Cordon Sanitaire

The militia beating demonstrators in Minsk is a vivid illustration of the integration process underway, aimed at forming a union state of Russia and Belarus, a subject being actively discussed by politicians in both countries. Perhaps the march of protest against the Lukashenka regime in Minsk would have passed unnoticed in Russia, had it not been for the arrest of Duma Deputy Olga Beklemisheva in Minsk. Something they had not expected even from Alyaksandr Lukashenka: a lawmaker of the allied state spending such long time in a prison cell! A perfectly legitimate politician arrested in a country where the legitimate Parliament has to go to the mat and whose official residence is occupied by people doing no one knows or can understand what, another Lukashenka invention recognized nowhere except by his CIS brothers. Would this not make a good political anecdote?

But why anecdote? Lukashenka does not like a powerful opposition, so he gets rid of it without further ado, marginalizing even those few representatives of the Belarusian elite who had the courage to warn their fellow citizens about the inevitable fiasco of their Father's “republic.” Those who refused to put up with their marginal status were left to die in the streets of Minsk. And now this Beklemisheva woman, certainly no godsend to Lukashenka, as a member of the Yabloko faction, which he hates, and somehow she materialized alongside all those transgressors of law and order. But then the Russian Communist Speaker Gennady Selezniov, Lukashenka's devout supporter, instead of condemning the Minsk militia, voiced his surprise about legislator Beklemisheva turning up in the wrong place at the wrong time. Indeed, who would have touched her if she took part in a presidential rally, carrying Big Daddy's portrait?

There are many people in Russia openly dissatisfied by that country's democratic process, and they have adequate reason to feel that way. But any comparison to Belarus shows beyond a reasonable doubt that Russia has covered a certain, quite important distance. In any case, it would be hard to picture a Russian lawmaker being arrested on Red Square, even less so a foreign one having the relevant identity papers on him/her. What happened to Ms. Beklemisheva shows precisely how the Belarusian regime sees integration with its neighbors. Lukashenka would want to extend his Soviet administrator's experience not only to Minsk and Gomel, but also to Moscow and Yekaterinburg, and with luck even to Kyiv and Dnipropetrovsk. Such is the Belarusian President's dream and he is working hard to make it come true.

Perhaps the Russians ought to build a cordon sanitaire a round Chechnya to protect themselves against terrorism. By the same token, another sanitary fence should be erected round brotherly Belarus to protect Russian democracy, for the whole thing is fraught with danger.