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MU student from Belarus achieves success at international conferences

In his doctoral research, Andrei Kalavur from Belarus analyses the communication of supporters of the current authoritarian regime in Belarus. His research has attracted much attention at international conferences – most recently in Philadelphia.

Annual conference of Association for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES) conference has been held in various cities across the US for over sixty years. This time it was held in Philadelphia.

Under the supervision of Jan Holzer from the Department of Political Science, Masaryk University PhD student Andrei Kalavur is researching a topic that would get him into a lot of trouble in his native Belarus. When political repression in the country intensified in 2020, he was able to move to Brno to complete his PhD thanks to the newly established scholarship fund for Belarusian students, which Masaryk University set up more than three years ago to support students from Belarus.

As part of his scholarship-funded PhD, Andrei has spent the last three years researching crisis discourse in Belarus and Russia and how the public perceives appeals to fear. In his dissertation, which he plans to defend in October, he analyses hundreds of media appearances of Lukashenko’s and his supporters in the run-up to the elections to see which communication models he uses to legitimise authoritarian regimes and whether he also uses various techniques to manipulate the audience.

“The topic I am dealing with is rather under-researched. I found a lot of interesting information, the most important of which relates to the major shift in communication. While in 2015 there was no repressive context in pre-election communication, but mainly populism as a main discourse, in the 2020 presidential election and in the context of later protests and the start of the war in Ukraine, elements of stigmatisation, repression and fear appeals to fear began to be intensified in communication. Based on this change, I also predict the likelihood of a new wave of political terror in the future,” explains Kalavur.

Invitation to a conference with leading experts

The topic he is working on is of great interest to scholars around the world, and he has presented his work at several international conferences in Lithuania, Poland, the UK and the USA. Most recently, he presented a paper entitled “Monitoring Fear Appeal and Electoral Violence Strategies in Belarus” at the Association for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES) conference, a prestigious annual event that has been held in various cities across the US for over sixty years and brings together experts and specialists on Central and Eastern Europe, Russia, the Caucasus and Central Asia to share information and knowledge about the region.

Within this international forum, there is an informal research team focusing on Belarus, including historian David Roger Marples of the University of Alberta, Canada. It was he who approached Andrei Kalavur of Masaryk University with an offer to present the results of his research in Philadelphia as part of a panel on politics, propaganda and culture in contemporary Belarus.

“Professor Marples and I know each other through our academic and public activities. He is a renowned scholar and author of articles and books on Belarus, particularly on the cult of the Great Patriotic War under the Lukashenko government. I even cited his ideas in my dissertation. So I was very pleased when he offered me the opportunity to speak at such a prestigious conference and to present the results of my research to a community of experts from around the world. I could not refuse such an honour,” says Andrei Kalavur.

The journey from receiving an invitation to presenting at the conference in Philadelphia was, of course, quite challenging and the whole process took almost a year. First, Andrei had to write an abstract and summarise the results of his research in a 20-page document, which took almost four months to prepare. The abstract was then approved first by Professor Marples and then by the entire panel, along with the abstracts of other panellists from the Universities of Tennessee, Stockholm and Yale.

Belarus is still a big topic

When Andrei heard that his paper had been accepted and that he would have the opportunity to present his research at the ASEEES conference, he was thrilled. “I am very happy that a wider audience will learn about my research through the conference. During my almost 30-minute presentation, which I had been preparing for several days, I also talked about the system of oppression in Belarus. This system is based on the cultivation of fear and electoral violence, including physical assaults, searches, arrests, intimidation and a wide range of communication tactics that help to reinforce the whole system,” said the doctoral student, whose presentation received a great response and positive feedback from the audience.

For Andrei, the most interesting part of the conference was the opportunity to interact with people in the audience who had many interesting questions about his research and propaganda in Belarus. Some of their questions and comments even helped him improve his research. He also met several scholars from American universities with whom he was able to discuss a variety of topics. Members of the Belarusian diaspora in the United States even organised an after-party for the four panellists, including Andrei, where he had the opportunity to meet many interesting people.

“The whole conference was a great experience for me. Of course, Ukraine was the main topic, but there was also a lot of attention paid to Belarus, which is a big topic not only in terms of research, but also for national security reasons, because Lukashenko’s regime is unpredictable and poses a threat to its neighbours in the EU and Ukraine. All in all, it was very useful for me, and I am glad that I was able to represent MU there. In general, I am very grateful to Masaryk University for the way it has helped Belarusian students and I would like to see this support continue,” says Andrei Kalavur, who also organised a meeting of Belarusian students to thank Masaryk University for its support on Belarus Freedom Day last year.