“Then I asked Julian Castle what “zah-mah-ki-bo” meant.
- Do you want a simple answer or a whole answer?
- Let’s start a simple one.
- Fate - inevitable destiny.”

(Kurt Vonnegut “Cat’s Cradle”)

What is appalling is that everyone understands how things are. Belarus is a country of absolute understanding. In spite of the incredibly diluted intellect of the masses and the totality of our self-deception, it does seem to be possible to achieve understanding. Yet the paradox lies not in this, but in our complete inability to take any action in keeping with this understanding. Without exception, the people of Belarus are infected with abulia, or impaired willpower. This, apparently, is our cruel fate…

A classic example. A politically active citizen comes to see you, someone who has been raised in the bosom of an NGO or some other opposition group, and says:

- Let’s join forces.

- Yes, let’s, - I reply – in the name of, and on behalf of the Movement itself.

- Great, - he says cheerfully.

- OK, - I say, - and now let’s start by doing something simple, so that everyone can see that we are united!

- We-e-ll…er, I don’t know ….. I’d have to take advice on that…….

But anyway, that’s not what I meant to talk about…..

Matskevich once wrote a bookentitled “About Eggs” as a spoof, because he had grown bored at that point of banging on about the same old stuff…. I too am starting to feel that I can no longer keep churning out my clever but banal statements of the analytically obvious every time I’m asked. People understand how things are anyway and, though they may condemn me for my sincerity and the likelihood that I’m right, they’ll still do absolutely nothing about it….

Well, all right, then - one last time, just for you….. Do you want to know how things are? Why we are quite happy to go through life muzzled? I’ll tell you all about it.

Belarus is a country that’s poorer than poor - in an economic sense, of course. And the people who live here are very poor, surrounded by poverty, penury, greyness and monotony. Terror and gloom are pervasive. There’s only Russian gas to warm us, and when that runs out, then … what can I say… The moral state of the people is lamentable, the nation has lost its sense of nationhood, and our culture has been expropriated. Just occasionally, maybe 5 or 6 times a year, usually in spring or autumn, there is a ‘revolution of the spirit’, but this has little impact on the general situation.

If the general situation remains stable, it’s entirely down to the gas. Because if the gas dries up, then – well, you know already. Social stability (based on gas) is supported by a uniquely organised system of power (‘vlast’) and control, which can be characterised as “dynamic tension”. This means that stability in society arises from the confrontation that exists between ‘Papa’ and the opposition, or the dynamic tension between them. A system of this kind, described by auhtor Kurt Vonnegut, has become the classical model for the theory of “dynamic tension”:

“Papa Monzano, he’s so bad,
But without bad Papa I would be so sad,
Because without Papa’s badness,
Tell me, if you would,
How could wicked Bokonon
Ever, ever look good?”

(Vonnegut, 1963)

Here, rather figuratively, we see underlined the basic principle of this type of social organisation. A part of society (in the above example – a figure called Bokonon) is effectively excluded from the system objectified by the power, and finds itself outside it. These people become an unpopular, stigmatised and marginalised group, but one which nevertheless has symbolically significant moral purity, on account of the greater immorality of the figure who personifies the power. Belarusian society corresponds almost perfectly to this ideal type: the opposition is deprived of power, corrupted and discredited (with its die-hards, lousy businessmen, and bent agents), but remains symbolically ‘clean’, on account of the considerably greater crimes and sleaze associated with the political regime. The masses of the population effectively find themselves between the two poles of this tension: “goodness” and “evil”, or “good” and “bad”, without veering towards one extreme or the other.

It is important to stress the symbolic or fictitious aspect to this confrontation. In it, the real state of affairs is unimportant and everything happens in a realm of signs and symbols. Put more simply, this theory can be reduced to a concept or ideology comprising a system that perceives components of the ‘political world’ in terms of an ideology and realm of symbolic representations (though this is, of course, not quite true). The reality of socio-political life, in one sense, is just the essential material basis of the sign. What is actually happening interests neither the opposition, nor the powers that be, nor the people. And who in his right mind would be interested in such a reality these days?

Within the state of dynamic tension described above, there exists a series of fundamental characteristics and norms, whose permanence is necessary for the maintenance of stability. In the first place, the opposition cannot be a “genuinely”or “really” positive force, i.e. politically viable, effective and so on. This would overstep the limits of the tension, causing a rupture and a transition to a different kind of political system, as was the case in Serbia, Georgia and Ukraine. A “positive” model or signifier for the opposition does not develop itself, on the basis of its real activity (the real signified), but only as the inverse, brighter side of another sign – the sign of the power. Or, if you prefer, what is signified by the signifier “opposition” comes to be defined instead by a different signifier - the power. Hence the ideological concept of the opposition is a myth (see Roland Barthes). The maintenance of stability requires that the sign and the thing that is signified are inverted: for the powers that be, therefore, the opposition must signify what is “bad”, and consequently its actions in the reality of the political world must match this, and so be “bad”.

The second norm is the progressive demoralisation and degeneration of the opposition. This is the consequence of the weakening of standards in the political realm: in particular, since the opposition is taken to be primordially “bad”, then there is no need to be concerned with the effectiveness of its political activity (either way, they are all as bad as each other, so to speak), and neither are there any legitimate means for society to censure the opposition in a situation of “dynamic tension”. So it becomes degraded and impoverished, without need of carrots or sticks… And good men, finding themselves in the opposition or some NGO or other, begin to fall sick with rare maladies, like “every -Belarus” or “something-must-be-done-itis”, and suffer with insomnia, loss of appetite, and a state of depression.

Thirdly, and indisputably, the maintenance of the tension depends critically on the gap between the opposing poles. So the power must necessarily become degraded and blackened (remember Strugatsky, “in place of the grey..”) more rapidly than the reverse-opposition of its own sign. Hence the brutality, the mass arrests, and … well, whatever else is in store.…

However unlikely it may seem, society is squeezed between two rapidly deteriorating poles and is subject to processes of moral breakdown and debilitation. And before long, instead of “gas”, it will no longer need anything. The situation is nearing the crisis point that Vonnegut calls POOF!, and POOF! signifies the fate (zah-mah-ki-bo) of millions of people, held in the hands of a “stuppa”. And a “stuppa” is a fogbound child.

“History! – writes Bokonon. - Read it and weep!” (Vonnegut, 1963)

Ch. Karuzlik

Translated by Chris Ayton (Scotland)