Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko. Photo: Natalia FedosenkoTASS via Getty Images
Getting elected president in Belarus is usually pretty easy — so long as your name is Alexander Lukashenko, that is. The 65-year-old president has managed to romp home to victory no fewer than five times over the past 26 years, while also winning two referendums that made the constitution a little more to his taste. For Lukashenko the question is typically not “will I win?” but “how much will I win by?” Last time around he was content to sail home with a modest 84% of the vote; 100% would be a bit too Saddam Hussein, after all.
As a result, Belarusian elections are not something that many people pay much attention to. The Bush administration may have named Lukashenko the “last dictator in Europe” and “an outpost of tyranny” as long ago as 2005, but the country has never been high on anyone’s list of states due for regime change, whether driven from within or imposed from without.
Until now, that is. As Lukashenko approaches his sixth election on 9th August, he is suddenly facing something he is unaccustomed to: opposition. Multiple rivals have risen up to challenge him, while the usually sedate capital, Minsk, has seen major street protests. All kinds of reasons have been cited for the unrest, ranging from economic stagnation to his eccentric response to Covid (don’t worry, drink vodka) — although the fact that he’s been in charge since Clydebank’s own Wet Wet Wet were topping the charts with “Love is All Around” is probably enough to make anybody a bit weary. One unofficial Internet poll has his support at 6%. Another places it at 3%.
As a Lukashenko-watcher since 1997 I was, like the president himself, caught off-guard by these sudden developments. But does this mean that we should expect Ukraine-style upheaval? How to interpret this sudden flurry of reporting from journalists located in the countries next door? Will the bells of freedom ring, as they did for Ukraine, Georgia and Kyrgyzstan in 2004 and 2005 (and then again for Ukraine in 2014)?
Perhaps; yet it must be noted that Belarus has stubbornly gone its own way for a long time now. Although its predecessor state, the Byelorussian SSR, was part of the triumvirate of republics that dissolved the USSR in December 1991 without bothering to consult any of the others, it has, since those heady days, pursued a more conservative course than Russia and Ukraine, its partners in dissolution. Whereas the Russians put up with 10 years of lawlessness and corruption before electing a strongman to bring “order and stability”, and Ukraine has put up with 30 years of lawlessness and corruption and is yet to succumb to the temptation of electing a strongman, Belarus went for a strongman the very first time it held a presidential election.
But unlike the near-teetotal judo enthusiast Putin, Lukashenko was a very conventional type of strongman, already retro in 1994. With his combover and thick moustache he was the perfect image of a Soviet regional boss, as if he had been cloned in a test tube kept on a shelf at a dacha between a jar of pickles and a bottle of home made vodka that made grandpa go blind.
Born in 1954, Lukashenko came of age during Brezhnev’s era of stagnation. He studied at a teaching institute and agricultural academy, did a stint in the Red Army, and then worked as a manager on collective farms while plodding his way through a political career that led to him entering the Byelorussian parliament in 1990 — an inauspicious year to be elected a communist deputy, to be sure.
Lukashenko, in fact, was not at all keen on this whole independence thing. He opposed the break-up of the USSR and retained close contacts with the Russian communist party; in 1994 he addressed the Russian parliament and called for the creation of a new union of Slavic states. Lukashenko was less of a friend-to-oligarchs type and more of a state power type, seeking to preserve the USSR he had grown up in like one of those mammoths you occasionally find intact in a block of ice in Siberia.
There was to be no sudden privatisation; no flirting with NATO; no rebranding of the KGB; Russian, spoken by the majority of the country’s people, although a minority speak the closely-related Belorusian at home, would remain an official language, and the president gave all his speeches in it; Lukaschenko continued to pursue close ties with Russia, and in 1999 he and Yeltsin signed a “Treaty on the Creation of a Union State”, as if the course of history could be reversed at least a little bit.
The treaty was rather vague and hasn’t led to much. I was living in Russia at the time and Lukashenko’s passion seemed unrequited; not once did I hear a Russian yearn for the restoration of Belarus as they often did the Crimea. That said, his commitment to preserving Brezhnevian stagnation won the respect of some. Democracy had become a dirty word — demokratiya mocked as dermokratiya, or”shitocracy” — to the millions who had been swindled by so-called reformers and carpetbagging westerners. I remember talking to a Russian friend who had just returned from a trip to Minsk, the capital. “I hear it’s very soviet,” I said, assuming that he would go on a tirade against the dictator. “Yes,” he said. “It’s very good.”
And so Lukashenko was quite successful for a while, avoiding risk while delivering a stable, endurable poverty to his people, a task beyond many post-Soviet leaders. He told the BBC in 2012: “I would not say what happened in Russia in the 1990s was democracy, it was anarchy… we managed to nip these anarchic tendencies in the bud, we saved the country…” Lukashenko’s paternalistic approach earned him the nickname of “batka” — father.
His Soviet style was a strength in other ways: Europe’s last dictator he might have been, but he came from the tradition of dull Eastern European despots whose names and faces you can’t quite remember unless, for some reason, you take an interest in these things. Unlike Kim Jong-il he wasn’t a megalomaniac intent on starving his people into submission while drinking cognac and collecting nuclear warheads. The success of his policy of sustained dullness can be measured by a quick look at the archives of Vice which has 5,594 articles on North Korea and 149 videos compared to 29 articles and no videos on Belarus. If you’re boring, nobody cares; you’ll be left to your own devices.
Still, too much power for too long can do things even to the most tedious of dictators. I first suspected things were going to Lukashenko’s head in 2011 when he started taking his then 7-year-old son along with him to meetings with heads of state. Wee Kolya Lukashenko got to meet Pope Benedict and the Obamas and many other world leaders. Clearly disappointed by the adult sons his wife had borne him, Lukashenko was grooming his mini Slav sun king, whose mother was unknown, for power. When asked whether that was the case, Lukashenko responded with deadpan dictator humor: the boy was just very affectionate towards his father, he told the BBC, and couldn’t even go to sleep without him.
But this was not actually a sign of anything much: Lukashenko remained cautious and conservative. When Putin annexed the Crimea, he gave his first ever speech in Belarusian and attempted to distance himself from his powerful patron, but before long he was holding joint drills with Russia again. Earlier this year in a fight over energy prices with Russia he bought some Norwegian oil and invited Mike Pompeo to Minsk, but he was still a long way from the bitter exchanges that characterise Russia’s relations with Ukraine.
When the pandemic hit Belarus he was dismissive, suggested treating the disease by drinking vodka and went ahead with a Victory Day parade — but he was not the only leader to be dismissive of coronavirus; Boris Johnson was still boasting that he would keep shaking hands until not too long before he came down with a bad case of Covid-19 himself. (As it turned out, Lukashenko also contracted the virus, he now admits.)
In fact, it wasn’t rebellion against a grandiose act of eccentricity or tyranny that kicked off the open opposition this most retro of dictators now faces. Rather, the dam seems to have burst when a popular YouTuber, Sergei Tikhanovsky, cracked a gag about Lukashenko’s moustache, comparing it to a cockroach, and then took to driving around in a van with a giant slipper — the most popular form of pest control in the country — on it. All of a sudden, protestors took to the streets of Minsk with slippers in hand and foreign analysts were talking up a potential “slipper revolution.”
Tikhanovsky was tossed in prison, and he was swiftly joined behind bars by another opposition figure, Viktor Babariko, a 56-year-old former banker (not a trade typically associated with great probity in the former USSR, it must be said, and especially not when the bank is a branch of Russia’s Gazprombank). He was arrested before he could lodge his application to run for president, accused of financial crimes. Babariko’s arrest provoked outrage; protestors formed a two-mile human chain across Minsk. Another opposition leader, Valery Tsapkalo, also an erstwhile pillar of the regime like Babariko (he was previously ambassador to the US), fled to Russia with his two sons.
However, having neutralized these three men, their wives then united on a joint ticket to challenge Lukashenko. There are reports of opposition rallies outside the capital, in the cities of Grodno, Gomel and Brest. All of a sudden Belarus is not quite so dull and it seems that Lukashenko’s strategy of indefinitely extending the stagnation he grew up with may not be quite so tenable after all, especially as a new generation comes of age that has no memory of the Soviet Union, or even the chaotic 1990s, that were so chaotic elsewhere.
Lukashenko still has many levers at his disposal: throwing people in prison is usually an effective means of intimidation, as is going after their jobs (as Woke mobs know), and so is threatening their families. He blames nefarious foreign agents and has vowed that Belarus will not succumb to a Ukrainian-style revolution. And short of a mass uprising in which he suddenly loses control of the police or the army, I suspect he will be around for a while yet. But getting elected will never again be quite so easy, the romp home will be less convincing than before, and his KGB will be very, very busy for a long time to come. Lukashenko: still retro after all these years, only now with extra brutality.
Daniel Kalder is an author based in Texas. Previously, he spent ten years living in the former Soviet bloc. His latest book, Dictator Literature, is published by Oneworld. He also writes on Substack: Thus Spake Daniel Kalder.
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SubscribeI was in Belarus in the summer of 2011 – a time of minor crisis, since the Belarusian ruble was going through a period of instability, and the day’s exchange rate flashed out from neon signs along with the weather forecast. Some of the people I met were pro-Lukashenko, others anti. Some had mixed feelings, considering that Belarus, for all its flaws, was stable and orderly compared to Russia or Ukraine.
A number of people pointed out that the country’s pro-Russian orientation had been accidentally strengthened when Belarus’ Western neighbours entered the EU. In the 1990s, the journey from Minsk to Vilnius was quicker than and just as straightforward as that to some of Belarus’ own provincial capitals, and weekend shopping trips to Lithuania were common. Inhabitants of Brest or Grodno could easily pop over the border to Poland, where many (for historical reasons) had relatives.
With the accession of Poland and Lithuania to the EU, those soft borders suddenly became very hard indeed and links to the rest of Eastern Europe were partly sundered. One frustrated young man told me that if the people of working age could cross the border and find work elsewhere, Lukashenko’s regime would collapse in weeks, since he would be “left alone with the pensioners who vote for him.”
A fair account of what is going on in Belarus. I spent most of June and early July in Minsk. There is a lot of opposition to Lukashenko but apart from a few noisy demonstrations, it is mostly muted. What I often heard was nothing more aggressive than “I love Belarus, I don’t like my government.”
Even Lukashenko’s opponents admitted he adopted the right policy on the coronavirus, he kept their economy running and saved many jobs. Restaurants, hotels and shops have all been open for business. There has been no “lockdown”. No media propaganda to cow people into certain forms of behaviour. Social distancing has been non-existent and around one in 50 people (my estimate) wear masks. Life is as close to normal and pleasant as possible. And the death rate is far lower than in most countries in Europe.
Having personally experienced government responses to the coronavirus in the USA (confused, ineffectual and over the top in the eastern states), Germany (totally over-regimented nonsense) and Belarus (calm, ordered and maintaining normality), I know which country I would choose to sit out this virus. I am currently no longer there but would return without hesitation.
Belarus arguably had the ‘luxury’ of not having to lockdown. If all bordering neighbours shut their borders, you have a de facto lockdown.
Added to that, fewer than 400k tourists visit Belarus in a typical year (Poland c.20 million, Ukraine c.10 milion).
Interesting about Belarus though – would like to go
I define lockdown as what the unfortunate people of Melbourne VIC are now enduring, which is basically house arrest and a suspension of normal life for an indefinite period. This is certainly not the case in Belarus, where life is as normal as anyone could expect. Please also note that Belarus imposes no restrictions on incoming travellers through Minsk airport. I was able to get in and out without a problem and stay quarantine-free. It currently allows a 30 day stay without a visa and up to 90 days if you are unable to travel to another country for virus-related reasons. Contrast that reasonable and generous policy for foreigners with Boris’ hopeless screwup on quarantining even UK citizens returning to the UK from Spain.
What an excellent summary of the mature way Belarus is handling The Great Plague, in complete contrast to the shriekers and bedwetters of the West.
There is always some virtue in Dictatorship, that’s why the post was invented by the Roman Republic. You have provided a most apposite example. Thank you.
Thanks for your comment. The official Belarusian policy is not even a good example of “dictatorship”. Lukashenko has not forced anyone to do anything (unlike the increasingly Maoist Victorian government). He simply said to his people that this virus is overhyped and therefore, “do what you like and live normally”. It has worked. The streets of Minsk are not clogged with dead bodies. It’s a delightful city and I would encourage everyone from the West to visit and enjoy the magnificent architecture, friendly people, good food and safe public areas there. Plus, apropos Lukashenko specifically and for all his faults, I wish there were more similarly enlightened “leaders” in the West.
No agreed – don’t think I was clear enough in my comment.
What i meant is that Belarus has been in effect locked down from outside because even usually not many people go there, and furthermore all countries surrounding it have shut their borders.
What is the infection rate in Belarus? Has being slightly more insular than most European nations benefited them?
Check the official figures. Belarus has a large number of cases (68k+), as a lot of testing was done but it recorded a low number of deaths (548) to date. A lot of attention has been paid to Sweden (a country I was not allowed to enter in May) but Belarus allowed anyone to enter and stay without restriction. That’s why I ended up going there. I also met several Chinese tourists in Minsk in early July. They told me this was the only European country they could travel to in order to shop for luxury goods.
Having lived in Eastern Europe, many must be aware of what “liberal democracy” (much favoured by those freedom-loving billionaires we all know and love in the West, of course) will bring: a tiny minority will get very rich; a small quasi-middle class will emerge, who will do the professional work and be reasonably well paid; a large amount of people will be in precarious, low paid employment, with no chance to advance; and around 10% of the population will be more or less permanently unemployed.
Asset-stripping transnational corporations will descend like locusts and huge tech companies will arrive to facilitate and maintain the all-important data-crunching flow of international capital. Lots of young people will leave the country to work in other Eastern European countries like Ukraine or one of the smaller ex-Soviet satellites.
This template has been applied to all of the other former “communist” countries, with the US and the EU doing their best to foment unrest in e.g. the Ukraine and Georgia, just as they did their best to exploit Russia in the years after communism collapsed. I wish I could make a less cynical prognosis, but the masters of the universe are consummate professionals when it comes to the cynical exploitation and despoliation of small and vulnerable states.
Good article
I agree that he has probably survived by just being boring but I wonder how the economy fares? It is usually the most important thing for a ruler unless you want to rule with a NK style iron fist