Nationhood on Mind of Belarus Voters

On the eve of presidential elections that may determine if this nation remains independent, the editor of its largest newspaper complained about the new red-and-white flag. “It’s too nationalistic,” said Igor N. Osinsky, editor of Sovietskaya Belarossiya.

Nor does the 700-year-old heraldic mounted knight, recently retrieved from history’s dustbin, inspire the editor to patriotism. “We don’t like warlike symbols,” he said. “No one knows who that armed horseman is, or where he’s going.”

Where indeed? Belarus has tried its hand at independence for three years, and many citizens think it just isn’t working out.

Voters today will elect the country’s first president. Six candidates are running--four pro-Russian Communists and two independence-minded nationalists who back free-market reform.

The main issue that divides them is Prime Minister Vyacheslav Kebich’s plan to abandon the Belarussian currency, return to the Russian ruble and let Moscow control its former subject’s monetary policy.

“We are actually heading toward a sort of annexation (by Russia), and I cannot agree to it,” said Stanislav Shushkevich, 60, the former Belarussian leader who is running against his old subordinate Kebich for the presidency.

While nationalist movements raged in other former Soviet republics, Belarus had only a token independence movement. But in August, 1991, Belarus’ 10 million citizens suddenly found themselves in an independent nation the size of Utah, wedged between Poland, Russia and Ukraine, as well as Latvia and Lithuania.

Kebich, who took over from Shushkevich in January, is considered the front-runner, trailed by Alexander Lukashenko, a gravel-voiced collective farm chief who has made a name as a corruption fighter.

Last week, Minsk was turned upside down when Lukashenko accused Kebich of trying to have him killed. “A foreign-made car flew past us and fired two shots into the back seat, where I was sitting,” Lukashenko told reporters Saturday. “I’m convinced it was Kebich.”

The government says Lukashenko concocted the assassination attempt to get attention. “It’s a pretty obvious hoax,” said security spokesman Pyotr Snopok.

Until this feud, Kebich, 58, and Lukashenko, 40, had been considered allies. Both back the monetary union with Russia that was signed in April and awaits ratification by both countries’ parliaments.

Belarus last year reluctantly introduced its own currency, but its ruble is a sore spot. Everyone calls it “the rabbit,” because the baby blue one-ruble note sports a smiling hare in mid-leap. There are also green three-ruble beavers and pale pink half-ruble squirrels.

The rabbit isn’t worth much. In the past three months alone, it has lost three-quarters of its value against the American dollar and the Russian ruble. Meanwhile, prices here have risen 21-fold in the past year, while industrial output is half what it was in Soviet days.

Belarussians attribute their economy’s collapse to Russia’s new policy of making them pay full price for oil. In Soviet days, Belarus’ factories were fed a steady diet of cheap energy and materials. Today, Russia still gives some energy subsidies to domestic factories, but foreigners like the Belarussians are charged world market prices.

Monetary union with Russia would change that. Belarus would be offered raw materials at cheaper, Russian prices. Citizens would also be allowed to swap weak rabbits for stronger Russian rubles at a rate of one to one--a steal given today’s rate of 12 rabbits per ruble.

Shushkevich, who as chairman of the Supreme Soviet ran Belarus for two years before Kebich allies ousted him in January, said Kebich seeks union with Russia to hide his mismanagement of the economy.

Shushkevich and Zenon Poznyak--a dissident famous for his grim determination to catalogue crimes of the Stalin era--are the only candidates who actively oppose the ruble-zone treaty. Kebich calls them Belarussian nationalists and says either’s election would bring discord and civil war.