Changing Belarus

ABSTRACT

Belarus’s president, Aliaksandr Lukashenka, has been in power for 27 years. This introductory essay provides an overview of his time in power and particularly the manipulation of elections and control of the process, including election results. Also discussed are the reasons for the longevity of the only president of Belarus to date: a relatively stable economy, close links with Russia, a “social contract” with the population, and lack of unity within the opposition. The article traces the unravelling of the regime as a result of failure to respond to Covid, a divide within the ruling elite, and mass popular support for the campaign of the unexpected presidential candidate Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaia. The regime, however, has remained in place largely through mass repressions and the backing of Russia, while the West has cut off relations and applied political and economic sanctions. Though the country appears to be at an impasse, public perceptions have changed, and Lukashenka’s future as leader appears limited.

RÉSUMÉ

Le président de la Biélorussie, Alexandre Loukachenko, est au pouvoir depuis 27 ans. Cet essai d’introduction propose une vue d’ensemble de son mandat, en particulier la manipulation des élections et le contrôle du processus électoral, y compris ses résultats. L’article discute également des raisons de la longévité du seul président de la Biélorussie jusqu’à présent : une économie relativement stable, des liens étroits avec la Russie, un « contrat social » avec le peuple et la désunion de l’opposition. L’article retrace l’effritement du régime en raisoon de la réponse insuffisante face au Covid, d’une division au sein de l’élite dirigeante et du soutien populaire à la campagne de la candidate surprise à la présidentielle, Svetlana Tikhanovskaïa. Le régime perdure pourtant, en grande partie grâce aux répressions de masse et au soutien de la Russie, tandis que l’Occident a rompu les relations et imposé des sanctions politiques et économiques. Bien que le pays semble être dans l’impasse, les perceptions de la population ont évolué et l’avenir de Loukachenko en tant que président paraît limité.

KEYWORDS:

• Belarus
• Aliaksandr Lukashenka
• Russia
• European Union
• Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaia

The 2020 election: the Belarus uprising

The date 9 August 2020 marked a turning point in the history of independent Belarus. The sixth round of presidential elections since 1994 saw three challengers to the incumbent president, Aliaksandr Lukashenka: two from the establishment (Valeryi Tsapkala and Viktar Babaryka) and one popular vlogger (Siarhei Tsikhanouski) with mass viewership on his YouTube channel. In itself, the appearance of such figures indicated disillusionment not only with the president but also with the traditional opposition parties, which had tried and failed to come up with their own unified candidate. Though none of the new challengers was allowed to run – two were arrested on dubious charges and the third fled the country – a fourth, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaia, the wife of the vlogger, was permitted to register as a candidate. The other campaigns, leaderless, united with her, with a team made up exclusively of women: Veranika Tsapkala, the wife of the former diplomat Valeryi; Maryia Kalesnikava, the campaign manager of Babaryka, the former head of the Belgazprombank; and Tsikhanouskaia.

Their campaign ignited Belarus, and despite state-contrived obstacles to their rallies, they received mass support across the country. The rallies were marked by music, speeches, and slogans, moderate in tone and cautiously avoiding any partisanship. They were neither for nor against Russia and the EU, and at the early rallies, both the official Belarusian flag and the opposition white-red-white flag were on display, but hardly omnipresent. Comparisons were made in the Western media to Ukraine’s Maidan protests of 2013–14, but they did not stand up to serious analysis. Different names were given to the Belarusian version, such as the Slipper Revolution – denoting the use of slippers to kill “the cockroach,” the name given to the president by the vlogger Tsikhanouski. After the initial arrests of candidates, the new term was the “Campaign of the Fighting Women.”

Lukashenka elicited further derision when an online opinion poll calculated his support at 3%. T-shirts and slogans worn by protesters and activists in Belarus carried the words “Sasha 3%” thereafter. A seasoned campaigner about to turn 66, Lukashenka appeared flustered by the epithet and even came to the streets to complain to ebullient campaigners. The atmosphere was one of excitement and anticipation because it appeared to herald a genuine change. But how did the country get to this stage? Why was 2020 so unusual? And what had happened to bring such changes to society?

The Soviet legacy

On 25 August 1991, Belarus declared independence and changed the name of the republic from the Belorussian (or Byelorussian) SSR to the Republic of Belarus. The change of status followed the declaration of state sovereignty a year earlier, following mass demonstrations of workers dissatisfied with their economic situation. Interestingly, this date has never been a state holiday and is rarely celebrated even by opposition parties. The Belorussian SSR had been something of an economic success story in the 1970s and early 1980s, its industries tied to those in other republics and its Communist leadership firmly tied to its Partisan traditions (former Partisans as leaders) between 1965 and 1980. Its western border was also the Soviet border and heavily militarized. Its main industries were machine building (notably tractors) and oil refining. To some, it appeared to have hardly progressed from the heavy legacy of German occupation in 1941–44, the destruction caused by the invaders, and the great battles on its territory. From the mid-1960s, the war became the central event in the state narrative and Belarus had its own heroes: Partisans (its forests and swampy lands had created natural conditions for this type of warfare), pilots, and the Minsk underground. The narrative about the past was exclusively Soviet rather than ethnic. Not only Belarusians were incorporated into this theme, but the Holocaust, in which some 600,000 Jews died, was barely mentioned.

Belarusian cities grew rapidly with industrialization, so that the former peasant society was transformed into an urban one. In the 1980s, when Soviet society began to change, the republic faced the consequences of the 1986 nuclear accident at Chernobyl, after which about 80% of its territory was contaminated by radioactive iodine and about 20% by the fallout of cesium and strontium. While the new Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev was beginning to denounce the crimes of Stalin, Belarus appeared to continue as before. The Communist Party controlled parliament, though its top leaders rotated frequently. Most residents spoke Russian either exclusively or as a first language. The Russification had begun in the 1930s after a brief experiment with the national culture in the 1920s. With growing urbanization in the 1960s and 1970s, the towns became the preserve of the Russian language, while Belarusian was largely confined to the shrinking villages and to the elderly who remained there while their children sought careers in the urban centres.

In 1988, the architect Zianon Pazniak and the engineer Iauhen Shmyhalouski “discovered” mass graves of NKVD victims from the 1930s in the Kurapaty forest, just north of Minsk. Pazniak, who was also one of the founders of the Belarusian Popular Front the following year, believed there were at least 30,000 corpses buried there and possibly as many as 250,000. His discovery was not entirely new, since reports about the graves had been circulating decades earlier, but it caused a sensation. The government formed a commission that concluded initially that the massacre had been carried out by the Nazi occupation regime, but Belarus began to see the sort of mass gatherings at Kurapaty that other republics had witnessed earlier. The Popular Front also supported a national revival and a focus on the national language. By 1990, Belarusian had been made the state language of the republic, and it was compulsory in higher educational institutions. Essentially, thereafter there were two versions of the Belarusian narrative: one based closely on the former Soviet one, and a national one that took its inspiration from the non- and pre-Soviet past, with an alternative flag and symbols.

Pazniak is a controversial figure. Born in 1944, he had emerged as the main figure in the anti-Communist opposition. Tall, ascetic, articulate, with a bald pate, he was perceived by some as too extreme, too far from the mainstream to attract a mass following. Popular Fronts were common across the Soviet space by the late 1980s. In the Baltic states, they held a majority of seats in the parliaments, as elections indicated, and they could carry those states forward to independence. In Ukraine, the Popular Movement, or Rukh, mounted a challenge to the Communist leadership, which was deeply entrenched. In Belarus, on the other hand, the Popular Front was ostracized and deprived of a voice. It moved to Lithuania to hold its founding congress. But it remained the main hope for change along a democratic and pro-Western path. Its rivals in the opposition were the Social Democratic Party, the United Civic Party, and, to some extent after 1991, the Belarusian Communists, re-formed following the ban on the official Communist Party of Belarus after the failed putsch in Moscow in August 1991. The Front had about 10,000 members in the late 1980s, and it generally supported the policies of Mikhail Gorbachev though it opposed the Communist Party, and it included Vasil′ Bykau, a famous writer of novels about the war years. It was also supported by Ales′ Adamovich, a leading Belarusian writer and founder of the Belarusian PEN Club, who had taken up residence in Moscow in 1986.

Outside the Communist Party hierarchy, the main figure was the chairman of the parliament Stanislau Shushkevich, a physicist aged 67 at the end of 1991 and perhaps best known prior to this period as a tutor of Lee Harvey Oswald, the assassin who killed President John F. Kennedy in November 1963 but who had earlier lived in Minsk for some time. He was appointed to office on 25 August 1991 and led the country through a tumultuous period. Shushkevich hosted the famous meeting at the Belavezha hunting lodge in the Brest region at which, together with President Boris El′tsin (Yeltsin) of Russia and President Leonid Kravchuk of Ukraine, they created the terms for ending the Soviet Union and forming the Commonwealth of Independent States.

Shushkevich was in a difficult position. His main achievement in office was to renounce the use of nuclear weapons on Belarusian territory and agree to their disposal in Russia. His attempts to introduce reforms ran into the obstruction of a Supreme Soviet stacked with Communists and headed by Prime Minister Viacheslau Kebich. His term as chairman ended with a vote of no confidence toward the end of 1993, initiated by an anti-corruption committee headed by Aliaksandr Lukashenka, then an obscure deputy, who accused 70 officials of corruption. In Shushkevich’s case, the accusation was using state funds for private purposes, and specifically using some nails for the construction of his personal dacha. Though Shushkevich remained active in politics, he never achieved his former eminence, and his campaign for the presidency in 1994 resulted in a total of only 9% of the vote.

Lukashenka comes to power

The first years of independence were also difficult times for the economy, which contracted as a result of the severance of ties with other Soviet republics. The election of 1994 followed the acceptance of a constitution for the independent state, which divided power between the president, the parliament, and a constitutional court. The situation in that year was in some respects similar to that in 2020: the effective leader of the country, Kebich, was the overwhelming favourite but widely distrusted and believed to be corrupt, and there was a weariness with the old Soviet establishment. The first and last of these phrases appear to be contradictory. But it was assumed that Kebich, from the control desk of the party hierarchy, had enough weapons to win. The outsiders turned on each other, but mostly on Pazniak as the alleged extremist. Lukashenka’s victory was clear. He was well in the lead in round one, and he won in a landslide in the run-off round against Kebich. Pazniak came in third in the first round with about 12% of the total vote.

The question is: why did voters opt for Lukashenka in a free vote? What was so special about his campaign? I would posit four reasons:

1. He was not associated with the party establishment or the opposition.¹

2. As the acting head of a parliamentary commission on corruption, he was clearly accepted as someone who was not corrupt.

3. He reassured voters that ties with Russia would be maintained and strengthened. Many Belarusians were uncertain of a future as an independent state and where it might lead. The old ties with Russia offered some security. Kebich had sought a military-security union, too, but politically he carried too much baggage.

4. All candidates had targeted Pazniak as someone likely to take the country into uncharted waters. The Russian speakers feared further moves toward Belarusianization. This focus diverted attention from the personality flaws and career background of Lukashenka, which were known. Even for the opposition, however, Lukashenka was perceived as the best of alternatives. In 1994, there was little to indicate he had any lust for power or desire to overturn state institutions and amend the constitution.

The situation in the first half of the 1990s was very uncertain. The loss of ties with former Soviet partners, the instability of the economy, and volatile changes in Russia all served to exacerbate anxiety. There was no powerful political movement based on ideology. Those in the best position were still the former party elite and a handful of new businesspeople connected with them. Pensioners and many in the rural communities had fallen on hard times. They saw Lukashenka as a lifeline, someone who would be committed to their interests and who, like them, remained nostalgic for the Soviet Union and in some respects might even restore it, or at least forge a union with Russia that would carry Belarus into the future. Some, like Viktar Hanchar (aged 36), a dynamic member of the Supreme Soviet who became deputy prime minister in Lukashenka’s first government, and Aliaksandr Feduta, a 29-year-old journalist and writer who became the president’s first press secretary, committed themselves to Lukashenka after initial doubts, believing he might also pursue a democratic path.²

We have focused on the reasons why Lukashenka became president in July 1994. Seen in the context of that difficult year, Ukraine had just replaced its initial president, Leonid Kravchuk, with a near-namesake with a very different personality: Leonid Kuchma, the former manager of a rocket factory and perhaps a more predictable figure. In Russia, Boris El′tsin had eliminated the threat from a recalcitrant parliament the previous October, using tanks to blast the building of the Russian White House and resulting in the deaths of some 150 people. Both of these neighbouring states had failed to find an easy solution to the question of post-Communist power. On the other hand, some links with the Soviet past remained, just as they did in Belarus. Thus, Belarus’s transition from the Communist regime to the post-Soviet one occurred peacefully, especially compared with the larger neighbour to the east. But how was Lukashenka able to remain in power for the next quarter of a century?

Lukashenka in power

The economic factor

There are some grounds to state that Lukashenka created a cult, or that a cult was created in his name. Anyone who visited Belarus in the 1990s became familiar with his photograph in bookstores, and it was not unusual to see icons with his portrait in cottages in the countryside. But if he was the object of a cult, it was not one that was universally accepted. His longevity, like that of any political leader, owes much to economic stability, a factor less present in Ukraine and Russia, the obvious points of comparison. Grigory Ioffe, one of the most cited authorities on Lukashenka and one who has met and interviewed the Belarusian leader, spends much time in the early section of his 2014 book Reassessing Lukashenka comparing the performance of the Belarusian economy with that of Ukraine and Russia. Noting that Belarus chose not to privatize the economy, but rather to maintain control through the state, he uses World Bank data to show the superior performance of the country when compared with its two neighbours. Thus, even at the height of the recession of 2009, Belarus still achieved a small rate of growth, whereas in terms of GDP per capita, that of Russia declined by 7.8% and that of Ukraine by 14.8% – the biggest decline in the post-Soviet period excepting the year 1994. Ioffe also argues that income distribution in Belarus was more equitable than in Ukraine and Russia, and that Belarus spent more funds on education and health than its East Slavic partners. He adds that, based on his visual impressions outside the capital cities, life in Belarus looks more comfortable.³

Belarus has been largely free from the sort of ruptures caused by the clashes between oligarchs, or between oligarchs and the government, very prevalent in Russia in the 1990s and present also in Ukraine. But much of the implicit progress can be attributed to Belarus’s close relationship with Russia, which provided subsidized exports of oil and gas during the presidency of El′tsin (1991–99) and in the early years of the presidency of Vladimir Putin. On paper also, relations with Russia became much closer, culminating in the signing of the Treaty on the Union between Belarus and Russia, founding the Union State, in 1999. On the other hand, Lukashenka resisted requests for a common currency, and the Union remained mainly on paper. From 1995 to the end of 1996, he succeeded through quasi-legal means (referenda) in enhancing his power, and in a sustained battle with the Supreme Soviet he was able to succeed – thanks to the mediation of Russia in the shape of Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin – in eradicating the original parliament as well as the constitutional court, the two organs that limited presidential rule. Thanks also to Russia, Lukashenka overcame an impeachment process initiated in Parliament.

Elections

Belarus had elections in the following years after 1994: 2001, 2006, 2010, 2015, and 2020. The first was the most significant because of the constitutional changes enacted after the referendum of 1996. In theory, the election should have taken place in 1999, after Lukashenka’s first five years in office. But the amendments to the Constitution dated the start of his presidency from 1996. The opposition, increasingly angry, carried out a mock election that was partially successful. There was also some international activity, a quest for a dialogue between the president and the opposition initiated by Hans Georg Wieck, the German head of the OSCE Advisory and Monitoring Group in Belarus. Eventually disillusioned by the duplicity of a president who paid lip service to the dialogue but ignored it in practice, Wieck supported the candidacy of a unified election candidate in the shape of the trade union leader Uladzimir Hancharyk. Some more likely candidates withdrew from the contest to allow Hancharyk an opportunity to succeed. Though Hancharyk’s campaign was quite successful, especially in the city of Minsk, Lukashenka officially won 77% support to Hancharyk’s 16%. Wieck’s sojourn in Minsk abruptly ended the following year when he was not permitted to renew his visa.

Other elections proved similarly futile, with Lukashenka officially winning huge majorities; none of the elections were regarded as free and fair by election monitors such as the OSCE or the Council of Europe. In the early years of the twenty-first century, a series of “colour revolutions” across Europe, the Caucasus, and central Asia resulted in changes of regimes in Serbia, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, and Ukraine. In Ukraine, the Orange Revolution of 2004 saw a repeat of the second round of elections that had been declared in favour of the former Donetsk governor Viktor Ianukovych (Yanukovych) and resulted in the victory of the opposition leader Viktor Iushchenko (Yushchenko), who spent the protests in an orange scarf. There were some hopes in democratic circles around Europe that something similar might happen in Belarus. The campaigns of several parties in the political opposition combined, which resulted in the candidacy of the Hrodna professor Aliaksandr Milinkevich, representing the United Democratic Forces of Belarus. The leader of the Liberal Democratic Party, Siarhei Haidukevich, who had also run in 2001, once again started a campaign, though he was widely regarded as an instrument of the president to make the election look more democratic. The opposition campaign was also not united because the former rector of Minsk State University, Aliaksandr Kazulin, decided to run on behalf of the Social Democratic Party. In his brief cameo on official television, Kazulin startled the audience by ripping up a photograph of Lukashenka and stamping on it. His presence in the election (and subsequent arrest) signalled the failure of the opposition’s unity campaign. All the same, the official results were far-fetched: 84.4% for Lukashenka, 6.2% for Milinkevich, 3.4% for Haidukevich, and 2.3% for Kazulin.

There followed what was termed the Jeans Revolution in Kastrychnitskaia (October) Square in the centre of Minsk, with the setting up of a tent city in extremely cold March weather. The protests lasted for several days before the tents were dismantled at night by OMON (Otriad militsii osobogo naznacheniia, Special Purpose Militia Unit) troops, violently and with many arrests. Notably, there were a number of foreign participants in the square, and the numbers averaged about 5000 per day. The use of force and lengthy prison sentences handed out – Kazulin received 5.5 years – paled when compared to the following election in 2010. In that year, the opposition once again was divided and fielded two candidates, the head of European Belarus, Andrei Sannikau, and the former chairman of the Belarusian Union of Writers, Uladzimir Niakliaeu. There were many others, including Ales′ Mikhalevich, head of the Modernization Union; the economist Yaraslau Ramanchuk, representing the United Civic Party; Mikalai Statkevich, the leader of the Social Democratic Party; and Vital′ Rymasheuski, the leader of the unregistered Christian Democratic Party. The campaign itself was relatively open and peaceful. The official results were again from the realms of fantasy: over 5 million votes for Lukashenka, and Sannikau second with 156,419.

A protest began in Kastrychnitskaia Square – possibly the weather was even colder than in 2006, for the month was December – but participants opted to move to Independence Square, the centre of the government, because the authorities had iced over Kastrychnitskaia and were playing blaring music. The protests were spearheaded by Sannikau and Niakliaeu. One of the opposition media sites announced a change of government. At some point, a window was smashed in the adjacent building that housed the Parliament and the police arrived en masse, wading into the crowds with batons. Over a period of about 15 minutes, according to a statement of Grigory Ioffe’s, over 700 were arrested, including seven people who had taken part in the election as candidates. Sannikau ended the evening on the square’s cobblestones, beaten senseless. Niakliaeu had been attacked on his way to the protests and beaten so badly that he required treatment in hospital. After the clashes in the square, police arrived and took him directly from his hospital bed. Opposition media outlets were closed. A period of cautious cooperation between Belarus and the EU ended abruptly with this night of violence.

The elections of 2006 and 2010 marked the peak of protests by the official opposition. The size of the crowd in December 2010 has been estimated at around 40,000, far more than typical protests in Lukashenka’s Belarus. Official repressions probably reached a peak by 2011, at which time the KGB were entering apartments and taking away laptops of known opposition figures. Street protests were banned, and people resorted to clapping to express their protests. In 2015, the presidential election ran smoothly, without the presence of opposition parties. The lone candidate ranked as an oppositionist, Tatstsiana Karatkevich of the Tell the Truth campaign, had little backing from the anti-Lukashenka camp. As a result of the peaceful campaign, the EU opted to suspend most of the sanctions it had imposed on Belarus in 2010. In truth, there is some evidence to suggest that the president remained relatively popular. One survey put his electoral support at 47%, insufficient for a first-round victory but likely enough to ensure victory in an imagined democratic second round. His lowest ranking had occurred four years earlier, when it had dropped to 27% – roughly the same as the estimated support for the official opposition.

But we should be clear. The victories were obtained in carefully managed campaigns. After the removal of Hanchar from the post of Chair of the Central Election Commission in 1996, the position was held by Lidziia Iarmoshyna, a lawyer who has never concealed her support for Lukashenka. The local commissions were all headed by Lukashenka supporters. Registration of candidates was carefully monitored. Those candidates deemed to present a problem could be barred from running by finding some discrepancies in their registration papers. Perhaps among the 100,000 signatures there were some misspelled names. Rival candidates were more or less cut off from official media, which was controlled by the president.⁴ Lukashenka did not campaign but was usually shown on television opening a new bridge or visiting a factory – in short, carrying out his duties above the fray and ignoring the statements of other candidates. Elections had become a five-year ritual, a means of demonstrating to the EU or United States that the façade of democracy was present in Belarus. Yet the results were preordained and bore no resemblance to the actual voting.

There were some other factors of note. Lukashenka, unlike Putin today, declined to have a presidential political party. His control over the Parliament was through the mass of elected independent deputies without party allegiance. By contrast, the opposition was divided among a variety of political parties that were often themselves split into several factions. At one stage, there were two Social Democratic parties, two wings of the Popular Front (after 1999, by which time Pazniak was an exile in Warsaw), the aforementioned United Civic Party, the Women’s Party, the Christian Democratic Party (which remained unregistered), and others. Some of the party leaders had longevity similar to that of Lukashenka. The principal point is the lack of unity in the opposition. Cut off largely from state funds, it became dependent on foreign aid, which enabled the president to point out that it lacked a domestic base. A similar practice was evident with NGOs such as the Fund for the Children of Chernobyl and organizations such as the Union of Poles in Belarus (representing the 400,000 ethnic Poles). This habit has persisted, and Lukashenka has steered clear of party affiliation.

However, he has never ruled alone. He maintains a coterie of allies, in his Cabinet and in key ministerial posts. He has promoted his older sons to positions of prominence in the security forces and in sporting organizations that are tied closely to state structures. He has responded violently to street demonstrations, made the powers of the KGB similar to if not greater than those of Soviet times, and paid singular attention to the army as the guarantor of state stability. Some Soviet features remain: the use of subbotniki (voluntary working Saturdays) to keep the streets and countryside clean, the Union of Patriotic Youth, which superseded the Komsomol and took over its building after independence, and the traditional cavalcade for the president both entering and leaving the presidential palace. Ceremonies have likewise followed the Soviet tradition: 9 May remains Victory Day and the largest parade of the year. Since 1995, the day of independence has been 3 July, the date of the liberation of Minsk in 1944, and also in 1995 the white-red-white flag used from 1991 reverted to the former Soviet red-green flag, without the hammer and sickle.

2020: Lukashenka’s blunders

In 2020, Lukashenka made several errors that suggested he was losing some of the political prowess he had shown in the past. He failed to respond to the pandemic of Covid-19, scoffing at it and making what he evidently took to be humorous statements about remedies of drinking vodka or driving tractors. His insistence on holding the Victory Parade in May amid the pandemic and not cancelling matches of the Belarusian soccer league – the only one operating in Europe at the time – further angered the public. There was further derision at the official figures of Covid casualties coming from the Ministry of Health – particularly the death rates – when compared with other countries of similar size.

Lukashenka clearly had not anticipated that rival candidates might emerge from within the ruling hierarchy rather than outside it. A unified candidate from the opposition was anticipated. And in Viktar Babaryka and Valeryi Tsapkala, he faced the possibility of campaigning against two figures who had good standing in and close associations with Vladimir Putin’s Russia. In fact, he may have perceived their coming forward to run against him as a signal that Russia wanted to be rid of him, a plausible theory given the tensions between Lukashenka and Putin, both personally and on a variety of contemporary questions such as oil and gas prices, Putin’s demand for a Russian air base on Belarusian territory, and Russian pressure for closer integration using the already existing base of the Russia–Belarus Union. Russian oligarchs have intruded into the Belarusian economy, buying over recent decades the gas transit line and several large machine-building enterprises. Lukashenka has rigidly protected his main money-making factories, such as Belaruskali, one of the world’s major producers of potash, and Hrodna Azot, which produces fertilizers and nitrogen compounds.

If Lukashenka did suspect he was facing a threat of regime change from the east rather than the west, he acted with unfortunate clumsiness. First, on 29 July 2020, the KGB’s Alfa Group arrested a group of 32 Russian mercenaries from the Wagner Group staying at a Minsk sanatorium before flying out to a mission in the Sudan. The existence of the group is officially denied by the Russian government, but its activities are well documented. It played a critical role in the intervention in Ukraine, both in Crimea and in the Donbas, and it also took part in the war in Syria. The men could have been in Minsk only with the agreement of the two presidents, and thus it made little sense for Lukashenka to accuse them of being part of a terrorist threat to overthrow him, and to have them arrested. Indeed, this was a crucial moment because had Russia chosen to extricate them, it may well have removed Lukashenka at the same time.

Lukashenka’s second move was to arrest Tsikhanouski (29 May 2020) and Babaryka and his son Eduard (17 June 2020). As Veranika Tsapkala suggests in this issue, Valeryi Tsapkala was also on the verge of arrest, but he managed to flee to Russia (24 July 2020). His choice of location was no accident. For one thing, there was no security on the border between Russia and Belarus, but for another, Russia was perceived as being friendly toward the Belarusian establishment, which included Tsapkala. Thus, at the start of the election campaign, Lukashenka was acting on the assumption that his main enemy was Putin. Only when the Russian leadership did not respond strongly to the detention of the Wagner Group or to the arrest of the two elite candidates did Lukashenka gain some confidence.

Third, however, he compounded the dilemma by heaping scorn on Tsikhanouskaia, once she registered as a presidential candidate in place of her husband, and in particular on her gender. Women should not be allowed to run for president because they had not served in the army, the president commented in derision. Women, in his view, had no place in state affairs – notwithstanding his past reliance on Iarmoshyna to control the election processes at each stage. But Iarmoshyna had never challenged him for the presidency. In essence, he had offered a challenge to more than half the Belarusian population. Women not only played the main role in the opposition’s campaign – especially the three women who drew huge crowds: Tsikhanouskaia as the official candidate; Veranika Tsapkala, the wife of Valeryi; and Maryia Kalesnikava, the dynamic campaign manager of Babaryka – in the early post-election protests, too, women were prominent.

These unusual blunders from the long-time president may suggest complacency, or they may indicate weariness or some mental decline on the part of Lukashenka. There was an additional factor in the role of social media. Past elections had been carefully controlled, and a key element was the administration’s hold over official media. Even in 2020, Tsikhanouskaia was allotted only a very brief time on national television, traditionally monopolized by the president. Social media are not new, but they had not been harnessed fully in past elections. The opposition candidate and her entourage were all in their late thirties or early forties. Lukashenka was 66, a generation older. Moreover, there was a very youthful tinge to the Tsikhanouskaia campaign. Students, professionals and those who travelled abroad widely communicated beyond the stifling state propaganda that came out of Minsk. The government failed completely to predict or prevent the massive surge of articles and information that came through social media, with the Telegram channel NEXTA leading the way.

Another major mistake came on election night with the announcement of the results. In past elections, the margin of victory was always substantially inflated, but there is not much evidence to suggest that in 2001, 2006, 2010, or 2015 Lukashenka actually lost the election. Oleg Manaev, a contributor to this issue, and his team conducted regular surveys throughout the presidency that showed Lukashenka’s support was somewhere between 27% and 47%, far higher than that of any of his rivals. One can debate why this should have been the case, but their key statement is that in the earlier elections, even had they gone to a second round, Lukashenka would probably have emerged as the winner had the vote been counted accurately. In 2020, it was not so clear. In Minsk, Hrodna, Viciebsk, and other cities, mass crowds came out to support Tsikhanouskaia. She had the momentum, and she was clearly ahead in Minsk and other cities. Manaev has suggested elsewhere that not everyone was so convinced and that Lukashenka retained some core support. But he does not deny that the vote would have been a close one; in his view neither candidate could have won a majority in the first round.⁵ Thus, the announcement that Lukashenka won 80% and Tsikhanouskaia less than 10% was perceived as outrageous – a demonstration of the contempt of the ruling elite for the wishes of the population.

There is one other element to consider. In the past, Lukashenka had had no written law to the effect, but he had had an unofficial, orally stated, social contract with the population. In brief, he promised to care for the people of Belarus in terms of wages and pensions. He was a populist who travelled widely around the country, conversing with villagers and factory workers. They could also admire a president who was physically active, taking part in his own hockey team, and who above all associated himself with the state in such a way that the state, in his view, was Lukashenka, and Lukashenka was the state. Ironically, the encroachments and petty disputes with Russia served to strengthen these seemingly absurd statements.

Thus, over the period 2005–20 – and particularly in the first five of those years – Belarus changed its official narrative from one clearly directed toward Russia and working with Russia to one focused on the existence and future of a Belarusian state. Billboards and shop windows were adorned with slogans such as “For a Happy Belarus!” and “For a Prosperous Belarus!” Each carried images of the state, Soviet-style: a field of corn, the military, or the war victory. The Belarusian national anthem began to be played on television at the end of the evening. Even Lukashenka himself, whom many foreigners had believed to be unilingual, began to offer some speeches in Belarusian, a language hitherto identified with the official opposition. Gradually, the authorities appeared to take some interest in the historical past of the Belarusian state. The presidential newspaper, Belarus′ segodnia (Russian language), began to focus on the year 1918 and the first declaration of independence, prior to the end of the First World War. The date 25 March 1918 had always been the occasion of an opposition march and other activities.

Had these measures been taken to their logical conclusion, then Lukashenka might have ridden a wave of patriotism to take Belarus into the modern era. The soft nationalism endeared him to a wider audience. It perplexed the opposition in the same way that the Ukrainian national movement, Rukh, had been taken aback in 1991 when the Communist leader in parliament, Leonid Kravchuk, suddenly revealed himself as a patriot and nationalist, thereby paving the way to become Ukraine’s first president. In many ways it made sense. Belarus had been independent for some 14 years, and most Belarusians were content with independence, as polls demonstrated. Yet under the leadership of Lukashenka such a movement could be allowed to go only so far. It allowed him some leeway in discussions with Russia, but the official narratives remained very much tied to the Soviet past, especially to victory over the Nazis in 1945. Just as he declined to privatize the economy for the country to advance, so he refused to go very far from the images he had used in the past to explain the local identity.

In 2020, there was nothing to suggest that Lukashenka’s quest for re-election offered anything new. There were no manifestoes or slogans, and not even any campaigning. Lukashenka took to the streets only once he realized that he was being mocked by the opposition. The vlogger Tsikhanouski referred to him as a “cockroach,” and the “Sasha 3%” slogan appeared on clothing and on buildings. Lukashenka was heckled by factory workers. These were all signs that perhaps his era was ending – and yet he managed to remain in power. Lukashenka remains despite months of protests that saw as many as 250,000 protesters in the streets of Minsk, while most of the opposition is either in jail or has been forced to move abroad. Not a single major opposition figure is free today in Belarus. The question is why.

Why Lukashenka remained in power, 2020–21

Though the future of the new Belarus remains uncertain, the Lukashenka regime remains in place, battered and bruised, ostracized by the Western world that has applied some of the strongest sanctions seen to date, but still intact and characterized by repressions and extreme brutality against any signs of overt opposition. One can posit three main reasons why it has remained.

First, much of the ruling structure has remained loyal to Lukashenka rather than defect to the opposition. The reasons are debatable, but security forces and the cabinet are directly responsible to the president and would share his fate if he were to be removed or put on trial. The most intriguing case is that of Foreign Minister Uladzimir Makei, who has been added to the Security Council, which is now listed as the recipient of full powers should the president step down. Makei frequently addressed the German-initiated Minsk Forum and was at the forefront of the Dialogue with the European Union, supported and promoted by some of the more liberal elements of official Belarus as well as by those in the West who had regarded Lukashenka as a viable option to offset and limit the advancement of Russian aggression further to the west. But from the outset of the protests of 2020–21, Makei has remained outspokenly loyal to Lukashenka and dismissed the case for regime change, whether through a new election or through a new constitution. He is thus directly associated with the thuggery and brutality that has taken place.

The security forces and the KGB gained some advantages by supporting the status quo. The former receive high wages for their lengthy hours patrolling the streets looking for white-red-white flags or demonstrators, or just people who look likely to be opposed to the regime. No doubt, many had some anxious moments and may have considered their options. But the beleaguered president chose to remain in Minsk. Arguably, one reason why they have remained loyal to Lukashenka is the second factor, namely the attitude of Russia toward the old presidency.

I have commented on the divisions between Russia and Belarus, and on the arrests of the Wagner Group at the beginning of the election campaign. Moreover, there was little in the campaign of Tsikhanouskaia’s team to suggest that it was pro-Western or in any way anti-Russian. On the contrary, Tsikhanouskaia made several appeals to Vladimir Putin and indicated her willingness to work with him should she win the election. But clearly, by November 2020, a decision was made in Moscow that the best option was to support Lukashenka. The mass protests in Belarus after the election coincided with large-scale anti-government protests in the Russian city of Khabarovsk, and the events in Belarus also took place alongside the attempted poisoning of the Russian opposition leader Aleksei Naval′nyi. For Putin and his team, what was happening in Belarus was very similar to what had happened during the colour revolutions of the early twenty-first century and in Ukraine’s Maidan in 2013–14. In short, it was put into the context of anti-Western rhetoric, and it had to be eradicated.

Notably, around this same time, the foreign policies of Belarus and Russia became intertwined. Russian media took over Belarusian TV networks after some Belarusian broadcasters left their positions. The rhetoric emanating from Minsk then began to resemble that of Moscow, and it took a very anti-Western tone. By the fall of 2020, Lukashenka himself began to use sycophantic language toward Putin and to state that the demonstrations were instigated and financed by the West, citing as evidence the exiled Tsikhanouskaia’s frequent meetings with European leaders in Germany, the UK, France, the Baltic states, Poland, and Sweden. Russia revived the Union with Belarus and began to add substance to it. In the first half of 2021, Lukashenka made six foreign trips; all were to Russia, either to Moscow or Sochi. The one-way direction was symbolic: Lukashenka came to Moscow to ask for help and Putin obliged, with conditions attached. Initially, Russia promised a loan of $1.5 billion. In 2021, the two states renewed the joint military exercises of Zapad (now Zapad 2021), envisaging the response to an attack by a NATO country. In turn, the Russians have refused to hold even a conversation with Tsikhanouskaia or the Coordination Council that she established to work out the terms for a regime change.

Matters were exacerbated in May 2021 when Lukashenka made another irrational move: to force a Ryanair flight from Athens to Vilnius to land in Minsk on the pretext that the Hamas organization had planted a bomb on board. After the plane landed, the authorities kept it on the ground at Minsk International Airport for seven hours before arresting Raman Pratasevich, a key coordinator of the protests through the NEXTA Telegram channel, along with his Russian girlfriend, Sof′ia Sapega. The alleged Hamas letter was crudely constructed and convinced no one, and the European Union, United Kingdom, and United States were horrified at this contravention of international flight rules. Several countries banned the Belarusian Airline Belavia – an innocent bystander to the events – and the sanctions imposed after the hijacking were the heaviest to date, hitting exports and Belarusian assets abroad. Pratasevich confessed under torture to his alleged crimes against the state and was confined to house arrest. The event solidified the wave of Western anger at Lukashenka and pushed him further into the Russian orbit.

The third factor pertains to the nature of the protests between August and December 2020. There were clear opportunities to remove Lukashenka, to take over the presidential residence and arrest members of the Cabinet. But the protesters opted for a peaceful approach. In Tsapkala’s words (see her interview in this issue), “Not a single glass was broken.” The mildness negated the purpose. Modern mass protests such as those of the Arab Spring, particularly with reference to the regime of Qaddafi in Libya, have rarely succeeded without some use of violence or armed force. Perhaps the result would have been civil war, but there was a visible moment when the situation could have changed. On 23 August 2020, Lukashenka and his 15-year-old son Mikalai alighted from a helicopter outside the Presidential Palace, bizarrely wearing bullet-proof vests and holding Kalashnikovs, as though ready to fire on the crowds of protesters. The president was obviously shaken and ready to fight for his survival. But no attack took place.

The arrest of Pratasevich notwithstanding, the protests were essentially leaderless. One advantage of such a structure was that the Belarusian security forces had few people to target other than the old, traditional opposition leaders. Of the potential leaders, Babaryka, the most viable candidate to unseat Lukashenka, was in prison. Tsikhanouskaia and the leader of the Coordination Council were both operating outside Belarus. No one was in a position to take power, or to give orders to do so using force. The passivity might be perceived as a feature of the Belarusians. The possible consequences, including a Russian intervention – which looks far more plausible today in such a situation than it did in August 2020 – might have injected some fear. But in every respect the opposition protests lacked purpose, other than to remove Lukashenka, release political prisoners, and hold new elections, none of which would have been possible without the use of force. That failure to act separated Belarus from the Maidan uprising in Ukraine, where in the latter part of February 2014 the demonstrators resorted to violence and attacks on buildings.

The future

One might posit that Belarusians retained the option of peaceful change. But today, no changes can be finalized without the assent of Russia. Lukashenka has continued to talk about a new constitution, which is to be issued in the spring of 2022. He has resisted Russian attempts to install and finance pro-Russian political parties that can represent their interests in the future Belarus. Yet he is almost totally reliant on Moscow to remain in power. Thus, one might consider 2020 to have been a failed attempt to change Belarus, to remove the dictatorship and move toward a democracy, most likely through new elections, freeing political prisoners, and issuing a new constitution that re-empowers the parliament and perhaps a constitutional court along the lines of the original constitution of 1994.

In this collection, the authors have examined a variety of topics on the Belarusian Uprising, its context, and its consequences. They cover ethnography (Hervouet), politics (Kulakevich and Augsburger), foreign policy (Pierson-Lyzhina), the theatre (Moskwin), media (Manaev, Rice, and Taylor), and an inside look at the campaign of the three women opposition leaders (interview with Tsapkala). They analyze a period when Belarus went from a virtual unknown to the world media to a state that was capturing headlines daily – for weeks. The period has received such epithets as the Belarus Uprising, the New Belarus, and the Slipper Revolution, and it has seen the country come under unprecedented analysis.

But it is within the country that the biggest change has taken place, despite the repressions, arrests, tortures, and the people forced into exile. There has been a discernible change of mindset. The onset of the pandemic forced the public to take matters into its own hands, to raise money for doctors and take protective measures. The election campaign changed the way of public thinking and destroyed the illusion of a president who took care of his people. The authoritarian regime in many ways revealed itself for what it is, namely a retrogressive system of government that appears caught in a time warp and is gradually being brought under control by Moscow.

These events have also destroyed the illusion of a more democratic Belarus within the European Partnership Program, or of a dialogue between its leaders (the current leaders) and the countries of the European Union. Its future remains very uncertain, but not everything that occurred in and after the election of 2020 has been negative. It might be termed a glimpse of a potential future and one that could harness the talents of a well-educated and technologically savvy country in the heart of Europe. Finally, there is no long-term future in supporting Lukashenka, a fact that is obvious to the Russian leadership. But Russia ideally would like more control over Belarus’s future than it has had to date, and thus for the time being it is expedient and safer to back its ally, troublesome as he may be.

Chronology of Lukashenka’s rule in Belarus

1991–2019

25 August 1991: Belarus declares independence.

15 March 1994: Constitution is issued.

23 June and 10 July 1994: First presidential election, won by Aliaksandr Lukashenka.

14 May 1995: Government referendum gives Russian language equal status with Belarusian, adopts new national symbols and state flag, promotes economic integration with Russia, and mandates early elections if Parliament violates the Constitution.

24 November 1996: Government referendum changes Independence Day from 27 July to 3 July, expands powers of the President, changes laws on land, and retains the death penalty.

8 December 1999: Agreement on formation of the Union State of Russia and Belarus signed by presidents Boris El′tsin (Russia) and Aliaksandr Lukashenka (Belarus).

9 September 2001: Lukashenka wins presidential election with 77.4% of votes; challenger Uladzimir Hancharyk receives 16%.

17 October 2004: Government referendum allows Lukashenka to run for a third term (88.9% in favour).

19 March 2006: Lukashenka wins presidential election with 84.4%; Aliaksandr Milinkevich of the United Democratic Forces of Belarus receives 6.2%. Mass protests follow (“Jeans Revolution”).

19 December 2010: Lukashenka wins presidential election with 79.65%; Andrei Sannikau, leader of European Belarus, receives 2.43%. Election ends with mass protest and 700 arrests, including those of seven presidential candidates.

2011: KGB crack down on opposition.

16 April 2015: Belarusian government issues “social parasite law” to fine adults working less than 183 days per year. It sparks mass protests in 2016 and early 2017.

11 October 2015: Lukashenka wins presidential election with 84%; Tatstsiana Karatkevich of the Belarusian Social Democratic Party (Assembly) receives 4.48%.

9 March 2017: Lukashenka suspends “parasite law.”

2020

31 March: In interview with the Times (London), Lukashenka encourages Belarusians to drink vodka and go to the sauna twice per week to stay healthy amid the Covid-19 pandemic; he refuses to take measures to protect the population.

5 May: House of Representatives announces the date of the presidential election as 9 August 2020.

7 May: Popular YouTube vlogger (“Country for Life,” Strana dlia zhizni) Siarhei Tsikhanouski announces his intention to run for the presidency.

15 May: 55 people apply to enter presidential campaign, including Tsikhanouski, Viktar Babaryka (former chairman of Belgazprombank), and Valeryi Tsapkala (founder of Hi-Tech Park and former ambassador to the USA and Mexico).

29 May: Tsikhanouski and nine members of his initiative group arrested at rally in Hrodna. Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaia, his spouse, declares she will run in his place.

18 June: Viktar Babaryka and his son Eduard are arrested.

30 June: Five presidential candidates rejected, including Valeryi Tsapkala (allegedly insufficient valid signatures to run).

14 July: Babaryka denied permission to run for president on the grounds of income discrepancies. Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaia registers as a presidential candidate

16 July: Headquarters of Tsikhanouski, Babaryka, and Tsapkala unite to support the candidacy of Tsikhanouskaia.

24 July: Valeryi Tsapkala flees to Russia.

30 July: Tsikhanouskaia challenges Lukashenka to debate on TV; the challenge is ignored. Over 60,000 attend Tsikhanouskaia rally in Minsk, one of largest rallies ever seen in Belarus.

8 August: Central Election Commission announces over 31% of electorate filed early ballots.

9 August: Official election results: Lukashenka 80.1%; Tsikhanouskaia 10.1%, 84% turnout. Mass protests begin in major cities. Widespread arrests and detentions by security forces begin.

10 August: Tsikhanouskaia flees to Lithuania, citing the safety of her children. NEXTA Telegram channel in Warsaw announces over 1 million subscribers.

14 August: Tsikhanouskaia announces formation of Coordination Council, with membership open to all who believe election results to have been falsified. Its goal is the transfer of power from Lukashenka.

16 August: An estimated 200,000 protesters join the Freedom March in Minsk, the largest demonstration in the country’s history.

19 August: Coordination Council elects presidium of seven members, including former minister of culture Pavel Latushka, Maryia Kalesnikava, and Sviatlana Aleksievich, the Nobel Prize-winning author. All members living in Belarus are subsequently arrested except Aleksievich (she leaves Belarus on 28 September).

21 August: Over 70 websites blocked in Belarus.

1 September: UN human rights experts document over 450 cases of torture against detainees and confirm four deaths.

15 September: On behalf of Russia, Vladimir Putin offers US$1.5 billion loan to Belarus during meeting at Sochi with Lukashenka.

17 September: European Parliament recognizes Coordination Council as interim government of Belarus.

29 September: Protester Denis Kuzniatsou is arrested and taken to Akrestsina prison. On 3 October, he dies in hospital of a “grade 3 brain injury,” allegedly after falling out of his bunk. He had reported being beaten by guards at the prison.

2 October: EU sanctions 40 officials believed responsible for political repressions and vote rigging.

12 October: Coordination Council asks Lukashenka to cease repressions and step down from presidency by 25 October.

11 November: Raman Bandarenka, an art designer, is abducted from his home near the Square of Changes in Minsk and beaten severely. He dies of his injuries in hospital the following day.

15 November: Human Rights Watch states that over 25,000 people have been arrested in Belarus since August, many of them women.

19 November: Belarus KGB announces 726 “terrorists” on wanted list, including two citizens of Belarus: the founders of NEXTA Telegram channel Raman Pratasevich and Stsiapan Putsila.

3 December: TUT.BY, the most popular website in Belarus, loses accreditation; this follows a general crackdown on and arrests of journalists.

2021

25 March: Hundreds arrested at traditional Freedom Day March in Minsk.

23 May: A Ryanair flight from Athens to Vilnius is diverted to Minsk by Belarusian authorities, who arrest Pratasevich and his Russian partner, Sof′ia Sapega.

24 June: EU imposes broad economic sanctions on Belarus with focus on its exports and access to finance in response to Ryanair incident.

6 July: Viktar Babaryka given 14-year prison sentence for corruption by a Minsk court.

28 July: Tsikhanouskaia meets with US President Joe Biden at the White House. Biden expresses support for “people of Belarus in their quest for democracy.”

6 September: Babaryka campaign manager Maryia Kalesnikava given 11-year prison sentence. At the same trial Maksim Znak (lawyer, Coordination Council and Babaryka team member) gets 10 years.

9 September: Putin and Lukashenka meet in Moscow, announce road map for economic integration leading to federal union, but no documents signed.

16 September: Russia launches Zapad-2021 joint strategic exercise with Belarus, involving over 200,000 troops.

30 September: Human rights organization “Viasna” announces that there are 715 political prisoners in Belarus, including its chairman Ales′ Bialiatski (arrested 14 July 2021).

October–November: Migrant crisis escalates as over 2,000 migrants from the Middle East and Asia gather on the border with Poland. Many were transported by Belarusian military trucks. They have little food or funds to survive without help. Poland, Lithuania, and Latvia maintain that the authorities in Minsk facilitated the crisis in response to Western sanctions against the Belarusian regime.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

David R. Marples

David R. Marples is a Distinguished University Professor in the Department of History, Classics, and Religion at the University of Alberta. A specialist on Belarus and Ukraine, he has authored 20 books on topics such as Stalinism, Chernobyl, and twentieth- and twenty-first-century history and politics. Among his contributions on Belarus are “Our Glorious Past”: Lukashenka’s Belarus and the Great Patriotic War (Central European University Press, 2014) and Understanding Ukraine and Belarus (E-International Relations, 2020).

Notes

1. Nelly Bekus cites the late Vital′ Silitski, who commented that Lukashenka presented an image of someone associated neither with the government nor with the opposition, and in this way he was able to pick up support from uncommitted voters. Bekus, Struggle over Identity, 89.

2. Both would suffer as a result. Hanchar was kidnapped off the street in Minsk and murdered on 16 September 1999, together with his friend, the businessman Anatol′ Krasouski. Hanchar had been chairman of the Central Election Commission briefly in 1996, but he strongly opposed the referendum through which Lukashenka increased the powers of the presidency. In April 2021, Feduta was arrested in Russia and handed to Belarusian authorities, accused of trying to overthrow and assassinate the Belarusian leader.

3. Ioffe, Reassessing Lukashenka, 29–33.

4. There were some minor exceptions. Candidates in 2006 received two 30-minute slots on television.

5. See the interview with Manaev, “Sotsiolog.”