No risk of boredom for the Belarus diaspora

The Belarusian National Rada (BNR) seems preposterously peripheral. It represents, via a tenuous chain of succession and inheritance, a state founded in 1918 that existed for barely a year.

Since similar émigré outfits, such as the Ukrainian and Polish governments-in-exile, packed up in triumph at the end of the Cold War, it has no counterparts. Its self-perpetuating 80-strong assembly meets every second year; the five currently functioning secretariats (ministries) have no officials to command or tax-payers’ money to spend. It comprises little more than a shabby letterhead, a shambolic website, and its devoted, somewhat secretive adherents: a mixture of diehard old émigrés and, lately, keen youngsters from the new diaspora.

The BNR’s chief achievement is to have survived for the decades during which the country was part of the Soviet Union and to have kept a wise distance from the regime that took over in 1991. Its main aim is to wind up, once Belarus has a democratically elected and truly independent government.

That is not in sight. Belarus is already deep in Russia’s shadow in business, energy and security; until recently a ‘union state’ with a common currency, passport and constitution loomed.

Democracy is even more endangered than statehood. President Alyaksandr Lukashenka dominates the media, courts, economy and officialdom. His opponents sometimes disappear and often end up in jail. A professor who opposed him in rigged elections in March this year, Alyaksandr Kazulin, is on hunger strike. From his prison cell, he appealed to the BNR for protection. Its president, Ivonka Survilla duly raised Kazulin’s case during recent meetings with politicians and officials in Poland and the Baltic states. At a meeting in Washington, DC, last year the BNR struck up friendly ties with leaders of the often quarrelsome Belarusian opposition.

Their common hope is that Russia and Belarus fall out. In the past, Russia has backed Lukashenka with cheap gas, flattery and strong diplomatic protection against western criticism. In return, he sells Russian arms to dodgy customers and provided almost the sole living example of that rare breed: a happy, grateful Russian ally.

But now that deal is fraying. Plans for the union state are on hold, with each side blaming the other. Russia wants to raise the price of gas fourfold, to $200 for 1,000 sq. m; to claw back the profits Belarus makes by refining cheap Russian crude oil; and to cut back deliveries. That squeeze is partly because Russia wants to buy Belarus’s energy industries; and partly because the irascible Lukashenka has been unwisely critical of his counterpart in the Kremlin, Vladimir Putin.

A top Belarusian parliamentarian, Mikalay Charhinets, called this "economic war on Belarus" and warned Russia that it was risking its military bases there: chiefly a vital naval radio station and an anti-missile radar. At a recent energy conference in Prague, a senior Belarusian diplomat gave a remarkable speech in which he castigated Russia for unreliability and greed in its energy politics. Lukashenka says he may impose customs barriers on Russian goods.

That row raises interesting possibilities. One is that the Kremlin topples Lukashenka and tries to incorporate Belarus into Russia. That could give the BNR a new lease of life, as the only representative of an independent Belarus. More trickily, Lukashenka, until now an arch-pariah, might try to cosy up to the West. He is already putting out discreet feelers and says that Belarus is "building a new foreign policy". Would the West shun him, or embrace him - and betray the opposition that it has nourished? A glorious end looks distant. But the BNR’s members don’t risk boredom.

• The author is central and east European correspondent of The Economist.

The Belarusian National Rada (BNR) seems preposterously peripheral. It represents, via a tenuous chain of succession and inheritance, a state founded in 1918 that existed for barely a year.