Sergey Nikolyuk
In Alexey Bratochkin’s article The Mythological Thinking of Belarusian Elite some interesting questions have been raised. Belarusian elite’s inability to make system-level decisions is evident; therefore, we can’t talk about development of any “project for the future” although we can see certain attempts to make sense of what is happening at the moment undertaken by the authorities. Here’s a quote from Presidential Addess-2010: “The goal of our efforts should be formation of both economic system and state as a whole that would be competitive on a modern level. More than that, I am talking here about competitiveness of Belarusian nation itself!”
All these three components can’t be competitive without competitive elite. What prevents it from being competitive?
Officials’ careers: from people to small fry
Some Russian political scientists don’t use the word “elite” without quotation marks. It’s easy to understand why. Elites (political, scientific, and so on) are a product of an open society. If, for instance, citizen N. sets himself a goal of joining his country’s political elite, he will have to come up with a solution of some acute problem. The solution will most probable be not the only one. The competitiveness of his solution will define the fate of the contender for the position of a politician.
Because the mechanism of natural selection is working constantly and on all levels, from municipal to the nation-wide, political elites are formed by people capable of thinking in terms of projects and solutions.
The openness of the selection mechanisms ensures another trait of elite: responsibility. The case of German president Horst Köhler is a good example. The head of the state stated that “the forces of good should be well-armed, especially against Somalian pirates” – and journalists decided that this was a signal for militarization. The president had to resign.
When there’s no open competition, recruitment into the “elite” is done by “picking out from the small fry” (the term coined by Ivan the Terrible). Those responsible for the “picking out” are obviously high-ranked officials who form their own teams of the small fry. Absence of an open competition doesn’t mean there’s no competition at all. That only means there’s a competition not between competences but rather between loyalties. Such competition doesn’t tolerate publicity and most action, as a rule, takes place “under the carpet”. Such “elites” don’t have any connections with other social institutions. They turn into “receive-send” mechanisms firmly built-in into hierarchies that function on personal connections. It is no incident that when describing relations inside the political leadership, analysts and journalists often use the word “family”.
Belarusian “elite” lives by clan games, not strategies
What issues a real elite (no quotation marks) is to challenge? Here’s a short list: symbolic issues, normative issues, and goal-setting. For more clarity let us use an example made by sociologist Lev Gudkov: “I can offer you a following image: if you put metal rasping on a sheet of paper and place a magnet below the sheet, their chaotic positioning immediately becomes structured. That is the role the elites, the most respectable groups should take: to structure mass values, to connect them to everyday problems and to economic interests.”
“Ought to be” is not necessarily “to be”. Our “elite” consists of people who make important decisions. And here we should put a full stop. They make these decisions not because they possess intellectual or cultural capabilities but solely because they have the administrative resource. Today if you hold a position then you automatically become a member of the “elite”. Tomorrow, under certain conditions, you will be detached from your position and your former colleagues will immediately cross the street upon seeing you.
It is clear that you can’t expect such an “elite” member to think in terms of projects. That is hopeless. There’s an example of that from the internet. Recently some independent websites have been writing about the conflict between two former siloviks: N. and Sh. It is impossible for me to imagine that the reason underlying that conflict is differences in their vision of the future of Belarus. Most probably they are fighting for the access to the leader’s ear. Our “elite” doesn’t live by strategies, it lives by clan games and that is why the hierarchy of authority has turned into the hierarchy self-interest at the very stage of its formation.
The majority of Belarusians consider authority representatives to be irresponsible careerists
In his famous book A Study of History Arnold Toynbee wrote that “… growing civilizations differ from static primitive societies in virtue of the dynamic movement, in the their bodies social, of creative individual personalities…” For the British historian and sociologist the creative individual personalities were an embodiment of the elites; with their presence/absence he associated the stages of civilizations’ development and degradation.
As modern research states, the share of creative people in any society is constant (ca 5%); however, their share in the ruling regime can considerably fluctuate. In the end it depends on the selection mechanism. In this sense the most effective selection mechanism is democracy. Moreover, democracy (as history tells us) is the best way of making elites responsible, and without responsibility their creativeness can start doing harm instead of good.
Research conducted by IISEPS (Independent Institute of Socio-Economic and Political Studies) allows us to evaluate Belarusian authorities from the society’s viewpoint. Despite of all the state propaganda machine the majority of Belarusians thinks of the “people currently being at power” as of careerists preoccupied with their material well-being.
Here is how people responded to the question “How would you evaluate people currently being at power?”, %
"These are people preoccupied only with their material well-being and career” – 43.5
"These are honest yet weak people who are not capable of making use of their authority and providing order and proper political leadership” – 12.7
"These are honest yet not very competent people who don’t know how to bring their country out from the economic crisis” – 11.9
"They are a good team of politicians who provide their country with proper leadership” – 17.3
No answer – 14.6
Vladimir Makej is lamenting about Belarusian society being “undemocratic”
Representatives of our country’s “elite” like to talk about Belarusian people being not ready for the democracy. Here’s a quote from the head of Presidential Administration Vladimir Makej: “They sometimes make a demand in a form of an ultimatum that we must immediately start living in a democratic society, as they understand it. But this is not possible. The society itself should first prepare itself for the change.”
It may seem that it’s hard to argue with such statements. However, whose duty it is to turn people’s unpreparedness into preparedness? It has been 16 years since the first presidential elections, which were relatively democratic. Who prevented the “elite” from introducing the principles of free political competition into common practice?
The “elite” is fighting for the sake of power, not for the development of the country
Who prevented our political elite representatives to read the book Democracy in America by de Tocqueville, which was written in the middle of the XIX century, and to learn about their responsibilities? Here is a quote from the book: “To educate democracy – if possible to revive its beliefs; to purify its mores; to regulate its impulses; to substitute, little by little, knowledge of affairs for inexperience and understanding of true interests for blind instinct; to adapt government to its time and place; to alter it to fit circumstances and individuals – this is the primary duty imposed on the leaders of society today.”
Modern political scientists divide groups in the power into the elite of command and the elite of development. The primary goal of the first group is to preserve the status quo; the second group aims to find effective answers to inside and outside challenges. According to economist Mikhail Khazin, “the most terrible part begins when the existing “rules of the game” exhaust themselves". It is true especially if “they have been out there for a long time” and that is precisely our case.
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