Third Way (Belarus)

The Third Way is an international community of liberal-thinking young Belarusians living in Belarus and in the Diaspora. It was created as a mean of participation in public and political life of Belarus, as well as an open democratic discussion ground where the issues important for today’s and tomorrow’s Belarus would be discussed. It was established in August 2004 by Master’s degree students of the European Humanitarian University (EHU) and their colleagues. The reason for establishing the Community was that Belarusian authorities had closed the EHU down, as well as holding the unconstitutional referendum on prolongation of Lukashenka’s stay in presidential office.

The Community’s mission, goals, and principles

The Community’s mission: To foster Belarus’ modernization into a prosperous and competitive country with the priority of liberal values.

The Community’s strategic goals:

• Formation of a new generation of professional national elite of Belarus, diverse and yet common in their vision of the country’s future, on the basis of bright young Belarusian aged 15–30, living both in Belarus and abroad.
• Creation of stable and influential civic platform for containment of negative tendencies in Belarusian political life, its gradual modernization into professional value-oriented open-type system (with constant circulation of people inside it based on competition between their personal potentials).

Values of the Community’s participants

• Freedom of the individual as a human right for independent decision-making
• Responsibility as precondition for individual freedom
• Private property as a basis of an individual’s independence
• Conscious participation in society’s life as a precondition for society’s well-being as a whole
• Solidarity as a joint establishment and protection of common values
• Diversity as a precondition of society’s prosperity
• Tolerance as a right for other opinions, views, and lifestyles to exist
• Dialogue as a basis of public concord
• Honesty and openness as a principle of society’s existence
• Good will as a precondition of realization of all the goals mentioned above
• Labor as a precondition for individual’s self-actualization and society’s well-being

Principles of the Community’s participants:

• I want, I can, I do. Know what you want, be able to achieve what you want, be ready to make use of the achieved.
• Patience is most important. Be patient – what you want to achieved can’t be achieved at once.
• Don’t judge others more than yourself. Be patient to others’ weaknesses and critical to ones of your own.
• Help – and you’ll be helped. Help others in achieving their goals, and they will help you to achieve your own goals.
• All the world is inside us. Get to know yourself and foster your unique skills – this is the key to success.
• Learn not only to win, but to lose. Don’t be upset by your defeats, be grateful for new experience and learn by your own mistakes.
• Initiative is life. Be initiative, don’t let the circumstances suppress your individuality.
• Be significant. Do remember – your action or word can be decisive at some moment. Be ready for that.
• Faith is stronger than word “no”. Have faith! Have faith in yourself and in what you do!

Additional information

The Community’s distinctive traits: A distributed network structure based on usage of information technologies, bet on bright young Belarusians complying with quality standards of an elite’s representative.

Value orientation of the Community’s participants: Liberal values

Belarus’ foreign policy (the vision): Belarus’s neutral status, pragmatic relations with Russia, the EU, and NATO. No joining NATO and the EU, no annexation by Russia, reform of the Union State project into an economical rather than political union, participation in regional cooperation forums in the framework of national interests, responsibility for political and economic obligations taken by the country.

Sources

• The Community’s website: [1]
• The Third Way: About us [2]
• The Third Way’s Manifesto [3]
• Bat’ka – Masyana’s Belarusian Brother [4]
• Belarusian Cartoon Makers Defiled Lukashenka [5]
• The Third Way [6]
• The Third Way - 3dway.org [7]
• Alexander Lukashenka, the Victor of the Toons http://nmnby.eu/print/220805/cartoons_prn.html]
• Stand By Mode [8]
• The Third Way Presents Lukashenka with LuNet [9]
• Closer to March (I) [10]
• Belarusian Opposition Activist Captured in Russia for Extradition Purposes [11]
• Art v. Dictatorship Exhibition is Held in Washington [12]