Expert: Stalin dressed his tunica, and all the officials wore field jackets

"Inadequate forcing of militarist moods in the country", that's how the political scientist Aleksandr Klaskovsky estimates yesterday's meeting on territorial defense, chaired by Lukashenko.

Political analyst believes, that assigning ranks of generals to the heads of regions and Minsk puts a literal goal - to form up the officials "in column". Aleksandr Klaskovsky discusses it in the interview to "Belarusian partisan".

- Aleksandr, why does Lukashenko need territorial defense? Against whom he is going to fight?

- In my opinion, only PR tasks dominate in this case. There is no external threat. The main threat comes from within, from the financial and economic situation, which sagged the living standards by three times. Having such an internal policy, there is no need in enemies.

Authorities are busy with shifting accents of public attention from real problems to imaginary ones. It's a classics of propaganda in any dictatorship - when the creation of artificial image of the threat diverts attention from price tags in stores, from a rapid impoverishment. Allegedly, we must be patient, we must tighten our belts, we must make sacrifices to live better. This is the same, what ordinary grannies define briefly: "Just not to have a war".

- Territorial defense is the pure PR and nothing more?

- Let this territorial defense be, if it does not require substantial financial outlays. If you listen to the experts, this concept is obsolete. It was relevant in the late 19th and early 20th century, when there were contact fights, where soldiers sat in trenches. Now wars has become very different: there is practically no contact fighting, the enemies are destroyed by precision-guided weapons, as NATO troops demonstrated it in Iraq, as they conducted operations against gaddafists. Here the case is how to give rifles to "hairy" louts, so they have something to defend. Such a concept is an anachronism. If we are talking about the European model of a territorial army, then the territorial army in Europe is quite different case.

- Why then to give general's ranks to the officials?

- This is an artificial forcing of militarist mood. And they make of it perhaps the most important event in the country. This morning I turned on Belarusian TV - news begin from this: the officials in camouflage repulse buses from thugs ... If someone turn on this channel after drinking much, one can really start thinking that some price tags in stores don't matter, if really there are such external threats.

- It turns out, that yesterday's rank giving to the officials is from the same case?

- This makes some sense. This is a natural desire to consolidate the ruling elite in the face of palace coups. In response to the crisis, due to machinations which Moscow builds, there is a fear: what if some palace coup ? Therefore, there is a desire to dress the officials in camouflage, even though it suits them like a saddle on a cow. All the power vertical is built on the principle of strict hierarchy, and here they even introduce the military laws, all the officials are lining up in a literal sense. This modeling came from Stalinist times: Stalin dressed his tunica, and all the officials wore field jackets.