Belarus has an exiled parliament in Ottawa
Last Tuesday, the Eastern European nation of Belarus suspended diplomatic relations with Canada following Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s condemnation of the country forcing down an overflying jetliner in order to arrest a dissident journalist aboard.
It’s one of a series of diplomatic sanctions Belarus handed out last week, but Canada’s spat with the country carries a little-known twist: Ottawa is home to a Belarusian parliament-in-exile that has been claiming to uphold the legitimate government of Belarus for more than 102 years.
The Rada of the Belarusian Democratic Republic holds elections, mints medals, issues declarations and sees itself as the only true “guardian of the traditions of Belarusian statehood.” In a testament to Belarus’ lengthy history of autocratic government, it is the world’s longest lasting government-in-exile.
Aside from a nine-month period when it loosely governed a chunk of formerly Tsarist Russia, most of the Rada’s existence has been as a hardscrabble collection of refugees operating out of back offices and pining for the day it can “hand its mandate over to a future democratic government of Belarus.”
The Belarusian Democratic Republic first took shape in the chaos surrounding the end of the First World War. After the abdication of Russian Tsar Nicholas II and the subsequent Bolshevik takeover of Russia in the October Revolution, in 1918 Russia officially ended its role in the war by ceding large swaths of western Russia to Imperial Germany.
It was in these newly conquered lands that the Rada of the Belarusian Democratic Republic took shape as a 77-member congress attempting to patch together a national military, civil infrastructure and foreign recognition. After the defeat of Imperial Germany in November 1918, however, Bolshevik armies swiftly moved in and established the area as a Soviet republic.
The exiled government originally moved to Prague, before the events of the Second World War pushed them to Paris and then North America. Since 1997, the Rada has been headquartered in Ottawa and headed by Belarusiancanadian Ivonka Survilla.
While Survilla did receive a Diamond Jubilee Medal in 2013 from Conservative Senator Raynell Andreychuk, her government-in-exile has never been granted recognition by Canada. “We have never received much support from Western governments,” Mikalaj Packajeu, the Rada’s Deputy Secretary for Foreign Affairs told Vice in 2016.
For much of the Rada’s existence, Belarus was one of the 15 constituent republics forming the Soviet Union. The country obtained full independence in 1991 amid the breakup of the USSR, but since 1994 has been under the increasingly authoritarian rule of President Alexander Lukashenko.
Backed by overt support from neighbouring Russia, Lukashenko has overseen multiple disputed elections and the serial disappearance of political dissidents.
“Belarus is Europe’s last dictatorship, this continent’s last country that has still not managed to shrug off the dark legacy of the Soviet regime, to overcome the terrible traumas totalitarianism brought upon our nation,” Survilla said in a 2020 speech delivered in the midst of mass-protests across Belarus disputing another election in which Lukashenko claimed to be the blowout winner.
The government-in-exile maintains a website naming its 16-member presidium and hosting their official charter. The Rada also runs several social media accounts highlighting human rights abuses by the Lukashenko government.
In a 2020 interview with Latvian Public Radio, Rada Information Secretary Aleś Čajčyc described the exiled government as a “non-material relic of sorts.” The Belarusian government-in-exile long ago abandoned any plans to once again form the country’s legitimate government. Rather, they see their mission as keeping the flames of Belarusian democracy alive until a non-autocratic government can arise in Belarus to claim them.
When the day comes that Belarus adopts a constitution and holds free elections “the functions of the Rada of the Belarusian Democratic Republic will have been fulfilled,” said Čajčyc.
The Rada’s diplomatic influence may be non-existent, but it has inspired recognition among dissidents to the Lukashenko government. Belarusian politician Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya was the main opposition candidate in the 2020 election. Her husband is in state custody for running an anti-lukashenko Youtube account and Tsikhanouskaya has subsequently fled to Lithuania due to similar fears of arrest.
Last month, Tsikhanouskaya officially recognized Survilla for the “work she has been doing for many years for our independence.”
Europe spawned many governments-in-exile in the 20th century, but probably the most famous was the Polish government-in-exile driven to London following the country’s invasion by Nazi Germany in 1939.
The government-in-exile stayed in London following Poland’s post-war communist takeover and ceded its authority only upon the 1991 democratic election of Lech Walesa.
The Belarusian government-in-exile similarly came close to giving its blessing to the country’s first post-soviet government in 1990, but pulled back because “the signs of how the present regime would come into being were already evident,” Čajčyc said last year.
He added, “we can only give the mandate once. That’s why it is necessary to wait for the moment when full-fledged and independent democratic institutes are set up.”