Vilija Navickaitė (Vilnius University)
The mass protests in Belarus in 2020 caught the world’s eyes and surprised the Belarusians themselves. The experience of previous unsuccessful opposition protests and the social contract with the regime had disconnected Belarusians not only from their civil rights but also from each other. Belarusian public space had been carefully censored and shaped by the regime, which had distorted the picture of the number of Belarusians dissatisfied with the regime. The global covid pandemic, denied by the Lukashenko regime, deeply angered Belarusians and mobilised thousands to volunteer and donate on crowdsourcing platforms. The presidential elections of the same year brought masses of Belarusians onto the streets to protest against the fraudulent elections and the arbitrariness of the regime. The Covid pandemic, the results of the fraudulent elections and the mass protests are macro phenomena that took place in Belarus in 2020. To understand and explain these macro political and social phenomena, according to J. Coleman, it is necessary to resort to the individual micro level, identifying the internal mechanisms at work.
One important internal mechanism is signalling, where individuals signal their own attitudes and where such visible signals shape attitudes and preferences towards the regime. One of the theoretical arguments I use is Timur Kuran’s notion of falsified preferences, which is simplified by the phrase “living a lie” used by Eastern Europeans under the communist regime. It is important for me to understand how and what kind of signalling took place in Belarus in 2020. What was the significance of signalling in the Belarusian protests of 2020, and what was signalling and what was an act of protest? How did the signalling mechanism work in Belarus in 2020 and what were the signalling strategies of the Belarusians?