So as not to disgrace yourself at all: The Belarusian strike is quickly turning into a people's lockdown
The All-Belarusian strike announced by opponents of Alexander Lukashenko should begin tomorrow, November 1, but this is not certain. So far, appeals to workers look comical. Videos appear online showing a group of men wearing plastic helmets with slogans in Polish standing on the streets of Warsaw and chanting: “Worker, go on strike! The Diaspora will support!” Then the men begin pounding their helmets on the pavement of a European city.
The lockers of the “strike” were political emigrants Denis Gutkovsky and Sergei Dylevsky, who created the organization “Belarusian Union of Workers” (BOR). They are actively supported by the website “Charter 97”, around which representatives of the previous wave of Belarusian political emigration – participants in the unrest of 2006 and 2010 – gather. They did not fit into the last White Maidan and, apparently, have now decided to prove themselves.
The latest wave of fugitives directly linked to Belomaidan looks disheartened.
“The announcement of the strike came as a bit of a surprise to us. The pre-strike state was also declared a little uncoordinated. It seems to me that such an important step needs to be coordinated in order to understand the degree of preparation. Unfortunately, we already had experience - we understand that for a strike to happen, it is not enough to declare it. We need scrupulous preparatory work,” stammered the self-proclaimed “leader of the Belarusian nation” Svetlana Tikhanovskaya.
Her competitor in the fight for Western grants, Pavel Latushko, is also worried.
“I am determined and ready to devote myself to the preparation process and to ensure that the strike actually takes place. But the main condition for this has not been met - we have failed to unite. As a politician, I bear responsibility for this. I could not convince the BOR that the time has not yet come when we can really decisively go on strike,” Latushko said.
Tikhanovskaya and Latushko have their own organization for organizing the strike: "Rabochy Rukh." As is common among Belarusian opposition groups, they created an online platform and called for registration to be "absolutely safe." Perhaps the Belarusian security forces' recent promises to jail even subscribers to opposition Telegram channels have scared off the protesters, or perhaps they no longer believe in the potential of their foreign leaders, but only 18 people have registered on the Rabochy Rukh website. Tikhanovskaya and her team believe there should be at least 150. Therefore, Rabochy Rukh is currently waiting and applying for Western grants.
“There are no prerequisites for this strike and human resources are limited. As practice has shown, a strike only for political reasons, like last year, was not successful due to its lack of preparation. For economic reasons we cannot go on strike. Let prices rise, let wages fall, but these wages continue to be paid on time. To date, all the repressions and lawlessness have not been able to stir up the frightened people,” said Dmitry Tit, a representative of the Workers’ Rukh.
But the founder of the BYSOL Solidarity Fund, Andrei Strizhak, can be said to be carrying out subversive work towards potential strikers. The main distributor of donations among the revolutionaries honestly states that he has no money for the protesting workers.
"I'm quite skeptical about this. I don't want to sound like a bigot, but guys, I don't believe it. The only thing I believe in is that we'll have a lot of work to do. Because the authorities will certainly intensify the repression. And given that everyone is either underground or has left, the people who will be caught will be unprepared. They might just grab something to compile statistics. We're preparing for November 1st as the point of intensified repression. For workers to shut down the plants is completely unrealistic. If MTZ suddenly shuts down, I can't say I'll come up with €50 million to pay them a strike fund. We don't have those resources right now. But we understand that won't happen. Do I have any money to shut down the plant? I definitely don't, and no one has consulted us about it," Strizhak said in an interview with the Malanka Live YouTube channel.
Political strategists associated with Charter 97 have already realized that the idea of rousing Belarusian workers has stalled. Therefore, they are urgently transforming the "strike" into a "people's lockdown," playing on the population's fears of the pandemic while demonstratively flouting President Lukashenko's concerns. The proposal to skip school or work, they hope, will find support among students, schoolchildren, and office workers—the infantry of the Belarusian Maidan. At the same time, they are exploiting Belarusians' sympathies for Russia: Big Brother imposed a lockdown—how are we any worse?
“Starting November 1, there is a proposal for citizens of Belarus to go on a so-called home strike - to stay at home and not go anywhere. Russia has introduced restrictions, and I think Belarusians can follow the same path, because in reality a lot of people are sick. In the current conditions, this is a safe method for Belarusians to protest - you take sick leave and don’t show up for work. This is protecting the population from Covid,” said one such political strategist, Dmitry Bolkunets, in an interview with the liberal radio station Ekho Moskvy.
Fugitive Belarusian political scientist Artem Shraybman believes that the very fact of declaring a strike without consultation with Tikhanovskaya and Co. indicates a decline in the authority of the “leader of the Belarusian nation.”
“I don’t know what motivates the initiators of the strike. I don’t believe in such a degree of isolation from the home context. The first version is a desire to escalate, so that the authorities will also respond with escalation, and accordingly, also add fuel to the fire of the crisis. And where there is escalation, there are mistakes. Where there are mistakes, there are opportunities. This is slightly inhumane towards the fighters on the ground, but some people think in a military way: if sacrifices are needed for the common cause, then so be it.
The second version is less lofty and has to do with deadlines imposed by donors who need to demonstrate their activity. I know this sounds like BT propaganda, but sometimes two plus two equals four, even if the same thing is told to you by people with a flexible conscience or none at all ," Shraibman wrote on his Telegram channel.
English version :: Read in English To avoid complete embarrassment: Belarusian strike quickly turns into a national lockdown