The Resilient Belarusian Civil Society: Developments of Support and Solidarity with Political Prisoners

This paper examines developments in Belarus since 2020 when unprecedented mass peaceful protests occurred, and the authoritarian regime responded with severe repression. Many politically active Belarusians were arrested, became political prisoners, or were forced to flee the country. Since then, the authoritarian government has increasingly utilized state violence and criminalized not only protests but also broader civic activism, including acts of solidarity with political prisoners. Despite these harsh conditions, Belarusian civil society has adapted to operate in a hostile domestic environment while also engaging in transnational solidarity from exile. Civil society is broadly defined to include human rights organizations, civil society initiatives, networks, activist groups, and individual supporters of political prisoners both within and outside Belarus. Supporting political prisoners has become one of the forms of civic resilience, challenging the authoritarian state and developing innovative approaches to withstand political repression. This study focuses on how Belarusian civil society learns to resist and stay resilient, identifying patterns and regularities in attitudes and behaviour that emerge in response to repression. We apply the lenses of democratic adaptation and innovation, using Dolowitz and Marsh's (1996) seven categories of learning: policy goals, structure, and content; policy instruments; administrative techniques; institutions; ideology; attitudes, ideas, and concepts; and negative lessons. We begin by addressing the “demand” side of support for political prisoners, presenting relevant statistics and discussing the conditions they face. Then, we turn to the “supply” side, analyzing how civil society learns to support political prisoners under the regime's escalating repression. We explore how it learns from external best practices and experiences and how they are adapted to the Belarusian context. The empirical section categorizes and examines various initiatives, networks, and organizations that either existed before 2020 or emerged afterwards, both inside and outside Belarus, to support political prisoners. The study aims to answer two key questions: How does Belarusian civil society, in the face of increasingly brutal repression, sustain everyday support for political prisoners? How do these groups adjust and learn to remain resilient under authoritarian conditions? We analyze how civil society mobilizes and learns to resist and be resilient amidst ongoing repression. The study period captures the expansion of repression in Belarus: it extends from the early autumn of 2020 (post-electoral protests) to the summer of 2025 (the new sham presidential election). The primary data is drawn from qualitative semi-structured interviews with civic activists and experts. Additionally, we analyze a wide range of secondary sources, including official websites, media channels, and social networks.