Since summer 2020, the world has witnessed an astonishing civic uprising against Belarussian long-term dictator Alexandr Lukashenka, who had been accused of massive electoral fraud to stay in office. The fact that this electoral fraud became public and that states around the world no longer recognize him as the country's president is in essence due to an extraordinarily courageous, tenacious and united civil society that mobilized protests. However, more than 18 months after the protests started, Lukashenka still considers himself as president, while thousands of protesters and activists are imprisoned, dead or in exile. Authoritarianism, it seems, is stronger and more resilient than the democracy movement.
The paper will explore the dynamics of protest and of the perseverance of power holders from a resilience perspective combined with social movement theory. When confronted with mass protests, power holders often face declining loyalty and elite splits that undermine their legitimacy. At the same time, movements become stronger, building a more visible public identity. In 2005, the movement ZUBR emerged, addressing election fraud but did not gain momentum to implement changes and to become a hub for a strong civil society. Nevertheless, there are lines of continuity in Belarussian civil society which indeed led to mass mobilization, but not to political change. The paper will therefore analyse political opportunity structures, mobilization processes and framings of the Belarussian pro-democratic movement and thereby try to trace the reciprocal dynamics of resilience of the civic movement and of authoritarian rule.