Success stories are a cheap cognitive resource: they allow one to economise on analysis, just as oil rent allows one to economise on institutions. Central and Eastern Europe provided one of the main such stories for the idea of democratisation, and with it the question: dozens of countries in the region “made it” in 1989, so why did Belarus “fail” in 2020? Writes Piotr Rudkouski.

The methodological curse

The Central and Eastern Europe region is one of the most successful examples of democratisation. The vast majority of countries in the region went from closed autocracies to a minimal level of democracy in just three years (1989–1992).

By comparison, Southern Europe took around 30 years for a similar transition in the 20th century. And the pioneering countries of democratisation — Scandinavia, Western Europe, and North America, which went through this process in the 19th–20th centuries and built institutions from scratch — took between 115 and 130 years (according to my calculations based on the V-Dem project’s Liberal Democracy Index). Of course, we are talking about different historical eras and contexts, but this is precisely what shows the uniqueness of CEE: what others built over centuries, this region traversed at extraordinary speed.

By analogy with the economic concept of the “resource curse,” another term suggests itself: the methodological curse of success. And this is not merely a rhetorical device: there is a real similarity between the two, because success stories are nothing more than a form of “availability heuristic” that allows one to economise on analytical effort.

It is this methodological curse that makes itself felt, time and again, in discussions of Belarus. Dozens of countries in the region “managed” in 1990, so why did Belarus “fail” in 2020?

Разабрацца ў гэтым і ёсць задача артыкула. Дзеля гэтага мы разгледзім два пытанні. Першае — чаму польскі досвед, які найчасцей служыць пунктам адліку для Беларусі, насамрэч складаецца з дзвюх прынцыпова розных гісторый. Другое — як за апошнія дзесяцігоддзі змянілася эканамічная прывабнасць Захаду для такіх краін, як Беларусь. Гэтыя пытанні не вычэрпваюць усіх фактараў, якія тлумачаць, чым адрозніваецца ўмоўны 1990-ы ад 2020-га, — але без іх немагчыма зразумець галоўнае: чаму тое, што спрацавала ў Польшчы, не спрацавала ў Беларусі.

This article sets out to address this. To do so, we will consider two questions. The first is why the Polish experience, which most often serves as a point of reference for Belarus, is in fact composed of two fundamentally different stories. The second is how the economic appeal of the West to countries like Belarus has changed over the past few decades. These questions do not exhaust all the factors that explain the difference between the loosely-termed “1990” and “2020” — but without them, it is impossible to understand the main point: why what worked in Poland did not work in Belarus.

What’s wrong with comparing Belarus to Poland in 1989?

Poland’s path from authoritarianism to democracy is often perceived as a single story — from the emergence of Solidarity in 1980 to the Round Table and the free elections of 1989–1990. This perspective seems natural: in both episodes, broadly the same people, organisations, and political ideas were involved.

However, a closer analysis reveals that these are two different stories. The rise of Solidarity (1980–1981) and the democratic transition (1989–1990) took place under fundamentally different international and domestic political conditions: the structure of opportunities, the balance of power, and the outcomes themselves all differed. The first episode ended in the defeat of the mass movement and martial law; the second in negotiations, semi-free elections, and the beginning of a democratic transition.

This leads to a simple methodological principle: the Belarusian events of 2020 should be compared not with an abstract “Polish model,” but separately with Poland of 1980 and Poland of 1989.

According to V-Dem estimates, the level of pro-democratic mobilisation in Belarus in 2020 was roughly the same as in Poland at the peak of Solidarity in 1980 (see Chart 1).

As we can see, the level of public mobilisation in both cases approached a maximum — such scores are rarely recorded by V-Dem, only a handful of times in the last two centuries. But in both cases, public mobilisation led not to democratisation, but to the opposite outcome. In Poland, the 1980–1981 protest ended with the declaration of martial law and the crushing of Solidarity; in Belarus, it resulted in unprecedentedly harsh repression.

The reason lay not in the weakness of society, but in the international context: in 1980, the Soviet Union remained a consolidated hegemon, and in 2020, Russia remained a similarly consolidated hegemon.

Now for the comparison with Poland in 1989. According to V-Dem estimates, the level of pro-democratic mobilisation then was not only lower than at the peak of Solidarity in 1980, but also lower than the Belarusian protest of 2020 (see Chart 2).

The Round Table was made possible not by a “stronger protest,” but because a hegemonic shock had occurred by 1989: the Soviet Union, undermined by internal crisis and defeat in Afghanistan, abandoned the Brezhnev Doctrine. This “geopolitical bonus” in the form of a weakened hegemon changed the cost-benefit calculation for the Polish elite: Moscow would not come to the rescue, which meant they had to make a deal with the people.

In 2020, Belarus found itself in a different situation. In terms of the scale of mobilisation, it was closer to Poland in 1980 than to Poland in 1989, and protest activity in Belarus before 2020 was much greater than in Poland before 1980. However, unlike the Polish case of the late 1980s, the Belarusian regime enjoyed the support of a consolidated external hegemon: Russia not only did not withdraw its support for Minsk, but strengthened it with financial, informational, and coercive resources.

Of course, there are no rigid, one-hundred-percent determinants in socio-political processes, and the hegemony factor is no exception. Nevertheless, as the research of Seva Gunitsky shows, it is a very powerful factor. At first glance, the events in Ukraine (2004 and 2014) or in Armenia (2018), where protests were victorious despite proximity to an authoritarian hegemon, might seem like exceptions. However, these cases differed significantly from the Belarusian one. Prior to these events, Ukraine (under Leonid Kuchma and Viktor Yanukovych) and Armenia (under Serzh Sargsyan) were not consolidated autocracies. These were hybrid regimes with real institutional pluralism, opposition representation in parliament, and elite divisions — which created a fundamentally different field of political possibilities.

Economic attractiveness

Between Poland in 1989 and Belarus in 2020 — and more broadly, between most of the CEE countries of 1989–1990 and modern-day Belarus — there is another fundamental difference.

At the end of the 1980s, there was a clear economic asymmetry between the socialist bloc and the West. The countries of the European Communities (then the EU-12) formed one of the world’s largest economic centres, accounting for more than a quarter of the world’s nominal GDP. The USSR’s share was several times smaller, and China was not yet a significant player in the global economy.

In 2019, on the eve of the events in Belarus, the macroeconomic picture was fundamentally different. The European Union comprised 28 member states (the United Kingdom was still a member). However, despite expanding from 12 to 28 countries and the addition of 16 new economies, its share of world nominal GDP had shrunk to approximately 21%. During the same period, China increased its share to approximately 16–17% and became one of the main centres of the global economy.

This is not the only factor, but it is one of the most important reasons for the declining attractiveness of the EU and the West by 2020, compared to what might loosely be called 1990.

The strategy of the long will

The main conclusion is simple: Belarus in 2020 was not a belated Poland of 1989. It was much more like the Poland of 1980 — a country with powerful civic mobilisation, but without a favourable international context. The failure of the Belarusian protest was not determined by the weakness of society or the “immaturity” of the democratic forces. Two structural factors proved decisive: the absence of a hegemonic shock and the low appeal of the Western European economic model.

However, structural factors are not immutable. Russia’s war against Ukraine is increasing the strain on the Russian state: economic costs are rising, international isolation is deepening, and the costs of long-term military mobilisation are growing. Whether this will lead to a new hegemonic shock is impossible to predict today. But history offers a different lesson: international systems are not eternal. Periods of relative stability are sooner or later replaced by a new redistribution of power.