{"id":86239,"date":"2024-05-21T10:04:46","date_gmt":"2024-05-21T07:04:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pozirk.online\/en\/longreads\/86239\/"},"modified":"2024-05-21T10:09:07","modified_gmt":"2024-05-21T07:09:07","slug":"traditional-values-russias-soft-power-must-be-taken-seriously","status":"publish","type":"longreads","link":"https:\/\/pozirk.online\/en\/longreads\/86239\/","title":{"rendered":"Traditional values: Russia’s soft power must be taken seriously"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Mentally rooted in the USSR just like Alaksandar \u0141uka\u0161enka\u2019s Belarus, Vladimir Putin’s Russia broke with Bolshevik revolution legacy to embrace traditional values, a key element of Russia’s soft power. Belarusian propaganda follows Moscow\u2019s script.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n \"\"\n
\n
\n\n An Orthodox chaplain at a Belarusian army training camp in April 2024\n <\/div>\n \n
\n Vajar \/ Arciom Bierascie\u0144<\/span>\n <\/div>\n <\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Codified values<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Belarus is the world\u2019s only country to mark anniversaries of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution as a state holiday.

The revolution involved not only a violent seizure of power, but also the rejection of traditional values such as religion, ethnic identity, the family and marriage as a strong union between a man and a woman.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of these values, such as the traditional family, were later restored, while others, such as religion and nationalism, were formally or informally prohibited until the late Soviet period.

Belarus is probably one of few countries to treat traditional values as fundamental and obligatory for society.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Traditional values are the basis of Belarusian statehood,” said the headline displayed for half a month on the front page of the pro-government website newsby.info<\/em>.

The 32-page national security paper adopted by the All-Belarusian People’s Assembly on April 25 mentions traditional values fifteen times.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The new military doctrine, adopted on the same day, classifies “the propagation of ideas . . . leading to the rejection of traditional spiritual and moral values and guidelines” as a military threat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Decline in support for liberal values<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Some may argue that Belarusian society does not buy the government propaganda of traditional values.

Such reasoning is probably an echo of the progressive optimism of the 1990s, when democracy was spreading rapidly around the world and the public opinion in the West was changing in favor of emancipative values.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the \u201cqueer icons\u201d Tatu, acting as lesbian schoolgirls in a marketing stunt, were incredibly popular in Russia.

Things have changed. Year after year, major monitoring projects (EIU Democracy Index, Freedom in the World Index, Varieties of Democracy Index) record a slow but steady global decline of democracy.

Although emancipative values are still widely supported in Western societies, groups that push these values, such as feminists and transgender rights supporters, have been riddled by disunity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The growing popularity of right-wing populists is indicative of demand for political alternatives and alternative values.

Belarus and other countries in the region have shown little progress in embracing emancipative values.

According to the World Values Survey (WVS), Belarus scored 1.9 out of 10 (where 1 is never acceptable and 10 is always acceptable) in homosexuality acceptance in the early 1990s. In 2018 its score rose to 2.5. There has been no significant improvement.

Belarus has been making slow progress toward gender equality. Over the past quarter of the century, the gap between supporters and opponents of the assumption “men generally make better political leaders than women” has narrowed, but in 2018 its supporters still outnumbered opponents by 21 percent.

The stunning success of a female-led opposition presidential campaign in 2020 and \u015aviat\u0142ana Cichano\u016dskaja\u2019s probable victory changed little in the areas.

Cichano\u016dskaja and her associates campaigned for the release of political prisoners and a new election, in which those unfairly disqualified by the central election commission would run.

In an online poll conducted by Chatham House in mid-November 2020, 50.1 percent of respondents admitted to voting for Cichano\u016dskaja in the August 2020 election, but only 6.2 percent thought she was the best-suited candidate for the presidency.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Viktar Babaryka was considered the best-suited candidate for the job by 31.7 percent, followed by Alaksandar \u0141uka\u0161enka with 24.2 percent, Pavie\u0142 \u0141atu\u0161ka with 14.2 percent and Valer Capka\u0142a with 7 percent.

The result is consistent with the 2018 WVS poll, in which the first four places in the ranking of the best potential presidents were taken by men.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kremlin aware of demand for alternative<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The traditional values are not limited to a hostile attitude towards LGBT+ or skepticism about gender equality. However, the two topics have been the target of Belarusian and Russian propaganda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Kremlin’s strategy deserves special attention.

The word “strategy” is used here for a reason, because it actually refers to a systematic and consistent effort aimed at long-term results.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Back in 2013, even before the Russian occupation of Crimea, the pro-Kremlin Center for Strategic Communications developed a document called “Putin – the New World Conservative Leader.”

That was perhaps the first clear sign that traditional (conservative) values became a key component of Russia’s soft power, i.e. a strategy for achieving desired results in relations with other states by offering an attractive alternative. It was a brilliant idea.

Already in the early 1990s, the Western and non-Western worlds diverged on values, and there were tensions within Western societies.

Western political and intellectual elites were confident that emancipative values would prevail.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Traditional values were perceived as a futile policy of reanimating the past. Many pro-Western NGOs in the former Soviet Union uncritically adopted that approach and saw their mission in exposing conservative views as a meaningless relic of agrarian-patriarchal society.

Thus, the Kremlin’s strategy was a success because of the rising demand for an alternative to emancipative values, which was underestimated by critics.

Putin’s Russia broke with Bolshevik legacy and started propagating a return to traditional values, while Western and pro-Western thinkers sneered at conservative values.

“Western values are steadily diverging from the rest of the world’s” was the telling headline run by The Economist<\/em> last August.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While the specific set of traditional values varies from society to society, the general trend is that demand for these values outside the Western world persists and, in some cases, is growing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Soft power can be stronger than hard power<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

In the last two years, much of the focus has been on Russia’s hard power, in particular its aggression against Ukraine and its aftermath.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many discussions about Russian imperialism revolve around whether Russia will defeat Ukraine and what might follow.

The outcome of the war is significant, but it will be ambiguous in any case. For Russians the price of victory, if achieved, will be important, while for others, including the non-Western world, the war will remain a flagrant violation of international norms.

But the influence of soft power of Putin’s Russia and the \u0141uka\u0161enka regime, which plays along, may be quite significant.

The crusade for traditional values can somewhat offset public outrage about the war in Russia, Belarus and elsewhere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Traditional values are the key element of the Kremlin’s soft power and should not be underestimated. Especially in relation to Belarus.

—-

This article was written with financial support from the European Union. The author, Piotra Rudko\u016dski<\/strong>, is solely responsible for its content. This text can in no way be considered to reflect the EU position.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mentally rooted in the USSR just like Alaksandar \u0141uka\u0161enka\u2019s Belarus, Vladimir Putin’s Russia broke with Bolshevik revolution legacy to embrace traditional values, a key element of Russia’s soft power. Belarusian propaganda follows Moscow\u2019s script. Codified values Belarus is the world\u2019s only country to mark anniversaries of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution as a state holiday. The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":85586,"template":"","rubric":[22],"class_list":["post-86239","longreads","type-longreads","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","rubric-theviewer"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nTraditional values: Russia's soft power must be taken seriously | Pozirk<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Mentally rooted in the USSR just like Alaksandar \u0141uka\u0161enka\u2019s Belarus, Vladimir Putin's Russia broke with Bolshevik revolution legacy to embrace\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/pozirk.online\/en\/longreads\/86239\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Traditional values: Russia's soft power must be taken seriously | Pozirk\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" 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