From leader to lead

Belarus used to be an economic curiosity, but for a different reason.
A backwater before the Bolshevik revolution – its non-farm economy was dominated by timber and peat processing – by the later decades of Soviet power it was a showcase of socialism, the “assembly line of the USSR .” The republic’s economy grew at a rate nine times that of the union in 1960 and almost five times the average in 1985, vaulting it past all but the Czech Republic among COMECON members in living standards, according to the United Nations. This progress left many Belarusians content with the same system that others in the USSR were so desperate to scrap. And when the first wave of economic reforms came, they did little to endear average Belarusians to the market. Between 1992 and 1994, GDP dropped by 20%, while crime and chaos spread unchecked. As in Russia and Ukraine , the collapse of state power was accompanied by the appearance of a new class of ruthless oligarchs, and the wholesale looting of the public productive assets most citizens still regarded with pride.
It was into this mix that Lukashenka stepped, offering a mixture of authoritarianism and traditionalist leadership.
“His views are very close to communist, but the Communists are his opposition,” says Alexander Sasnow, an economist who was a member of Parliament and Minister of Labor from 1994-96. Lukashenka uses the language of scientific socialism to denounce capitalism and explain his vision, and often seems to go out of his way to bolster his image as the last in Lenin’s line. (In late August, he received Russia ’s Communist leader Gennadi Zyuganov like a visiting head of state, the two bantering on the radio about the contribution of Belarusian tractors to the Russian harvest campaign.) At the same time, Lukashenka-controlled state media employ anti-Communist rhetoric when denouncing his chief rival for office, labor leader Uladzimir Hancharik, one of the highest officials in Soviet Belarus to keep their posts after the breakup of the USSR .
Earlier in his regime, Lukashenka often defined his economic ideology as “market socialism,” and tasked friendly experts with producing a profound work of political economy on which he could build a national ideology. But according to Sasnow, who is now deputy director of the Independent Institute of Socio-Economic and Political Sciences, the effort to create a coherent replacement philosophy fizzled out.
What may seem like simple opportunism can also be explained as an old-fashioned class struggle, pitting Lukashenka and others with humble roots against the urban elites of the old nomenclature and the nascent business classes. Though forced to work with slick former communists and young technocrats, Lukashenka’s is a regime of the common for the common. (The current chairman of the National Bank of Belarus , for example, is one of the world’s few central bankers without a (economic college education.) He revels in using boorish language in public and private, insulting and physically threatening his opponents. He reportedly believes that the separation and diffusion of power in western countries is a deception. Yet despite the incredulity of westerners, Lukashenka remains strongly popular with millions of Belarusian who are poorly educated, poor, and rural, or just old and afraid.
In fact, even as Lukashenka’s model of statism has weighed heavier on living standards in the country, many Belarusians share the president’s economic prejudices. According to a survey conducted late last year by the International Finance Corporation, the World Bank’s private-sector development arm, a slight majority of the population either support a market economy with broad state intervention, or a command economy modeled on that of the USSR . Almost half of those over 65 said they preferred a fully planned economy; in the eastern region of Vitebsk , almost 80% said they preferred a planned economy or one with significant state interference. Even a majority of those who counted themselves in favor of market economics also said they were in favor of strong state control over the economy.
The heterodox nature of Lukashenka’s appeal is also illustrated by his foreign friends; in addition to being popular with Zyuganov and Russia ’s other old-guard Communists, he is strongly supported by Vladimir Zhirinovski, the firebrand neo-Fascist who is vice-chairman of the Russian State Duma. Also great friends are China ’s leaders, who are themselves busy trying to reconcile socialism and the market.
“He has his own political course, and follows it,” say Sasnow. “And he is quite logical in his behavior.”
In making economic policy, Lukashenka follows a similarly crude if powerful logic. Production is supported at the expense of trade, “fair” prices valued over functioning product markets, and absolute control from the center imposed at the cost of everything else.