Uladzimir Matskevich: We need to destroy ‘Moscow’ in Belarusians’ minds (Photos)

The Cultured Politics program has been unfolding in Belarus for 18 years already. The author, the head of the Board of the International Consortium "EuroBelarus", philosopher and methodologist Uladzimir Matskevich specified - for greenhorns - the terms...

The Cultured Politics program has been unfolding in Belarus for 18 years already. The author, the head of the Board of the International Consortium "EuroBelarus", philosopher and methodologist Uladzimir Matskevich specified - for greenhorns - the terms used under the Cultured Politics program, and summed up some results of the program’s activity during a public lecture under the "Urbi et Orbi" series. 

The lecturer reminded about the main thesis - "To think Belarus", as well as about the key categories, which are to use within the framework of the Cultured Politics: "politics", "culture", "to think / to conceive", "Belarus". He explained that a program is a text that not just tells something about an object, but also changes this object. The program is such when it is performative; that is, when it presents action and does something with people at the moment of its announcement. The Cultured Politics represents exactly the program, because the people, who accepted the program’s text, have changed their lives and activities under its impact. Exactly the program launches the policy.

Uladzimir Matskevich, arrived in Belarus in 1994, proposed that "himself and all interested persons did the Cultured Politics". Recruitment of new participants for the program’s implementation has started, for example, within a methodological seminar’s framework, launched by the author.

Then, in mid-1990s, there was total mess in political life in Belarus. There were no serious meaningful proposals for the country’s development. What was the cause of the devastation? "The causes of evil are errors in thinking". No one was thinking about the condition in which the country found itself, about the directions of its development. Expert groups were thinking of separate parts of the whole: of the country’s economy, environment, etc. But no one declared anything about Belarus as a whole.

- Firstly, there was no class of the aristocracy, - people used to think about the country as a whole from their childhood. Secondly, there was no methodology that would deal with the way, the process as such. That is, there was nobody who could think and nobody who would know how to think about approaches to the phenomenon of Belarus, explained Uladzimir Matskevich. And we, having created the Humanitarian Techniques Agency (AGT), have set the task to ourselves to raise such a political class of people and to equip them with necessary programs and approaches, intellectual tools for such activity.

The AGT’s small group was gradually growing, drawing more and more people in the orbit of a common deal. Firstly, the AGT involved several civil society leaders, then the international consortium "EuroBelarus", the Belarusian National Platform for the Eastern Partnership Civil Society Forum. The limiting distribution, as was stated at the outset of the Cultured Politics program, was Belarus.

- The AGT group, among other things, prepared an education reform project for Belarus, but it was done for us, said Uladzimir Matskevich. It must be understood in the sense that only we could implement it; for example, to train the minister of education from our ranks. But 18 years would be hardly enough for this. Thus, the program should be designed for a longer period.

- If what we are doing in theory of the Cultured Politics we are doing for ourselves, then those to implement it should also be us, said the lecturer. And who is this ‘us’? A group of two people that has been expanded to the National Platform of the EaP CSF, consisting of dozens of organizations. The program’s implementation is taking place also within the Flying University program, within public lectures under the "Urbi et Orbi" series. The Cultured Politics program is fundamentally open to anyone who wants to live in a top-notch country. Though, it is impossible to be engaged in such work without knowledge and understanding. For this we need to reconsider the key categories which our life and the life of the country is formed up upon. Everything bad that happens in our country is generated by errors in thinking. If we want to correct them, we should start with the revision of our own thinking.

The methodologist drew attention to the fact that people, who hold senior positions in various spheres of activity, often can not be responsible for these areas. They do not think independently, but, by force of habit, are just waiting for instructions from Moscow, are waiting to see that the ones from the "top" would think for them. Therefore it is necessary to destroy Moscow in Belarusians’ minds.

- If we conceive, we must find answers to our questions on our own. And if we believe that answers to our questions known experts in Moscow, Warsaw or Paris, then we consciously declare off thinking. Therefore it is necessary to destroy Moscow in people’s minds, stressed Uladzimir Matskevich.