Belarus is an ex-soviet country in Eastern Europe with about 10 million people population known for its vast forests, lots of potatoes, pretty girls, kind-hearted gloomy people prone to sustain big amounts of distilled beverages, great agricultural machinery, rich history and of course its president and its “stable” economical situation. For me as for a Belarusian by citizenship and self-identification it is very important to spread the knowledge about first of all the existence of my country (yes, some people have no clue of what “Belarus” might be) an secondly about the dreadful political situation that we’ve been having already for ages. In other words even right now by the means of this assignment I’m trying to contribute to the change that Belarus is longing for and therefore also contributing to the global “knowledge space”. According to P. Lévy communist countries couldn’t survive due to the absence of the phenomenon of the collective intelligence: “It (totalitarianism) was incapable of collective intelligence”. What we have going on in Belarus right now is clearly a totalitarian regime in the best traditions of the USSR and the way we are trying to stand up to it is the Internet. Attempts to overthrow the existing regime by the use of demonstrations, political meetings and peaceful revolutions didn’t work out. Either the people are too scared or the government is too blunt and taking measures, or most likely both of those things, but another election in December 2010 ended up in the fourth term in a row of the eternal Belarusian president. Naturally there’s no freedom of speech in the country. Radio, television and the press is governmental and doesn’t tolerate any negative statements about the government and doesn’t permit any emission of these statements to the international scene. Thus I personally have met people who truly believed that Belarus was a kind of a model state, a great example of honest politics and fair economics. Nevertheless in spite of the full control in the country the dictator is not able to subordinate the Internet although he’s trying to. There’re numerous Internet magazines, newspapers (http://charter97.org/en/news/) and projects (http://belarusinaction.wordpress.com/) that play a great role in struggling against brainwashing and informational blockade. But sadly sometimes especially in the most severe moments even these scant means of deriving true information can be blocked. Like for example as it happened in December when thousands of people marched along the main avenue in Minsk peacefully showing their disagreement with the results of the elections. This demonstration came to an end with mass arrests and violence on the side of the government. The few things that were functioning at that time were Twitter, Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/#!/group.php?gid=80666187169), and a couple pro-opposition web-sites which were also successfully closed in the next several days. During the December massacre the mobile phones were not working and the majority of the Belarusians were not even aware of what was going on in the capital. The only way to get to know the latest news or whether everything was alright with one’s friends and relatives was mostly Twitter and then Facebook. I remember myself tracing the news by thousands and thousands of twits and Facebook posts during several days. People were searching for their friends or other way round were informing about their safety, they were passing forward working links to see the news and posting fresh footage from the downtown; they were sharing their indignation, despair and sorrow initiating massive reaction and discussion… This is when collective intelligence worked in its full measure in order to produce thought provoking ideas and motivation not to give up after that night of another failure and to rapidly act again. People were blogging intensely to at least somehow cover the events and thus generating new ideas of how to act when the government showed its real face that night. Hundreds of volunteers were creating and completing the lists of the seized by the police. Later even a website http://pashtouka.org/ was launched for sending e-cards to the arrested activists and in this way also starting the produsage of these special e-cards. Talking about creative produsage, there’s a nice example within the context of situation in Belarus: http://www.antibrainwash.net/ . Antibrainwash.net gathers anti-Lukashenko leaflets, posters and graffiti stencils and encourages everyone to share creative ideas. Another web-site of the same character specializing in leaflets: http://samizdat1.narod2.ru/catalog/ .
Getting back to the December events again I must say that everybody was posting at that time; moreover everybody was sharing others’ posts to spread the valuable information. This is when each and everyone were trying to collaborate to hand down the information to the global eye waiting for some real power to step in. Even a web-page for alternative online election appeared. But unfortunately the government took action and everything officially was passed for an act of hooliganism in the streets of Minsk. The worst thing is that they started tracking down people by blogs and posts they made and social networks’ accounts that they used. People were threatened; the scandal was hushed up… But the change did happen. I’m talking about the change in the minds of the Belarusians. Back in 2006 when the third term election was happening obviously the Internet was less used than nowadays and therefore people were resorting to ordinary methods of action which were to go and protest in the streets or just to keep silence. But this time in 2010 everybody could see what the majority was thinking and could feel the unity of purposes, the spirit and sympathy. That’s why I think that collective intelligence in case of Belarus is not just something not possible in a totalitarian regime but also a tool to fight this regime. Hopefully next time…whether it’s in another four years or maybe earlier our new political experience of sharing in the Internet will bring a true change to Belarus.
Aliaksandra Pushchanka
Well written!
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