Belorussian Self-Awareness and Belorussian Politics

Abstract

Every country in the CIS [Commonwealth of Independent States] has a unique "political face," and each has its own configuration of political forces, its own pace, and even its own direction of political development. Even so, Belorussia is a "quite special" country. No other country had so peculiar an "electoral revolution" as Belorussia did in 1994. No country displayed such readiness to unite with Russia. Nor is there any other country (not only in the CIS but also throughout the world) where the president, the first head of the first independent state in the history of his people, would triumphantly tear up his national flag, a symbol of independence, and say about his own people's language: "Nothing great can be expressed in Belorussian. The Belorussian language is an impoverished language. There are only two great languages in the world, Russian and English" (Narodnaia gazeta, 1 February 1995). Where do these peculiar features of Belorussian political life come from? And what kind of "strange" country can elect such a "strange" president?