Memes aside, of course any support from communists has to be highly critical in this case because there are some very pronounced reactionary tendencies there…
Given that Belarus now has increasingly strong relations with China, I think there’s a lot of cause for optimism going forward. The big question is going to be who comes after Lukashenko, but given that the west is now hostile towards Belarus whoever takes over will effectively be forced to look east.
As for the West’s hostility toward Belarus, that is something that can switch on a dime if the color revolution that they have already tried to pull off once and will certainly try again in the future works out. They are even preparing for the possibility of a military overthrow using armed Belarussian dissidents out of Ukraine, Poland and Lithuania if they perceive that the Belarussian state is sufficiently weak. A Belarus under a puppet regime that is totally subservient to the West would not be considered hostile anymore, it would immediately start to do what Ukraine’s regime did after 2014 which is cut ties with whoever the West tells them to cut ties with - i.e. Russia and China - and will go on to implement brutal neoliberal reforms on the economy, dismantle its industries and sell the country off to Western corporate and financial interests.
The possibility that this succeeds is very low for the time being, so long as Russia remains stable and strong they will never allow that to happen, just like they didn’t in Kazakhstan. But Belarus needs to stay vigilant because the West may get desperate enough to try to roll the dice on some foolish gambit.
Now that Russia put nukes in Belarus the chances of a color revolution there are basically zero. In fact, I suspect that was the main reason for doing that move.
Hopefully someone who is equally or more dependable when it comes to staying vigilant about imperialist regime change attempts, keeping western NGOs and other neoliberal influence tentacles at bay, and resisting the pressure to liberalize the economy. At the same time hopefully being less of a cringe reactionary grandpa than Lukashenko when it comes to LGBT stuff. A lot can be learned from China, Cuba and Vietnam in this regard, all of whom are managing to make quiet but steady progress in this regard without giving in to rainbow imperialism or emulating the West’s liberal identity politics that just create a culture war which polarizes the society.
However i am afraid that might just be a bit of idealistic wishful thinking on my part, i am not even sure there will be another leader of an independent Belarus after Luka. The Union State with Russia is probably going to evolve more and more toward a real merger of the two. Belarus is likely going to be going in the same direction as Russia, both socially and economically, so the real question is: which direction is Russia going to go in after Putin? As long as he is in charge it will be status quo, which is both good and bad, but just like Xi his age probably means that he will be retiring sometime this decade.
Interesting things are happening in the world today already and in the future things will get even more interesting. We’re at a real crossroads moment in history.
I’m hoping Russia is going to start looking more towards Chinese model going forward as well. Support for liberalism in Russia is the lowest it’s been since the collapse of USSR, and I imagine a lot of people look at the Chinese model as the way forward. It’s also not all that dissimilar economically from where Russia is at right now. The major step that’s needed would be to have a serious communist party take control of the government.
