Belarus remains a country where time seems to have stood still. The red flag that proudly waves over public buildings bears an eerie resemblance to that of the communist era. The omnipresence of police on the streets appalls visitors. State television continuously broadcasts feel-good reports of economic successes and heart-rending images of external and internal enemies. Political prisoners, although few in number, endure persecution that sends the entire society a signal about the cost of disobedience. Especially since the government introduced Soviet-style criminal punishment for defaming the country, ordinary people shiver when they hear someone discussing politics in public.

While other post-communist Central and Eastern European countries have recently broken off the shackles of authoritarianism, Belarus remains, in the definition of US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, “an outpost of tyranny.” Other members of the former Soviet club—Georgia, Ukraine, and Kyrgyzstan—have recently experienced democratic revolutions, which raised hopes for the entire region’s eventual emancipation from authoritarian rule. But Belarus, once thought to be the setting for the next “color” revolution, is not taking same path. Instead, its autocratic president Alyaksandr Lukashenka is poised to win reelection to a third term in March, competing against a hopeless and intimidated opposition in a contest whose foregone conclusion stifles public interest.

Belarus is not unique among former Soviet republics in its authoritarianism. Lukashenka’s regime bears many common characteristics with other consolidated autocracies in the former Soviet republics. Those include a fully institutionalized system of unlimited presidential authority, the omnipotence of security and law enforcement agencies, the president’s reliance on an inner circle selected on the basis of personal loyalty rather than merit, and a comprehensive control of economic and information resources by the regime. Unlike other former Soviet dictatorships, however, Belarus is distinctly located in Europe, borders the European Union, and is one of the most economically developed former Soviet countries. Why, then, has Belarus become one of the most repressive, enduring, and impregnable dictatorships in the post-communist world?

Lukashenka’s regime is sometimes described, in the words of Andrei Sannikov, as an “accidental dictatorship.” This point of view credits his rise to power to the concurrence of favorable historical events and the overall political and social confusion that surrounded the collapse of the communist system in Belarus. Lukashenka has a unique political biography. At the time of his election to the presidency in 1994, he was a relative outsider who headed a collective farm and served as a rank-and-file member of the Belarusian parliament. Lukashenka is thus an oddity among the veteran nomenclatura insiders who became the first post-communist presidents in most former Soviet republics. He won power in the country’s first free and democratic elections, running on populist promises to eradicate corruption and reinstate the Soviet Union in some form. His election was made possible by the complete disorganization of the country’s ruling elite, who failed to take seriously his challenge for power and allowed a relatively fair ballot—a “mistake” many incumbents in post-Soviet states no longer make.

But the “accident” of Lukashenka’s rise to power has a more profound explanation. This article highlights four factors that make Belarus’ experience unique, even among the fellow non-democratic regimes of Eurasia. First, authoritarian power is embedded in the political culture of the population, underlined by the phenomenon of “Soviet Belarusian patriotism.” Second, Lukashenka’s economic model has proven surprisingly durable. Third, the unique context of Belarus-Russia relations provides Lukashenka’s regime with stable external sponsorship. Finally, Lukashenka’s perfected tactics of authoritarian pre-emption enable him to eliminate challenges to his authority upon their inception.

Soviet Roots of Lukashenka’s Regime

Culture and identity are central to Lukashenka’s emergence as a democratically elected leader who won his first term in office on a fair ballot. While first free elections have been de facto referenda on the future throughout Eastern Europe in early 1990s, Belarus stands out as the country where the public made a clear choice for the past with the presidential ballot of 1994. In the blunt statement of observer Kathleen Mikhalisko, “it is the lack of nationalism … that makes Lukashenka possible.” While nationalism triggered anti-communist revolts from the Baltics to the Balkans and mobilized aspirations to end undemocratic rule and “join Europe,” Belarus did not follow the same path due to its specific context of national and political development during Soviet rule and even centuries before.

Belarusians, unlike most of their neighbors, did not develop a strong sense of national identity by the time the Soviet empire collapsed. Domination by external powers—centuries-old policies of Polonization and Russification—produced a collective memory without a sense of the past. The Soviet regime filled that vacuum with its own ideology, mixing communist doctrine with the glorification of the guerilla resistance during World War II. The result was the so-called “Soviet Belarusian” patriotism, a surrogate national identity that credited the nation’s existence to the communist regime that saved it from extermination by the Nazis during World War II and reconstructed the country during the post-war period into one of the most prosperous parts of the communist empire. A rapid increase in living standards was safeguarded by republican leadership under the highly popular Piotr Masherov, a wartime hero who ruled the republic from 1965 to 1980 and whose leadership style has become a model of paternalistic relations between the state and society in the public consciousness.

During a brief period of political liberalization unleashed by Gorbachev’s perestroika, competing visions of the Belarusian nation became antagonistic political platforms. Belarusian nationalism, revived by a small circle of intelligentsia, pursued a distinct national statehood emancipated from the former imperial power and promoted the Belarusian language as the primary means of communication. It also advocated a completely different understanding of the society’s historical roots, locating them in the medieval Grand Duchy of Lithuania rather than in the Russian Empire. This nationalism sustained a political platform that justified not only Belarusianization and de-Russification, but also de-Sovetization, democratization, market reform, and Europeanization.

But Belarusian nationalism, in spite of such achievements as the introduction of Belarusian as the official language and the 1991 declaration of independence, failed to win the hearts and minds of a public that remained largely unfamiliar with its content and ideology. Hence, when the Soviet Union dissolved, most Sovietized Belarusians could understand the turbulent politics and collapsing economy only as the breakdown of their customary world, in which political totalitarianism, social stability, and personal security used to coexist in harmony. It was inevitable that someone would exploit this confusion and anxiety to reap political benefits. That someone happened to be the 39-year-old head of a collective farm who became President Alyaksandr Lukashenka. Campaigning for power with an anti-corruption crusade, Lukashenka carried a simple and understandable message to the electorate: things went wrong because the Soviet Union was destroyed, and with it went the foundations of a good, simple, safe, and prosperous life.