Introduction: The Sociology of Belarusian Protest

Power, People, and the Political: Understanding the Many Crises in Belarus

“…This research aims to go beyond these studies to provide a deeper insight into understanding change in Belarus, often hidden and eruptive. For instance, the events of 2020 could be compared to the 1989 democratization processes in Central and Eastern Europe (Bekus and Gabowitsch 2021) and thus be interpreted from the perspective of mobilization of civil society and political elites. An authoritarian consolidation theory explains popular mobilization by the erosion of the foundations of authoritarian stability, i.e., repression, co-optation, and legitimation (Bedford 2021).…”

“…To date, all these crises in Belarus have been examined through the prisms of democratization and nation- and identity-building. It is often put into the context of the 1989 democratization in Central and Eastern Europe (Bekus and Gabowitsch 2021) and compared with similar societal mobilization, or what is known as the colored revolutions in Georgia (2003), Ukraine (2004; 2014), and Kyrgyzstan (2005). This article argues that while these theoretical approaches provide important explanations, they nevertheless fail to account for informal, hidden, and unstable processes unfolding in society daily, inevitably leading to political change.…”

Wild Border of Politics

“…The nature, catalyst and consequences of the Belarusian protests have been widely debated, especially in relation to previous protests, activism and self-organisation in Belarus (Ackermann, Berman and Sasunkevich 2017;Minchenia 2020;Wałyniec 2021). Further discussions have taken place about their relationship to changes in the economic structure (Gapova 2021), digital technologies (Gabowitsch 2021) and external political manipulations (Bekus and Gabowitsch 2021). Furthermore, the extent to which the terms of the protests respond to the Belarusian nation-building process that has occurred under Lukashenko, what they stand for (Gapova 2021), their gendered dimensions (Paulovich 2021), and what they have changed in the social and cultural fabric (Minchenia and Huasukouskaya 2020) or how at the moment of writing they seem to have become entrenched in a despotic status quo (Ilyash 2021), have all provoked much thought.…”