38 THENEWYORKER,DECEMBER13, 2021
AREPORTERAT LARGE
AN ACCIDENTAL REVOLUTIONARY
The woman who challenged Belarus’s dictatorship.
BY DEXTER FILKINS
O
n the north side of Indepen
dence Square, in the Belarusian
capital of Minsk, is the House
of Government—a row of cuboid white
buildings, each with a checkerboard of
identical black windows. Members of
parliament go in through the main en
trance, passing a towering statue of Lenin
and a forlorn line of trees that stand amid
several acres of pavement and brick. Peo
ple who want to visit the Central Elec
tion Commission use a small entrance
to the right. On the afternoon of Au
gust 10, 2020, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya
went in through the smaller entrance, to
complain that her victory in the Presi
dential election had been stolen.
Tsikhanouskaya was not a career pol
itician; she was the daughter of a truck
driver, a mother of two who had set
aside a career as an English teacher in
order to help her deaf son learn to speak.
An improbable series of events had pro
pelled her to challenge President Alex
ander Lukashenka, the last dictator in
Europe, for the leadership of Belarus.
A few months before, Tsikhanou
skaya’s husband, a journalist named
Siarhei Tsikhanouski, had declared his
own candidacy against Lukashenka,
whom he had relentlessly derided as
an incompetent autocrat, a “cockroach”
who was despoiling the country. For
years, Lukashenka had regularly staged
Presidential elections, and each time
claimed an easy victory. This time,
though, there was a strong popular re
action, inspired in part by Siarhei’s re
ports. He was arrested and thrown into
a “punishment cell,” a dank concrete
box without a window. Hundreds of
others had already been imprisoned for
questioning the regime.
With Siarhei in jail, Tsikhanouskaya
decided to run herself. At first, she was
reluctant. When I met her recently, she
radiated earnest charm: her face is broad,
framed by straight brown hair, her voice
plain and strong. “I am accidental,” she
told me. “I am not building my career, I
am not settling scores, I do not know
the language of politics, I do not like this
business. I am doing this for the Bela
rusian people, and for my husband. They
jailed him for nothing.”
Tsikhanouskaya’s platform consisted
of only three demands: freedom for po
litical prisoners; a new constitution that
reduced the powers of the Presidency;
and fresh elections. But her speeches were
galvanizing. “State officials have failed to
understand that it’s not individual can
didates but the people who threaten their
power,” she told a boisterous crowd in
Minsk. “And the people are fed up with
living in humiliation and fear.”
Lukashenka declined to debate
Tsikhanouskaya, and evidently didn’t
consider her enough of a risk to have
her arrested. “Our constitution was not
written for a woman, and our society
isn’t ready to vote for a woman,” he told
a gathering at a tractor factory in May.
“The President will be a man, I am more
than sure.” But, with surprising speed,
Belarusians took her side against the re
gime. The opposition adopted a white
andred flag—a symbol of Belarus’s brief
first attempt at independence, in 1918—
which Lukashenka has since banned.
They also began wearing white ribbons,
as a signal of support. Tsikhanouskaya’s
rallies drew enormous crowds. “We set
up a stage and a microphone in a field,
and five thousand people came,” a press
aide named Gleb German told me.
On Election Day, August 9th, Be
larusians flocked to the polls, with hun
dreds of thousands wearing white rib
bons on their wrists. Tsikhanouskaya
and her allies were certain that she had
won. But, that night, Lukashenka de
clared that he had captured more than
eighty per cent of the vote—a prepos
terous claim, which brought outraged
protesters to the streets. As Tsikhanou
skaya implored the crowds to remain
peaceful, Lukashenka’s riot police threw
stun grenades, beat and teargassed dem
onstrators, and arrested thousands.
The next day, with the streets again
swarming with protesters, Tsikhanou
skaya and her lawyer, Maxim Znak, ap
proached the election commission to
file her protest. Near the entrance, they
found a cordon of security officers in
dark suits, with guns at their belts; two
men were waiting inside. They recog
nized one of them as Andrei Pavlyu
chenko, a notorious enforcer who has
served as Lukashenka’s head of security
and his chief of Internet police.
The men told Znak to step away,
then led Tsikhanouskaya to a dark room
and closed the door. “Your campaign is
over,” Pavlyuchenko told her. They gave
her a choice, she recalled. She could go
to prison, leaving her son and daughter
to be raised by others. Or she could leave
the country immediately; a car was wait
ing. “All I could think about was my
children,” she said.
A few hours later, the two officials
led Tsikhanouskaya toward a rear exit.
On her way out, she passed Znak. “Sorry,
Max,” she said as she was hustled out
the door.
The men drove Tsikhanouskaya across
town, past throngs of protesters, some
chanting her name. The chants were so
loud that the car windows seemed to vi
brate. “Look what you have done,” one
of the men said. Minutes later, they ar
rived at Tsikhanouskaya’s home, and the
men told her to pack a bag. There she
was joined by Maryia Maroz, her campaign
manager. She, too, was being expelled.
The men loaded them into Maroz’s
car, with Pavlyuchenko in the passen
ger seat and police vehicles ahead and
behind. At about 3 A.M., they arrived at
the Lithuanian border, where Maroz’s
two young children were waiting to meet
her. Pavlyuchenko got out and told them
to drive through the border post, which
seemed prepared for their arrival. Tsikha
nouskaya thought for a moment that
