HOW DO YOU SLAY A DRAGON?

Peaceful protest was seen as the only acceptable and universal strategy for all times and in all situations. The aim was not simply a revolution, but it had to be a velvet revolution, a revolution in kid gloves. From now on protest could not involve violence, even if this violence were to be directed against a tyrant and his henchmen who had drowned the country in blood.

Up to a certain point this strategy of “non-resistance to evil by violence” worked; at least, that was how it seemed from the sidelines. The velvet revolutions developed into colour revolutions (although it would be more accurate to describe them as “flower revolutions”: “the Rose Revolution”, “the Carnation Revolution” and so on). Colour revolutions became the successful political technology, which led to the careful removal from power of authoritarian regimes without serious bloodshed; at least at the moment when power passed into the hands of the opposition. In the twenty years that passed from the time of the “self-dissolution” of the USSR and the tearing down of the Berlin Wall, the standard set by the colour revolutions became firstly the model for revolution, and then revolutionary dogma. But the consolidation of a dogma leads inevitably to stagnation.

It’s necessary here to point out one thing: any revolution, even a velvet one, doesn’t take place without violence, or, more often, without the clear and imminent threat of violence, which leads the regime to prefer to seek a compromise. It’s this preparedness of the regime  to compromise, and not the desire on the part of the revolutionaries to find a compromise with the regime at any cost, that makes velvet revolutions possible. As a result, such revolutions succeed only when they are up against outdated dictatorships – authoritarian regimes that are run by the children or even the grandchildren of their founders.

Recently there was a revolutionary situation in Belarus. This was a crisis of the new era that the opposition tried at first to solve by the old rules, using the methods of the colour revolutions: coordination, mobilisation, solidarity, psychological pressure and the moral support of the West, occasionally strengthened by a little financial help.

Previously, as a rule, this set of actions had proved sufficient for a dictatorship to capitulate. But in Belarus, things “didn’t quite work out that way”. The opposition were coordinated, they mobilised, they demonstrated unprecedented solidarity, they brought powerful psychological pressure to bear, and they had the support of the West; but all this came to nought. The regime drowned the opposition in violence, and the support of the West was more than made up for on the other side by the help received from Russia. Increasing attempts to bring people out onto the streets did not bring the opposition any closer to success, as a result of which general dissatisfaction grew with the outcome of the revolution.

Against this background, both in Belarus itself and beyond, there was inevitably a discussion about the strategy of protest in a situation where regimes fail to give ground, and where there’s no possibility of outside intervention (clearly, no one was going to start a nuclear war with Russia for the sake of the Belarussians’ freedom).

This gave rise, on the one hand, to doubts as to whether adopting solely peaceful methods for the struggle really is a universal and effective solution in any revolutionary situation. On the other hand, there were concerns that calling for non-peaceful methods could lead to the protest being discredited in the eyes of both the population and the international community. This would lead, in its turn, to inevitable defeat. So opposition arose to both peaceful and non-peaceful protest. In my view, this is a completely false dilemma.

In principle, can there be non-violent protest in a non-democratic state? Under despotism there are no legal boundaries for protest; that’s why it’s despotism. Any citizen who is genuinely protesting against a dictatorial regime (and not simply taking part in a mock protest as agreed with the authorities) is already breaking the law. If meetings, marches, demonstrations, pickets and other forms of public political activity are forbidden, then a single step outside these with the most peaceful of intentions can turn violent, because it’s likely to lead to violence from the authorities. This will provoke resistance, even if it’s passive, such as someone being beaten by the police who’s protecting their head from the blows of the police truncheons.

So under a dictatorship the types of protest that we automatically call “peaceful” or “non-peaceful” don’t differ from each other at all. Any kind of public protest against the usurpation of power has the potential to be non-peaceful, even though the level of violence can be very different, from virtually nothing to something serious.