As the Russian military advances onto Kyiv, some might wonder: will Ukraine become the next Belarus? A police state and vassal of Russia, one that ruthlessly suppresses any form of internal opposition?
I am a historian, I cannot predict the future – it’s impossible to say what the world will look like in just a few days. Like so many others who are watching the catastrophe unfold in Ukraine, I am shocked, helpless, and angry, and more than anything else, I am hoping that this nightmare will soon end, and that Ukraine will remain a free and independent state.
But even if the Russian military prevails, I do not think that Ukraine will soon become like Belarus, a Soviet-style dictatorship with internet. If there is a state that seems to be set on that trajectory, then it is Russia itself.
Over the last decade, I have lived for substantial periods of time in Russia and Belarus, and I have travelled often to Ukraine.
The atmosphere in Belarus has always struck me as much more repressive than in Russia, with people having to make compromises, big and small, on an everyday basis.
In university seminars, it was clear that certain topics were off limit: the Soviet repressions of the 1930s, the suffering that collectivisation brought to the rural population, the Soviet annexation of Eastern Poland in 1939, which was declared in Belarusian history books a liberation from Polish rule (an old Soviet narrative).
Lukashenko’s regime depends on the power of its police forces, which, as the brutal crack-down of the 2020 protest movement proved, has developed sophisticated means of quelling internal opposition.
And yet even today, individuals in Belarus are taking to the streets, protesting the war in Ukraine – all the while knowing fully well the consequences of their courageous actions. If Putin has a similar arrangement in mind for a Ukrainian state under Russian tutelage, it will not work, at least not any time soon.
This is not because people in Ukraine are more willing to fight for their country than in Belarus. To say this would obviously be utter nonsense.
It is because since the fall of the Soviet Union, a lively civil society has emerged in Ukraine. Resistance would be strong and would come through many different channels – including from the territorial defence units that citizens of Ukraine are currently forming.
Belarusians cowed
In contrast, Lukashenko, who came to power in 1994, has had almost three decades to build up a coercive state apparatus – and followers – that ultimately have proven too strong for the 2020 protest movement.
Many have interpreted the fact that Russian troops marched from Belarusian territory into Ukraine (and that they will now be stationed permanently in Belarus) as a sign that Lukashenko has become even more dependent on Putin. In Lukashenko’s mind, the opposite might be the case.
Perhaps he believes himself to be Putin’s confidante, and was proud to be standing in front of a map of Ukraine on Tuesday, showing what looked like invasion routes into the country.
Meanwhile, the news coming out of Russia is dramatic, to say the least. Over the last years, the Russian state has slowly and carefully tightened its grip on civil society, as seen in the recent ban of Memorial, Russia’s leading human rights organization that also does tremendously important work documenting the history and violence of Stalinism.
Protests always carried clear risks in Russia, but now, the situation is escalating rapidly. The state took Ekho Moskvy’ radio station off the air on Tuesday and blocked other independent media. Very soon, perhaps even as of today, there will be no independent media left in Russia.
On Friday, the Russian parliament will take up a law that will make any “false reporting” on the war – including calling it a war and not a “special military operation” – punishable with fifteen years in prison. Russia, in other words, is becoming more and more like Belarus.
Dr Franziska Exeler is a historian of Modern Europe and Russia and a Research Fellow at the Centre for History and Economics at Magdalene College
