Posted: 14.01.2022 16:57:00

Progressive intellectual capital, ideas of social equality moving to the East

Unlike Belarus and some other countries which understand what a welfare state is and which are building it up, the West is guided by a completely different logic in decision-making, believes political expert Aleksei Dzermant

In his talk with Alfa Radio, Mr. Dzermant stressed, “I have no worry about Belarus. As I see, Belarusisation is also observed somewhere in Russia – in a good sense. Our social practices are being taken there, and support is being rendered not only to the middle stratum. Fight against poverty is in place there and, in my opinion, it is quite successfully progressing. There is such a trend. Meanwhile, I do not see such trends in the West. People there are outraged that the welfare state is being rejected. There has been a general tightening of the screw and people are being deprived of their money. We cannot also speak of any renaissance of social ideas there. I would rather say that, on the contrary, all the progressive social intellectual capital, accumulated ideas about social equality and support are moving towards the East. The Chinese want to build a society where there will be no poverty and every citizen will have access to social goods. They want to create moderately prosperous society. We are holding our ground. Russia and Kazakhstan will come to this. Interesting reforms are underway in Uzbekistan in this regard. Meanwhile, in the West, the welfare state – especially against the COVID background – is increasingly being curtailed. After all, they needed these hard lockdowns in order not to spend money on treating people in hospitals, but simply to lock people up and wait it out. We, in turn, did not put people under house arrest but continued to treat everyone who needed it, including in hospitals that we did not close, despite the pressure on the part of the IMF and other international structures. These are two different approaches, two different philosophies.”