Abstract
The political development in the Republic of Belarus differs sharply from that of Poland, Ukraine, Latvia, and Lithuania during the past decade. While her neighbors have ascended on a path toward democracy and greater transparency, Belarus has been descending into authoritarianism. Politically, Belarus shows more similarities with the republics of post-Soviet Central Asia than with its neighbors in Europe. In fewer than fifteen years, Belarus has gone from being a new and fragile democracy to a pariah state, which the United States refers to as an “outpost of tyranny” and the European Union (EU) calls “the last dictatorship in Europe.”1 Belarus’ political evolution during the post-Communist period can be divided into three phases: independence, liberalization, and establishment of democratic national institutions (1991–94); conflict between president and parliament, strengthening of the presidential powers, and weakening of democratic institutions and independence (1994–96); and one-man authoritarian rule (since 1997).2 Why and how did this happen in Belarus? This article seeks to find some of the answers in the absence of a strong national identity and in the public’s weak identification with the national institutions.
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Notes
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© 2008 Oliver Schmidtke and Serhy Yekelchyk, eds.
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Rudling, P.A. (2008). Belarus in the Lukashenka Era: National Identity and Relations with Russia. In: Schmidtke, O., Yekelchyk, S. (eds) Europe’s Last Frontier?. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-10170-9_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-10170-9_4
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