This is Democracy – Episode 116: Protests in Belarus

Unknown Speaker 0:05
This is Democracy,

Nataly Yagur 0:07
a podcast that explores the interracial intergenerational and intersectional unheard voices living in the world’s most

Unknown Speaker 0:13
influential democracy.

Jeremi Suri 0:19
Welcome to our new episode of This is Democracy. This week, we are going to focus on a crucial story in the history of democracy in our present world, a story that has ramifications for Europe and really for the future of democracy across the globe. But it’s a story that’s not getting very much attention in the United States. And this is the democratic movement in the country of the yellow rose, which is, as most of our listeners know, a small country but a very important and strategically located country. In Europe, really at the cusp between Russian and European Union influence, you could argue that Belarus is one of those countries like the Baltic countries, Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia. Really perched between two of the larger dynamic forces in Europe, the European Union, and Russia. We have with us today an incredible panel of experts who have studied these issues live through these issues and are closely following and closely working on these issues related to democratization. In a bit loose. I will introduce each of the panelists our first we have Natalia Yaga. Good morning, Natalia. Natalia, was born and raised in Belarus, and she’s been a resident of the United States since 2010. She holds a BS in economics from yellow Ocean State University. And I know from my own experience that many of the brightest minds in Russia and via Luce were trained in economics. Unlike in the United States, where the brightest minds are trained in history, that’s obvious to everyone. She has an MS in statistics from that university in College Station, I can’t remember its name, I think it’s called Texas a&m or something like that. And she has been the community coordinator, coordinator for the other regions in Russia and in Austin, excuse me since 2014. And she’s the lead for yellow oceans and in Texas since 2017. This is, as I understand it, Natalia. This is a group of citizens in Texas and in Austin, who are active in trying to promote democracy and gather rules, is that correct?

Nataly Yagur 2:29
It’s small, like a community group. We have people who move from Belarus or who are just passionate about Belarus. And that’s what’s keeping us together, initially, but we also go to France. We have some community events and we’re trying to promote the culture mainly.

Jeremi Suri 2:45
That’s fantastic. And it shows once again the diversity of our country and diversity of Texas. Our second panelist is Michael Dorman. Michael has an MA in Russian East European and Eurasian studies from the University of Texas at Austin, I had the real great fortune to work with Michael, when he was a student in that program. His research focuses on the Lukashenko regimes use of anti Western propaganda, and especially the role of the memory of the trauma of world war two in that propaganda. And Michael lived in Villa was for an extended period of time. Good morning, Michael.

Nice to have you here.

Our third, our third panelist is Matthew or Matthew is pursuing a dual master’s degree in Global Policy Studies in Russian and East European and Eurasian studies here at the University of Texas. He’s also a student that I’ve had the fortune to work with. He received his BA in Russian language and literature from George Washington University and lived in Russia for three years, I assume that included three winters, Matthew. Yes, it did. And you live to tell the tale. I certainly

Unknown Speaker 3:57
did.

Jeremi Suri 3:59
He is along with our next guest, Thomas Rehnquist, a co host and producer of another terrific podcast offered through through our Russian East European and Eurasian studies program, Slavic connection. It’s really a terrific podcast, I’ve had the opportunity to appear on it, I think once and it’s really it’s really worth listening to, especially if you’re interested in all things Russian, East European and Eurasian. Our final guest is Thomas Rehnquist. Thomas is a cyber security fellow. So when he’s not talking about Russia, he’s helping to protect our election. I hope that’s true. Thomas, right. Partially, he’s, he’s a cybersecurity fellow at the Strauss center, here at the University of Texas. He’s a third year student completing a dual Master’s in Russian studies in Global Policy Studies. So he’s a dual degree student just like Matthew. his attention to cyber security comes from his interest in the non military or is those in the know would say the non kinetic elements of political warfare. And he’s also, as I said, a co host and producer of Slavic connection with with Matthew. So we have a really extraordinary group of experts who bring expertise and experience in the ruse in Russia, in the region to this discussion today. Before we turn to this August group of experts, we have, of course, our eloquent itinerant poet in residence here, Zachary Siri, what is the title of your poem today?

Zachary Suri 5:33
Speaking of the hurricane,

Jeremi Suri 5:36
all right, I’m a little I’m a little concerned here. But let’s let’s hear about the hurricane.

Zachary Suri 5:43
There is sometimes a clearing in a forest and sometimes there is a bridge on a Brook. And often Indeed, there is truth in the chorus, that freedom can conquer the crook. There is upon occasion and occasion to laugh and a moment to cry on the sea in a raft, a soothsayer will sometimes speak soothingly. And even a tyrant will once not approvingly. There are moments like these when the ocean is calm, when the rivers are still in fear is embalmed. And it comes only once in a lifetime. It said, when the dying can breathe and are no longer dead. But here we are standing in September of rain, speaking of the hurricane and the death of the slain. Here we are standing in a cold, dense wood, and the forest never opens as it sometimes should. The bridges collapsed and the cook is elated. No tears will be shorn and no truth will be stated. The dead they are dying in the hated still hated, their hopes have collapsed, their memories faded. The winds do not blow to free shores tonight. The house has collapsed and the floors are light. But maybe there can be music playing in the Wars of night that perhaps will find us when we’re ready to fight.

Jeremi Suri 6:53
While Zachary I love the cadence and the imagery of your poem, what is your poem about?

Zachary Suri 6:58
my poem is really about the power of democratic movements, even when they struggle, and even when they when they first meet with setbacks.

Jeremi Suri 7:08
Great well, that really sets the thematic framework for us beautifully, Natalia, there has obviously been a long standing democratic movement in the ways that Zachary describes or at least alludes to in his in his poem in bellows. Why has this been have been unsuccessful? I guess why is the democratic movement in billows been unable to unseat Lukashenko over really 26 years, the dictator ability which has managed to hang on for so long, even during a period before our recent one, when we thought that democratic change was more than norm, what why is that the case?

Nataly Yagur 7:48
I would say, in my opinion, the resistant group was a rather small, and it was a very narrow group of focused people. It did not include everybody in the country. So that made a huge difference. It was seen like, like a small group of people who think differently. However, they needed support from everyone. Just like it’s happening now. Now everybody is out in streets protesting and everybody means students are senior generation moms. So dads, kids, just everybody because this is their the point the boiling point. After 26 years, people finally realize that they have a voice. Another opinion is that there’s a Belarusian mentality because we are seen as quite people, maybe peaceful people, and we can tolerate a lot. That’s a stereotype that is spread over the world. Another reason for these years standoff is the Coronavirus response that was very poor that was really the trigger people discontent because they saw how how unimportant they are for the government. Because there was no quarantine. There was actually denial on Coronavirus itself. And that just triggered a lot of discontent. Everywhere in every city in town, and I’ve seen those small towns I never heard about protesting, which I think made it very different this year. So yeah, its massive support. It’s just supported every layer of the society, which I think is amazing, and it’s unprecedented.

Jeremi Suri 9:29
Well, and this gives us a really wonderful sense of what’s happening now, before we go too deeply into that part of the story. Michael, you’ve done a lot of work on Alexander Lukashenko, his use of propaganda and other things. Tell us more about his rules since 1994. How he came to power and how he’s held on to power and and really ruled over this the small country in such violent dictatorial ways.

Michael Dorman 9:58
So Lucas Shanker was elected in 1994. And he 180 percent of the population of the electorate, and the only free and fair election Belarus has had as an independent country. And immediately, within within a year he moved in to change the constitution and pass referendums that would allow him to stay in power indefinitely. And I think, because in Eastern Europe and the former territory, the Russian Empire in particular, there’s this history of not changing leaders, and when you have when you do happen on a good leader to keep them and I think, for much of the population, especially those that were ingrained with this Soviet mentality,

Lucas shanku, was seen as a good leader he was

he was in touch with the agrarian base that was the the Belarusian electorate at the time. And, and so they didn’t, they didn’t want to give up a good thing. There wasn’t that tradition of changing every every four years or five years or every eight years or so on. And and I think it’s taken 26 years of of hardships and economic collapses and currency collapses, the Belarusian people to finally sort of be angry to the point that they’re, they’re ready to force change.

Jeremi Suri 11:30
I see. It’s interesting this this point that leadership transitions are always difficult, as we know, in the United States right now. But they, they are particularly difficult when you don’t have institutions and traditions for them, which which I think is a really important point about the influence of history. Matthew, you’ve studied, in some ways, comparative authoritarianism. How would you contextualize the events in biello, since 1994, up to the present in the context of democratization and authoritarianism around the world? What elements of this are global? What elements of this are particular to be loose?

Matthew Orr 12:09
Sure, no, I think that’s an interesting question. I know that, you know, people in Belarus and the Belarusian opposition, were looking at democratization going on in other places, particularly Ukraine. They saw the orange or my dawn revolution in 2004, on their southern border, and it really inspired them. And there was actually this event, you can look it up on Wikipedia called the jeans, or the denim revolution, which took place in 2006. where it was, it was at the time, the biggest protests against Lukashenko that had been seen, and, you know, they were kind of drawing directly from, you know, the inspiration that they got from, from the Orange Revolution. But, you know, as is the standard playbook, you just bring out the riot police, you don’t let any footage or video get out, and you just kind of crush with with brute force. And I think that for a long time that because the Belarusian opposition was so small, they really did, you know, they didn’t organize, and they didn’t have as much contacts with the West as a place like Ukraine. And so they really didn’t know how to organize. But that really started to change, after the second Ukrainian revolution in 2014, the madonn revolution, where once they saw the power of social media, they realized what role social media can play in all this and how that can actually be the key to undoing the regime. And that’s precisely what we saw, in this case with Belarus right now where telegram has been the tool that has really, in my opinion, allowed everything to change. And we can go more into that.

Jeremi Suri 13:56
Absolutely, absolutely. I think I want us to come back to that. But But before we do, I want to turn to Thomas, our cyber expert among many things. How did technology in the first sense, reinforce Lucas gencos rule because it takes a lot of work we know as historians to to keep even acquiescent country under control for so long, especially with the European Union pushing for democratization on your border. So, to what extent did technology support the authoritarianism of Lukashenko Thomas? And then why are we see in this transition that Matthew referred to so Well, today?

Thomas Rehnquist 14:35
Well, sure, I’d actually refer people to the work of Erica Chenoweth, who writes about non violent protests, much more eloquent than than I ever could. But she’s written about this how protest movements have become larger and more sustained, because of things like next because of telegram because people can organize so much more readily. However, they’ve also become less professionalized. So you would see The earlier revolutions or sorry, not revolutions, the other movements, they were probably more consolidated and probably had more specific leadership and more clear changes, they just couldn’t get the critical mass at the current movement is getting. However, what comes with these huge movements when people can just go wherever they want based on what they’re seeing on telegram or on their phones, is you get sort of more amateurism and you get larger masses of people who may not be consolidated around one message or one policy. So Bellerose certainly has a massive a massive amount of protest right now. We’re not seeing the actual way that’s going to move to a proper government structure. And I think that’s kind of where we are right now.

Jeremi Suri 15:43
That makes a lot of sense. Thomas, if I could follow up on that with you. Do you? Do you have a sense that this, the opposition movement really is leaderless? that’s what that’s what people are writing about. The way this is being written about, by some observers, some journalist is that you have a very authoritarian, traditional, centralized leadership of Lukashenko. And then you have this more cellular leaderless structure of the opposition movement. Is that really true? And it does that give them a technological advantage. Now, those in the opposition

Unknown Speaker 16:17
leader list would I think that we do a disservice to what tekin ups guy has done. She has been as strong of a leader as she can be given the circumstances and that she was briefly removed from the country and is really had to completely change her entire life in the past three months. So I think leaderless would definitely be understating her impact. I do think there is a bit of an amoeba like structure in which they can kind of be everywhere at once, but they are not insurmountable in any one place. However, as we see the Security Service has been fledging and being able to suppress the movement at any point because they can appear anywhere in the country or anywhere in the city, it seems.

Jeremi Suri 16:59
Right. And just to clarify, Svetlana Tucano Sky is the opposition candidate, actually, the wife of a former opposition candidate who ran and by many accounts, won the election on August 9 20 2020. And one of the triggering mech moments for this particular set of protests, of course, was Alexander Lukashenko, his blatant stealing of this election in August of 2020. Zachary has a question for Natalia, I think,

Zachary Suri 17:28
um, how have we understood the relationship between Belarus and countries in the West like Europe or the United States? How has the United States and the European Union pushed for democracy and Belarus, but how has that also failed? In many ways? I

Nataly Yagur 17:46
think when you have an authoritarian leader who doesn’t want to listen, she’s not open to a dialogue. That’s how all the initiatives fail. And in that a lot with a lot of years of sanctions. We saw four years of diplomatic forces approaching Belarusian authorities, but we never had a real dialogue. And also, we saw some, some improvement in the recent years, for example, or we got to msts embassy back, we didn’t have an embassy for many years. Now, we saw some, some return of diplomatic relationship. And we got some visits into Minsk last year. However, I didn’t think that was serious from Belarusian side, because it’s much easier to control the power in your own country when nobody sees what was going on inside. And there were, of course, a lot of good initiatives coming from from the west. However, I don’t think we we have shown a lot of participation in that.

Jeremi Suri 18:49
And maybe Natalia, you can share with our listeners a little bit about what was it like to be a university student in beos, we have this image of totalitarian societies where you don’t have information of the outside world and everyone worships the dictator. I have a sense your experience in university was different.

Nataly Yagur 19:07
Ah, yes. So I was at school back in 2003 2008. That wasn’t the time when the internet was actually that powerful. So there was a state monopoly on the mass media back in those days, so TV and newspapers and baby traditional sources still dominated. We had some student computer networks, that was just the beginning. And of course, there were talks, there were different things you could hear around, but the overall mood, the overall state of mind of people was very quiet was very. We didn’t have any protest waves compared to what’s happening right now. And yes, I witnessed the 2016 election when people were camping at that main square in Minsk However, yeah, they just took it down after a few days. So people were protesting. They’re expressing their opinions, but it was baby narrowly focused, and it was very decentralized. I had some friends who got kicked out of school because of their political opinions. I also had some good people at school at my school who tried to cover that up and lead their students remain as programs. So there was some standoff back then. But it was mainly like in very narrow academic circles or political, politically oriented people. I would, I wouldn’t say it touches the masses of all the layers of the society. And we also see some generation standoff right now. Because all the new generations, those guys who never lived in the Soviet Union, actually, we have people who never lived without Lukashenko because those kids are over 20. Right now they’ve traveled, they’ve been too easy, traveled all over the world, they have the freedom. They have the mass media, the internet, you can just show them anything and everything. So it’s really hard to control that crowd of people now. So I’m seeing coach students being much more open to change these days. And they can be oppressed, of course, they’ve been threatened. But it’s a very different crowd of people right now. And I think they are the change drivers.

Jeremi Suri 21:34
That’s that’s a very powerful image that you’ve that you’ve painted for us. Michael, you study propaganda, culture, opinion, mass opinion. Would you explain what what Natalia just described to us? Would you explain that as a new generation, the influence of Western of Western ideas, you know, what, what has what has made this what sounds like a small dissident movement from the early 2000s into a mass movement today?

Michael Dorman 22:05
Yeah, so I think what not Natalia said was very interesting that there were certain groups of professors that would sort of protect students. And I think that speaks to the opposition movement, even if you go back just five years ago, was really centered, and this kind of elite intelligentsia, and they were people who spoke Belarusian, in their in their everyday lives. And we’re kind of

in that way, a little bit detached from the

larger population, they set themselves off, there were people that were reading Belarusian literature. And they did, even though they saw themselves as sort of the, the, like, narodna movement or something like, like the the people’s movement or something like that. They weren’t viewed that way, by the, by the population at large. And so

now, I think you’ve,

you have, like, that’s all you said, a generation who’s grown up and they’ve traveled and they’ve, they’ve, they’ve seen the West, and they’ve, you know, they’ve been to the States into Western Europe. And they’re not looking to be aligned with a particular ideology, the opposition of the the kind of old guard opposition of Belarus was this anti Russian, also anti Polish in a lot of ways. Anti Ukrainian, it was, it was a lot like the Ukrainian idea of Ukraine, for Ukrainians, which is a very nationalistic and idea born out of out of 1930s fascism, really. And, and so that was the opposition of Belarus of the 1990s. And much of the 2000s and and so now you have a have a movement, that’s not really opposition, you’re not the opposition when you’re the majority. Right? So it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s not aligned with with that, but that anti Russian or anti Western or any particular ideology, it’s aligned with, we want to hear, we want to vote and we want to have our votes heard, and be counted accurately. And we want to be in charge of our our destiny. And I think in that way, the bell Russian protests at the moment are very different than what happened in Ukraine during the last my dawn because that was very pro Western and anti Russian. It was outwardly anti Russian. And these protests are not anti Russian. And they’re not all that pro Western. There’s simply fellow Russians wanting to have their voice heard. And I think there is in Belarus, a particular aversion to any sort of my dawn like protest where Lucas shango says with absolute certainty, there’s not going to be a my dawn and Bella ruse. And he says that because fellow Russians themselves say we don’t want to might die. Mm hmm.

Jeremi Suri 25:19
This is a really powerful comparison with the color revolutions the Orange Revolution in Ukraine, which did overturn a pro Russian authoritarian regime and put in power, the current regime in Ukraine, and it’s, of course, one of the great fears that Vladimir Putin in Russia has, we will get to the Russian angle on this. But Matthew, I wanted to I wanted to ask you just building on Natalia and Michael’s insightful comments. One of the things that that as you know, we study when we look at revolutions is or movements, is the balance of fear. And one of the things that represses social activism and democratic activism is the fear of reprisal, of course. But it does appear that in every movement, every period of a society going through transition, there’s a moment when the balance of fear shifts, we as a story and say that, you know, when you’re a leader, and you have to barricade yourself in in your palace or your white house, that often is a sign that actually you’re more fearful of the public than they are of you that appears to have happened in Ukraine. Just in the last 24 hours, Luca shenko inaugurated himself president again after stealing the election. But he did it in secrecy. You know, durations are supposed to be public announcements. So how would you explain this? What appears to be this shift in the balance of fear? And what is the significance of that?

Unknown Speaker 26:42
Sure. I mean, I think this is a fantastic point. And I think that we saw in a salon and you can those guy in our very first statement, as the election results were coming in her very first statement said, in any, we we’ve won this election, no matter what, because we defeated our fear. And I think that in in terms of strategy, this was a brilliant move, because it was this recognition that even if we don’t win this election efficient, officially, even if there’s months and months and months of fall out, we have still defeated our fear. And therefore we still won. And as far as how the Russian the Belarusian people did that, we saw all the tactics that they used during the election, to mobilize and to show each other that, hey, we really are the majority here, they folded their ballots, when they would put them into the urn, instantly, like, as they say, like hot dog style in the United States. So that everybody who would look into the, the glass urns would see all the folded ballads ago, oh my gosh, we really are the overwhelming majority. And of course, the full of ballots take up more space. So it was a really brilliant move. And then we saw these very local organizing on election nights when people would wait outside their polling places just in masses, and say, read us the results, read us the results. And then a lot of places that they didn’t come out, didn’t read them the results, but in other places, you know, in the middle of the night, they came out read the real results, and people just rejoiced. So it was really all about just doing everything to hone in on their local situation. And once other people saw that, hey, wait, we really are the majority, things started to change. And then we saw and then in the coming days, we saw the next thing, we saw the same dynamic at factories were factory workers, they would say raise your hand, if you voted, particularly this guy, and everybody would stand up and cheer right. And so you know, and these videos were just masses and masses. And so once once that’s once these videos started rolling out of workplaces The next day, then then it just started.

Unknown Speaker 28:54
Lucas gencos authority was lost forever.

Jeremi Suri 28:57
Wow. That’s it’s such a powerful description you give of the performative and mobilizing element of an election. This is something you know, scholars have long argued that elections are not just about that the count of the vote, of course, that matters enormously. But there are moments of public expression. There are moments of public symbolism. And and what you’re describing is a kind of national brother and sisterhood. That that was built around the act of voting and then claiming the claiming the votes that the vote should be counted appropriately. Thomas, one of the things you’ve studied is, of course, the influence of Russia, in this region in all kinds of ways. And Belarus has long been a kind of smaller little brother supplicant to Russia and all kinds of ways, especially to Vladimir Putin’s authoritarian rule in Russia. Take us through the Russian role in recent events, what what is Russia doing? What What role is Vladimir Putin playing? So there’s,

Unknown Speaker 29:55
you know, the larger Russian role and the more my new Russian role And men I actually spoke with Dr. David Marples from University of Alberta hope I got that right. But he talked to us about just you know, if you look at the political science cross cutting way you compare Russia to Belarus and Russia, Ukraine, and Russia, Ukraine has always been more aggressive, more antagonistic, much more involved in everyday affairs, Russia and Belarus has always said sort of this little brother thing. But it hasn’t had the same push and pull the constant moving away, like Michael spoke about comparing the 2014 Ukraine protest of the current one of Bella Roos. And that’s almost that’s kind of remained the case in a lot of ways with how Putin has responded. In the short run, they’ve given money they’ve given you know, tacit military support, although Lukashenko is blown that completely out of proportion. Russia is basically like, we will support the alliances that we’ve signed, we’re not going to mobilize immediately. But you have seen these videos of you know, Russian troops driving west for Moscow, where are they going? We don’t know. So there is kind of this fear that Russia is going to be involved more in the crackdown, but I think Putin has sort of wisely, he’s reading the tea leaves, he doesn’t want to make this an anti Russian movement. By placing Putin in minx he is making it an anti lukashenka movement, and trying his best to see how he can still be and, you know, have that big brother relationship with whoever is going to be running the race.

Jeremi Suri 31:31
And and Thomas, there’s been a lot written about concerns in the Baltic countries and Lithuania, Latvia, and particularly in Estonia, about Russian aggression, and perhaps Russia exploiting this moment. And there’s been a lot of concern among NATO members, both because of a fear that Putin will exploit this moment, but also because of Americans pulling back from NATO, we’re producing forces and our contribution to NATO recently is are those fears overstated?

Unknown Speaker 32:02
I don’t think you can ever, ever state that the Baltic country fears I think they are rightfully fearful just given their geographic location in the world. I do think though, and Matt definitely has an opinion on this, that Russia, we look at what happened to Ukraine, and we go, oh, now it’s going to happen again. And Bill ruse, Ukraine was a disaster for Russia, there’s no other way to view that. I don’t think Putin is going to pull the same levers, knowing how I think weak the country look, following that, knowing how much isolated them from the international community of which they want no part in, but that still has economic and, you know, reciprocal effects that has serious effects not being involved and how the world is being run. So you can tell me Putin doesn’t care about that. But when the economy is flatlining, I think he will care at some point. So the idea of, you know, Russia, driving tanks into Tallinn or Riga, or wherever, I think it is overblown. I don’t think they are wrong to be paranoid, though.

Jeremi Suri 33:05
Well, Matthew, what do you think? Because the history, of course, is of the Soviet and Russian intervention in this region, as our listeners know, the Baltic countries were under so direct Soviet rule, and even Mikhail Gorbachev used military force people forget this in the Baltics at the very end of his rule in 1990 1991. And of course, the experience of Lucas shut up choose me over Ukraine was of Putin trying to install a puppet of his own and then keep that puppet in power. As Thomas said, that didn’t work out. Well. The Orange Revolution overthrew that regime. But are you as sanguine on Russian military action and direct intervention as Thomas’s?

Unknown Speaker 33:45
Yeah, I think Putin is definitely kind of stuck between a rock and a hard place on this one. On the one hand, he wants to keep Belarus in Russia’s orbit. And he’s, you know, willing to pay a price to do that. On the other hand, as Tom just pointed out, if he does take drastic action, right, he becomes the subject of the ire of the Belarusian people. And I don’t know, I’m not necessarily, sir, sure that a Russian occupation of Belarus would go very, very well for them. I think that the difference though, with Ukraine is that, you know, Belarus, ultimately is not, you know, in fact, it’s a huge economic weight on Russia, that Russia just had to spend billions and billions of dollars subsidizing mello roos essentially so they don’t want Belarus in their orbit for kind of more realist economic or geopolitical reasons. I mean, the real reason he asked us support Lukashenko is this point is the democracy if the if democracy is seen to be successful in Bella ruse, and the opposition ultimately comes out successful then that’s just yet another playbook for the the internal opposition to Putin within Russia. And I think that they’re they’re thinking, Oh, if you know if our elections are similarly falsified, just like in Belarus, then our only option is to, to look at the Belarusian scenario and copy that. And I think that, you know, whether it’s involving these team, whether it’s other people, I think that there could be a generations of Russians who become increasingly disappointed in elections and resort to more methods, methods more similar to what we’ve seen in Belarus, and that is what really really scares Putin.

Jeremi Suri 35:33
That makes a lot of sense and and is what we would often call the contagion of revolution that has to that has to scare Putin quite a bit as another aging longtime dictator in a country Russia, like be able to use that’s having trouble dealing with the pandemic, that’s, that’s experiencing an economic slowdown that’s experiencing less foreign currency returns on its on its fossil fuels. putting us be very frightened and very concerned about any success in building roofs, it seems to me encouraging opposition in his own country, Michael, in that context, I mean, where do you see this going? It’s hard to make predictions. But But knowing that history as you do and knowing the country as you do, what what do you think we’re going to see in the next few months in in Bella Bella rose.

Michael Dorman 36:22
I was hoping you wouldn’t ask that. I

I honestly, I have no idea. I really don’t. But Matthew mentioned david Marples and and i think Tom has mentioned the puddin giving a loan to Lucas Shanklin, I, David Marples wrote recently, very, I thought, apt critique of what that meant he wrote, The 10 billion would have meant that you’re our best friend, and we’ll save you, whatever the cost 7 billion you’re highly regarded. And we’ll bail you out for the immediate future. 3 billion, you’re worth supporting for now for 1.5 billion, you’re basically done and we will keep you hanging on the road for a week or two longer. So I thought that was a particularly keen observation, this situation, I don’t think Putin’s invested in and keeping Lukashenko around. And I’ve also seen, I don’t know that this is true or not, but I’ve seen reports saying that to Karnofsky has been vetted by the FSB while she’s been in business. So I think Russia is is probably, and I think this is in part due to the fact that this particular

movement or phase of the movement

isn’t anti Russian there. I don’t see I haven’t seen EU flags except maybe twice in the first two days of the protests. And and and I haven’t heard anti Russian sentiments from the from the protesters. And after. Remember that Bella Bella ruses linguistically, you know, russophone country and Bella Russians were very close to Russia. And so I think that I think that Russia is prepared to see see power change hands, as long as they can keep their thumb on the scale. And I think they can I think, I think any economic scale barbaric, any of these people are willing to let Russia have a fairly substantial say so. So I, as far as what the, you know, next six months or so hold? I don’t know, I don’t know how long lukashenka can financially hang on the power. It’s not feasible to keep a resting, you know, 1000 people a week or something. So, yeah,

Jeremi Suri 39:04
well, it’s a it’s a it’s a great analysis you offer because it would parallel what Russia and what other large powers, including the United States often do when they see disruption, and unrest in countries that are important for them strategically, instead of trying to hold on to a leader who’s lost legitimacy. And it might be ineffective, finding a replacement, who satisfies some of the nationalist urges of the protesters, but remains closely tied to the strategic interests of the larger neighborhood to some extent, the Russians have played this game in Central Asia for quite a long time. And and it would, it would probably be a very smart strategy. In so far as that doesn’t motivate opposition within Russia. That would seem to me to be the key element of what you’re describing. Natalia, we’re gonna use you as our soothsayer. What’s your prediction? What’s going to happen? Are you hopeful for the next few months.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai