FRIENDS AND FOES OF BELARUS

The results of June IISEPS survey demonstrate which countries respondents consider friendly, and which hostile (Table 1). These results confirm a high level of stability of Belarusians’ “picture of the world”, however the observed changes are quite instructive.

Almost in all 4 surveys Russia is the best friend of Belarus. The only exception was the survey of March 2011, soon after the "gas war" and "godfathers" of 2010, at the peak of an acute economic crisis, when Russia didn’t hurry to come to the rescue of the ally. Instead, at the time, the political and economic "romance" between Belarus and Venezuela was at its height. And that was the only time when Russia did not head the list of friends.

In all other surveys Russia always took the first spot, just like it happened now. However, even excluding the fluctuation of 2011, it’s not difficult to see that the level of friendly evaluations slowly decreases.

The role of the main enemy is constantly played by the US. However, an opposite trend can be observed in the relation to the US. Even though evaluations of the US are the most negative, with time they become less so.

Often you can hear that Belarusians’ opinion on foreign policy is formed mainly by Russian mass media, that Belarusians, so to speak, see the world through the Russian eyes.

It is partially so. Belarus and Russia are the closest friends for each other. Two other close friends are China (second position after Russia in Belarus) and Kazakhstan (second position after Belarus in Russia).

The main enemy is the same for both countries as well. But the rest of the list is different. The second most important enemy for Belarusians is Germany, while for Russians it’s Ukraine. Belarusians still see Ukraine as a friend, although the rating is not very high.

The fourth most important enemy of Russia is Poland. Again, Belarusians rather regard Poland as a friend, even though it was considered to be an enemy in all past surveys.

Analysis of Levada-Center results, mentioned here, demonstrates that Russians’ attitude is much more contrasting. If Russians consider some country as friendly, then there are almost no respondents who consider this country hostile (less than 1%). This is particularly true in relation to Belarus.

And vice versa, there are almost no respondents who consider Russia’s enemies as friendly countries. Belarusians’ attitude is more nuanced. Overwhelming majority of Belarusians consider Russia to be a friend, but 9% share the opposite opinion. 4% of respondents believe that the US is a friend for Belarus (compare with 1% in Russia). And the "levels of hostility" (the shares of respondents consider a country as an enemy) are lower in Belarus. In particular, negative attitude to the US is 20 points lower in Belarus than in Russia.

Some of peculiarities of Belarusians’ attitude should be noted as well. These peculiarities are probably defined by the recent events: A. Lukashenko’s visit to Italy, and visit of the new Minister of Foreign Affairs of Poland W. Waszczykowski to Minsk could have influenced the improvement of attitude to these countries; financial aid of Azerbaijan to Belarus in 2010, and the recent visit of Azerbaijan leader I. Aliev could have brought this country to the top five of friends. Nothing like this happens in Russia. And the most outstanding example – Venezuela. Russians have almost no attitude to it, but Belarusians remember their friendship and support – or what was told about it.

Naturally, there are also similarities between the "pictures of the world" of two nations. Countries of the Western Europe seem more or less hostile to both Belarusians and Russians, and their friends are mostly the CIS countries and China.

But the dynamics of indices demonstrate that the situation in Belarus 10 years ago was quite similar. Russians saw the world differently back then: Germany and France seemed rather friendly to them, and the attitude to the US was rather positive.

It is not Russians who taught Belarusians "the science of hate", it’s more like Russians moved closer to the Belarusian vision of the world with an obvious overkill, while Belarusians in general remained as they were. Russian propaganda did not make them more "western-phobic". The attitude to the US remains negative but is better than it was; the attitude to Poland and Italy became rather and very positive accordingly; the attitude to Ukraine became worse, but they still remain friends.

In other words, the theory of "Russian eyes" through which Belarusians supposedly look at the world doesn’t seem completely adequate. There is Belarusian propaganda as well, and it puts different accents; there is national character; there is a different level on involvement into the Ukrainian conflict, for example. All these factors hold out Belarusian attitude from becoming an exact copy of Russian one.

In fine we propose to your attention the results of Table 2. These results testify that anti-Americanism of Belarusians, so prominent in Table 1, is not very strong in reality.

As you can see, there is no general desire to restore normal relations with the US, but there is an evident superiority of supporters of this opinion.

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