Before the declaration of its independence
Belarus
had no self-image, due to the fact that no one knew anything about
Belarus.
With the announcement of the independence
Belarus had an excellent start in
finding «its place under the Sun» however the Belarusian leadership did nothing
to consolidate the situation. The day after the referendum of 14 May 1995 a red
and green flag of the BSSR was put up over the country and it was a clear sign
to the rest of the world about what attitude should be taken towards
Belarus. This fact
signified that the country phased out market reforms and took a course towards
the restoration of the
Soviet Union. Until
2000 the Belarusian regime was spending huge sums on building the image of
Belarus
in
Russia,
especially in the Russian regions and in some CIS countries, virtually ignoring
Europe and the rest of
the world where it had an image of a pariah nation. In the beginning of the new
century,
Belarus
has made an attempt to capture the leadership among the anti-American and
anti-Western oriented countries. Ideological accords and political statements
in this segment of the international policy were easy to declare, which is not
the case with regard to the economic relations. As a result, it became obvious
to the Belarusian regime that foreign policy and geo-economic orientation
towards the third world, the Non-Aligned Movement and rogue had no perspectives.
During this period the Belarusian regime decided to take care and to update the
country's image and its marketing strategy.
In the most general form the image can be represented
as a set of two components: framework and reputation. Framework is a simple
quantitative measurement while business reputation, can be measured both
qualitatively and quantitatively. Today
Belarus
is a small country. A few of people know it because we are a non-eventful
country. At the same time, our country already has a stable reputation, which
is integrally called very shortly «the last dictatorship in
Europe».
The only positive moment about this image is that only few know about this
reputation. Now we can benefit from the fact that we are not a well-known country
and to manufacture events and information events, which are linked to other
information about this dynamic and modernizing country. However there are a lot
of difficulties on the way. For consistency, terms that were proposed by
Umberto Eco «finding dislike» (captatio malevolentiae (Latin)), and the
reverse, «finding approval» (captatio benevolentiae (Lat.)) may be used.
Fame is achieved through simple reporting about
events, but the goodwill is determined, including, sympathies or antipathy,
approval or dislike by the people representing the country. And what they say
and how they behave, is either approved or disliked. We can complain as long as
we want about that in
Europe
they do not know or know very little about us, but to ensure that they know
more, we need to think firstly about how we will promote each one of us and the
entire country as a whole. Also, in order to ingratiate ourselves with the
Europeans and to improve marketing rating the country as a whole, we should not
only seek for approval, but for deeper and better knowledge about
Europe. Otherwise, we will win
dislike only if we do not understand the overall
situation in
Europe, the main trends in its
development and integration into pan-European processes.
Vladimir Matskevich
[email protected]
