gas, Belarus refines it; they should be able to work profitably together. But the Russian oligarchs behind Gazprom weren’t satisfied with the usual kind of profit. They created an intermediary company based in Lithuania; the company “buys” gas and “sells” it to Belarus, while the received payment goes offshore, to the oligarchs’ bank accounts. Some of it reaches Russian state coffers, but a lot goes astray.

The Russian state kept raising the price of oil delivered to Belarus refineries, until the supposedly allied state was paying more than supposedly hostile Germany and the Ukraine. Belarus switched to refining Norwegian and Saudi oil: it was cheaper than Russian. Now they refine American oil. Belarus also decided to cut off the intermediary company, and the police are investigating their siphoning-off funds to offshores. The Russian oligarchs were very unhappy; they bankrolled the AGL competitors and funded a loud campaign against AGL in Russian media and social networks.

President Putin has a different game in mind. He would like Belarus to join Russia as a constituent republic. He does not care much for AGL who bettered him in corona days, but he does not want to be led by his oligarchs. That’s why he expressed his support during the elections and congratulated AGL on his victory. But Russian media plays against Lukashenko, whether by the demand of media lords or because of their desire to sound similar to their Western brethren.

All oligarchs, from East and West, would like to destroy the last remnant of the USSR and erase its memory. This is what the elections and the attempted regime change is really all about.

They are annoyed by the successes of AGL’s Belarus. If you think socialism is not a successful strategy in economics, consider Belarus and think again.

For a few years, until 2015, the Belarus economy was the fastest growing one in Europe; its GDP grew 10% a year. After the terrible collapse of 1991, Belarus was the first to rebound in 2002, while Russia made it only in 2006. Just think about it: the totally unnecessary destruction of the USSR was overcome economically only 16 years later by the rather privatised Russia, 12 years later by Belarus that remained state-owned; and totally privatized Ukraine hasn’t even yet succeeded: their economy is 65% of what it was in the last Soviet year, 1990.

You can see the graph of Russia (light grey) and Belarus GDP (solid line) between 1990 and 2018, to see that good old Belarus managed quite well under AGL. Salaries grew faster than labour productivity (as opposed to, say, the situation in the US or UK where labour productivity grew while salaries stagnated); there was (and is) practically no unemployment.

After 2015 Belarus stagnated, as it was closely connected to the stagnating Russian economy, but still they managed fine.

One of the secrets of the Belarusian miracle is that Belarus has practically no corruption. I was told by friendly Russian businessmen that it is almost impossible to bribe a Belarusian official (as opposed to in Russia where officials are supposedly corrupt). They told me that their KGB (they retained the brand name) is always vigilant in fighting corruption; plenty of electronic devices, a transparent banking system, citizens’ support of the anti-corruption drive makes a Belarusian official very, very reluctant to accept a bribe. (It has to be paid into a European bank in another country, and it is not an easy thing to arrange in the present climate.)

As a post-Soviet state, Belarus is quite strict. The country is so clean because AGL is known for prowling the streets personally. If he discovers some garbage lying around, he calls out the local mayor and forces him to clean it up right away. He has more than a touch of Lee Kuan Yew, the legendary Prime Minister of Singapore from 1959 to 1990. Perhaps he will also serve as long as LKY, 31 years – so far, it is only 26 years.

Another mark of strictness is a special tax non-working people are obliged to pay. It is an heir to the Soviet Parasite Tax. The non-working person can even be tried and sentenced. Their socialism is not great for welfare abusers.

The average tax in Belarus is 30%, unless one works remotely in the IT industry. Computer-savvy Belarus has 75,000 IT consultants, engineers and technicians who work for the companies located in the EU, Russia and the US. If an average salary in Belarus is about $500 per month, the IT specialists earn over $2500 and pay only 7% tax. Apparently AGL thinks that otherwise they will evade paying tax altogether. One would think these guys should be happy, but they are not. Many of them joined the protests. They naturally want a more liberal society.

The US wants to bring Lukashenko to its side; and wily AGL is ready to play along. He is now is processing American oil in his refinery. AGL wants to stay friendly with everybody, and his new close friend is China. The Belarus men in power say their country will become the Chinese hub in Europe. Belarus is very, very close to Russia, but it is afraid of being engulfed and devoured by this friendly giant. If the pressure on AGL increases he may have to decide to get off the fence and join Russia. The US feels that and tries not to push him too far. But the Russians are smart enough to encourage the protests with exactly this goal in the mind.

Will Lukashenko liberalise his country? Is it possible, without surrendering all social achievements? I am not so sure. Perhaps, while there are imperialist powers, there is no way to create a liberal socialist state. That was the conclusion of Vladimir Lenin: he wrote that the liberal stage would be reached when there are no predators lying in wait. He was decisive in smashing the Krostadt revolt.

The workers of Belarus should understand what would happen to them after the rebels’ victory. Their industries will be sold off and dismantled so they won’t compete, as happened in Russia, Poland and Latvia. The terrible example of the Ukraine should keep them out of the revolt. But will it?

Such differences can be solved by force, not by the vote. It is force that will decide whether socialism will survive. After all, colour revolutions are not doomed to succeed – they failed in many countries. In case of pro-Western coup, Russia is likely to intervene, as she is permitted by their CSTO treaty. But Russia is not in favour of socialism, in Minsk or elsewhere.

My advice to the US administration is to expand the Venezuela experiment. When the US weren’t happy with Venezuela’s president, Mr Maduro, they didn’t bother with elections but instead, they chose (“recognised”) a certain Mr Juan Guaido, a rather junior member of the opposition. They assigned to him the assets of Venezuela, including gold the country carelessly kept in the Bank of England; they took over Venezuelan embassies and assigned them to Mr Guaido, and the man gratefully signed a contract promising millions to the US-based mercenaries for kidnapping the actual president and enthroning Guaido.

Now the West is dissatisfied with the Belarusian presidential elections. The Belarusians apparently chose to reconfirm their president Mr Alexander G Lukashenko (AGL) in his position, and he is a stubborn guy who refuses to sell his country’s assets and invite in NATO tanks. My advice to the US leaders is to re-use Mr Guaido; recognise him as the new President of Belarus, and have done with it. He has proved his devotion to Uncle Sam; he has experience of being a recognised president. Long live President Guaido of Belarus!

P.S. Re Beirut. Some people suggest “mini nukes”. I do doubt it, for Israel and the US do not possess the required technology, as I’ve been told by a Russian physicist. Only the USSR had the mini nuke technology; Russia inherited a few; new ones weren’t manufactured for years.

The problem is that mini nukes are made of californium and suchlike isotopes, and can be produced only in the course of large-scale military grade plutonium production as its byproduct. Israel never produced that much of plutonium, and the US used a different process altogether. So I’d advise to take mini nuke revelations with a grain of salt.

Israel Shamir can be reached at [email protected]

This article was first published at The Unz Review.