President Lukashenko speaking at the Republic Day parade in Minsk, July 2006. His election as president in 1994, at age 40, surprised many in the international community. (AP)
Alexander Lukashenko has a hobby. The president of Belarus likes to change the names of streets in Minsk, his capital city. And so without any prior warning, the names of about 10 main thoroughfares have been changed in the past three years. The president issued an order, and Marsharov Prospekt is now known as Prospekt Pobyedityly (Victors' Boulevard). The memory of Marsharov, who toward the end of the Soviet era was one of the most popular politicians in Belarus, was not entirely expunged - the road named for him was simply moved a few kilometers to the north. A day or two after the presidential order was issued, the street signs in downtown Minsk were replaced and new tourist maps were ordered from the printing presses.
Like every directive from above, this order of Lukashenko's was received in Belarus with apathy. Not one of the 10 million residents of the post-Communist state went out to demonstrate, no one asked what was behind the name change; nor did anyone seem to care why it was carried out through a direct order of the president. Residents of Belarus are already accustomed to caprices of this sort - Lenin Square has had its name changed to Independence Square four times - and back again.
"Here, one person decides on everything," declares Dr. Alyaksandr Sasnov, deputy director of the Independent Institute of Socioeconomic and Political Studies. "One person decides on the names of the streets and decides how we will plow the fields. And this person is crazy." Alexander Feduta, Lukashenko's biographer who served as his first media adviser, nevertheless tries to offer an explanation for his former employer's name-changing obsession: "The main road leading from the president's summer home to his official residence in central Minsk used to be named after Marsharov, who was a popular and relatively democratic leader. This, of course, greatly irked Lukashenko, as Marsharov represented competition to him. It was impossible to alter the traffic route, because this is the shortest, widest and easiest road for safeguarding the presidential motorcade, so they simply changed the name of the street. Now it is called Victors' Boulevard, apparently for the countries that were victorious in World War II."
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Residents of Belarus have never heard this explanation by Feduta, nor the psychological analyses of Sasnov. After the two men fell out with the president, they lost not only their jobs, but also disappeared from the screens of the government television channels. In a country that the U.S. State Department has described as the "last dictatorship in Europe," there is today no free press and no real opposition, and anyone considered to be a threat to the president either disappears or is arrested.
Even opposition leaders in Belarus admit that Lukashenko came into power democratically. Although he had once been the manager of a sovkhoz (a Soviet agricultural farm), Lukashenko was perceived by the public as an alternative to the first leaders of the young independent state, who consisted mainly of former high-ranking officials in the Communist regime. His election as president in 1994, at age 40, surprised many in the international community. Lukashenko, who positioned himself as a popular politician of the people, lacking in good manners and a little rough around the edges, quickly earned the sobriquet "Batka" - "father" or "boss" in Russian and Belorussian. His centralized leadership, intended to enforce economic reforms in the state, quickly led to conflicts with members of the parliament. After five years of economic reforms and the adoption of values of democracy and pluralism, the new state began to re-embrace the old Soviet model.
At the corner of Marx and Engels
Lukashenko's residence is located in the heart of Minsk, at the intersection of Marx, Engels, Komsomol (the youth wing of the Communist party) and Kirov (a senior Communist Party member and comrade of Stalin's, who was murdered on the latter's orders) streets. The colossal building is also the most closely guarded place in the country. All of the roads leading to the area are sealed off to vehicular traffic, and all attempts to hold political gatherings in the nearby public park are violently suppressed.
The directives and presidential orders meant to reinforce Lukashenko's hold on power emanate from here, with the chief victims being the opposition parties and the media organs. Human rights organizations in the West report that to date, more than 4,000 Belorussians have been sentenced to prison for anti-establishment political activities. A law that was passed eight years ago metes out prison terms of up to five years for any verbal or physical injury to the institution of the presidency.
The modus operandi of Lukashenko and his colleagues is relatively sophisticated - the authorities make it difficult for opposition parties to exist, by means of peculiar laws and discriminatory regulations. One new regulation, for example, requires every political party to have an official address, one that is not the residential address of any of its members. In this way, small parties have effectively been banned, as they are unable to afford to rent office space. Other parties and independent research institutes have been closed on the grounds that they incorrectly filled out official documents.
Due to the fear of popular revolutions, such as those that have taken place in Ukraine and Georgia, Lukashenko's regime imposes severe restrictions on holding demonstrations. According to a new law, demonstrations are permitted solely in one public park in Minsk. Demonstrations that were not coordinated with the authorities have been dispersed by force and many of the participants arrested. Opposition leaders charge that hundreds of opponents of the regime have been thrown out of universities or fired from public sector jobs.
Along with its aggressive tactics aimed at the opposition, the administration also decided to deal with the media. At first, Lukashenko's people gained control of the electronic media. Afterward, it was decided to wage an all-out war against the country's print media and against foreign journalists working in the country. In the course of my own visit to Belarus, I was detained for interrogation twice: I underwent approximately 40 minutes of questioning at passport control after the policeman noticed that I had received a journalist visa for a previous visit to Russia. Several days later, I was forced to present my passport and submit personal details at one of the police positions near the presidential residence in Minsk. Reporters for the New York Times and other foreign newspapers have reported being followed by the KGB (the Belorussian espionage agency is the only one in the former Communist bloc that still retains the historic name).
"There is less freedom now than at the end of the Soviet period," claims independent journalist Andrei Federov. "At the time, lots of newspapers were being published. No one closed them down and no one imposed fines on them. Television was much freer, too, and there were critical programs about the government. Nowadays, not a single word of opposition can be found in the media."
The official propaganda organ is the newspaper Sovetskaya Belorussia. Like its name, the contents of the newspaper - which is published by the office of the president - are reminiscent of the Brezhnev era. Huge photographs of Lukashenko regularly appear on the front page, and his speeches are quoted extensively in the inside pages. The editor-in-chief, Pavel Yakubovich, is a personal appointee of Lukashenko. Yakubovich says he will remain in the post "until he gets tired of me." Even he admits that his newspaper can adopt a critical tone when it comes to directors of government corporations, mayors and members of parliament, but by no means can it criticize the actions of the head of state.
Sovetskaya Belorussia has a daily circulation of 400,000, most of which goes to subscribers, who the opposition maintains are factory workers and employees of governmental organizations forced to do so by the authorities. The second-largest newspaper is the local version of the Russian tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravda, which has a circulation of only 40,000. In recent years, the authorities have managed to prevent publication of most newspapers not identified with the regime.
Printing of the most widely circulated opposition newspaper, Narodnaya Volya (The People's Will) was banned in October 2005. Tens of thousands of copies of the newspaper are now printed in Russia, and then smuggled into Belarus a day or two later. The newspaper is not available for sale in the state-licensed kiosks, of course, and its distribution is conducted in underground fashion.
A winning formula
Two key factors make Lukashenko's continued rule possible - Russia's backing and the flourishing economy. "The path taken by Belarus is based on building up a democratic state, espousing social values and creating the foundations of a free market" - declares the official book "In Favor of Belarus," which was published by the government in early 2006. No fewer than 24 photos of Lukashenko appear in the lavish book, which claims that the "Belorussian economic model is based on a scientific combination of free market principles and a state-planned economy."
When asked to name the precise components of this scientific combination, even high-ranking state officials seem unable to say. What can be said for certain is that Belarus is, economically speaking, the most Soviet state in the world. Attempts in the 1990s to introduce a market economy failed, and currently, more than 80 percent of businesses are state-owned enterprises. The few foreign corporations that do operate in Belarus (Benetton, McDonald's and Adidas, for example) "volunteered" to adopt backward agricultural farms and subsidize their operation. Each corporation is also committed to employ a vice-president for ideological affairs - akin to the politruks (political commissars) of the Soviet regime.
Since 2001, Belarus' planned economy has shown impressive results. Growth in 2005 was 8 percent, and the per capita GDP was nearly $7,000 (as opposed to $1,800 in Uzbekistan and $17,000 in Estonia). In addition, citizens enjoy extensive social benefits, payment of old-age pensions and a subsidized education system. The main streets of Minsk have undergone a complete overhaul in recent years, opulent public buildings are going up around the country, and even the Russian-made Lada sedans on the roads have been supplanted by Mercedes and Opels. At first glance, this winning formula deserves to be adopted worldwide. But the real reason for Belarus' economic miracle is much simpler.
In the late 1990s, "Batka" dreamed up an ingenious program: his country would commence a process of economic and political integration with Russia. In 1999, Minsk and Moscow began to implement an alliance that would lead to a proposed "union state." In the meantime, differences of opinion arose between the countries (Lukashenko opponents charge that he scuttled the plan after realizing that he would not be the president of the union state), but the president of Belarus did notch up a significant achievement by having customs duties between the two states abolished.
Thus, Belarus buys Russian oil and gas at rock-bottom prices, and after processing in local refineries, the fuels are pumped to Europe at profits of up to 500 percent. International reports describe Belarus as "a country that is a pipeline." Nearly everything that enters from the neighbor to the east is immediately sent to the West - oil represents 40 percent of Minsk's imports and 40 percent of Minsk's exports. The immense profits enable the government apparatus to operate and underwrite the planned economy.
Russia's threat to raise oil and gas prices has fouled relations between the states in recent months. Russia, which was until recently Belarus' "best friend" in the world, is now described by Minsk as a state that harbors within it "factors that do not seek the well-being of Belarus." The recent cooling of relations with Moscow is at odds with the official ideological line that has been championed by Lukashenko since his election in 1994.
"There's no clear ideology here, only a mishmash," says Valery Karbalevich, head of the political department of the independent Strategic Center think tank in Minsk. "There's a single objective: proving that Lukashenko is a good president and keeping him in power. To that end, they embraced a few Soviet values, according to which the history of the Soviet Union was highly important and life back then was very good. They kept the hostility toward the West and the United States, which are portrayed as the enemy that wants to conquer Belarus. And on top of all this, they added the economic growth of the past few years. The government sanctifies this growth, which it contends is the product of the unique method adopted by Belarus. Even Russia, based on this ideology, has sold itself to the West."
The people's choice
Despite the severe impairment of freedom of expression and suppression of opponents to the regime, Belarus is not the only totalitarian state in the former Soviet bloc. The human rights situation in Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan is much worse, but European and American interests in these states soften the West's position toward their tyrannical regimes.
As opposed to Turkmenistan, no cult of personality has developed in Belarus around the president. Although posters of Lukashenko are sold in every bookshop and it is possible to buy postage stamps with his likeness at every newspaper kiosk, "Batka" prefers to market himself as a candidate of the people and not as the member of a supreme elite. "Lukashenko positions himself differently than Stalin did," explains the biographer Feduta. "He is always saying, 'I'm not God, I'm one of you.' Nevertheless, he's very proud to be the last dictator in Europe. You no longer have a Soviet Union, you no longer have a Milosevic, whereas you still have a Lukashenko. He has made it into the history books."
As far as the president of Belarus is concerned, he plans to remain part of that history for many years. While Belarus has not yet turned into an absolute dictatorship, its regime is quickly heading in that direction. Not only the president and his minions are to blame for the situation; so is the in Minsk. Opposition leader Aliaksandr Milinkevich and his deputies may enjoy sweeping support in Warsaw, Brussels and Washington, but they would have a hard time leading the nation in Belarus to true democracy and a market economy. Even the president's most ardent opponents openly say that leaders of the current opposition are not sufficiently charismatic to lead the state through a profound and difficult process of structural change.
Even Milinkevich is willing to admit that he has not yet succeeded in drawing in the people behind him, but he believes that the change will occur within less than two years. "We should be preparing the people for the eventuality that the time is coming when we must go out into the streets and say no to dictatorship! We haven't succeeded yet in persuading even half of the people that the standard of living here would be higher than it is now. But I believe that as long as there is no free market, as long as the state destroys private companies and does not respect its own laws, as long as people live in perpetual fear, it is not possible to expect a more contented life in such a country."
However, notwithstanding the escalating fear and the assurances of a more contented life under another regime, most experts in the West concur that change will not come from within Belarus. Neither will bringing down the Lukashenko regime be accomplished through EU sanctions or threats by the U.S. It appears that only the closure of the Russian oil faucet would succeed in ending the regime of "Europe's last dictator."W
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