The Belarus I remember was grim. Shuttered restaurants. The police on every corner. Smiles were rare. Envious stares from young Belarusians whenever I used my mobile phone. |
That was in 2003, when I frequently reported there as a freelancer. I went back to Europe’s last dictatorship on vacation last summer and saw an entire neighborhood, once reduced to rubble, that was now teeming with trendy cocktail bars. One Brutalist Soviet building housed a KFC. Minsk’s gentrification could put Brooklyn to shame. If a revolution was on the horizon, it certainly wasn’t visible from the shopping mall attached to my hotel. |
But one thing hadn’t changed: the president, Alexander Lukashenko, a tyrant who has been in power since 1994. During Lukashenko’s long reign, Belarusians have gained access to some luxury goods and the country has lacked the extreme inequality of many former Soviet states. In return, they have had to be flexible with things like, oh, elections, democracy and dissent. One friend dubbed this “cappuccino communism.” |
Outside the glitzy capital of Minsk, Sergei Tikhanovsky, a Belarusian YouTube star, was producing dispatches in 2019 with ordinary Belarusians who were telling a different story. Economic growth lingered around 1 percent, the ruble had depreciated significantly, monthly salaries were not increasing despite Lukashenko’s promises. This stagnation plagued smaller cities and the countryside. Lukashenko wasn’t hearing these complaints, but Sergei was, and his fans soon demanded he run for president. So he did. |
Lukashenko approached the election with his proven playbook: jailing and terrorizing the opposition, including Sergei, who has been imprisoned four times and remains so today. Following his most recent detainment in Minsk, his wife, Svetlana, put her own name on the ballot. An act of love, she insists, not political ambition. |
 | | Country for Life, via YouTube |
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A self-described stay-at-home mom, Svetlana was Lukashenko’s last legitimate opponent who was still in Belarus and not behind bars. She galvanized a nation, drawing tens of thousands of supporters to her rallies. When she lost the widely disputed election in August, hundreds of thousands of people filled the streets in peaceful protest. And they are still protesting today, undeterred by the violence of security forces who have imprisoned and tortured dissidents. |
Our Opinion video team commissioned a Belarusian journalist who was beaten herself to collect testimonies from other protest victims in the I.C.U. in late August. |
Svetlana’s political success eventually forced her into exile. She is now in Lithuania, where she continues to fight on behalf of the Belarusian people. Today, we are publishing a video Op-Ed by Svetlana, produced by Alexander Stockton, a Times’s Opinion video producer. Svetlana tells her improbable story — how her loyalty to her husband inspired her to take on Europe’s last dictator. |
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Introducing ‘Sway,’ a Podcast About Power From The New York Times |
It’s time we talk about power and “Sway,” the new podcast hosted by Kara Swisher, is here for that. In episode 1, Speaker Nancy Pelosi discusses her friend, the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a stalled stimulus bill and her dysfunctional relationship with the president. New episodes every Monday and Thursday, beginning Sept. 21. |
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