Can the Belarussian scene unfold in the streets of America?
Belarus has a primitive system that is easy to mock, but it is the laugh of irony when and if a disputed vote will unfold in the United States.
Minsk, Belarus, August 9, 2020. Photo taken by Joshua Tartakovsky, All Rights Reserved, 2020 (C)
November 3, 2020
By Joshua Tartakovsky
I was in Minsk, Belarus on election day. It was after a long night in a rave party in the forest. A fantastic party, non-commercial, four different stages, pure nature, forests, simple, and easy to know people. As the sun rose in the early hours, I realized that though Belarussians will be facing a dim reality and a possible repression by the government, they have to face it and vote. Change will happen, a transformation is possible, through various ups and downs, but it takes not stopping evolution but continuing with the flow of life and pushing forward. Breaking forward to new grounds.
The streets were blocked by police in many areas. I was prevented from going to a Catholic church on a Sunday by the police (a church that later became a haven for protesters seeking to escape the police).
May 10, 2020. Photo by Joshua Tartakovsky (C) All Rights Reserved 2020.
At the end of a long and tiring day, where people voted, young people began to come out to the streets with the fingers raised in a victory sign, claiming that their candidate of the opposition, won over the sitting president, who has been ruling Belarus with an iron fist for 26 years. Meanwhile, cars could not stop honking in support. After a short while and that same night, there were protests throughout the country, and many Belarussians braved on to face the police and the long-feared KGB that often kidnapps civilians while wearing civilian clothes (AKA citizen arrests).
Minsk, Belarus, August 9, 2020. Protesters waving red-and-white flags of the opposition and of pre-Soviet Belarus. Photo taken by Joshua Tartakovsky, All Rights Reserved, 2020 (C)
At the end of a long day, the opposition claimed that their candidate won, and the president claimed victory. The president claimed that he won 80.23% of the vote, and that the opposition candidate Svetlana Tikhanovskaya won only 9.9% of the vote. But, young people were agitated. Everyone I know, one British-Belarussian woman told me, voted for Tikhanovskaya. There is no way Lukashenko could have won the popular vote. Alas, it was hard to know what the real numbers were. Since then and until today the matter has not been settled.
The Belarussian Presidential Palace, often surrounded by protesters, August 7, 2020, Photo taken by Joshua Tartakovsky (C) All Rights Reserved 2020.
What has unfolded since then is both pro-president and anti-president protests, with many of the elderly or those working for the state system supporting the Belarussian president and many of the younger people, factory workers, supporting the opposition. In fact, the opposition people waved red and white flags of Belarus pre-Soviet era, while the pro-government protesters waved flags of the Soviet era. Similarly, in the United States, militant pro-Trump supporters wave flags of the US flag in black and blue stripes [symbolizing support for the police], and militant opponents of Trump wave flags of Black Lives Matter (BLM).
The formal flag of the state of Belarus of the Soviet era on my right, green-and-red, Photo by Joshua Tartakovsky (C)All Rights Reserved 2020.
Many of the liberal pundits in the American scene, such as Anne Applebaum, known for her coverage of and review of the Eastern bloc and the Iron curtain, lashed out against Lukashenko, the Belarussian regime president. At the same time, in op-eds in The Atlantic, she urged citizens not protest before the elections and simply to vote, and that everything will work out. She said, simply and curtly, that “America is not, after all, Belarus.” It is nice that she was comfortably arrogant enough to think that the US is not a post-Communist post-Soviet collapsing society.
Two months ago, I met two friends who work in the US security establishment. They were wondering about Belarus and said that the Belarussian people don’t really like their president. To me it seemed then that it is all too easy to be smug about Belarus where scenarios of chaos and a disputed vote could take place in America shortly.
Now, as Americans vote today and as I intend to vote, there are signs and probabilities that in fact, at the end of the day we will have two winners, a president claiming that he won and the opposition leader claiming that he won. And, subsequently, clashes and protests in the streets of America. In other words, Belarus comes to America.
I think the two key elements we need to learn, as Americans these days, are humility and realism. We may mock Belarus for its primitive structure, but we have a president who is not concerned about the popular vote. But, today we still have the power to change the outcome, and that is why everyone should go out to vote and encourage others to do so. And please follow the saftey guidelines. None of us is 100% invincible from a virus. Again, some humility is needed.
Good luck America.
