Explaining Lukashenka’s hold on power

Yesterday as Tomorrow: Why It Works in Belarus
Alexander Lukashuk

Unlike other states, ours is governed—excuse this indiscretion—by a president with integrity.” So says Alexander Lukashenka about himself in the recently published book Alexander Lukashenka: First President of the Republic of Belarus. The well-known Belarusian painter Mikhail Savitski is also quoted in the book, praising Lukashenka as “a mysterious figure, in whose depths lie a heroism and passion that make one forget daily life.” Other quotations refer to the president as “flexible but firm, open and shrewd” and “a man who sees things in the proper perspective.”

The book, which presents the reader with Lukashenka’s vision for the future of Belarus, was published in June, then on the eve of the International Economic Forum in Crans-Montana, Switzerland. The highly publicized program for Lukashenka’s planned three-day visit to the forum included interviews, press conferences, and speeches, as well as two presentations of the English-language version of the book. But he was received so inhospitably that he felt compelled to shorten his stay to a mere day.

Still, the audience did get a quick course in Lukashenka’s convictions and political style. He warned of the dangers of American intervention in European affairs, accused the West of ignoring Belarus’s needs relating to the Chernobyl disaster, and reproached the EU for adopting double standards in its relations with Belarus. He went on to attack NATO expansion and then, to top it off, explained that Switzerland’s political system was far more totalitarian than that of the former Soviet Union.

Upon returning to Belarus, Lukashenka characterized the forum as a “zoo.” His chief of administration issued a release stating that “the Crans-Montana forum is not of a high enough level for a leader as powerful as Alexander Lukashenka.”

The “village idiot” and his rise to power
Authoritarian leaders are not unique, and, at the end of this century, they are often largely ignored by the foreign press. In November 1996, for example, dozens of foreign journalists were covering the constitutional crisis in Belarus when Lukashenka dismissed the National Assembly and the members of the Constitutional Court and introduced his own constitution. The next day, the foreign media packed their bags and hastily bid their farewells. The journalistic consensus seemed to be: “a coup d’état is big news, dictatorship is not.”

Since then, however, Belarus has climbed back onto the front pages. In an article of May 1998, devoted to the recent diplomatic drama in Minsk, the so-called Drozdy crisis, The Guardian referred to the Belarusian president as the “village idiot of Europe.” This may be funny, but it hardly explains the phenomenon that Lukashenka represents. Although village idiots have been known to make it to the top, they have seldom managed to retain power for long. Lukashenka, by contrast, continues to enjoy unwavering popular support (from approximately 40 percent of the population) and has already extended his term in office beyond what is constitutionally allowed. To understand this support, and to grasp the roots of the present crisis, as well as perhaps to catch a glimpse of Belarus’s future, a brief flashback may be in order.

In 1994, Alexander Lukashenka was elected president by 80.3 percent of the voters in a classic protest vote (4.2 million of 7.4 million of those registered turned out to vote). Since then, he has held two victorious referenda (in 1995 and 1996). The first referendum adopted the old Soviet flag as the official flag and state emblem of Belarus; the second one eliminated the division of powers within the government and laid the foundations for one-man rule.

Lukashenka has enjoyed the steadfast support of two groups in Belarusian society: the nomenklatura and rank-and-file voters. Even though these groups have different, indeed often opposing, interests, he has managed to appeal to them both. Technically, Lukashenka won his presidential campaign on an anticorruption platform. This is ironic, considering there were, in truth, no especially corrupt “new Belarusians” capable of mounting a formidable opposition to protect their interests. This is a crucial point. Unlike Russia, Belarus did not experience nomenklatura-privatization. That is, the Belarusian nomenklatura never had the opportunity to amass fortunes massive enough to set them apart as a class of owners or “new Belarusians,” and the absence of such a private-sector counterweight to political authority explains why contemporary Belarusian society differs so markedly from Russia.

Lukashenka’s most important anticorruption victory, during his original campaign, and the one that raised him from obscurity, was his defeat of the liberal parliamentary speaker Stanislau Shushkevich. Shushkevich was accused of stealing two boxes of nails for his summer dacha. This accusation, later dismissed, is significant in terms of what it says about the level of corruption in Belarus. Lukashenka warned “corrupt” officials and businesspeople to pack their bags and leave the country the day he became president.

No one took his advice because they had nothing to pack. There were no export quotas for oil, gas, or metal, with which to make quick millions, because the country possesses no natural resources. The most popular get-rich-quick scheme in Belarus consisted of obtaining cheap credits from a state-owned bank to build a dacha. A house in the countryside is about all that most of the nomenklatura managed to acquire during the first years of independence from Moscow. Now, most of these huge brick dachas stand empty. The exorbitant cost of water, sewage, gas, and electricity means that the new dachas cannot be easily maintained. They had been built near cities and close to the roads, making them very visible. Lukashenka’s promise to confiscate these visible examples of conspicuous consumption (it has never happened) won him hundreds of thousands of votes from the country’s rank and file. The dacha issue characterizes the condition of society in the first years after communism: a strong egalitarian ethos with very few “new Belarusians.”

When Lukashenka became the legitimate head of state, the nomenklatura accepted him without resistance. Their future well-being was connected entirely to their positions within the system—and Lukashenka was just another figure on top. They had no choice but to carry on, since they had little at stake in society at large. In fact, even key figures from the previous administration, who had supported Prime Minister Viachaslau Kebich and campaigned strongly against Lukashenka, defected to his side after the election. An act of contrition was all that was required to retain their coveted posts. Some actually rose in the hierarchy. Even former premier Kebich, after swearing his loyalty, was awarded with a seat in Lukashenka’s hand-picked parliament and given a lucrative pension “in recognition of his contributions to the state.” Conversely, the young, ambitious politicians who had opposed the old nomenklatura and helped Lukashenka achieve electoral victory were forced to resign soon after the election—ironically, because their views were not compatible with the policies that continued to prevail. Some of them retired voluntarily, others were fired; some became prominent opposition figures.

Looking back even further, we can see that Lukashenka’s rise was made possible by the total lack of reforms in Belarus in the first years after the demise of the USSR.

To explain: the Belarusian Supreme Soviet of the time (1990–95) was the postcommunist champion of longevity. While Poland and the Czech Republic held one parliamentary election after another, embarrassing reporters with the ever-changing names of prime ministers, Belarus’s political landscape remained stable to the point of immobility. It boasted of stability when dealing with European organizations and foreign investors; and maintaining this dubious stability was the government’s main goal and achievement. What was really achieved, however, was less stability than stagnation. Minsk looked increasingly like the land that time forgot: no new advertising, no new companies, no tourists. The dearth of economic reforms resulted in spiraling state debts, since the state continued to subsidize collective farms and the military-industrial complex, which was as high-tech as it was useless. Additionally, the suffocating social atmosphere contained too little oxygen to allow political parties to develop. Self-government did not take shape and the few nongovernmental organizations that did exist depended exclusively on foreign grants for their survival.

The main force of the democratic opposition, the Belarusian Popular Front, tried to break through the ensuing political lethargy by initiating early parliamentary elections in 1992. The opposition collected almost 500,000 signatures in favor of the referendum on early elections. But the communist-run Supreme Soviet banned the referendum.

At this point, the real center of power in the country shifted to the executive. While Viachaslau Kebich’s government received regular international credit injections and cheap oil from Russia, it pursued a do-nothing policy. America’s first ambassador to Belarus, David Schwartz, strongly protested against awarding credits to Kebich’s government, suggesting instead that foreign aid be channeled to NGOs. His advice was ignored and millions of dollars continued to flow into Belarus, allowing the government to postpone reforms.

By 1994, Belarus was the only postcommunist country without a president. On Kebich’s orders, the Supreme Soviet introduced the office of the presidency in 1994. The opposition protested vigorously, warning that, under the circumstances, the presidency might evolve into a dictatorship and threaten the republic’s independence. The opposition, however, constituted little more than 10 percent of the parliament, and its advice went unheeded. Thus was laid the platform on which Lukashenka would stand. To oversimplify: the very stability of the country, in the immediate post-Soviet era, quickly turned into stagnation, and the first wave of opposition, once defeated, gave way to a government dominated by the executive. This sequence, reinforced by a nomenklatura with nothing to lose but governmental posts, created a circumstance in which a president—ostensibly strong enough to fix things—appeared as the only feasible solution. The argument of the opposition, that such an office could turn dictatorial, came too late. Indeed, it was too late even to help then–prime minister Kebich. Thus, the time was ripe for the emergence of “the last Soviet man,” as Lukashenka once characterized himself.

Beyond the rule of law, beyond nationality—and toward the absolute
The rule of law is always a possible if not a certain barrier to authoritarianism. In Belarus, this barrier has proved even less effective than in neighboring Russia or even Ukraine. According to a former Consti-tutional Court justice, Mikhail Chudakou, the public’s perception of the law has not changed since independence. The legal ramifications of the Drozdy diplomatic crisis—the violation of the Vienna Convention governing diplomats—do not capture the interest of the majority of Belarusian television viewers. Some may disagree with the way diplomats were treated, and some may be concerned with the consequences, but it would occur to very few of them that the heart of the problem hinges on respect for law.

The majority of citizens still maintain the old Soviet approach to law: the boss is always right, the law stands alone, and so does life itself. What is special about Belarus is that most members of the judiciary share this same approach. Lukashenka could not, and did not, replace the judiciary; as it turns out, he did not have to. Almost all members of the judiciary have continued to serve the new regime with little if any embarrassment. A Soviet-style nomenklatura is always happiest when subordinated to a firm authority that demands unquestioned obedience. This instinctual subservience was strong enough to bend to Lukashenka’s will even those whose professional duty it was to uphold the law. More generally, the self- interest of the nomenklatura encouraged compliance with the will of the executive.

Apart from a few noteworthy exceptions (five justices of the Constitutional Court resigned in protest over Lukashenka’s referendum), most of the leading figures of the judiciary have cooperated fully with the president’s unconstitutional practices. Indeed, an absolute majority of judges eagerly participated in the squelching of mass protests in 1997–98. In order to circumvent the Constitution and various laws adopted during the first years of independence, Belarusian legal scholars introduced a novel twist into jurisprudential theory: the distinction between “legal” and “nonlegal” laws. If a law corresponds to the public’s intentions, they reasoned, it should be deemed a “legal” law; if, on the other hand, it contradicts the public’s mood and the president’s intentions, it should be considered a “nonlegal” law and may be ignored altogether.

The members of the Belarusian nomenklatura not only accept authoritarian rule, they share, in a lesser way, in its power—each to his proper degree—and help project it into society as a whole. The nomenklatura’s cadres thus enjoy unfettered power over obedient underlings. But while the Belarusian people know there can be no recourse to the law, they also know that they can appeal to a higher authority, namely, the president. Lukashenka’s office is typically swamped with letters and visitors seeking justice through his personal intercession. This public psychology is reflected in literature (the protagonists of a new novel by a famous writer find justice only after appealing to a president-savior) and even in language. Beginning last year, Lukashenka’s official title, “president and leader of the state,” hitherto lowercased, had to be capitalized. In a manner redolent of the ancient Near East, the president’s authority is, or is becoming, transcendent. It can suspend the very operation of, if not natural laws, at least human laws, because his supremacy is, in effect, the ultimate source of the law’s legitimacy. Because the constitution is essentially the president’s constitution, the legality of a law lies in its correspondence to the president’s intentions.

Of course, Belarusian authoritarianism is by no means unique in postcommunist Europe. What makes Belarus different from other authoritarian states is its nonnationalist character. Lukashenka does not speak Belarusian and has often expressed contempt for the country’s history. “Those who speak Belarusian can only speak Belarusian,” Lukashenka said contemptuously, in 1995, and he added: “There are only two great languages through which one can achieve something: Russian and English.” All books on Belarusian history published in the first years of independence were ordered replaced with Soviet-style texts. Today, there is not a single college or university in which all classes are conducted in Belarusian.

In 1962, Nikita Khrushchev, visiting Minsk, uttered the following enigmatic phrase: “The Belarusians will be the first to attain communism.” At that time, the newly adopted party program stated that “the next generation of the Soviet people will live under communism.” The Communist Party program envisaged that all nationalities, cultures, and languages would merge into a single “soviet” entity. The Russian language was to function as the lowest common denominator in this process. Khrushchev singled out Belarusians for one reason—no one he met spoke Belarusian. Here, it seemed to him, was a nation on the verge of transcending nationalism.

It should not be surprising, then, that Lukashenka’s most vigorous opponents on the democratic side are Belarusian nationalists. Indeed, nationalism in Belarus has become almost a synonym for democracy. In a sense, it is the only position logically left open to those who would oppose Lukashenka and his nostalgia for that once-and-future supranationalist “Soviet” state—the USSR. For the last four years, Lukashenka has constantly repeated the same mantra: all evil things emanate from the demise of the Soviet Union.

The intensity and frequency of the president’s philippics reveal something else other than his fondness for populist rhetoric. According to Theodor Adorno, the authoritarian personality suffers from extreme insecurity in any decision-making context and requires absolute clarity and certainty. Former presidential aides report that Lukashenka wept for an entire week after he was elected president. Perhaps such behavior can be interpreted as a release of nervous tension. Or, was it instead the lament of a man frightened of a future without a boss over his head?

In any case, the president now seems to have found the longed-for clarity and certainty to which Adorno refers. Speaking before the parliament this spring, Lukashenka set a goal for the republic: to achieve in 2001 the level of economic development the country enjoyed in 1990. Belarus’s future, in other words, is to be found in its past, its tomorrow in its yesterday. In this past, of course, the USSR is the ideal and idol—the ultimate boss. Hence Lukashenka’s goal of reintegration with Russia.

An authoritarian personality also requires enemies, to help clarify things. The first enemy was the enemy within. After his constitutional “putsch” in 1996, the president managed to marginalize the opposition. New decrees outlawed most of the opposition’s activities and rendered the street the only forum available for people to voice their protests. Street protests, without exception, were brutally crushed, and hundreds of people were severely beaten and arrested by the president’s security forces. The youth movement was effectively blocked, by teachers and professors at school and by frightened parents at home. Punis-hments meted out to minors included months of incarceration in preliminary detention centers, pending trial, and years of hard labor for political graffiti. Open, social institutions were either banned or their members expelled from the country. Any remaining opposition groups were effectively marginalized. The message was easy to read: the president would brook no opposition.

The enemy within was vanquished. Attempts to demonize it met with little success, so thorough was its defeat. For example, six months ago, in January of this year, state television “revealed” an alleged $32 million opposition plot to undermine the regime, but even Lukashenka’s supporters had trouble believing this “exposé.” At this point, Lukashenka desperately needed a new enemy to blame for new failures and difficulties. This is when he turned his full attention to an enemy that was both within and without— a dialectically satisfying arrangement—the foreign diplomats in the Drozdy compound.

A very undiplomatic crisis
The diplomatic row started in Minsk, in May 1998, when the government demanded that foreign ambassadors leave their residences in the Drozdy compound, located on the capital’s outskirts. The authorities claimed that the diplomats’ eviction was necessary to repair the plumbing and sewage systems. The ambassadors insisted, under the Vienna Convention, and thus according to international law, that Belarus had no right to force them out.

The US and EU member states recalled their ambassadors from Minsk for consultations and requested that Belarusian ambassadors return to Minsk for “reporting”—a rebuke, clearly. On July 9, the EU defined its common position: as long as the crisis lasts, Belarusian officials will not be permitted to travel in the West.

There is no unanimity on the real origin of the Drozdy crisis. The government at first tried to present the crisis as a simple “communal row” but then turned to more-familiar accusations against the evil West. Here is how the government finally decided to explain the crisis: Western ambassadors, like naughty children, refused to behave properly in spite of the best efforts of the Belarusian government. Since they refused to behave, the government had to discipline them. To show their spite, the West is now demonstrating a double standard with regard to Belarus.

(A source within the government explained to the author that the whole issue was due to Lukashenka’s dual obsessions with exercise and security. Every morning the president goes either rollerblading or skiing around the Drozdy compound. Security and privacy are of utmost importance to the president. Lukashenka once confessed that he enjoys playing ice hockey alone. Thus, since he wanted the whole area for himself, Lukashenka merely acted as any kolkhoz [collective farm] chairman would have if some newcomers built dachas on kolkhoz territory. No matter how legal their papers were, the new dacha owners would simply be evicted.)

There are other “explanations.” Some members of the opposition postulate that Moscow was behind the scandal. According to this theory, the eviction of foreign ambassadors from Belarus serves Russia’s long-term interests. Without its own independent diplomatic ties, Belarus would be forced to operate through Moscow, thus assuming the de facto status of a Russian dependency. In due time, Russia would again swallow Belarus. The crisis was inspired and kindled by Russian agents inside the Belarusian government. And it is in fact remarkable that many key positions in the Belarusian government, namely, in the influential Security Council and the KGB—it still goes by that name—are occupied by Russian citizens.

To many, however, this thinking seems farfetched. Such critics contend that Lukashenka’s intentions may very well be exactly the opposite—that he is the one plotting to capture Moscow from his present stronghold in Belarus. Lukashenka does not keep his Kremlin ambitions a secret. He has said that he would like to take part in the next presidential election in Russia—and Russia’s left-leaning patriotic opposition increasingly regards him as a possible leader. His chief rivals for this post, including those of a similar breed (General Alexander Lebed, communist leader Gennady Zyuganov, and the Moscow mayor, Yury Luzhkov), lack Lukashenka’s political and economic power. He can offer voters not only words and promises but also point to his “achievements” in Belarus. He might, for example, show that there are no delays of pension or salary payments in Belarus, while ignoring the fact that the average monthly salary is a meager $80. He might also truthfully claim that, unlike Russia, Belarus suffers no extended railway blockages and omit details of a metro strike in Minsk that was quickly and brutally crushed by the president’s security forces. Participants in the strike languished for months in punitive unemployment. Lukashenka defends patriotic Slavic values and stands bravely against the West. He deported an American diplomat who was seen at an opposition demonstration; shut down the Soros Foundation in Minsk; expelled a Russian television journalist who was Jewish; and, finally, evicted foreign ambassadors from their Minsk residences. In short, Lukashenka is the people’s champion, who will fearlessly restore a sense of pan-Slavic and Soviet pride.

Some indications suggest that this scenario is not entirely outlandish. Attempts are being made by the Russian Duma to introduce dual citizenship and to change the Russian electoral law to allow Lukashenka to run. Currently, Lukashenka holds the title chairman of the Belarus–Russia Union. Further, Belarus has opened diplomatic missions in a number of key Russian provinces. More than a dozen Russian governors have already visited Minsk. While a persona non grata in the West, Lukashenka spends more and more time in Russian cities establishing so-called direct relations. Finally, this past June, Belarusian state radio began broadcasting into Russia. (Most of the European region of Russia is covered, and daily broadcasts will be expanded from 6 to 16 hours.)

Although the recent confrontation with the West and Belarus’s increasing isolation were in many ways inevitable, there is one powerful domestic reason that might compel Lukashenka to sever ties with the West. According to the Constitution of 1994, Lukashenka’s term in office must expire next July. The president maintains, however, that it will end only two years after that, in 2001. After Crans-Montana, Lukashenka said, by way of explanation, that the EU and the European Parliament had insisted that presidential elections in Belarus be held in 1999. According to Lukashenka, he agreed but had then insisted that the EU finance these elections. Further, were he to win by an overwhelming majority, Lukashenka then demanded that Belarus be given membership in the EU and its parliament and be fully recognized as a democracy. Lukashenka informed the nation that, since the West turned down his offer, there will be no new elections until 2001.

After all, he has nothing to lose. The president understands that his legitimacy in the eyes of the world cannot fall much lower. Since confrontation and isolation were unavoidable, he decided to strike first and orchestrate the confrontation on his own terms. No matter what the initial reasons for the confrontation, it appears likely that this explanation is both reasonable and fairly probable. According to several political analysts in Belarus, the latest developments signal the evolution of a largely authoritarian regime into a largely dictatorial one.

What’s next?
The travel restrictions imposed by the EU and the US are really only a moral gesture, as Belarus’s top officials seldom travel to the West in an official capacity anyway. They have virtually no business there. Western investments plummeted three years ago, and trade is increasingly oriented toward Russia, Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Vietnam.

During the last four years, perhaps only Yugoslavia rivals Belarus in the degree of international criticism it has received. Human-rights organizations and committees for freedom of the press all over the world condemn Lukashenka’s regime on a daily basis. The Belarusian president’s name was third in a 1998 rating of the world’s ten worst enemies of press freedom. The US State Department cites dozens of blatant violations of human rights in Belarus in each of its reports to Congress.

This avalanche of criticism has thus far had little effect on either Lukashenka’s internal and external policies or his domestic popularity. Moral condemnation and symbolic gestures of rebuke make little impression on authoritarian societies. In fact, in certain middle-of-the-road situations (no freedom but no concentration camps; low living standards but no famine), an authoritarian leader can use external criticism by a perceived enemy to his advantage. It helps him maintain power without resorting to extreme measures.

Given the demoralized state of society and the very limited possibilities for dissent in Belarus, one should expect no sudden changes in the country’s situation. The first seeds of democratic change were too weak to take root; the West missed its chance to aid in their development, and now its leverage and influence is minimal. The future of the regime is closely connected to Russia. To date, Lukashenka has effectively managed to obtain from Russia what he could not from the West—economic assistance and political and moral support.

At the beginning of perestroika in the USSR, there was a joke making the rounds among the new entrepreneurs: “Let me privatize just one meter of the state border and I will build you a golden monument.” Lukashenka has privatized a whole state lying at important European trade and transport crossroads. Illegal tax-free trafficking of goods from the West into Russia’s vast market brings in income comparable to the state budget. The “inner state” status that Belarus enjoys within Russia allows it to continue to survive without extreme economic shortages. But should Russia suddenly be forced to change its policy of feeding Lukashenka, his regime would be doomed. Close aides of Lukashenka now admit as much. An independent shift of the regime toward a market economy, on the other hand, is highly unlikely.

Alexander Lukashenka’s personal power base faces only one other significant threat—from Lukashenka himself. That, however, is not a subject for constitutional studies.

Alexander Lukashuk was a member of the Commission of the Supreme Soviet of Belarus on the Rights of Victims of Political Repression from 1990–95. He is currently deputy director of the Belarus section of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty in Prague.