The goal – destruction of authoritarian regime in Belarus in 2006.

The crucial point of the Strategy-2006 is that we must win in 2006, when presidential elections are to be held. The choice of time is not occasional. Firstly, during the elections authoritarian regimes try to pretend being democratic. That’s why regime is most vulnerable during elections, because at that time they create the image of legitimistic governing, both for internal usage and for worldwide community. Secondly, after another “elegant victory” the situation in Belarus will change drastically and another chance might appear not so soon.

So, presidential elections in 2006 is the time when liquidation of existing authoritarian regime is possible. Strategy 2006 is not a strategy to win the elections. Under existing regime such a victory is simply impossible. Strategy 2006 aimed to use the most favourable moment to topple the authoritarian regime.

“Reconnaissance of the ground”

Situation of divide between regime and democratic-oriented people in Belarus can be called a “barricade”. The barricade exists both in thinking and in activity. People on either side of the barricade read different newspapers and books, are guided by different ideas and values not taking into account ideas and values of their opponents at all. Even the terms of different sides of the barricade sound the same but are filled with different sense and have different meaning. A typical example is independence. Even the Independence Day is celebrated by public and the state on different days of the same month.

The barricade is even more visible in activity: persecution of differently minded, pressure on mass media, creation of obstacles for activities of structures and organisations non-controlled by state, and even disappearance of people. Accordingly, opposition replies with various protest actions, which, in turn, are suppressed and serve as a cause for further repressions.

Important feature of this barricade is that split-up is drawn through families. Opponents are mixed and spread on the whole area of the country. So it is not a clear-cut front-line, but barricade drawn through the whole Belarusian people. Such a contradiction led to civil wars in the past, when both parties, finally, started negotiations about establishing new principles of governing in the country, about providing benefits for both parties, both for winners and losers.

In XX century civil wars in the civilized part of the world “became out of fashion”. Instead of civil wars the bloodless revolutions are happening (“a velvet one” as in Germany and in Czech Republic, “a singing revolution” as in Lithuania, etc.), where both sides withhold from violence — and not because of humanistic reasons but because the one who starts violences - is the one to loose. The state looses as soon as it violates against its opponents, as it turns to be in front of ascendant power of international community (a classical sample for recent time – Serbia). If both sides use force, the situation is unchanged (latest examples are Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan). A pure victory is achieved in “revolutions” where opposition is able to keep its followers form provoking state forces (Czech, Slovakia, the Ukraine).

The regime has its own scenario for prevention of a peaceful revolution in Belarus, and it resulted in two main directions of activities:

1) management of street activity (meetings, demonstrations, strikes, etc.);

• Coordination (to be exact – intrusion) of demonstration routs and actions’ participants behavior;
• Infiltrating organizations, that show maximum street and strike activity with their people;
• Enlistming the technical staff and (if possible) potential leaders of opposition groups;
• Training of experts of special divisions for penetration into mass actions;
• Coordination of police (militia) activity (and other divisions of intelligent services) and planted agents.

2) building and enforcing contradictions in interaction and communication between various opposition and resistance groups.

• Creation of juridical and organizational hindrances for parties and public association (re-registration procedure, bureaucratic regulation, fiscal procedures, etc.);
• Keeping political activists away from state mass-media, prosecution of independent media.
• Controlling political parties’ and public associations financial activities (from prosecution of businessmen providing financial support to politicians up to agreements upon foreign grants for NGOs).
• Provocing conflicts inside the opposition, discreditation of political and NGOs’ leaders in the eyes of wide public and their own organizations’ members;
• Inducing corruption among opposition activists.

Efficiency of this ancient and reliable “divide and rule (divide et impera)” policy in Belarus is not very high but its persistence, rigidity of policy and perseverance (deliberation in combination with persistence) of officials give results. Currently, nobody trusts anybody in the opposition. Everyone suspects each other either in association with the authorities or in corruption. Grass-root and ordinary structures don’t have any trust in leaders, leaders - in executors, nobody coordinate serious actions with anyone. Communication in opposition is presented in primitive contacts both in form (ideological monologues and mutual claims) and in content (either trifles are discussed, or the regime is criticized).

Four steps of the Strategy of Victory

Taking into account this “barricade” situation in Belarus society, we see obviously that to win over the regime is possible only if the authority will be forced to start negotiations with opposition. How to force it for this step?

Four “simple” actions should be fulfilled:

Action 1. Exact time to start street-activity should be defined. The decision about going out “to the street” is to be made not by street leaders and not on the level of strategic management.

Action 2. Paralyze the regime vital functions in accurate time. Only in case the authorities won’t be able to restore these functions by violence, the regime will participate in negotiations.

Action 3. Torce the authorities to negotiate. And they are forced to negotiate only if the Action 3 is fulfilled professionally, i.e the necessary conditions are followed:

a) mass character of actions;
b) duration of the stay “on the street”, duration of the strike, etc.;
c) discipline and succession.

Action 4. And only after the authorities show readiness to negotiate, the negotiators are appointed on behalf of “the street”.

Conditions for the Strategy implementation

These “simple” activities cannot be implemented without solution of complex issues. The most important and forming are:

1. To organize monitoring and data collection about situation “across the barricade”, about actions of the authorities both on the level of concrete activities and the level of norms, rules and decision-making. And deep analysis of situation inside the opposition, monitoring its own structures, their readiness and moral state is needed. To do this we should first overcome opposition’s leaders unwillingness to know and understand the real situation in opposition ranks.

After the strategy of such actions is adapted by the opposition at the level of strategic management (or “Pure Thinking” - PT), monitoring and analytics will have different but still important function – to follow and analyze time. Any activities (decisive and winning especially) have an optimal period when they are most efficient (the well-known Lenin’s statement: “today is early and tomorrow will be late”). Actions taken a little bit early or a little bit late can lead to results opposite to what has been planned. It is possible to win only if the right action is done in proper time and in proper place. It is impossible to define such time and place without monitoring and analytics.

2. Solving of the personnel issue. The question is “Are all people in their right positions?” First of all, the objective of the opposition is to guard the purity of its ranks, raise barricade between themselves and the regime, i.e. to get rid of the regime agents among them, not to let false agents of intelligence services manage meetings and demonstrations, to find ways to prevent incitements to force applying.

Secondly, the main problem in opposition is lack of competence and correspondence of staff to positions they occupy. If political leaders do not change for decades while activity condition has been changed significantly many times, then with high probability it can be stated that either the competence of these leaders does not meet current demands or they are political adventurers and trimmers.

Implementation of the strategy depends on answers on three important questions:

1. Who will go to the street (“maidan” in Minsk)?
2. Who will negotiate with the state authorities on behalf of Belarusian society ?
3. Who will make decisions?

To simply appoint the actors for these roles won’t solve the issue. Trust between representatives of different levels of opposition is even more important problem. If “the street” doesn’t trust decision-makers, nobody will implement their decisions. If the negotiators dont trust “the street”, they cannot stand up for its interests in negotiations. After the decision makers betrayed those who stayed on the streets in 1996 and 2001, it will be not so easy to restore the trust.

Each level competence is determined not separately, or isolated on each level, but in inter-relation to other two of them. Roughly speaking, even the best negotiator (in the layer of thinking communication) coming from business or diplomatic circles won’t be considered to be competent if those who make decisions don’t recognize him as such (in pure thinking layer), as well as those who organize the resistance and “maidan” (in Thinking activity layer). The competence on each level is determined by the expectations of two other levels and their mutual trust. Recruitment of personnel and taking vacant functional positions should become the subject for specific care in the opposition and the subject of concordance and negotiations.

For successful implementation of all those conditions we need to concentrate all information flows in one functional position. We speak about the “revolution headquarters” or “brain centre”. At the moment no oppositional group meets these requirements. So, here is the first strategic task – to create such a group*) .

*) The group is created and works for more than a month.