A new study published in the Centre for European Policy Analysis Journal has revealed the role of the Belarusian IT sector in supporting democracy, its subsequent defeat and the mass exodus of IT professionals from the country.
Titled Belarus Digital Brain Drain – an Industry in Exile, the paper was initiated by an IT company founded in Belarus and written by Belarusian academic Tadeusz Giczan. It outlines how the IT community accelerated the anti-authoritarian revolution of 2020 and the subsequent pro-democracy movement.
The research highlights that IT facilitated the growing unrest through crowd-funded platforms and sophisticated digital solutions for documenting election rigging. Software was created to deanonymise the Belarusian security officers carrying out brutal assaults.
However, as the regime cracked down on the rebellion, all protest leaders and activists were arrested or forced to flee the country, leading to the IT sector becoming public enemy number one in the eyes of the Lukashenko regime.
The paper outlines the two waves of IT emigration (before and after the war) and the impact their departure had on the Belarusian economy. It also discusses the situation and prospects of those who left and those who stayed.
Professor Wilson, author of Belarus: The Last European Dictatorship and Ukraine Crisis: What the West Needs to Know, commented: ‘For a time in the late 2010s, Belarus became well-known for something other than being the ‘last dictatorship in Europe’. Its booming IT industry produced 6.5% of GDP, and produced famous global brands like Wargaming and Viber.
‘IT workers were at the forefront of the 2020 protests. They helped devise apps for exposing vote rigging; they coordinated and participated in demonstrations; and hacked the security services to expose their accountability for repression.’
The paper was presented at the 8th annual Belarus Studies in the 21st Century conference in April, which was hosted by the UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies, the Ostrogorski Centre and the Francis Skaryna Belarusian Library and Museum. It was sponsored by an international tech company of Belarusian origin.
Professor Wilson added: ‘Despite being in exile, many Belarusian IT specialists continued to work online for a post-Lukashenko Belarus. The dynamism that had benefited Belarus was dispersed, not destroyed. It was now benefiting Belarus’s Western neighbours, the global economy, and a hoped-for digital transformation of Ukraine under post-war reconstruction.’
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