Lukashenka and migrants

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

the article presents quite objectively the dynamics of the situation with illegal migration and ethnic criminal groups in Belarus. How did they deal with Caucasians in the 90s, and why have the Belarusian authorities recently filled the gaps in the labor market with migrants?

Today Russia is experiencing significant pressure from both external (Central Asia, Transcaucasia) and internal migration flows (North Caucasus). Kondopoga, the events at Manezhnaya Square, Biryulyovo - clearly show that the situation, if not out of control, is on the brink. In this sense, it seems interesting to compare the situation in Russia with neighboring Belarus.

Of course, many parameters will be incomparable, and direct comparisons are often incorrect, but some aspects of the fundamental approaches to external migration are worth paying attention to.

Immediately after the collapse of the USSR, processes similar to those in Russia took place in Belarus - the criminalization of society, active penetration into the trade of "guests from the south" and other well-known "delights" of the transition period: racketeering, extortion, financial scams, currency transactions, prostitution, drug dealing, outright banditry. The scale of all this was, of course, incomparable with the Russian realities of the same period, but life ceased to be calm and predictable. It is clear that the numerous "fortune hunters" from the sunny republics also did not stand aside, trying to participate in the division of the half-ownerless post-Soviet pie.

All sorts of "thieves in law", "authorities" and other shadow characters tried to take control of entire spheres of activity. Representatives of the Caucasus did not lag behind, especially since the coronations of Belarusian thieves in law took place with the direct participation of Georgian criminal leaders.

The most attractive "type of activity" for Caucasians, prone to crime, turned out to be illegal cross-border trade in tobacco products and Polish spirits. Quickly pushing aside the local authorities, the “guests from the south” took this trade and the Belarusian “shuttle traders” under complete control, receiving very decent money. The Caucasian diaspora in Brest was multinational, but its core was Chechens. Quite quickly, during 1992-1993, a real ethnic enclave of several thousand people from the Caucasus was formed in Brest. Brest residents even nicknamed Bogdanchuk Street, where the migrants settled, “Dudayev Street”.

The emerging criminal ethnic "ghetto" quickly made itself felt. A schoolgirl was killed first. Unrest began in Brest. Young people gathered near the building of the city executive committee and made demands to the authorities to evict Caucasians from the city. The Belarusian business also consolidated, dissatisfied with constant extortions and threats. Enterprises and institutions began collecting signatures demanding the eviction of uninvited guests. The second crime committed by migrants - a robbery on a Minsk sportsman-currency dealer - added fuel to the fire. The protests intensified after that.

The Brest City Council did not follow the example of the Russian authorities to fight local "nationalists and extremists", but decided to abolish the temporary registration for representatives of the Transcaucasia, the North Caucasus and other southern regions of the former USSR.

Were carried out checks on the activities of all commercial structures, one way or another connected with restless migrants. The tightening of passport control led to the fact that Caucasians from Brest moved to the countryside and other regions. However, gradually, similar measures were taken throughout Belarus, although the overall situation remained difficult.

On July 10, 1994, Alexander Lukashenko won the second round of the first presidential elections with 80.1% of the vote. The first Belarusian president got a devastated economy and a country entangled in criminal clans. By the end of 1994, there were about 150 organized crime groups in Belarus, which numbered from 35 to more than 100 people. The common fund system functioned widely. Alien ethnic criminal groups were directly involved in all this.

The following indicative fact speaks about rampant crime. By the end of 1993, more than 100,000 crimes were registered, while in Soviet 1988 - less than 50,000. The population experienced anxiety and fear.

The young Belarusian leader immediately set about putting things in order. In February 1994, the most authoritative Belarusian thief in law, Vitebsk resident Pyotr Naumenko (Naum), who was involved in extortion, was arrested on charges of organizing a criminal group. A few months later, he unexpectedly died in the Vitebsk pre-trial detention center - according to the official version, from a drug overdose. The vacant place was taken by Vladimir Kleshch (Shchavlik).

However, the first years of Lukashenka's stay in power were characterized, first of all, by his confrontation with the opposition. Naturally, this could not but affect the crime situation - at the end of 1996, there were already 300 organized crime groups in Belarus with a total number of up to 3,000 people. In 1997, there were already 130,000 crimes committed. It was in June 1997 that the country adopted the law “On Measures to Combat Organized Crime and Corruption”.

The real scourge of Belarus was crime on the highways (especially on the Brest-Moscow "Olympia"), illegal smuggling of technical alcohol from the territory of the Baltic States to Russia and economic crimes. All this illegal activity brought considerable profits to the ethnic criminal groups actively participating in it. To combat these manifestations, Lukashenka created the State Control Committee. In Mogilev, the head of the KGC was a deputy of the House of Representatives of the National Assembly of the Republic of Belarus E. Mikolutsky, who immediately crossed the road of the "vodka mafia". At the end of September 1997, the deputy either jokingly or seriously said that they "promised to send a sniper for him." September 6, 1997 as a result of a terrorist attack (explosion) Mikolutsky was killed. His wife was hospitalized with serious injuries.

For Belarus, this high-profile murder had the most serious consequences. Lukashenka, speaking the next day at the Palace of Pioneers, was very emotional: “The criminals took a long time to get close to the president - it didn't work out. We decided to start with the people who were by his side, who always carried out his will. I understand that this is a challenge. He is thrown. Here, on the Mogilev land, I want to declare to this evil spirits that I accept its challenge … Remember, gentlemen, the earth will burn under your feet!.. We have been messing with these scum for too long. And as a result, we are losing our people."

In hot pursuit, it turned out that the authorities were also involved in the murder of Mikolutsky. The true scale of the networks of the underworld has been exposed.

On October 21, 1997, the Belarusian president signed a decree “On urgent measures to combat terrorism and other especially dangerous violent crimes”. According to this decree, law enforcement agencies have the right to detain persons suspected of committing crimes for up to one month without charge.

A large-scale assault on crime began on all fronts. On the Brest-Moscow highway, specially created mobile groups destroyed the bandit groups. Many corruption cases were initiated, the passport regime was tightened.

Migrants inclined to criminality felt uncomfortable. At first, they hoped to wait it out, continuing to control the markets, but regular inspections and other measures became not one-off, but permanent. And the Belarusians themselves more and more often bypassed the counters behind which the southerners stood. At first, immigrants from the south tried to somehow retain control over trade - they hired Belarusian sellers, bought up private houses around the markets, using them as storage areas. However, migration from the south faced the problem of economic inefficiency of living in Belarus. Even many of those Azerbaijanis who traded tangerines in Belarus for several decades back in Soviet times left for Russia.

This, of course, did not happen overnight, but gradually migrants began to leave Belarus, moving back to Russia. Due to the constant checks by the police, the dark-skinned refugees who at one time begged in Belarusian cities also felt uncomfortable - they disappeared as quickly as they appeared.

Thus, the decisive struggle of the Belarusian authorities against crime and corruption has knocked out the ground from under the feet of mass migration (both illegal and legal) - coming to Belarus has become both unprofitable and unsafe. A comprehensive approach worked, in which, in addition to tightening law enforcement actions, the economic component of illegal migration from the south was undermined.

In the same Brest, by the end of the 90s, only a few dozen Chechens remained. The same thing happened in Minsk and other Belarusian cities.

At the same time, it was Lukashenko who provided assistance to Chechen refugees, when, during the second Chechen war, the European Union refused to accept them and Chechen families found themselves in a difficult situation in Brest.

Then, in some Chechen families, as a token of gratitude, they even called their children the name Alexander. This was the best proof that the Belarusian president was not fighting against the people, but against criminals and attempts to impose other people's customs on Belarusians.

The fight against crime continued. On December 10, 1997, the thief Shchavlik went missing after leaving the apartment to drive the car to the parking lot. Some of the thieves were hidden behind bars, the rest left Belarus in a hurry, realizing that nothing good awaited them in the future if they stayed. Rumors have multiplied that there are some special groups involved in the physical destruction of criminals. The opposition press also wrote about this. The president himself only intensified this effect, publicly declaring the following: “I warned them all: God forbid, somewhere you create a criminal environment - I will rip off your heads. Do you remember these shchavliks and others? And where are they now? Therefore, the country is in order and everyone is happy"

Thieves and authorities who did not leave on time disappeared under mysterious circumstances. According to unconfirmed reports, some of the remaining leaders of the organized criminal group were taken to the forest beyond the Minsk ring road and conducted "preventive conversations" with shooting overhead. Such "conversations" turned out to be quite effective - even the most "dull" people began to leave Belarus.

The mass illegal migration from the Caucasus to Belarus was finally ended in 1999. In September, the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Belarus carried out a pre-planned large-scale operation "Landslide" to identify foreign citizens illegally staying on the territory of the republic and stabilize the operational situation on the streets. Places of residence of foreigners, train stations, hotels, markets were carefully checked. During the operation, approximately 4,000 people from both the North Caucasus and Transcaucasia were detained and interrogated. 500 people were fined, others (there were about two hundred of them) were offered to leave Belarus in an amicable way.

Caucasians could no longer trade without documents in the markets, they were constantly checked by the precinct in their places of residence, and the Belarusians themselves were very reluctant to rent out their apartments to the southerners.

In mid-June 1999, the verdict for the murderers of E. Mikolutsky - they (all - Belarusians) were sentenced to long terms of imprisonment.

As a result, at the turn of the 21st century, the problem of criminality and illegal migration in Belarus was resolved. Later, Caucasians partially returned to Belarus - for doing business, playing sports, studying, and scientific activities. However, there could be no question of creating their own closed districts, mass gatherings, all sorts of "Lezgins" in the city center and similar realities that have long become customary for Russia. Today, with a population of 9.5 million, about 30,000 Caucasians live in Belarus. At the same time, they try not to particularly attract attention to themselves, so as not to have unnecessary problems with the Ministry of Internal Affairs. In Belarusian markets, you can see Chinese more often than Caucasians.

Thus, it is obvious that the problem of illegal migration turned out to be completely interconnected with the problem of organized crime.

Moreover, the traditionally dominant role in criminal circles, both in the USSR and in the post-Soviet space, is played by Caucasian and primarily Georgian thieves in law, who, among other things, often control illegal migration flows. The same numerous markets and various kinds of "vegetable bases" in Moscow are not controlled by Slavic criminals, but by people from the North Caucasus and Azerbaijan.

Having significantly reduced crime, in Belarus by the beginning of the XXI century created an extremely unfavorable situation for illegal migration.

In this sense, the first decade of the new century was quite calm in Belarus. Of course, corruption and criminality have not completely disappeared - which is only a large-scale criminal case against an organized criminal group of “firemen” in Gomel, which was engaged in extortion and banditry. However, this organized criminal group, like the periodically emerging others, was defeated. The main principle of Lukashenka was a decisive struggle against any attempts to create alternative centers of power and power, be it organized crime groups or ethnic criminal groups. Therefore, there is crime, including ethnic crime, in Belarus, but it is forced to go into deep shadow, as it was during the Soviet era.

The village has undergone significant modernization, 2,500 agricultural towns have been created - almost newly built villages with modern infrastructure. However, alcoholism in the countryside (as well as in the city) has not been eliminated. Small and medium-sized villages are emptying and dying out, and it was there that at the beginning of the century migrants from Uzbekistan, and especially Tajikistan, flocked. They occupied empty villages, raised livestock and … tried to sell drugs. The latter, due to the Belarusian specifics, did not go very well, therefore, just like the Caucasian migration in the 90s, the Central Asian wave of the 2000s turned out to be unsuccessful for the migrants themselves.

Russians, Tatars, Chuvash coming from the Russian Federation, and in the south - Ukrainians, who quite actively moved to the Gomel and Brest regions, integrated much more successfully into Belarus.

It would seem that the problem of illegal migration, like rampant crime, has been completely resolved. However, unfortunately, in recent years there has been a tendency to exacerbate interethnic contradictions, for which both objective reasons and the Belarusian authorities themselves are to blame. Attempts by migrants (both from non-CIS countries and from the regions of the Caucasus and Central Asia) to use Belarus as a transit territory for moving to the European Union, both illegally and on completely legal grounds, as refugees, have intensified. Already in 2011, in Belarus, in the area of the Belarusian-Polish border, the activity of Chechen militants and other foreign (and mixed) groups, trying to establish channels for illegal border crossing, was noted. In this sense, Belarus with the assistance of Russia, without receiving any equal support from the EU, bears a serious burden of protecting the borders of the Union State and the European Union.

In 2012, 69 violations of the state border were recorded, most of which were committed by people from the Caucasus. It became clear that Belarus is turning into an important transit link for illegal migration to the EU countries. In the same 2012, more than 20, 3 thousand people from the Caucasus region tried to get to Europe through Brest alone. Of these, 11, 4 thousand people (that is, more than half!) Were detained by the Polish side and returned back to Belarus. It is this contingent of uninvited guests that is largely responsible for the exacerbation of the crime situation in recent years - they prefer not to return home, but temporarily settle in Belarus, waiting for a favorable moment for repeated attempts to enter the EU countries as refugees or with the aim of organizing illegal channels for migration. Accordingly, attempts to penetrate into Belarus by Caucasian ethnic organized crime groups have also resumed.

Interestingly, this was most clearly manifested in the midst of the economic crisis that hit Belarus in May 2011. Then the authorities tried to artificially restrain the collapse of the Belarusian ruble, and queues long forgotten by the Belarusians reappeared in exchange offices. There was not enough currency, currency dealers and ordinary citizens began to besiege exchange offices, here and there conflicts arose. In such an environment, the visiting Caucasian organized crime groups felt like a fish in water.

The whole country was stirred up by a video posted on the Internet, which shows how the Caucasians, pushing the Belarusians away from the checkout window in the large Minsk shopping center “Korona” with threats, brazenly declared: “Today we will seize your exchangers, and tomorrow all of your Belarus!”, “He who is not with us is under us!"

Without hiding, the "guests" reported that they were representatives of an organized criminal group and had already taken control of currency exchange offices at the Komarovsky market, in the Evropeyskiy supermarket and at the Central Railway Station. The Belarusian police acted in the same way as their counterparts in Russia - they ignored the situation, explaining that no action would be taken until “until the fact of direct threats and direct violence was revealed”.

But this attempt at invasion was soon neutralized - the hot horsemen evaporated as quickly as they appeared, and some suspiciously indifferent police officers at a higher level were reminded of what they should be doing. At the same time, the exchange rate of the Belarusian ruble was released, currency appeared in abundance in exchange offices, and there was simply no room for ethnic criminal groups to operate in this area.

However, potential “refugees” waiting for a “free window to Europe” have shown their temper several times. So, on October 20, 2012, at the large Minsk market “Zhdanovichi”, there was a mass brawl between Roma and Caucasians who came from Stavropol and the Astrakhan region, temporarily residing in Belarus. The reason for the contention was a mobile phone - the seller and the buyer did not agree on the price. As a result, both Caucasians and Gypsies quickly called relatives and friends, and the massacre began. One of the gypsies fired several shots from a traumatic pistol, but was severely beaten for this. The police reacted quickly and practically all participants (43 people) were detained. Most of them were fined and deported to their places of permanent residence. From what happened, conclusions were drawn and the market in Zhdanovichi was put in order.

In mid-December 2012, a mass brawl between Belarusians and Caucasians took place in one of the entertainment establishments of Pinsk (Brest region). 3 people were taken to intensive care, 8 were seriously injured.

Another incident took place on December 31, 2012 in the Minsk metro in the very center of the capital at the Oktyabrskaya station (the same one where the terrorist act was previously committed). The verbal skirmish, started by Caucasians with local residents, quickly escalated into a massive brawl right in the subway car. This time, however, the Caucasians received a serious rebuff and were eventually beaten. At the Kupalovskaya station, all the participants were detained - the passengers promptly pressed the panic button to call the police in the carriage. At the precinct, overly ardent guests were popularly explained that for their own good, due to the lack of an official place of work, it is better to continue to behave extremely quietly and inconspicuously, or, if something does not suit them, to leave Belarus as soon as possible, and the Belarusians released, not considering their actions an offense.

For more than six months everything was calm, but in the same Brest near the City club, a fight broke out between local residents and Armenians who arrived in a car with Russian license plates. The next day, the Armenians, through representatives of their diaspora, offered the Belarusians to continue the showdown near the boat station near Mukhavets. Fifteen local residents arrived at the place of the alleged "clarification". A little later, 6 cars drove up, in which there were about 30 people - both Armenians and Belarusians. A massive brawl broke out. At first, a car with a PPS outfit watched all this indifferently, limiting itself to calling for help. Only after the arrival of two more police cars was the fight stopped, and its participants fled. While trying to escape by swimming either from the attacking Armenians, or from the arriving militia, a young Belarusian drowned. Hot on the heels and during the night, most of the participants in the conflict were detained. According to the assurances of the Belarusians, the Armenians used firearms and pneumatic weapons, but the police later officially denied this. The conflict, albeit with difficulty, was hushed up.

This was the second after the 90s new outbreak of interethnic conflicts between Belarusians and Caucasians practically ended - the authorities were able to take control of everything relatively quickly.

However, the noticeable deterioration of the economic situation in Belarus gave rise to new migration problems. Many Belarusians, who for the most part represent a highly qualified labor force, leave to work outside Belarus (primarily to Russia). These are scientists, engineers, doctors, teachers, builders, drivers and many other specialists who are dissatisfied with the low level of wages in their homeland.

In return, the Belarusian authorities are trying to fill the gaps in the labor market (first of all, in workers' specialties) through external migration. Unlike Russia, this is not done by private firms or criminal structures, but by the Belarusian state itself and state-owned enterprises.

The largest number of migrants came from China and Ukraine. Recently, more and more people come from Uzbekistan, Bangladesh and Turkey. Moreover, the experience of Russia and Europe does not teach the Belarusian authorities anything. In the pursuit of immediate economic benefits, voices are increasingly being heard that only active attraction of migrants will help Belarus solve the problem of labor shortage. At the same time, it should be noted that Belarus is trying to focus on attracting highly qualified specialists and workers. In the first half of 2013, 1,272 migrants of this category and 4,602 migrants with lower qualifications arrived in the country. It is also interesting that the Belarusian authorities are trying to use the increase in the flow of migrants in recent years for their propaganda purposes, explaining the growth of external migration not by the outflow of their own labor resources, but by the fact that Belarus is becoming more and more attractive to foreigners. The thesis is more than dubious. It is bad because Belarus, instead of successfully curbing external migration, as it was in previous years, is changing its approaches towards actively attracting foreigners. In addition to the states listed above, Lithuania, Vietnam, Armenia and Azerbaijan are active suppliers of labor to Belarus.

If we talk about external migration to Belarus in 2013, then in absolute numbers it looks as follows. In January - September 2013, 4,513 Ukrainian citizens, 2,216 Chinese citizens, 2,000 from Russia, 900 - Turkey, 870 - Lithuania, 860 - Uzbekistan, 400 - Moldova, 336 - Vietnam, 267 entered Belarus as labor migrants - Armenia, 270 - Georgia, more than 100 - Poland, more than 100 - Tajikistan, more than 60 - Czech Republic, more than 60 - Iran, 25 - Greece, 20 - USA, 3 each - Switzerland and Japan and 1 representative each from Australia, Argentina, Guinea, Indonesia, Cameroon, Cyprus, Cuba, Libya, Morocco and Ecuador. There are no exact figures for Azerbaijan.

If migrants from Ukraine and Lithuania, as well as other European countries quickly and painlessly integrate into Belarusian society, and the Chinese and Vietnamese do not create any special problems so far, many other visitors often try to impose their own ideas about the world around them and life values, which will inevitably be generate conflicts with the local population.

Another problem is the activation of educational projects in Belarus and Turkmenistan. Now in Belarus there are 8,000 students from this country. They live compactly in university dormitories and represent a fairly close-knit and noticeable community for Belarus. Turkmens study on a paid basis, which is undoubtedly beneficial for Belarus. This is a personal project of the Belarusian president, and he promotes it in every possible way. Thus, on November 5, 2013, meeting with Turkmen President G. Berdimuhamedov in Ashgabat, the Belarusian leader assured that the training program for Turkmen students would be continued and even expanded. Moreover, he even stated that he was ready to create a kind of "Turkmen island" in Belarus - in fact, an ethnic quarter with special hotels and hostels for Turkmen students. Meanwhile, in Belarus itself, not everyone is happy with such cooperation.

Of course, some of the students from Turkmenistan are trying to seriously master the specialties they receive, but the majority do not bother themselves with science, which is aggravated by the initial poor knowledge of the Russian language.

Even when teaching, Turkmen students often violate discipline, create difficulties for the teaching staff and are often content with formal, minimal, but sufficient marks for the issuance of a diploma. This attitude towards studying among Turkmen students is also due to the fact that it is much more important for many of them to formally obtain a diploma than professional knowledge - they will be well employed at home thanks to influential and wealthy parents. At the same time, Turkmens are mainly settled in hostels, and Belarusian students are forced to rent apartments for housing at much higher prices.

And the amount of currency entering the country is not so great - most likely, the very fact of such cooperation is necessary for the promotion of Belarusian goods in Turkmenistan and the region.

Such an abundance of students from Turkmenistan affects interethnic relations as well. On New Year's Eve in the center of Minsk, near the Sports Palace, a large company of Turkmen youth, heated up by alcoholic beverages, made a riot - students loudly expressed obscene words, pushed local residents, climbed onto the stage. When a group of Uzbek guest workers caught the eye of the Turkmen, they began to actively bully the latter and provoked a mass brawl, in which, in addition to representatives of Central Asia, Belarusians were involuntarily involved. The police reacted quickly. All participants in the mass brawl were detained, paid heavy fines and were deported to their homeland (both Turkmen and Uzbeks).

Another unpleasant incident related to Turkmen students took place in Vitebsk - under pressure from indignant Vitebsk residents, the authorities banned a party of Turkmen students, scheduled for October 24, 2013 at the Zebra club. The reason for the ban was that the guests from Turkmenistan, apparently confusing their role with the role of hosts, crossed the bounds of what was permissible and did not hesitate to write on the poster of the Turkmen Party event: "Closed party only for students of Turkmenistan and Russian girls." This phrase was the reason for the ban, as it angered everyone without exception - both supporters of integration with Russia and Belarusian nationalists. It is curious that the latter were quite outraged by the fact that the Turkmens did not see the difference between Russians and Belarusians.

At the same time, it must be admitted that the Belarusian authorities are in control of the situation, and the Turkmen students themselves, realizing that they may face deportation, most often behave quite adequately.

Let us note by the way that not only Russia creates migration problems for Belarus. So, after the August 2008 war, Minsk did not introduce visas for Georgian citizens, which the latter actively used for illegal entry into Russia. Moscow has repeatedly pointed out this problem to Belarus, therefore, on November 4, Belarusian-Georgian negotiations were held in Minsk on the problem of combating illegal migration.

And in conclusion, I would like to emphasize that, in contrast to the situation in multinational Russia, in practically mono-ethnic Belarus, where Belarusians, Russians, Ukrainians, Poles and Lithuanians are a single Russian-speaking community, the authorities closely monitor the development of interethnic relations, in most cases rather quickly responding to certain incidents.

And the Belarusians themselves are not particularly inclined to tolerate provocative antics arranged by individual guests. President A. G. Lukashenka is sensitive to the mood in society, not disregarding the problem of external migration.

It is rather difficult to predict how the situation in Belarus will develop today, but there is no doubt that for Russia this experience of a neighboring Slavic country with a strong state power may turn out to be interesting, and in some ways even instructive.