“Sovok” lives and flourishes in Belarus
No one has even made a dent in the direction of de-sovietization.
So figuratively head of the International Consortium “EuroBelarus” Uladzimir Matskevich characterized the situation with abundance of “Soviet style” in Belarus during the round table “Theories and Practice of Desovietization in the Context of the Transformational Processes of the 21st Century” held on the 23d of November in Minsk.
The event which was organized by the International Consortium “EuroBelarus” and Heinrich Böll Foundation assembled more than 30 participants from Belarus, Russia, Germany, Georgia and other countries.
As Uladzimir Matskevich noted, “in Belarus “sovok” (which is way of thinking and behavior typical of the Soviet system) is in a person, society, language and is so strong and enduring that if no one struggles against it this phenomenon will exist further.“ In the modern Belarusan reality, according to Uladzimir Matskevich, the Soviet legacy becomes the most apparent in language sphere, humanist and institutional strata. And reorganization of such spheres is required for the desovietization of Belarus.
According to Kiryl Savin, the representative of Heinrich Böll Foundation in Ukraine, the process of transformation is perfunctory and demonstrative in many post-Soviet countries. And statesmen are not always interested in changes, as post-Soviet elite feels very well in systems existing there.
At the same time, as member of International society “Memorial”, co-chairperson of Moscow department of “Memorial” Jan Rachynski emphasized, the Soviet situation on the side of study of the past differs from others fundamentally. The difference is, for instance, that in the USSR family remembrance centers didn’t survive because of migration, repressions and wars. The civil society was wrecked there when even associations of philatelists were centralized and were subordinate to the KGB. Because of the total propaganda a split of awareness happened, when people knew about repressions and still believed in the building of communism. As a result, paternalistic sentiments developed in the society, when citizens stopped believing that something depends on them and that they can change something.
Nevertheless, hardly all these phenomena should be considered the survivals of irretrievably gone past. As director of the institution “Political Sphere” Andrej Kazakevich noted, Belarus can be the example of the situation where appeals to the Soviet past became not the objects of history, but found their place in modern rhetoric which is applied to economic and political situation.
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