Three Main Blunders of the Authorities in the Case of Krystsina Tsimanouskaya

The regime has outlived its usefulness and is no longer able to adequately respond to what is happening.

The situation that happened at the Tokyo Olympics with the Belarusian athlete Krystsina Tsimanouskaya made it clear that the Belarusian vertical has outlived its usefulness and is no longer able to adequately respond to crises.

If you take a sober look at what happened, then there was no crisis with Tsimanouskaya as such. It was created by the functionaries themselves, not only Belarusian sports but the entire created vertical.

Ezhednevnik analyzed the three main blunders of the vertical, proving that the system has outlived itself and is no longer capable of fully functioning.

First blunder, purely vertical

Even though Tsimanouskaya was even accused of planning all this in advance, in reality, she is only a hostage. Not even of sports functionaries, since they are only obedient cogs, but of the entire vertical management system in the country, under which a scandal was inevitable.

In a normal management system, every manager, no matter what he specifically does, has the right to make mistakes. This is the basis for a person not to be constrained by fear so that he can make decisions on his own, try something new, and move forward in this way.

In the Belarusian management system, the so-called repressive management is fully implemented, where the subordinate is always guilty. The search for the guilty begins at the very top and ends at the lowest echelon of vertical management.

That is why the instinct of self-preservation is very developed among the Belarusian vertical. It does not matter whether it is a sports vertical or a power vertical - if there is some kind of blunder, then the instinct of self-preservation immediately turns on and the one who did wrong tries to cover his backs by all means, to find the "guilty party," and to blame everything on him.

This is exactly what happened at the Tokyo Olympics. When two Belarusian athletes, who were supposed to run the 4x400 m relay, were removed from the relay, the first thing that the sports functionaries did was to rush to cover their backs. They did it like full-fledged cogs of the vertical - they transferred the problem to the lower subordinate link, to Tsimanouskaya. She was put on the relay without even asking if she wanted it or not, if she could do it. They acted according to the principle "I am the boss, you are a fool," so you must stupidly perform and not question. Under normal management, the coaches would gather all the members of the national team and try to solve the problem together. Surely, there would be athletes who would agree to support the country and run the relay. By the way, Tsimanouskaya didn’t refuse to run either, she just didn’t fully understand how the Belarusian vertical was working due to her young age, and, therefore, she was indignant.

The second blunder is the inability to overcome fear

When Krystsina Tsimanouskaya posted on the Internet that very video with her emotional indignation, it was still a long way to the scandal. Well, the young athlete was indignant - great deal! Young people tend to be hotheads.

What is surprising is the behavior of the experienced leaders of the Belarusian delegation, who are over 60. They were almost certainly well aware that it would be foolish to remove Tsimanouskaya from the Olympics because of someone's video, that it would only worsen the scandal. It was right to just talk to the girl, perhaps, apologize, and solve everything calmly, giving her the opportunity to show herself at a distance of 200 meters. You only have to remember the old parable about the wind and the sun arguing over who is stronger. If they would have shown affection and warmth, she would do anything to help out the coaches. She would have won a gold medal.

But the problem is that the story with the video reached Minsk, and, in the light of the events of the last year, such public speeches, especially those of state employees, especially with criticism, are categorically discouraged in Belarus. Accordingly, when they called from Minsk, the situation developed according to a completely predictable scenario. The real culprits began to cover their backs and blame everything on Tsimanouskaya, and, having received the command to send the athlete to Minsk, they did not even say a word against it, probably out of fear, and they did not try to explain that it would only get worse. They just agreed.

The third blunder - propaganda

The trouble of Belarus is that, after the presidential elections, the hands were untied not only for the security forces but also for the propagandists, who now do not see any boundaries at all. Therefore, when there was only a small scandal that could have been safely forgotten in a day, the propagandists pounced on the athlete who dared to be indignant with all their rage, mixing in the politics that had never been there at all. Simply because, according to the new Belarusian dogma, anyone in the service of the state who dares to criticize it publicly is a political schemer and traitor, bought off by the vile opposition or a Western monster.

When Tsimanouskaya, against her will, was dragged into politics, she had no choice but to really get into this politics and ask for international protection. After all, she lived in Belarus for the last year and saw what was happening around. She understood perfectly well that, since she was made a political enemy of the state, then she would not be able to stay at large, as the coaches told her. Criminal charges and jail time for discrediting Belarus were a real possibility. Especially if the security forces analyze her phone and find there a subscription to a Telegram channel that is recognized as extremist or they want to be recognized as such. If they find a phone conversation with a Belarusian athlete who supported the protests and has left the country, then no one would be able to save the athlete. In any case, to return to her homeland as an enemy of the state was akin to suicide.

So what do we end up with? An emotional speech of the athlete, which would have remained a simple speech if not for the vertical control system built in Belarus. It had been biting its own tail before and has uncovered all of its crooked spine in the current crisis. It is the system that has driven itself into a gigantic scandal, which will backfire on it more than once.

The scandal could go even further if the system continues to function as before and tries, for example, to intercept Tsimanouskaya during the flight from Tokyo to Warsaw. After all, the athlete will fly over the territory of Russia, which by all means, for its own reasons, supports such a suicidal behavior of the Belarusian vertical.