The Last Soviet Republic: Alexander Lukashenko's Belarus

by Stewart Parker

The first serious study of Alexander Lukashenko, president of Belarus. This book exposes the reality behind the myth of 'Europe's last Dictatorship'.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Politics

250 pages, Paperback

First published August 15, 2007

Reviews

[David · Rating 1 out of 5]

I probably know less about Belarus than I did before picking up this book.

Lukashenko being reelected year after year? He's a good and honest man. Opposition failing to gain ground or any seats? All NATO-sponsored stooges simply trying to provoke repression so as to legitimize them. Repeat economic successes of Belarus idiosyncratic "market socialist" economy? The self-evident progress of pragmatic socialism.

I can forgive biased writing, but I need an author to have the integrity to construct a story from which their team can learn lessons. For Parker, it's a simple tug-of-war between Lukashenko and the Belarussian people on one side and the NATO on the other, and all good things are concentrated on one end. Did Lukashenko write this? He might as well have.

How did the Belarussian economy grow so long, being state-owned and -directed to such a large degree, against all odds? I have no clue. I just leafed through the chapter on the economy again and can only conclude that it grew because Lukashenko wanted it to. How did the communal farms and factories deal with the 90s? Doesn't matter. What do parties mean in a Belarussian parliament filled with independents? It doesn't even address this.

The only sources heralded in defence of Lukashenko are press releases by the Belarussian embassy, highly partisan non-journalistic pressure groups such as antiwar.com, the "British Helsinki Human Rights Group" and our very own Belgian senator Frank Creyelman, a far-right figure whose main hobby seems to be attending elections in Crimea and Russia and who was recently indicted for taking Chinese bribes. Parker forever remains at the level of the highly anecdotal ("This woman interviewed in a Belarussian newspaper loves Lukashenko more than she does her own husband") or meaningless global whataboutism ("Opposition parties say they want liberalism and democracy, but here's a Chomsky quote about intervention in Yugoslavia"). Combined with the self-published status, this editorial practice casts doubt even on what should be uncontroversial historical background (I'm sure Belarus has a long history of Jewish integration, but why do you need to cite Another View of Stalin for that).

The country remains an enigma, a twilight mirror to Cuba: heavily reliant on Russian largesse (€100 billion between 2005 and 2015), deideologized, a balanced and relatively advanced production base, loads of doctors and teachers, forced to commit to geopolitical brinkmanship. I'd love to know why, one day.

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book, an economic, political and cultural history of Belarus in the years since its (reluctant) independence from the USSR, is a valuable - if incomplete and somewhat analytically flawed - counterweight to the long onslaught of propaganda from the Atlantic powers.

The case that Parker sets out in this volume is essentially that Belarus is doing alright, and that it avoided much of the upheaval and utter deprivation that was visited on many of its fellow Eastern Bloc countries in the wake of the Soviet collapse. The president of Belarus, Aliaksandr Lukašenka, has managed to avoid most of this deprivation by appealing directly to the Belarusian people over the heads of the old Soviet apparatchiks and the xenophobic nationalist right, by refusing the IMF-prescribed 'shock therapy' that starved millions of Russians, by carefully preserving many of the material benefits of the old Soviet system, and by quietly doing away with many of the old ideological shibboleths of the same.

Between the years of 1994 and 2008 (when this The Last Soviet Republic was published), many of the insights of this book hold true. Unfortunately, Parker has a set of ideological goals that don't quite match with Lukašenka's project, and can easily lead the reader to misunderstand his perspective. The direct, plebiscitarian appeals to the people; the implicit critique of Soviet bureaucracy; the independent, non-aligned foreign policy; the emphasis on retaining the social safety net and strong public sector; and the protection especially of domestic farmers - these are goals that Parker correctly ascribes to Lukašenka, but he ignores some much-needed context. Parker, writing from a Marxist perspective that becomes evident early in the book, seeks to attribute these stances to Lenin via Pyotr Masharov, the Communist secretary of Belarus whom Lukašenka openly admires.

But again, this lacks some needed context. The flexible agricultural policies of Lenin were specifically designed as a political weapon to deflate a significant and parallel left-wing agrarian movement in Russia, the Socialist Revolutionary Party, which advocated for many of these same goals on behalf of the Russian peasantry. Lenin's design in creating his 'new policies' (policies which went against the Marxist orthodoxy of rapid urban capitalist development and the strengthening of the proletariat, by the way) was to politicise and co-opt the peasantry into the vanguard. In this he was opposed by both Trotsky and Stalin, but he was successful in outflanking and crushing the genuinely pro-peasant SRP. Lukašenka, coming from a rural and agricultural background as the manager of a collective farm, doubtless imbibed some of the Soviet ideology, but his shift toward a more rural-facing policy which treats agrarian concerns as genuine rather than merely as a political tool for the advancement of industrial communist goals, is a bit out-of-step with the Leninist intellectual legacy into which Parker wants to shoehorn him, and more in keeping with the legacy of the SRP. As a supplement to the lacunae in this book's analysis, I would recommend reading Romanian economist David Mitrany's book Marx Against the Peasant.

Mostly, though, I have to applaud Parker's goals in writing this book. He wants to show an English-speaking audience a side of Belarus and Belarusian social history which is too-often ignored or belittled, yet which is borne out by a number of independent social indicators. If he is often harsh on the quasi-independent Belarusian 'opposition', it is worth remembering the chaos into which Belarus's neighbour Ukraine has recently been thrown, and the unsavoury, hate-filled and self-serving characters who floated to the top in the wake of the Maidan - and also Lukašenka's essential role as a mediator and peace-broker between the Ukrainians and the Russians.

I recommend this volume, but with the above-mentioned caveats. Read with a critical eye; know what you're reading and why the author wrote it.

[Victor · Rating 3 out of 5]

Despite protestations to the contrary, this book is very much an apologia for Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko and the social system of Belarus under his leadership, at least circa 2011.

The author attempts to present a balanced tone, though his politics are clear throughout, especially in some of the sources he recommends i.e. crude Stalinist apologia like Ludo Martens’ book ‘Another View of Stalin.’

Besides academic articles and books, unfortunately there is not a great deal of popular history focusing on Belarus, especially of the Soviet and post-Soviet period.

Hence simply for existing this book is an important reference work, summarising and skimming over the very interesting features of Belarusian history (such as its Soviet period, experience of WWII, the proportionally larger size of partisan resistance in the country compared with other Soviet republics, post-war developments) to reach the period where the USSR collapsed and Lukashenko became President, the real substance of the book.

The Soviet regime struck deep roots in Belarus, and despite repressions in the 1930s retained considerable approval and popularity among the population in the post-war period, or at least largely consensual tolerance if not always active enthusiasm.

It was only after the disaster of Chernobyl in which Belarus was directly affected, and the discovery of mass graves in 1988 believed to have been the work of the NKVD between 1937 to 1941 that shook the pro-Soviet consensus of the majority.

The Belarus transition to capitalism proceeded cautiously and slowly as opposed to the crash-ahead catastrophic measures adopted in Russia and other former Soviet republics. Although generating greater inequalities and opportunities for corruption, the limited and slower pace of privatisations produced a considerably softer blow in Belarus among the population than, for example, Ukraine experienced. Soviet political structures, though somewhat democratised, remained in place, such as the Supreme Soviet and the Council of Ministers.

A new constitution was adopted in 1994 which created a new post, President of the Republic, in order to bridge the gap between parliament and the Council of Ministers, which had produced deadlock and stagnation in Belarusian politics since the Declaration of Independence as the Soviet Union collapsed.

Many in Belarus hoped for a democratised and reformed USSR - it was only after the 1991 coup attempt against Gorbachev that independence was proclaimed. Only one member of the Belarusian parliament - Lukashenko, who in his various jobs up to becoming a member of parliament can be regarded as a Soviet success story, advancing step by step in his career path - voted against the final dissolution of the Soviet Union.

Ironically given his reputation today, Lukashenko in the waning days of the USSR created a group within the parliament called ‘Communists for Democracy’, and favoured greater autonomy for the constituent Soviet national republics; an extremely faint and weak echo of Lenin’s aspirations as outlined is his final years and reflected in his actions during the Georgian Affair.

After independence, Lukashenko was elected chairman of an anti-corruption committee, and it is here he gained popular support and notoriety, using his reputation as an anti-corruption campaigner to catapult himself into the Presidency as the surprise winner of the 1994 elections, in what is regarded (as opposed to later elections) as a legitimate and popular vote.

Because of his retentions of elements of the Soviet system (notably in education and healthcare) and respect for the Soviet past, while continuing to cautiously open up the economy where possible Belarus achieved a political, economic and social stability many of its Eastern European neighbours envied.

It also helped that, as Parker acknowledges, ‘the military and police were, and remain, one of Lukashenko’s most loyal bases of support in the country. This comes in no small part from the respect held for him as a former serviceman.’

Lukashenko’s approach to government could be described as ‘crossing the river by touching the stones’ - that is, going ahead steadily, step by step, not taking any great leaps.

A Chinese folk saying popularly associated with Deng Xiaoping’s description of his reform efforts, it is arguably more applicable to Belarus under Lukashenko than China under Deng.

However, such a system could only ever be transitory and backward looking - and however slowly it adapted to contemporary economic realities, that is precisely what it did. It has now, to all intents and purposes, run out of steam, not able to offer a future and unable to return to a past that no longer exists.

While the Soviet past was once a key reference point for much of the population, younger generations are either too young to remember or never experienced it, relying on tales from parents and grandparents.

It’s hard not to reach the conclusion the author has simply replaced Stalin with Lukashenko as his lodestar (even going so far as to describe the latter’s motivations, even to this day as essentially socialist and Marxist, downplaying his socially regressive patriarchal authoritarianism and other backward views - one recent example being his initially touting home remedies to deal with COVID) and considers Lukashenko’s Belarus the best regime in Eastern Europe one could hope for in contemporary conditions as compared with the rest.

While Parker praises Lukashenko for maintaining the sovereignty of Belarus, and indeed Lukashenko played the game of balancing between the EU and Russian interests while remaining more in the Russian orbit better than others (notably the likes of Viktor Yanukovych in Ukraine) this is now more questionable;

particularly given the Russian backing of the Belarusian state in putting down large domestic protests and strikes after a highly contested election which Lukashenko ‘won’, and allowing Russian troops and war materials proceed through Belarus to wage war in Ukraine, which Belarusian rail workers did their best to sabotage. Such events represent the greatest slippage in Lukashenko’s popularity and legitimacy since his inauguration as President in the 90s.

The results of other contested elections never produced such a response.

For the people of Belarus they are in an unenviable position of trying to find an appropriate model of political transformation and economic development that can offer a future beyond simply being subsumed to either Russian hegemony or as a weak, peripheral partner within the EU bloc of states.

[T.J. Petrowski · Rating 3 out of 5]

Belarus has made international headlines in 2020 with the Belarusian presidential election and accusations that the election was rigged in favour of Alexander Lukashenko, who has served as president of Belarus since 1994. Although this seemed like a U.S.-sponsored colour revolution to me (and I still think it is), I didn’t know enough about Belarus to have a strong opinion about the election. Thus, when this book arrived in the mail, I was very eager to read it.

Stewart Parker makes a very interesting and surprisingly compelling case that Belarus is politically, economically, and socially more aligned with Cuba and Venezuela than anywhere else. Under Lukashenko, Belarus has adopted, or more accurately maintained from the era of the USSR, a highly progressive and unusually anti-capitalist socio-economic system, not that dissimilar to Cuba and Venezuela. According to Parker, with some moderate adjustments, like allowing some capitalist production, Belarus has strongly continued the policies of the Belarusian Soviet Socialist Republic, considerably more so than any other former Soviet republic or Eastern Bloc state. The overwhelming majority of the country’s economy is state-owned and there is no “business” or “capitalist” class, all land is publicly owned and the majority of agriculture is still cooperative, education is free and compulsory up to and including university, unemployment is virtually nonexistent, there is no brain drain (Belarus maintains something similar to Cuba in that education is free on condition that you serve the country for a certain number of years) or mass migration, healthcare is universal, and equally generous pensions, funding for cultural activities and events, etc. The IMF and World Bank were kicked out of Belarus because Lukashenko refused to adopt the murderous austerity measures demanded by imperialism that had such disastrous consequences in other former Soviet republics. As Parker writes, there are very few rich Belarusians, and certainly no oligarchs such as emerged in Russia, but there are equally very few destitute and impoverished Belarusians.

Parker cites as an example of Belarusian social policy the dispute between the American fast-food giant McDonald’s and Belarus. Minsk, the capital of Belarus, as CNN even reported, sought to block McDonald’s expansion into the city due to “the state’s concerns about the nation’s health and the promotion of domestic food products.” Although only one example, and a small one at that, I think Minsk’s dispute with McDonald’s indicates that there is something to be said about the social and economic policy of Belarus, that it is not simply another bourgeois-capitalist state to emerge from the overthrow of the USSR.

According to Parker, Belarus’s socio-economic system is due to how deeply intertwined Belarusian history is with that of the former USSR. Under tsarism, Belarus was a non-entity, forming part of the Pale of Settlement, the territory where Jews were permitted to reside, and the Belarusian people were a persecuted minority like most minorities in the “prison house of nations”. Under the Soviet rule the Belarusian language was revived, Polish national-fascism was ended, Belarus formed a constituent Soviet Socialist Republic, illiteracy was eradicated, cooperative farms replaced rich landlords, and the impoverished territory was transformed into one of the most industrialized of all Soviet republics. This had a profound influence on the Belarusian people, who had never known statehood before, besides for a brief period in 1918 under German domination. When the Nazis invaded and occupied Belarus in 1941, more than 300,000 Belarusian partisans waged a relentless and brutal struggle against the Nazis and their Belarusian nationalist collaborators, killing more than 500,000 German soldiers, more than all German losses in the African and Italian fronts combined. Belarus suffered enormous causalities and destruction under Nazi occupation, but just like after the Russian Civil War, the Belarusian people with Soviet support once more rebuilt their republic, and Belarus again was one of the most successful Soviet republics.

The Belarusian people as a whole, Parker writes, are extremely proud of their Soviet heritage, and their experience fighting both the Nazis and their Belarusian nationalist-collaborators helped instill a far more internationalist ideology in Belarus not found in the Ukraine, Poland, Georgia, Russia, etc. Antisemitism, far-right nationalism, and neo-Nazism, all on the rise in the Ukraine, Poland, Hungary, Georgia, Russia, etc., are virtually unheard of in Belarus, where national and religious rights are enshrined in law. Indeed, Lukashenko himself has threatened to “tear the arms off any fascist I find,” and after an attack on a synagogue in Minsk in December 2000, Lukashenko declared “we won’t let anyone harm our Jews.”

Parker makes some interesting observations about the conduct of elections in Belarus.

Parker rightfully emphasizes the hypocrisy of the U.S. and other Western imperialist states in condemning Belarusian elections. The U.S. has cozied up to dictators around the world, such as in Turkmenistan and other Central Asian countries, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, etc. Moreover, the U.S. is hardly democratic itself, with a two-party system, extensive corruption and police brutality, and the fact that its own capital city has no democratic representation in the U.S. Congress or Senate.

Parker then examines ongoing U.S. interference in Belarusian elections. U.S. imperialism, like it has in almost every country in the world, has brazenly interfered in Belarusian elections, funding opposition candidates, newspapers, NGOs and political parties. The examples cited by Parker are almost comical at times. In 2001, when Belarusian police seized computers from an unregistered opposition newspaper, U.S. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher demanded the computers be returned to Washington, D.C.! Even more farcical is the late Senator John McCain’s efforts to link Belarus with the September 11th attacks! Speaking at a conference in Washington, D.C., McCain declared how “September 11th opened our eyes to the status of Belarus as a national security threat,” as if the Belarusians were somehow connected to the mostly Saudi hijackers!

That the U.S. openly interferes in Belarusian elections was admitted to by none other than Michael Kozak. Prior to being appointed as U.S. Ambassador to Belarus by President Clinton, Kozak was directly involved in supporting the Contras in Nicaragua and the U.S. invasion of Panama. In a letter to the London Times, Kozak wrote that U.S. “objective and to some degree methodology are the same” in Belarus as in Nicaragua some twenty years earlier! However, as Parker documents, U.S. interference in Belarusian elections often takes the form of supporting the losing candidate deliberately. This is because, as Western intelligence agencies admit, even if Lukashenko didn’t rig an election, he would still probably win, owing to how disorganized and reactionary the foreign-supported Belarusian opposition is and Lukashenko’s own popularity with the masses. Thus, U.S. and Western interference in Belarusian elections often consists of supporting a “unified opposition” candidate that they know will lose to prevent any kind of genuine run-off election and enable the U.S. and other Western imperialist states to condemn the election as fraudulent. As Parker writes, “if the Belarusians cannot be relied upon to vote ‘the right way’, then the West must make the whole process suspect in order to justify isolation and sanctions” (p. 114). Although even in this regard U.S. condemnation of Belarusian elections is outrageously hypocritical. As Parker writes, while refusing to monitor the Belarusian election in 2006 but nonetheless condemning it as fraudulent, the OSCE recognized without complaint “a 97% result for Saahkashvili in Georgia, 93% for Heydar Aliev in Azerbaijan and 89% for Kurmenbek Bakiev in Kyrgyzstan. The key differences between these leaders and Lukashenko is not human rights or democratic processes, but rather political orientation” and the interests of U.S. imperialism (p. 186).

One might quickly denounce Parker’s analysis as being too pro-Lukashenko. However, I recently read a DW article that basically confirms what Parker writes. In this article, Belarusian opposition activist Svetlana Alexievich says she “did not have faith in my people. It seemed to me that people would not take to the streets and that we would carry on living as before, as if time had stood still.” Later in the article Alexievich seems to decry how Belarusians aren’t as violent as Georgians!

This book was a real pager turner for me. Although it is horribly edited and consequently sometimes difficult to read, I like how Parker examines Belarus in a way very similar to Dan Kovalik’s analysis of Venezuela. Very good book.

[Irmina · Rating 1 out of 5]

Did... did Łukaszenka write this...?

[Jimmy Steele · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book really goes into depth of Lukashenko and Belarus. It looks at the development through history of the nation. It looks at how the Soviet revolution created the ideological foundations of today. Belarus today remembers the national liberation struggle against the Nazi occupation.

The book looks at the revolutionary character of Belarus. It details how an independent Belarus has continued to inherit its soviet legacy. Belarus retained a socialist style economy but reformed it in order to modernize. The book dispels the myths that are propagated against Belarus such as it being a dictatorship, or Lukashenko being a reactionary right winger.

Well worth a read and readers can make up their own mind on the character of modern Belarus.