Systemic Crisis of Relations between the Government and the Society

Gennady Korshunov

Summary

The year 2020 was marked by a global crisis that accelerated the processes of social dynamics at all levels. A wave of forced anti-epidemic measures swept across the planet and revealed all hidden trends and contradictions. Each country, state and society had to take their own tests of strength – to find answers to the challenges of COVID-19, which, even if it did not strengthen the trust between the state and its citizens, at least would not destroy mutual understanding between them.

In Belarus, the crisis caused by COVID-19 overlapped with trends that had been maturing for decades and became systemic.

Trends:

Devaluation and denunciation of the social contract

The basis of the social contract concluded between the Belarusian society and the current government in 1994 was the tacit distribution of powers in the following format: the government received exclusive rights to normalize and regulate the order in the country, in return committing to maintain at the proper level (low, but acceptable) social standards inherited from the Soviet Union. In turn, the society reserved for itself the role of a socio-political object that does not pretend to actively participate in political life, but has guarantees of security, stability and a certain well-being.

For the next 10–12 years, the government worked hard on the domestic political front in two directions – building a “social state” for society and creating its own “vertical of power” to maintain stability. However, the series of crises1 that began in the second half of the 2000s put the authorities in a state of declining resources and actualized the need to review priorities – a gradual reduction in the financing of the “social state” began, while the function of rationing and establishing order remained entirely at the disposal of the authorities.

At the same time, the authorities went to a certain expansion of the “territories of freedom” to increase the possibilities of society in self-sufficiency, self-satisfaction of their needs. As a result, since the second half of the 2000s, the state's support for the welfare system has become less financial and economic, and more ideological and propagandistic, while the development of the power vertical was carried out in the mode of strengthening preventive authoritarianism.

If the initial departure from the socialist foundations of the social contract was primarily concerned with reducing the cost of the welfare system and liberalizing the business environment, then after the events in Ukraine in 2014, the authorities came to realize the need for some liberalization in relation to civil society but in the conditions of the “glass ceiling” set by the authorities.

By the beginning of 2020, Belarus had come in a state of latent, unmanifested, problematization of the social contract – on both sides. On the one hand, the authorities gradually renounced their obligations to support social standards while maintaining their own advantage – the position of the main (and only) political subject in the state. On the other hand, society had already gained some experience of self-preservation and self-reproduction, without significant support from the government or the state.

The events that unfolded during the first wave of COVID-192 gave a powerful impetus to the trend of denouncing the social contract: the idea that the government is not able to fulfill its obligations to ensure the safety of society’s life was formed in the mass consciousness. This trend was finalized by measures to pacify protest activity, which were considered excessive by a majority. The last line was drawn under this case by further actions of law enforcement and judicial authorities, which created a situation of legal default. The guarantees of security and stability, and in the long term – of economic well-being, which the government had been obliged to provide to society under the social contract of the 1990s, were finally destroyed.

Self-organization and subjectification of the Belarusian society

One of the key features of the Belarusian society is the phenomenon of “local sociality”. The essence of this type of sociality is to focus life interests on the basic levels of social organization (the family and the immediate social environment) and primarily distance themselves from hierarchical structures. This is a kind of extended absenteeism, which involves not only the “rejection” of the claim to power, but also a certain autonomy from it, that is, the habit of relying rather on one's own strength and horizontal self-organization than on vertical systems.

The development of network technologies provided Belarusians with tools for self-organization and synchronization of localities, creating opportunities for independent solutions to everyday problems without involving hierarchical structures. In turn, the “shrinkage” of the welfare system was an incentive both for the development of all kinds of horizontal ties (according to professional characteristics, the criterion of hobbies, the fact of joint territorial residence, etc.), and for the induction of various initiatives, activities, collaborations that can compensate for the lack of services from traditional institutions. These trends were not only in line with the devaluation of the existing social contract, but also led to the formation of a new collective subject – so far a distributed and web-based one.3

Subjectivity is the ability to make decisions and take responsibility for what is happening. When the idea began to form in the mass consciousness that the government does not recognize the degree of threat of COVID-19 and refuses to take responsibility for what is happening (the second quarter of 2020), in the eyes of the society, the government actually began to lose the quality of a full-fledged subject.

The desubjectification of power in the face of the danger of the coronavirus, confirmed by requests for help from ordinary doctors, launched a spontaneous process of grassroots mutual assistance and self-organization of the society that is the first stage of the process of increasing subjectivity. The key features of this stage are:(a) the popularization of digital platforms and initiatives aimed both at helping doctors and at spreading alternative information; (b) the solidarity of various business structures, civil society and the Belarusian diaspora with doctors; and (c) the rise of the volunteer movement. Also one should mention spontaneous initiative and distribution, that is, the absence of a hierarchy or a single control center.

All these results or features of the first stage – digitalization, inclusivity, individual significance and fundamental horizontality – actually set the paradigm for further waves of self-organization and increasing subjectivity.

The second stage of subjectification is associated with the beginning of the electoral campaign and an attempt to ontologize, to implement social subjectivity in the political field. The results of this stage are ambiguous: on the one hand the preventive and reactive actions of the authorities stopped the full possibility of political and social subjectivity, while on the other hand the society got the understanding of its mass character and the predominance of supporters of change over adherents of the authorities. A sense of a large-scale collective “WE” was formed – a huge Belarusian community that expanded local sociality beyond the borders of Belarus, as well as a sense of great pride of belonging to this “incredible” Belarusian community.

The third stage – post-electoral which began on Election Day (August 19) – is openly crisis-existential. Moreover, the crisis of existence develops in at least three directions: first, frustration about the way the authorities eliminated the possibility of political implementation of the subjectivity of society; second, physical threat to existence due to the explosion of unrestrained violence; third, critical stress from the deconstruction of the moral, ethical and regulatory spaces, i.e. from social anomie.

In other words, it is a question of traumatic destruction of the stability of the familiar world. Under these conditions the phenomenon of the “social swirling” arose, when mutual assistance and solidarity (which spontaneously manifested at all levels of social organization – from individual to international) became not only conditions of survival but also tools for the formation of new standards and models of joint community, in fact, a new sociality. This new sociality was created by a new collective entity that realized itself as such – the Belarusian society.

Crisis of confidence and horizontal revolution

At the beginning of 2021, the data of the next Chatham House study4 were published. Among the results of this study, the answers to the question of trust in certain social institutions are noteworthy. They are extremely depressing: in regard to all subjects that are state-owned (from the branches of government to the official media and trade unions), the share of distrust exceeds the number of loyal ones by 35–50%. This is an indicator of a powerful systemic crisis.

The state acts as a super-system of social institutions that normalize and mediate the interaction of social actors at different levels. It is based on a certain level of trust within the system; if this trust is not there, the deconstruction of the state is inevitable. Moreover, this process takes place both on the part of society and on the part of the authorities. In the first case, in the mass consciousness, there is a consistent desacralization, delegitimization, delegalization and demonization of social institutions (primarily those of government and security); in the second case – the involution of politics, the reduction of the tools of power to the methodological archaic and the collapse of the administrative apparatus to loyalty without admixture of professionalism.

At the same time, it should be understood that deconstruction is not a destruction (at least immediately), but a rethinking, reactivation of the true values and functions of the state. And if the government has chosen to strengthen the vertical and forcefully suppress all alternative strategies of social activity (private, civil, digital, symbolic, etc.), then society has taken the path of increasing resources at all levels:

In fact, one could say that today a new type of revolution is being implemented in Belarus – horizontal, in which hierarchical systems become dysfunctional and begin to be replaced by horizontal, initiative and self-organizing structures.

Here it should be mentioned that the tendency to move from vertical to horizontal types of social relations (actually social, communicative, political, economic, etc.) is characteristic of Western civilization for more than a decade. However, it is probably only in Belarus that this confrontation has become so obvious and immeasurable.

Conclusion

In Belarus, it is impossible to predict the further development of events in any way. Despite the incessant intensity of repression on the part of the authorities, the protest potential of society did not “fizzle out”. The trends and contradictions that led to the creation of a systemic crisis in the country and gave rise to an unprecedented wave of protests remain in force.

The third wave of COVID-19, the approaching financial and economic crisis, and political sanctions from the West will add additional volatility to the processes of social dynamics. At the same time, another stochastic factor is the Kremlin.

At the same time, it seems obvious that the launched processes of solidarization, self-organization and subjectification of society exclude the possibility of a simple return to the pre-crisis state of affairs. The main question is formulated regarding the further vectors of social dynamics – the political and economic collapse of the vertical power and the destruction of the state, or the construction of a new “horizontal state” that will replace the current government.