In Belarus – Behind the Scenes a Strong Working Class Keeps on Pushing

Protests have been held in Belarus in recent weeks and a strike movement has developed. The trigger was the umpteenth electoral “victory” of President Alexander Lukashenko, re-elected for his sixth term despite his low popularity, worn down by 26 years of uninterrupted power.

Lukashenko, initially considered the “savior of the republic”, has recently adopted neoliberal policies, including the privatization of many state enterprises, the reform of the pension system, the introduction of zero-hour contracts, etc.

Now most Belarusian workers live in worse conditions even than their Russian and Polish neighbors.

The first protests were repressed by the police, who arrested thousands of demonstrators. This did not put an end to the protests and soon the workers of the country’s major factories, characterized by a very high degree of industrialization, went on strike.

If the spark for the protests was the election, which the opposition claims was rigged, their real origin lies in the decline of living conditions in recent years.

For many years, energy agreements with Russia have ensured the Belarusian state an income to buy social peace and ensure a certain political stability. A breakthrough made by Russia in the energy supply policy of Central and Western Europe has diverted part of its investments from Belarus, exacerbating the economic crisis in this satellite country. To cope with the difficult situation, the government led by Lukashenko has tried the path of greater autonomy from Russia, hinting at some dialogue with the United States and the European Union, threatening to shift the axis of its energy policy.

Meanwhile the conditions of the Belarusian population have suffered a drastic deterioration, also due to a decline in state support for industry and social assistance.

The onset of the coronavirus has helped to show the reality of a government policy determined to pursue the interests of the Belarusian bourgeoisie, still largely nestled in the maze of the high state bureaucracy. The government, constituted through the traditional paternalism of “socialist” assistance, has brazenly flaunted its obedience to the interests of capital, ignoring the health of workers and the population in general. Like governments and employers’ associations around the world, the Belarusian state has forced factories to stay open, exposing workers to the contagion.

Production above all! This is the motto of the government of capital in Belarus, a country that, out of 10 million poor inhabitants, has 5 million employed and 2 million workers in industry. Proletarians, locked up in wage labor prisons with the threat of contracting the deadly virus, and forced to produce in the name of profit, have also suffered cuts in their wages, which in some cases have even reached 20%.

This proletarian anger was expressed in strikes, which did not back down despite the vain promises of the government, unable to restore order with sermons. Thus began the state response to the workers’ struggle: the strike committees were dissolved with a wave of arrests and the government ordered a lockout on August 24.

The so-called “liberal” forces, which express the aspirations of the petty bourgeoisie, despite being all aligned against the current regime, are divided between those who rely on the help of Russia and those who side with the European Union or the USA. These liberals, so much praised by the Western media, are not at all on the side of the workers, and would like privatizations at an even faster rate than the current regime.

Meanwhile, some of the more combative fringes of the trade union movement are trying to advance the demands of the working class, not only economic but also political. For example, the workers of the large Belaruskaliy chemical factory are calling for a generalized revision of collective agreements.

Regardless of the fate of the President, the strike movement must lead to the formation of an independent trade unionism, separate from both the state and from the movements and parties of the petty bourgeoisie, whether pro-Russian or pro-Western. Workers need an organization capable of defending the living conditions of their class. And a communist party needs to be reborn, rich in the experience of centuries of struggle, to represent the general and historical interests of the proletariat, not only in Belarus but the whole world.