GRODNO, Belarus – For two days this week, a city on the western edge of authoritarian Belarus has enjoyed freedom.
In Grodno, workers at the state fertilization plant went on strike, opponents of the ruling regime marched open on Central Square and the local police department did not think so: it apologized for last week’s violence against Protestants.
But then the fear returned.
This return was seen on Thursday, when a retired nursery schooler, Natalia P. Antonova, pleaded with fertilizer factory workers to join the protests and restore their strike. But almost all submitted by quietly, by ignoring them.
And it could be seen that evening, when a crowd of about 1,000 gathered in the central square of the city, again appealing to Mr. Lukashenko to resign. But then a police car drove up to lead the Protestants to disperse.
“People are being put under pressure at work, salaries are gloomy and we all have loans,” said one of the Protestants, Olga A. Lebedevich, 45, a decorator. “Everyone is afraid of losing their wages, so they live in fear.”
Against this former Soviet republic in Eastern Europe, President Alexander G. Lukashenko seems to have regained momentum in his brutal attempt to cling to power after demanding victory in an election on 9 August. Whose results were widely falsified.
The protests that followed were met with police abuse, rubber bullets and mass detentions. But this heavy-handed reaction provoked a backlash that only more Belarusians flocked to the streets,
Now, Mr. Lukashenko seems to have taken a more dignified approach to neutralizing the public anger against him.
His administration has organized rallies in his support, while Mr. Lukashenko is blaming children of the former Soviet republic’s companies that form his political base. He warned that striking employees of state-owned companies would lose their jobs, and after state television workers went on strike, Mr Lukashenko said he could replace them with journalists from Russia.
And on Friday, Mr Lukashenko sent a not-so-subtle signal that ‘the re-enactment of the last days of the violent suppression of the protests is unlikely to last.
“This is my problem to solve, and we are solving it,” Mr Lukashenko said of the protests after meeting with insurgent policemen, according to Belarussian state news agency Belta. “Believe me, in the coming days we will solve it.”
The turning point could be felt in Grodno, a city of 370,000 in western Belarus that emerged as a focal point of anti-Lukashenko sentiment.
On Sunday, tens of thousands of city dwellers crossed the streets with the red and white flags associated with the opposition. In Grodno and across the country, the long-running frustration with economic stagnation and polluted freedoms under Mr Lukashenko broke open after images of brutal police beatings of Protestants circulated via social media.
On Tuesday, local officials in Grodno went further than their opponents in any other Belarusian city in an attempt to stem the protests by offering concessions. Local police apologized for using excessive force, and most Protestants were released from prison. City Hall even promised to provide audio equipment for future opposition readings and said the television station it owns, Grodno Plus, would allow the protests to be covered fairly.
“Now our policy is that we cover everything neutrally,” said Yana A. Melnichenko, a 25-year-old Grodno Plus correspondent, adding that eight of her friends had been detained by police. ‘Of course I’m proud of my television station now, but I’m also proud of my nation. We have never been so united as now. “
But until Thursday, the City Hall seemed to be living up to its promises. It no longer provided speakers for rallies. And employees of Grodno Azot – a fertilizer maker that is one of the largest companies in the country – said they were put under pressure by management to refrain from strikes. Armed men, they said, had appeared at a factory checkpoint in a show of force.
The Grodno Azot employees who described the situation refused to give their names. A security officer standing nearby filmed the scene with a small camera in hand.
“Even two days ago, the situation was different,” said Ms Antonova, 61, the retired nursery school teacher who greeted workers at the fertilizer factory to stop and join the Protestants. “They decided to throw us some bones, to chew and calm us down.”
Mr. Lukashenko this week served Grodno as the most unreliable place in the country, using the protests there to support his claim that the movement against him was made by the West. People have started raising Polish flags in Grodno, Mr Lukashenko told his regional officials, warning that foreign powers “want to destabilize the situation in Grodno even more than they do in Minsk.”
In Grodno, Bazhena M. Pochebyt said she saw two Polish flags at one rally. Formerly a Polish city on several occasions in the past and very close to the border, Grodno has a large Polish population and has monuments of Polish writers in the city center.
“A lot of people here are more aware because they have relatives abroad, and we have a way of seeing how people can protest peace,” said Ms. Pochebyt, who spoke Thursday in the the city’s main orthodox cathedral came to commemorate victims of police brutality.
Whether fear keeps most Protestants off the streets this weekend, and prevents factory workers from running off the job, could be decisive for Mr Lukashenko’s fate. Some estimates put last Sunday’s crowd in Minsk, the capital, calling for the president’s departure to exceed 200,000 – the largest protests in the country’s post – Soviet history.
Sergei S. Demenko, a roofer at a state-owned construction company in Grodno, said many of his colleagues did only the minimal amount of work in a form of protest, but that the pressure against them grew stronger.
Standing in front of a police car and announcing that protesters should disperse in the central square Thursday night, Mr Demenko was furious. He said many of his friends were working in neighboring Poland, earning more money there and enjoying a freer life. Despite all the time, he was still working in a bedroom.
“I pay taxes, I have rights – why can I not come out to express my opinion?” asked Mr. Demenko, 35, adding that after a few days without arrests, some of his most active colleagues had been arrested the previous night. “Why is it that they have the law of application to our common people, but they do it all the time against themselves?”
