New Outburst of Protests to Come

Just tomorrow, the day after tomorrow - any day now - something may happen.

Gennady Korshunov is a sociologist, former director of the Institute of Sociology of the National Academy of Sciences, who revealed Lukashenka's low rating on the eve of the election. Now Gennady often writes analytical posts on Facebook about the Belarusian protest and constantly comes to the conclusion that it does not deflate, and the victory of the revolution (in the broad sense) is inevitable. Green Portal wondered Korshunov's reasons for scientific optimism. The Village Belarus also collected the main conclusions of the sociologist's recent research on the revolution in the Belarusian society.

- Mr Gennady, you've recently written on Facebook that protest marches have turned from Sunday marches into daily ones. Could you analyze three forms of the Belarusian street protest - Sunday citywide marches, neighbourhood marches, and now daily local activities?

- The large-scale Sunday marches made much sense because they showed how many of us there were. They demonstrated it to us, the authorities and the whole universe. Besides, it played an important psychological role: people waited a week to come out on Sunday with others and get positive emotions.

Over time, when the authorities learned to confront the format with force, the marches turned into neighbourhood ones. I consider it is good. Given those large-scale marches, everyone marched individually: there was centralized information through large telegram-channels. Everyone marched alone, and then people gathered.

Such individualization and "centralization" no longer worked during neighbourhood marches. People had to learn to develop and strengthen the mechanisms of horizontal relations with their neighbours at their level (neighbourhood, house, courtyard). It's an increasingly useful thing. One did not need large telegram channels, now courtyard and neighbourhood chats play the first fiddle.

The authorities intensified the pressure and such big neighbourhood marches also became dangerous. Horizontal connections between people were slowly emerging. They grew stronger under pressure from the authorities. People were increasingly evolving patterns of self-organization.

Small groups come up with a protest strategy and then scale it up. Groups divide up the roles: some of them develop routes, others monitor the arrival of paddy wagons, others spread the news from Telegram while others are at the rallies. It would have been impossible to imagine it in August or September. It is a great experience.

Protest actions strengthen the horizontal sociality that is now shaping. I would even say that it is a new dimension of citizenship.

I give a positive assessment of the format of marches. Rallies take place every day. Every day the country protests. Such "flickering protests" make it challenging for the authorities to respond promptly.

- Have we returned to the format we had in August when something happened every day: marches, chains of solidarity?

- I don't think so. These were very different protests. People took to the streets in August because of an outburst of misunderstanding in response to disproportionate violence. It was just an emotional outburst on a moral and ethical basis. Everyone could not but took to the streets.

Now we observe self-organization in its natural way. I see a great perspective here. It is the foundation for the future local government. Meanwhile, people at workplace expressed the alternative to official trade unions. They wrote letters against violence on behalf of their organizations, recorded video appeals. It strengthens the corporate spirit.

The emotional wave of August is turning into something else. There is a sense of power, potential. However, it is not always clear how to use this power.

For example, the Belarusian diasporas were formed on this wave. Earlier, Belarusians lived apart, joining Russians and Ukrainians. The expression "Belarusian is a Belarusian to another Belarusian" had the opposite meaning to the actual one. Now Belarusians have united and initiated, for example, the refusal of big companies to sponsor the Ice Hockey Championship if our country co-hosted it. They pushed the Belarus Democracy Act. It was signed by the U.S. President.

In one way or another, this protest potential is gradually breaking down the system at all levels of social organization, especially in the digital space. The digital space doubles the offline one.

Today, 90% of protest activity goes through digital space first. It flows offline, although it is challenging in the current situation. Under repression, tending toward totality, it is hard to bring protests to a level much higher than latency.

But we have to do something. We follow the methodology of a thousand shots: we hope that at least one out of a thousand will hit the target.

- How do scientists study protests? What instruments do they have?

- There are four global methods in science, which divide into types, kinds, etc. But there are four of them: experiment, observation, survey, and document analysis. So far, most people only observe. An experiment is impossible.

One can set up a survey. Such attempts are being made, but the participants in chats keep secrecy. On the other hand, there are interesting case studies of more or less open local Telegram chats conducted by the Center for European Transformation. However, it's not full-fledged research.

- May one give any forecasts concerning the future of the Belarusian protest?

- Many analysts say that now almost any trigger, any phenomenon, may cause a new outburst of protests. It may happen at any moment.

They have been saying that the "protest has deflated" since August. How will it deflate if no problems are solved? There are millions of people with protest experience now. What are the authorities doing to solve the accumulated contradictions? People see no action, except violence and strange pictures in the media.

Gennady Korshunov has been studying the transformations of Belarusians over the past six months and the Belarusian revolution for several months now. He has recently published an article entitled "The Prolonged Belarusian August - Horizontal Revolution." He describes the stages of transformation the Belarusian society went through and where we are now. We present the conclusions Korshunov made in an edited and abridged version.

The scientist believes the Belarusians are gradually shifting from the primacy of loyalty to the management (when they accepted tough power over themselves in exchange for the provision of their life activities and were content with only a small amount of freedom) to the dominance of self-organization, i.e. from vertical system to horizontal one. The latter manifests itself in the way Belarusians think (mass consciousness), how they make decisions and organize their activity. That is, Belarusians are getting more organized and capable of taking responsibility.

Korshunov claims that the Belarusians are going through four stages. Now they are already at the last one. The first stage triggered by the spring crisis (the epidemic of coronavirus and authorities' reaction to it) let Belarusians compare the efficiency of the state, law enforcement bodies, corporations and other hierarchic structures and self-organizing subjects, communities, horizontal and network structures.

The second stage occurred during the electoral campaign. The consequences of the coronavirus caused a moral and ethical shift in the collective consciousness. Not only because of the assessment of the events as a violation of the tacit agreement in terms of "ensuring the life of society", but also because of the facts of further destruction of the moral and ethical framework of existence. Apart from the coronavirus, many Minskers had problems with drinking water in June. A quick solution to the problem was spontaneous and horizontal. The vertical, despite the statements that the issue is under the personal control of the President, very unconvincingly tried to a) smooth over the questions about the scale and nature of the situation, and b) effectively solve problems with the supply of drinking water to the affected neighbourhoods of Minsk. As a result of this stage, the latent functioning of the horizontal began to develop a request for its subjective expression, which met a preventive, but already overdue, resistance from the vertical.

The third stage is the explosive release of the confrontation between the vertical and the horizontal into the open form. The publication of the preliminary exit polls pulled an ethical trigger. The announced figures shattered the vestiges of faith in any efficacy of the previous "agreement" and end the possibility of electoral affirmation of horizontal subjectivity. To create subjectivity through coercion is just as impossible as to eliminate it when it reaches the height of its development.

As a result, the events that followed the elections, namely the excessive violence against the demonstrators, made the new horizontal device work in full. Online regimes of instant-horizontal information, self-organization, mutual aid and solidarity activated.

Thanks to the new media, information has become truly horizontal (any significant event appears on the web, captured from several angles) and universal (at least for those who are able and willing to use the network). Network self-organization has progressed, both in the form of regional and neighbourhood chats/communities, and various collaborations, initiatives, and platforms. Horizontal processes focused primarily on mutual help and coordination in solving urgent issues. People, groups and organizations responded proactively o them (the transportation of released detainees, water delivery, blood sampling).

Then the fourth stage followed - a full-fledged and large-scale horizontal revolution of Belarusian society. The Belarusians are still at this stage. Korshunov notes he is not ready to predict how long it will last. This revolution follows four interrelated paths:

national - the events of 2020 created an extensive set of prerequisites for overcoming the complex of a victimized nation; formed a lively sense of national community; engendered a sense of pride "to be a Belarusian" (a paraphrase of Kupalov's "to be called a human");

social - technological development, generational evolution and value shifts plus the experience of 2020 resulted in the new type of sociality ("horizontal" sociality) with the corresponding institutions;

civil - there is an accelerated development of individual and collective civic consciousness. Models of self-organization receive the various institutional design. It builds the parallel to the state systems of management and self-government of society;

political - against the backdrop of domestic political default and foreign policy incompetence of the power vertical, there is a gradual growth of political competence of both individual subjects and various horizontal institutions. It is the slowest process so far. However, it started only a few months ago. The results of it are already undermining the vertical power structure.

These trends are scalarized by protest activity, which develops in waves at all levels of sociality (from the individual through the settlement and corporate to the national and international level). The horizontal learns, accumulates competence, and develops rapidly. Different types of activity (recreational, proactive, communicative, self-presentational, etc.) emerge and multiply. The proactive nature of the horizontal and the reactive nature of the vertical are becoming more evident. The vertical has only violence left in its arsenal. The horizontal advantage within the ideological, moral, ethical, organizational and other plans is growing. The horizontal dynamics, penetrating the professional and corporative and civic-axiological space, has reached the international level and formed the vectors of foreign policy assessment of the Belarusian agenda in the information, political and economic spheres.

The only question that remains open is when and how the horizontal revolution will demolish the vertical system.