Belarus: Let's support the mobilized Belarusian people
He 9 August there were presidential elections in Belarus. They were once again a staged theater so that Lukashenko was re-elected. Nevertheless, this time, the shot backfired, since a popular rebellion broke out that has cornered the dictator and his regime. The anger overflowed by a combination of democratic and social issues. Given this, there are Stalinists around the world who support Lukashenko and his authoritarian regime and try to discredit the struggle. Our location is next to the workers and the mobilized people. For an independent working-class and popular political solution for the bourgeoisie and bourgeoisie.
ByRuben Tzanoff
Throughout the electoral process, the presentation of opponents was prevented by imprisoning them., activists were persecuted and repressed. During voting days, the presence of impartial observers was prevented and there were all kinds of irregularities that were denounced, but not attended.Our colleagues have pointed them out from the heat of the fighting in Belarus (1). The scrutiny yielded a result of 80% of the votes for the ruling party and the 10% for Svetlana Tijanóvskaya, teacher and wife of jailed opposition blogger Syarhei Tsikhanouski.
Rebellion
In Lukashenko's sixth nomination, things did not go as expected. The vast majority of the population did not believe in the forged results. Because, the same night they made themselves known, thousands and thousands of people won the streets for several hours, finding a brutal repression in response. The next day, anger and disbelief took hold of the meetings and assemblies in the factories, offices and establishments where workers asked who voted for Lukashenko and who voted for Tijanóvskaya? And the results had nothing to do with the official data.
After six days of mobilizations and strikes in the main factories of the country, on Sunday 16 Hundreds of thousands of people demonstrated around the obelisk that commemorates the resistance to the Nazis in World War II. It was a historical manifestation that was also reproduced in the main cities of the country. as contracara, the march called by Lukashenko was extremely poor, few thousand, even with the state apparatus pressing to force assistance. He“80%” of the votes they assigned, does not appear anywhere.
So strong and massive has been the worker and popular participation in the events that for several days the regime has had to stop the open repression of the demonstrations, although a repression focused on activism continues through the intelligence services.
Electoral fraud lit the fuse of the outbreak, but the gunpowder had been accumulating for a long time and for different reasons. The lack of democratic freedoms was combined with the advance of the capitalist economic crisis, the deterioration of living conditions, social inequalities, lack of future for young people, job insecurity and poor management of the pandemic, since Lukashenko is a denier, like Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro. And there is another unavoidable component: the contagion effect caused by the rebellions that travel the world and have a new impulse from the Black Rebellion unleashed in the bowels of imperialism.
An authoritarian regime
After 26 long years in power, each term implied more authoritarianism over the population, particularly about opponents. The labor movement was a victim of this situation: To exercise the elementary right to protest, you have to ask for permits that are not granted., and organize a strike“legal” it became a practically impossible task.
The government's actions are based on an authoritarian regime, with Stalinist characteristics. Every last institutional loophole is managed from above by Lukashenko. The repressive forces are the fundamental pillar of the authoritarian scaffolding that, like a leftover from the past, keeps the KGB structure intact, responsible for internal espionage and persecution of opponents. Formally there is no single party, but that is what exists in reality, since only the organizations that make up the partners in power or those used to justify that the opposition exists are legalized.
The popular decision does not respond to an external plan
Stalinists of all stripes who defend Lukashenko and his regime argue that it is an external conspiracy, Thoroughly planned to overthrow them. But it was not the move of an imperialist piece on the international board that provoked the protest.. The people said enough for the 7 a thousand incarcerated, the hundreds of wounded, the tortured, the two protesters killed during the repression, fraud and much more.
The workmen with their helmets and work uniforms, doing assemblies, leaving the factories mobilized, organizing Strike Committees, they are not mere actors in a script written by imperialist authors abroad. The mobilized women, dressed in white with flowers in their hands, they are not the expression of a reactionary ideology that imitates the"Worms" anti Cuba, as some counterrevolutionary agents in the service of the dictator try to install, rather, they embody the existing anger and the vanguard role played by women in the rebellion..
With own stamp
There are those who compare the manifestations of 2013-2014 in Ukraine, known as Maidan, with what is currently happening in Belarus. They do not do it for illustrative purposes but with the intention of vilifying the ongoing struggle. In our opinion, you cannot put an equal sign between both processes. The demonstrations in Ukraine occurred with the population divided between wills"Europeanist" and pro russians. The students started them, but then it was the right and the ultra-right that acquired a strong weight and provoked reactionary violence, that later had its institutional correlate in the government of that time.
Things are different in Belarus. The center of the protest is aimed at recovering democratic freedoms that they never knew and improving the social conditions of life. There is a dynamic and changing reality, since the main opposition candidate was at the time the banker Babariko and then he was displaced by the popular support that the blogger Tijanóvskaya achieved. At first, youth was the exclusive protagonist along with the so-called"Creative class" composed of sectors of the urban petty bourgeoisie. With the repression, the labor movement entered the scene in factories such as BelAz, Grodno Nitrogen, in mining towns like Saligorsk, on the Minsk Metro and railways, in hospitals and other sectors. The far right has no determining weight, has not imposed its provocations in the mobilization, not a regressive program. At the global level, the protest is in tune with the rebellions and strikes that give a positive tint to the situation, very far from a"turn to the right". As every popular movement is heterogeneous, that is why we must fight the liberal and right-wing tendencies, so that they do not take over the popular struggle or lead it to a dead end. In this regard, as our colleagues inform us, It is very encouraging that in sectors of the labor movement the debate on the need to build a Workers Party has accelerated, independently of bureaucrats and bosses.
Out the imperialist claws
Senior EU representatives have announced sanctions on Belarus and the US government has expressed its"Deep concern" for the development of events. They are cynical. We must prevent them from getting their political claws, economic and military in Eastern Europe.
This assessment does not imply supporting Chinese imperialism or Russia.. The latter executes an aggressive foreign policy; that some try to soften by falsely presenting it as the recreation of solidarity ties"With the former Soviet republics". The aggressions it develops in eastern Ukraine are a clear example of the expansionism practiced. Because, nor can it be believed that Vladimir Putin's intention to deepen the State of the Union (Russia-Belarus) aims to establish a solidarity project: what you are looking for is the annexation of the neighboring country. The growing presence of Chinese capital in Belarus is also not due to a disinterested and fraternal agreement, but in the interest of the Asian power to tell the strategic location of Belarus as a bridge between the EU and Russia, as one more link in the chain of countries that are in the"Silk Road".
In the midst of the increasing friction and inter-imperialist confrontations in the dispute for world hegemony, all play a nefarious role for the peoples. There are those who want us to believe that it is necessary to locate in the Russian-Chinese field, as if it were a"Lesser evil" or even a progressive alternative to the EU and EE blocs. THE.
Justify repression and lack of freedom by prioritizing one field over another, not an original policy for the East. It was carried out to support the butcher Al Azad and it is the same that Stalinist sectors develop when they defend the regime of Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela, responsible for reversing all the achievements of the “Bolivarian Revolution "; or when they justify the surrender regime, hungry and repressive of Ortega-Murillo in Nicaragua; in both cases, taking refuge in the sinister aggressions and campaigns of Yankee imperialism and in the false idea that they are"Socialists".
A semi-colonial capitalism that worsens living conditions
Belarus was part of the USSR until 1991 and Lukashenko, who was a member of the Communist Party, on some occasions it has displayed a partially critical discourse of Western imperialism and its international organizations; prioritizing greater integration with Russia and China. Based on these facts there are Communist Parties that defend the regime and also affirm that in Belarus they persist"Soviet achievements".
The truth is that the Stalinist bureaucracy of the USSR, who always perched on authoritarian regimes, was destroying social conquests for decades, with their bureaucratic maneuvers, privileged and corrupt. Mikhail Gorvachev consummated this process when he dissolved the Soviet Union in 1991 to open the doors wide for capitalist restoration. Many bureaucrats were recycled and became patrons or junior partners of capitalist enterprises., multinationals expanded, private ownership of the means of production returned and with it the exploitation of workers. With more or less contradictions, all the countries that made up the USSR and led by the CP undertook the restorative path.
Neither Belarus nor Lukashenko were the exception to the rule. The country quickly became a State Capitalist, like china, that recreates the worst of the system of exploitation of man by man, both politically and socially. Year after year, international organizations rated Belarus with greater capacity to boost business, by favorable tax measures and simple business registration procedures, among other advantages for capital. The government has taken market adaptation measures, for example, the joint venture with China to create the Great Stone industrial park, a link of the new"Silk Road" so that the products of the Asian power reach Europe. Nowadays, in the country you can find Zara, Oysho, Mc Donalds, Redpath Mining and a growing presence of Serbian-origin capital in construction, among other capitalist businesses.
The correlate of this process of capitalist restoration, is the deterioration of the economic and social situation for the great majority. At 2017 Lukashenko went to the extreme of attacking the poorest, when he imposed a"Law Against Vagrancy", with the collection of fines from the unemployed. Massive mobilizations forced him to retreat, but they were a clear sign of his intentions, as were the attacks on the pension system. It is an easily verifiable fact that the bureaucracy enabled the bosses to exploit the workers and obtain profits..
The most widespread in Belarus are short-term contracts for the 90% working class, which constitutes a precarious system, closer to servitude than to labor dignity. Each new signature for one year, implies total defenselessness against employers. Above, the independent union organization is persecuted, in favor of official unions. The lack of state investment in public health that exposed the pandemic, it is also a sign that life is not prioritized. After the disasters of the bureaucratically planned economy, the introduction of capitalism has not caused, nor will it provoke, better living conditions, but more crisis, poverty, social inequality and suffering.
Solidarity with the workers and the people
There is a tough fight going on, although Lukashenko is cornered and is considered even by his allies as"A political corpse" He has said that he will not repeat the elections or leave, at the same time that he has received Vladimir Putin's commitment to"Provide the necessary help to solve problems"from Belarus. Against all odds, the mobilization continues with extraordinary force. Against this, support Lukashenko or remain silent in the face of repression, it is a shameful attitude that has nothing to do with the left or with progressivism. We, we are together with the Belarusian people, the workers who raised their voices and put their bodies to the mobilization, we are with our comrades who fight and organize in that country. Because, From the International Socialist League we have carried out different solidarity actions, we call for the solidarity of the peoples of the world, as well as the has expressed the Independent Trade Union of Ukraine"Labor Protection" and different sectors of the working class in the region.We demand an immediate end to the repression, Freedom to political prisoners, punishment of repressors and murderers of protesters, free elections and democratic freedoms. Permanent mobilization and active general strike mark the way for Lukashenko and his repressive regime to leave.
We are for a government of the workers and the people, with full workers' democracy to decide everything. We say without ambiguity or half measures: outside the Yankee and European imperialism, out of NATO from the East, no to the interference of Russian and Chinese imperialism. The situation puts on the order of the day the need to build a political organization of the working class, independent of bourgeois and bureaucrats, to fight for a social model without capitalist exploitation, nor bureaucratic oppression, to build a socialist society at the service of the great popular majorities.
