Pauliuchenka on Matskevich's Game: Smells of Political Fraud

Former political prisoner Uladzimir Matskevich is pushing for a methodological game involving key figures of Belarus's democratic movement. Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya's chief advisor Franak Viacorka, Viktar Babaryka, representatives of the Kastus Kalinouski Regiment, "Baisol," "Cyberpartisans," and many others have reportedly already agreed. Matskevich sees the main outcome of the game as developing a common strategy for the Belarusian diaspora.

I'll say it right away: the format itself, the organizers, and the information campaign promoting the idea personally provoked a strong resistance in me. Whether it's the personality of Uladzimir Matskevich, the legacy of methodological teaching, a distrust of those political groups that immediately started "rooting" for the "movement," or something else unconscious. I wanted to understand myself, my intuitive signals, which is why I'm writing this text.

Who is Uladzimir Matskevich?

He calls himself a methodologist, and recently also a political philosopher. The key here is "himself," but more on that later.

He began an active public life in Belarus in 1993, when he was 37 years old. He returned from Russia and, it seems, made an appearance everywhere: the Ministry of Education, Soros, Charter'97, UCP (United Civic Party), ONT (state TV channel), and even in the BCD (Belarusian Christian Democracy) with the "Doctrine of Belarusian Conservatism."

But the main work of his life was "system-thinking-activity methodology." This is a philosophical-methodological direction that originated in the post-war USSR. Georgy Shchedrovitsky and Alexander Zinoviev are named as its ideologists.

Communist authorities saw potential in the movement and tried to use it to somewhat civilize the system. By the way, conspiracy theorists claim that the letter Z during Russia's attack on Ukraine appeared in honor of the school's founder, philosopher Zinoviev.

This does not mean that "methodologists" are proponents of communism or the "Russian world." Not at all. It's more of an attitude towards life, where, in fact, one doesn't care within which ideological framework to "methodologize." There's no need to explain the nature of such a worldview to a resident of the late USSR. In Putin's Russia, this type of people is commonly called technocrats.

This is not the first organizational-activity game (OAG) organized by Shchedrovitsky's Belarusian follower. The first took place exactly 22 years ago and led to the development of (attention!) a winning political strategy for Belarus (Strategy-2006).

It envisioned creating confidence in Belarusian society about the need to eliminate Lukashenka's regime by its own efforts, identifying a leader capable of defeating and replacing Lukashenka as head of state, and bringing the nominated leader to the presidency.

Even then, many in the democratic movement were skeptical of Matskevich's ideas, so it was decided to overthrow the regime independently by creating the "Rukh" (Movement) movement. Spoiler — the regime was not overthrown.

So what kind of game is this?

«He who places bets in the game wins. He who doesn't — loses even before it begins. Refusing to participate means, at minimum, that you will gain nothing. At maximum, you might find yourself sidelined from the process. If the game is successful and genuinely starts to change the direction of political and public forces, then those who did not participate will remain outside of this process. So I say simply: if you don't want to, don't participate. But I warned you,» — Uladzimir Matskevich harshly formulated his position in a comment to "Nasha Niva".

Participants are taken to a quiet place for a week. The process, to simplify greatly, consists of several stages: self-determination, conflict, creation of an "objective picture," and new self-determination. The game lasts uninterrupted for 10-12 hours, with sleep deprivation and constant psychological and reflexive pressure. All of this, of course, is necessary to "break through the routine."

Then a small group consolidates the result. The process is led by game technicians and their leader. No, not even that — "Game Technicians" and "LEADER".

Do you know what this is similar to? To the practices of a totalitarian sect or personal growth seminars, where the main thing is to push a participant onto psychological swings of "humiliation-approval," which cause powerful surges of dopamine and severe addiction. In everyday life, this can be encountered in families where spouses alternate scandals and reconciliations in a spiral, increasingly winding each other up at each new stage.

Imposter

Remember, we've already encountered self-determination. Matskevich audaciously declared himself a political philosopher. This is an interesting phenomenon. In "methodology," self-determination is not accidental. The game technician's goal is to break the usual rules of the game, to step outside the boundaries to find an unexpected solution, which is why conventional institutions harm the process. But self-determination also has a downside: in societies where tradition, institutions, filter systems, hierarchy, and continuity are destroyed or undeveloped, any collective farm chairman can take advantage of a momentary weakness and tell people whatever they want to hear.

If we translate self-determination to the field of a methodological game, it turns out that participants aren't so much self-determining as the game organizer becomes king and god to the participants.

Moreover, the game technician-leader is not elected by anyone, represents no one, and everything rests solely on trust and the participant's consent to temporary subordination.

In a classic OAG, the organizers are maximally removed from the real lives of the game participants, acting as an disinterested external party. Otherwise, the entire meaning of the game is destroyed — the organizer gains too much power in the process.

And perhaps this is what bothers me most, because Uladzimir Matskevich is the leader of one of the political groups in the democratic movement.

What do we get as a result? One of the political actors vying for leadership announces a methodological game and peremptorily demands that legitimate leaders participate in it.

Possessing negligible legitimacy, questionable expertise, and relying on manipulative practices, Uladzimir Matskevich lays claim to unquestioning obedience, while Tsikhanouskaya, Babaryka, Kalesnikava, Latushka — these are merely figures on the thinker's chessboard. Well, that's something...

Uladzimir Uladzimiravich, there's another suggestion. Elections to the Coordination Council will be held soon, and the submission of block lists for participation in the elections will close in a couple of days. Perhaps you could go to the elections, gain voter support, and then, from a position of moral and electoral superiority, invite everyone else to participate in the game. Otherwise, this all smells of political fraud. As they say, either take off the cross, or...

With all due respect, and without negativity.

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