Europe’s Last Dictator: Aleksandr Lukashenko

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Video originally published on June 6, 2024.

This analysis examines Europe's Last Dictator: Aleksandr Lukashenko in historical and strategic context. It traces how the core developments unfolded, which institutions and actors shaped outcomes, and what those decisions changed on the ground. Rather than repeating headline-level claims, it focuses on concrete mechanisms, constraints, and tradeoffs that explain the trajectory of events. The discussion moves from Key Developments through Strategic Implications to Risk and Uncertainty, then evaluates wider consequences. The goal is to clarify not only what happened, but why these developments still matter for current planning, risk assessment, and policy decisions.

Key Takeaways

We are talking here, of course, about Aleksandr Lukashenko, the Last Dictator of Europe.
The fall of communism had upended the political and social systems in place for decades as well as the fragile economic balance which had just about held in place until then.
Many suffered from lopsided economies, corruption, internal conflicts or other political instability, and difficulties in nation-building and the search for a common identity.
According to his presidential website, he worked as manager of a state-owned collective farm or kolkhoz for several years before beginning his political career in 1990, when he was elected as an MP to the Supreme Council of Belarus.
Piotr Macherov - a hero of the second world war and longtime leader of the Belarusian SSR - was celebrated in Belarus for his ability to reform and resistance to corrupution, contrasting him with Leonid Brezhnev and.

Key Developments

We are talking here, of course, about Aleksandr Lukashenko, the Last Dictator of Europe. So what exactly happened in Belarus, and has anything changed in the years since then? Well today on Warographics, in the latest chapter of our 'The Dictators' series, we thought we'd look at Belarus: the situation on the ground, and what may change in the future. A stunted transition To understand the events of the past few years, it is first necessary to understand just how - and under which circumstances - did somebody like Aleksandr Grigoryevich Lukashenko first come into power. And to do that, it is important to understand the context in which a country like Belarus found itself at the end of the Soviet period. You see, when Lukashenko took control of Belarus in the mid-1990s, the entire former Eastern Bloc was undertaking a great - and in some cases perilous - period of change. You see, when Lukashenko took control of Belarus in the mid-1990s, the entire former Eastern Bloc was undertaking a great - and in some cases perilous - period of change. The fall of communism had upended the political and social systems in place for decades as well as the fragile economic balance which had just about held in place until then. The difficulties which accompanied this was none more visible than in Russia, where a coup attempt by Soviet loyalists to preserve the crumbling system was narrowly overcome by Boris Yeltsin's democratically-elected government. While political meltdown was avoided, the event did nonetheless mark the beginning of a decade of economic woe in Russia labelled by historian Andrei Tsygankov as the smuta of the 1990s. The word smuta roughly translates as 'turmoil' and often refers to a period of great social crisis and lawlessness in early 17th-century Russia. Suffice to say, the 1990s in Russia were a period of quite severe hardship. Aside from Russia, other countries in Eastern Europe and Central Asia also found the transition out of communism extremely difficult at this time. Many suffered from lopsided economies, corruption, internal conflicts or other political instability, and difficulties in nation-building and the search for a common identity. This was especially true for countries whose populations included ethnic groups haphazardly lumped together by Soviet-era population transfers and the redrawing of territorial boundaries. For its part, Belarus seemed to experience a comparatively mild period in the 1990s - and it did so, quite simply, by deviating as little as possible from the existing communist structure in place. Europe's Last Dictator The full biography of Lukashenko is not really clear. According to his presidential website, he worked as manager of a state-owned collective farm or kolkhoz for several years before beginning his political career in 1990, when he was elected as an MP to the Supreme Council of Belarus.

Strategic Implications

The fall of communism had upended the political and social systems in place for decades as well as the fragile economic balance which had just about held in place until then. The difficulties which accompanied this was none more visible than in Russia, where a coup attempt by Soviet loyalists to preserve the crumbling system was narrowly overcome by Boris Yeltsin's democratically-elected government. While political meltdown was avoided, the event did nonetheless mark the beginning of a decade of economic woe in Russia labelled by historian Andrei Tsygankov as the smuta of the 1990s. The word smuta roughly translates as 'turmoil' and often refers to a period of great social crisis and lawlessness in early 17th-century Russia. Suffice to say, the 1990s in Russia were a period of quite severe hardship. Aside from Russia, other countries in Eastern Europe and Central Asia also found the transition out of communism extremely difficult at this time. His website goes on to describe him as a politician tough on corruption whose (quote) 'determination and honesty earned him broad public support'. Alternatively, Lukashenko's path to the presidency could be summarised by simply accusing absolutely everyone and anyone of corruption - including the first head of state of independent Belarus Stanislav Shushkevich, whom he accused of being an 'American stooge'. Whether or not this was true it did seem to land with the public, and despite being a relative outsider, Lukashenko occupied a comfortable position going into the Presidential election in 1994, an election he would go on to win by some margin. Lukashenko's nostalgic take on communism was evident from the outset of his presidency. He had reportedly been the only Belarusian legislator to have voted against his nation's independence as the Soviet Union fell apart in 1991. While Shushkevich had introduced changes designed to enhance Belarusian national identity during his brief tenure as head of state, Lukashenko quickly worked to reestablish close ties with Russia once in power. He signed a friendship and cooperation pact with Russia, restored Russian as the co-official language alongside Belarusian, and even signed a deal that would see the currencies and tax systems of Belarus and Russia merge - although this ultimately did not come into being. The 1994 election remains the only election in the entire post-communist period in Belarus to date seen as fair and democratic, and Lukashenko rapidly consolidated his power in the following years by winning reelection in 2001, 2006, 2010, 2015, and 2020 - each one decried as illegitimate by observers. It is not surprising, therefore, that Lukashenko has been dubbed 'Europe's Last Dictator' by Western press - a title which, curiously, is not one Lukashenko shys away from and has even used when referring to himself at political events in the past.

Risk and Uncertainty

Many suffered from lopsided economies, corruption, internal conflicts or other political instability, and difficulties in nation-building and the search for a common identity. This was especially true for countries whose populations included ethnic groups haphazardly lumped together by Soviet-era population transfers and the redrawing of territorial boundaries. For its part, Belarus seemed to experience a comparatively mild period in the 1990s - and it did so, quite simply, by deviating as little as possible from the existing communist structure in place. How did it do that? Step forward Aleksandr Lukashenko. Europe's Last Dictator The full biography of Lukashenko is not really clear. Lukashenko also based his rule over Belarus on the Soviet system by retaining some of its key traits. This included the preservation of symbolic elements such as opulent monuments to Lenin and Karl Marx, adopting a Soviet-style coat of arms, and the introduction of a distinctive red and green flag mirroring that of the Belarusian Soviet Socialist Republic, described by Cracked.com as a sort of ugly Christmas sweater. Belarus also continued the Soviet system of state-run collective farms, and Lukashenko continued to rely on a state intelligence apparatus to support his rule, an organisation which retained its original Soviet-era title as the Belarusian KGB. Back in the Belarusian SSR Now, you might be thinking - surely the Belarusian public would reject out of hand the prospect of returning to the backward days of the Soviet system under their new, democratic system. But the truth is that the people's feelings - at least, in the turbulent years of the early 1990s - were a little more nuanced. You see, despite the Soviet Union always having proclaimed itself as a sort of union of equals based on the emancipation of the proletariat, it was really anything but. Many nations in the USSR fared comparatively better during its existence than others, with some benefitting from privileges coming at the expense of fellow citizens of a different ethnicity. As an example, during the extreme years of Stalinism and his many purges, ethnic groups like the Volga Germans, the Crimean Tatars, the Chechens and the Ingush were forcibly removed from their homes and shipped off to places like central Asia, with many of them dying en route or shortly after arrival. Some groups - like the Jews - were disproportionately targeted during the purges and many others suffered simple day-to-day discrimination under the hierarchical Soviet system. The territories of Kazakhstan and Belarus' neighbour Ukraine suffered devastating famines engineered by Soviet policies which wiped out millions of people and left large portions of land in either country sparsely populated and massively undeveloped. Despite the innumerable hardships imposed on all ethnic minorities during this period, the Belarusians under the Soviet system fared slightly better. Unsurprising, perhaps, given that they shared a lot in common with the Russians - sharing many ethnic origins, a language and also not having their loyalty to Russian hegemony being questioned in a way that the Ukrainians did.

Outlook

According to his presidential website, he worked as manager of a state-owned collective farm or kolkhoz for several years before beginning his political career in 1990, when he was elected as an MP to the Supreme Council of Belarus. His website goes on to describe him as a politician tough on corruption whose (quote) 'determination and honesty earned him broad public support'. Alternatively, Lukashenko's path to the presidency could be summarised by simply accusing absolutely everyone and anyone of corruption - including the first head of state of independent Belarus Stanislav Shushkevich, whom he accused of being an 'American stooge'. Whether or not this was true it did seem to land with the public, and despite being a relative outsider, Lukashenko occupied a comfortable position going into the Presidential election in 1994, an election he would go on to win by some margin. Lukashenko's nostalgic take on communism was evident from the outset of his presidency. He had reportedly been the only Belarusian legislator to have voted against his nation's independence as the Soviet Union fell apart in 1991. In addition, the Belarusian SSR - as the country was known during the Soviet period - occupied a comfortable place in the history of the union. It was one of the four original constituent republics (alongside Russia, Ukraine and Transcaucasia) - which meant that, by 1989, it had spent close to seventy years as part of the USSR. Belarus suffered extreme hardship during the Second World War, being at the epicentre of much of the fighting and losing more than a quarter of its population during the conflict - proportionally more than any other nation in the war. But its postwar experience was brighter than that of many neighbouring nations. The territory of the Belarusian SSR actually grew after the war, as Stalin added parts of erstwhile Poland to Belarus which had previously been surrendered in 1921. The country rapidly industrialised under the USSR's postwar five-year plans and the population of the capital city Minsk grew quickly, reaching 1 million people in the early 1970s. The country also became conspicuously more homogenous - its previously large populations of Jews and Germans having been either killed during the war or deported elsewhere. According to economists Michael Alexeev and Clifford Gaddy, in 1990 as the Soviet Union neared dissolution, the average income in the Belarusian SSR was the 4th-highest in the entire USSR, trailing only the industrialised republics of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, and significantly ahead of the Georgian, Ukrainian, Armenian and Moldovan Soviet Socialist Republics. Perhaps equally as importantly, as pointed out by historian David Marples, the Belarusian SSR had prided itself on the incorruptibility of its officials: something which notably contrasted it with the well-known excesses of the leadership in Moscow.

The Rise of Europe's Last Dictator

Piotr Macherov - a hero of the second world war and longtime leader of the Belarusian SSR - was celebrated in Belarus for his ability to reform and resistance to corrupution, contrasting him with Leonid Brezhnev and other Soviet leaders during the Era of Stagnation in the 1980s. The fall of the communist system and the rise in corruption cases across the Eastern Bloc had therefore hit Belarusians with a great deal of shock. The regular allegations of corruption made by Lukashenko and his political allies seemed to put the head of state Stanislav Shushkevich and Belarus' Prime Minister Vyacheslav Kebich at great odds with mythicised Belarusian leaders figures of the communist period. In short - when one considers the length of time Belarus spent as part of the USSR, the relative economic stability it experienced, as well as the many difficulties that came with the dissolution of the USSR, it is not a stretch to imagine that many in Belarus may have viewed a return to the days of the Soviet period as an attractive proposition. And that is precisely what Aleksandr Lukashenko - in 1994 - seemed to offer. While not everyone in Belarus bought into his promises nor into the appeal of a return to the period, Lukashenko's posturing as a hard-nosed anti-corruption campaigner was enough to see him earn an initial 45% of the votes in Belarus's first-ever Presidential election, and to later sweep to victory in the run-off election with an 80.6% total - putting him far ahead of second-placed finisher, outgoing Prime Minster Vyacheslav Kebich, with only 14.2% of the vote. It would be the first and last time a free election would take place in Belarus. Life under Dictatorship For many years, the tale of Lukashenko's grip on Belarus was one which largely - to audiences in the West, at least - remained somewhat under the radar. You see, before the protests erupted against Lukashenko in 2020, it could be argued that there simply hadn't been a whole lot to report on in Belarus and the gaze of the world had been for a very long time firmly set elsewhere. Belarus is a geographically rather small country, tucked away on the edge of Europe's eastern flank. With a seemingly popular, stable leader and a rigid political system in place, there had not really been much by way of political developments in Belarus for Western or world media outlets to focus on. No changing of hands politically, no ousted former President vying for power with a younger rival, and no breakaway region seeking to secure its independence and secede. With domestic media tightly controlled by Lukashenko's state apparatus, there hasn't been much room for anyone to report on Belarus at all for much of the late nineties and early 2000s.

Historical Context: Belarus in the Post-Soviet Era

In the meantime, many other countries of the post-Soviet space were in the process of making a painful - and very newsworthy - transition towards democracy in the shadow of Russia's leering presence. Countries like Armenia, Georgia, and Ukraine experienced up to several political revolutions in the years since after the fall of communism. These political ruptures occurred with punchy titles such as the 'Velvet Revolution', “Orange Revolution', or 'Rose Revolution' and featured large-scale demonstrations by civilians, often against pro-Russian governments and political figures. In the case of Georgia and Ukraine, their attempt at moving away from Russia's grip was met with the stifling blow of a military incursion and occupation by Russian forces, along with cyclical Russian interference in domestic political elections. Many of these events received significant spotlight, with the precarious state of stability, democracy, and independence in Ukraine and Georgia being at the forefront of European political interest in the past few years. Over in Belarus, things remained eerily quiet. The wave of revolutions occurring elsewhere had not spread there and everything in the country remained business as usual in the early 2000s. In fact, for much of this time, it simply appeared that nothing was really happening there at all. Despite its relatively small geographical size, it was not that the country was so small as to have slipped under the radar of global press coverage, such as might have been the case with some of the tiniest republics of the postsoviet space. At over nine million people, Belarus' population is still greater than that of any of the Baltic republics and nearly twice the size of Armenia and Georgia combined - two countries whose post-independence turmoils have been well documented in global press in the early twenty-first century. Nevertheless, save for the occasional article pointing out its continued frequent use of the death penalty and the suppression of press and political plurality, it would seem that goings-on in Belarus were largely kept hidden under the ironclad grip of Aleksandr Lukashenko for most of the time since his rise to power. But the situation in Belarus was actually far from rosy - and public disquiet at the abuses committed by Lukashenko's government was rapidly brewing. Beginning soon after his election victory, Lukashenko had moved to eliminate any potential rivals to his leadership, including several who'd actively helped to secure his route to power. Viktor Hanchar was Lukashenko's campaign manager during the Presidential election, but in 1999, he was abducted and was never seen or heard from again. Emerging Europe reports that he had been executred in custody under orders from Lukashenko himself. Hienadz Karpenka, another ally of Lukashenko during his presidential campaign, died the same year under contested circumstances - supposedly of a brain haemorrhage.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Lukashenko left or right wing?

See the full article for details on Is Lukashenko left or right.

Is Belarus really a dictatorship?

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What is Nikolai Lukashenko known for?

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Why is Belarus so friendly with Russia?

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Does the US recognize Lukashenko?

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Jackson Reed

Jackson Reed creates and presents analysis focused on military doctrine, strategic competition, and conflict dynamics.

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