The events of 2020 were a trauma for Belarusian society, not least because the brutality was carried out by fellow Belarusians who, along with their victims, had studied from the same textbooks. It is no coincidence that in August 2020, stories about masked foreign fighters became popular, because “ours couldn’t do that.” Where do the thousands of judges, investigators and prison warders come from, and how can they collectively do such terrible things? A lack of conscience, latent sadism, or the adaptation of hostages to the system’s merciless mechanics? Perhaps all of the answers are correct. Written by Maksim Znak.
In the silence of the SHIZO cell, watching the iron bolt on the door rise at exactly every hour and listening to the controller pacing endlessly along the same corridor, the melody and lyrics of the song “The Walkers” (“Khodiki”) came to me. The phenomenon of the “khodiki” — people who do something dishonest, sometimes against their will or under a veil of indifference — can be explained by classical research in social psychology. The main thesis of this text is that the repressive machine has its own logic of self-reinforcement and will not stop with the change of a single actor. Understanding the psychological mechanisms does not excuse the perpetrators, who bear unconditional responsibility for their actions (each according to their degree of guilt and extent of involvement).
The greatest crimes in history were committed not by demons, but by people who considered themselves law-abiding citizens. Christopher Browning researched the history of the 101st Reserve Police Battalion, which participated in the mass murder of Jews in occupied Poland in 1942–1943. The majority of these men were not fanatical Nazis: they were middle-aged reserve police officers, mostly family men. Those who did not feel capable of shooting were offered the chance to opt out, yet only a few deserted (and were not punished): most were held not by fear of punishment, but by conformity.
Hannah Arendt wrote that Adolf Eichmann was not a psychopath, but was characterised by “thoughtlessness” — an inability to see his actions from another’s point of view. Bettina Stangneth argued that the image of the “grey bureaucrat” was something Eichmann largely performed during the trial, and that in reality he was a convinced antisemite; but the phenomenon itself exists: Harald Welzer has shown how the “frame of reference” shifts, within which murder begins to be perceived as normal work.
Experiments and human nature: role and obedience
In the 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment, Philip Zimbardo sought to show how quickly a social role can consume an individual. The experiment is criticised for the self-selection of participants and for the “guards” being encouraged by the experimenters themselves — but this only reinforces the conclusion: “good people” become criminals particularly easily when the rules of the game are set and approved by management. Any Belarusian prisoner will confirm the rapid metamorphoses in the behaviour of inmates appointed as “orderlies” or “foremen,” and how they use the power they are given, especially when they receive unofficial orders.
In his famous experiment on obedience to criminal orders, Stanley Milgram showed that about two-thirds of participants would, at the researcher’s request, administer the maximum 450-volt “shock.” He described an “agentic state” in which the individual sees themselves merely as an instrument for carrying out another’s will — hence “I was only following orders.” But obedience proved fragile: when the experimenter gave instructions over the telephone, only 22.5% of participants went all the way; when two “colleagues” nearby refused to continue, only 10% did. According to Haslam and Reicher, participants obeyed because they identified with the “important cause” of science; for Belarus, this could mean that the more people share the narrative of “defending the state,” the more willing they are to obey. Whilst carrying out unpleasant orders, Belarusian officials regularly reassure themselves by repeating the narratives of official propaganda and blaming their victim: as if to say, “What did you want? Now get what you deserve.”
Self-justification and dehumanisation
To live with themselves, a person who commits violence must somehow justify it. According to Leon Festinger’s theory of cognitive dissonance, when behaviour contradicts the self-image of being a “good person,” it is easier to change one’s beliefs than one’s behaviour. It is much easier to believe that the country is surrounded by enemies than to acknowledge oneself as the enemy of one’s own people.
In Festinger and Carlsmith’s experiment, students were paid $1 or $20 to tell the next participant that a tedious task had been interesting. Those paid the meagre $1 later rated the task as more interesting: the reward was insufficient to justify the lie, and they explained their action with internal conviction. Therefore, seemingly voluntary small concessions are the most reliable path to ideological restructuring. The fanaticism of the rank-and-file — the lower-ranking officers in the Belarusian repressive machine — can be explained not only by how easily their psyches can be influenced, but also by the fact that the reward they receive is disproportionate to the most difficult and dirty part of the criminal work.
Adopting a demeaning attitude towards the victim is aided by Melvin Lerner’s “belief in a just world”: “If they are being beaten and imprisoned, it means they are extremists — they have only themselves to blame.” This allows even the conformist to maintain psychological comfort while observing the repression. Moreover, the “us/them” division becomes increasingly clear, both ideologically and even physically, which simplifies adaptation.
The language of propaganda and the physical segregation of political prisoners in prisons testify that dehumanisation has become the regime’s technology. Albert Bandura described the mechanisms through which moral self-regulation is switched off: moral justification (“we are defending the country”), euphemistic labels (“preventive talk”), favourable comparison (“it’s worse elsewhere”), blurring of responsibility (“I only signed”), dehumanisation, and shifting the blame onto the victim. The yellow badges on the clothes of Belarusian political prisoners turn the victim into an “object” rather than a human being: when a person becomes a “BCB person” (after the white-red-white flag of the Belarusian opposition) or an “extremist,” empathy for them diminishes.
Conformism and the radicalisation of closed corporations
Why are there no “righteous people” in the system to stop the violence? Solomon Asch showed that about a third of participants’ answers in the experiment matched the group’s obviously incorrect opinion, even though the task was elementary. However, the appearance of even a single ally who answered correctly sharply reduced conformity: the main enemy of dissent is the isolation of each dissenter. No one wants to step forward, imagining that the Belarusian repressive machine, whipped into a fury, will run them over before they can even complete the move.
People who consider their opinion to be in the minority fear isolation and remain silent, thereby further diminishing the visibility of that opinion — this is Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann’s “spiral of silence.” When a majority privately disagrees with the norm, but everyone assumes that others support it, “pluralistic ignorance” arises — and the illusion of complete legitimacy for the most insane practices. The first “confession videos” set against office doors looked like a hideous caricature of Orwell and an act of extraordinary violence; now the normalisation of these practices has reached the point where the relevant video is being offered to “non-political” offenders by the Belarusian tax authorities as well.
In closed structures of the security forces, where ideological oversight is exercised and leniency can be punished, this effect is amplified by “group polarisation”: when like-minded people discuss an issue only among themselves and seek to earn their colleagues’ approval, their position becomes more radical. Where moderation or doubt is perceived as betrayal, a natural selection of the harshest positions occurs, and attempting to show humanity can have material and even criminal consequences. Self-selection is also a factor: such structures are more often joined by those for whom such an environment is psychologically congenial.
Even those within the system who avoid criminal practices and may oppose the regime internally are unlikely to change anything for the better: in autocracies, loyalty is valued more than competence. Officers of the Wehrmacht who despised Hitler diligently carried out their duties every day, and the justification “if I leave, someone worse will take my place,” as Arendt showed, allows the system to exploit even those who do not support it internally.
The “worst practices” mechanism and escalation
Group polarisation can explain why, when sharing experiences, a system adopts not the best practices, but the worst. The desire not to appear too “sympathetic” leads to a situation where unlawful mechanisms — originating with the initiative of a sadist or careerist, such as depriving prisoners of sleep, books, visits or hygiene products — are initially adopted through the tacit conformity of colleagues.
Later, this “innovation of evil” spreads to other institutions, a “normalisation of deviance” occurs, and the practice can become enshrined in departmental instructions. To prove their loyalty, the next perpetrator must devise an even harsher measure — a “costly signal” of loyalty that cannot be directly verified. Historians of the Nazi state have described a similar dynamic as “cumulative radicalisation” and “working towards the Führer,” where subordinates compete to best guess and exceed the leadership’s expectations.
Thus, the perpetrators of criminal orders are often not only sadists or careerists, but also a product of complex social engineering: the system selects and promotes those who are prone to cruelty, whilst simultaneously creating conditions in which ordinary people become cruel. But even in the most brutal circumstances, some refused and saved. A visible example of refusal shatters obedience, but its power depends on the cost of the refusal and whether it remains an isolated act. The guilt of each perpetrator is also different: Jaspers identified four types — criminal, political, moral and metaphysical.
Understanding these mechanisms allows us to understand why the spiral of repression continues to unfold and why brutality intensifies. The machine will not stop of its own accord, and one cannot hope for problems to be automatically resolved by any single actor — a reform of the entire repressive mechanism is needed.
The “khodiki” is a metaphor, a literary image. In reality, it is people who operate the system, but the majority may not understand how they are being drawn ever deeper into the mire of repressive practices, just as historical conformist criminals failed to notice. Revealing the illusory nature of the banality of evil and explaining that conscience, rather than the law, is a better guide to what is right and wrong — this is the only thing that can be done for these people. The only way out of the repressive spiral lies in restoring individual responsibility and creating a system where conscience and human dignity are absolute values, not reasons to impose punishment.