i think the general line of contention on english speaking twitter about the recent events in belarus—as well as understanding of russia & putin in general, & more or less the rest of the post-soviet space—comes from a couple of issues that i’ll try to outline in this long thread

note: i have no stake in the game, and my solidarity is with neither the autocrats nor the liberal opposition, it is with the working class.

1) even marxist western perspectives can not fully grasp the post-soviet space's poverty. meanwhile, coming from the post-soviet understanding of rural poverty you really can’t grasp western inner-city poverty either: it just looks like privilege, although in context it's not

i personally am saying this as someone who was born in the south of russia in a house off a dirt road without plumbing: there’s still no asphalt or plumbing there 3 decades later.

you shouldn’t really have a poverty contest, but it is very important to note that alongside other iterations of poverty, in the post-soviet space the retirees are in the most precarious conditions.

moreover, because the regimes in the post-soviet countries are predominantly autocratic & serve to fill the pockets of the bourgeoisie they represent, the public services, which are, indeed, still free and available to all, are depleted and weakened

these free services are forced into austerity mode by budgeting, where funds gets skimmed at the very top. as a result, the quality of these services is not overwhelmingly top-notch, it varies heavily.

i personally know a woman from the city of orsha in belarus who had a double knee transplant for free and done absolutely brilliantly. in the us it would cost around 100k, it appears

i understand why this might make an american communist rationing insulin jealous, but you have to consider that without the budget skimming it would be even better and universally brilliant like that.

also, consider that workers across the post-soviet space, belarus in particular, are not paid wages, & that there's a rising wave of strikes across belarus right now: grassroots, with nothing to do with tsikhanouskaya. we must stand in solidarity with the striking workers.

right now we know of 12 instances. 7 in minsk, 5 elsewhere. transport, metallurgy, manufacturing, food production. but as the man accumulating strike info points out, these are not general strikes, mostly initiative groups of a couple dozen people.
https://www.facebook.com/alexander.bidin/posts/10216884733046939?hc_location=ufi

supporting the strikers, though, doesn’t mean that we must not acknowledge the very sad reality in which nationalist, liberal & other free-market stalwarts will co-opt the movement if it’s to their advantage & that good working people are very often killed in color revolutions

2) belarusian & other post-soviet communists do not use twitter much, it's mostly liberals here. liberal propaganda from the west is incredibly potent & unless someone is an active communist, it’s likely they do not have a critical anti-imperialist framework

again, i’m saying this from my own lived experience. liberals in the post-soviet space do not trust the government-aligned media & consider it absolutely shameful to listen to anything reported on RT.

however, they trust the opposition media a lot, and all those western-funded outlets and western-government affiliated media shape their perception. from rferl and voa to guardian and uncritically jacobin

you will not be successful in expounding all or any of these issues with nuance: uighurs, syria, ukraine, palestine, Bolivia, venezuela, etc. the post-soviet space is much closer to china and dprk than the west, yet the western concensus on these countries is way more powerful.

hell, even the western consensus on the legacy of the ussr is more influential than local perspectives, and that speaks volumes. there is not much knowledge on things like coups and regime change wars, either.

preferably don’t engage unless you see that the person is indeed speaking from an informed position backed by theoretical knowledge, and just didn’t have enough info on some issue

being within the post-soviet space and having political convictions that are fully opposed to the existing regime creates a false sense of radical leftism in people who actually hold moderate views by other standards (not dissimilar to anti-trump america).

clocking imperialism, cia-influence & nationalism are not tools made available by most left-adjacent media in the post-soviet space

and this is why, as a bunch of people unanimously but independently said to me: often, the truth is in right-wing media, if you can filter the underlying agenda. however, as i’ve already said, RT is distrusted completely.

this also creates a double bind because there is a strong incline to side with the west against the russian-aligned space (or putin-aligned space if you will). in the question of belarus, you have to consider the fact that the relationship between belarus & russia is very strong

many people i know there are migrant workers in russia, who feed their families back home. this, as well as a new, more branched out bourgeoisie taking over from a centralized autocracy, are the biggest risks people on the ground contend with.

that said, if you want to have a communist perspective on the events happening in belarus right now, you have to go to vk and g-translate everything.

overview of BY left party positions: https://vk.com/feed?w=wall-191991223_5540 1 supports Luka, wants to avoid “maidan”, 1 supports ST; 1 had their own candidate; 1 warns against provocations; 1 supports protestors indiscriminately; 2 don’t have a defined position made known to the general public.

since people that i personally know in belarus are not aligned politically (although all seem to have voted against all or boycotted) i have asked my russian comrades to provide a source for good marxist perspectives. they gave me: https://vk.com/poligraf_red 

these guys have just shared an op-ed https://vk.com/poligraf_red?w=wall-22715872_557 where they denounce violence from the government: “peace and stability” supported by flash grenades & rubber bullets are not “peace and stability”. besides, the internet is blocked nationwide.

poligraf red think that tsikhanouskaya could not have 70-80% but allege that those voting for lukashenko also did not expect violence in return fort heir votes.

poligraf red calls for a deescalation, for avoiding bloodshed and clocking provocateurs, like the telegram channel “nexta”. and they call for a pause in conflict to regroup and start building up on what exists. “if there are 80% of you, these 80% will not disappear overnight”.

i'm not saying they're the ultimate marxist voice from belarus, just sharing an opinion i see. they don’t address the worker’s strikes per se.

i want to say that i personally see general strikes as the most functional force to advance revolution.

i would like to see general strikes, especially those in heavy manufacturing, lead the way, with protests supporting them, whether in belarus, russia or in the us, but reality will show whether it’s a feasible option under current conditions

PS: if you want a good coverage of events, seek out working class & marxist, not liberal sources from within. i have outlined some above, but just searching for "belarus communist" on any platform will be helpful to locate actual people. language, though, might be a barrier.