Over the past decade, experience has shown how large protests at a single public square – like those in Cairo’s Tahrir square or Kyiv’s Maidan – can lead to real political change. At the same time, when state authorities are responsible for allocating spaces to protest - as was the case with Bolotnaya Square and Sakharov Square in Moscow in 2011 - even mass protests can end in nothing.
During the first two nights after the 9 August election results, the Belarusian authorities brutally suppressed protesters’ attempts to gather in the central squares of Minsk. This led to the protests dissipating and acquiring a hyperlocal character, whereby protests were not concentrated at a single point, but flared up simultaneously in different places, from street to street, from neighbourhood to neighbourhood.
This “scattered” protest had important advantages. Firstly, citizens themselves determined the protest’s course and the conditions they set, rather than the state bodies which authorised the demonstrations. Secondly, the “scattered” protest became a transitional stage ahead of protests on the square: a week later, on 16 August, the protesters managed to reach Government House in Minsk peacefully and without resistance, and to gather at a nearby important war monument. This peaceful protest was now much more significant in terms of numbers than the pro-government rally in support of Alexander Lukashenka.
