Despite widespread international condemnation of his handling of the 2020 election and subsequent crackdowns of mass protests, President Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus had nonetheless made some undeniable contributions to his country since coming to power in 1994. Through a rigid top-down chain of command (power vertical), he sustained Belarusian statehood during its most vulnerable period. Those vulnerabilities pertained to Belarus’s overwhelming economic dependency on Russia and, even more so, to the country’s blurred national identity. Lukashenka’s personalist regime nipped in the bud oligarchic capitalism, robber-baron style, which took root in Russia and Ukraine, and limited the spread of corruption. Additionally, Lukashenka was instrumental in developing an orderly welfare state; and he presided over a long (1996–2014) period of relatively stable economic growth that benefited most Belarusians until the past several years, when public debt and stagnation (not to mention the economic downturn linked to the COVID-19 pandemic) threatened to reverse those fortunes. Furthermore, Lukashenka carved out a peculiar, verging on neutrality, geopolitical niche for Belarus to keep at bay its hugely influential eastern neighbor.
OP-ED
Grigory Ioffe: Lukashenko’s legacy and the damage to public trust
Belarusian pensioners carrying former white-red-white flags of Belarus and flowers parade through the streets during a rally to demand the resignation of authoritarian leader and new fair election in Minsk on Oct. 19, 2020.
