THENEWYORKER,DECEMBER13, 2021 41
tity to flourish. Between 1937 and 1940,
most of the élite was wiped out, as Stalin-
ist purges swept the country. Many vic-
tims are buried in mass graves at Kura-
paty, a forest outside Minsk, which might
hold as many as a quarter of a million
people. Visiting there, I found crosses
extending so deep into the pines that the
farthest reaches were invisible in the shad-
ows. Belarusian nationalism was not so
much suppressed as destroyed.
When independence came again,
there was a chaotic period of adjust-
ment. Then, in 1994, Belarus held its
first and only free election. Lukashenka
ran as a populist, battling corruption;
during the campaign, he wore the same
jacket every day. In office, he promised
to preserve the safety net and the sta-
ble employment of the old order, stand-
ing against the chaos besetting the post-
Communist states that had attempted
rapid transitions to market economies.
“We did not follow the path of destruc-
tion,” Lukashenka told Russian report-
ers in 2005. “We stood on the founda-
tion that was created in the Soviet Union,
here, on this land, and began to build a
normal economy.”
In the following years, Lukashenka
pushed through constitutional changes
that allowed him to consolidate power.
Several of his political opponents dis-
appeared, and were presumed to have
been murdered on his orders. In 2001,
with the press silenced and parliament
cowed, Lukashenka staged what was
widely regarded as a rigged election;
several others followed. “They decide
ahead of time, Lukashenka is going to
win eighty-eight per cent of the vote,”
Jaroslav Romanchuk, who ran in 2010,
said. Whenever protesters took to the
streets, riot police cracked down. In a
speech this summer, Lukashenka warned
the country’s intelligentsia to stay out
of politics: “Before you do something,
think—watch your every step.”
The key to Lukashenka’s survival
was an unspoken Russian guarantee.
Beginning in the nineteen-nineties,
Russia agreed to sell Belarus vast quan-
tities of oil and natural gas at discounted
prices. This arrangement insured Be-
larus a relatively high standard of liv-
ing, while allowing Lukashenka’s gov-
ernment to resell the oil products abroad
at market prices. Prominent Belaru -
sians and Western diplomats estimated
that over the years the profits to Rus-
sian and Belarusian energy companies
amounted to tens of billions of dollars.
According to these officials, Lu-
kashenka, too, grew rich from the sale
of Russian gas and oil, and from smug-
gling between Europe and Russia. A
report for the U.S. Congress, published
in 2006, estimated his personal wealth
at a billion dollars. It has almost cer-
tainly grown since then; a former se-
nior Belarusian official put it closer to
ten billion, adding that Lukashenka ran
the country as “a family business.”
Lukashenka’s officials remain loyal,
in part because they are allowed to get
rich, from smuggling, kickbacks, and
whatever other means they can devise.
Stanislav Luponosov, a former security
officer who investigated organized crime
and corruption, told me that Lukashen-
ka’s office and the K.G.B. routinely iden-
tified people not to pursue. “When that
happened, one had to obey,” he said.
From the beginning, Lukashenka
affirmed his country’s affinity with Rus-
sia, “our elder brother.” He made Rus-
sian the official language. Textbooks
were rewritten to emphasize the shared
culture of the two countries; immigra-
tion controls were all but eliminated.
Lukashenka consistently downplayed
Stalin’s crimes, once declaring, “I’m ab-
solutely not of the opinion that Stalin
is the enemy.” A few years ago, he voiced
approval of a restaurant built in Kura-
paty, overlooking the graves of Stalin’svictims. It was called Let’s Go and Eat.
In the late nineteen-nineties, Lu-
kashenka proposed uniting Russia and
Belarus into one country, which he imag-
ined he would lead. Instead, Vladimir
Putin came to power and began en-
croaching on Belarus’s independence.
The two men often appeared together,
Putin inscrutable and slight, and Lu-
kashenka flamboyant and imposing. But
it was always clear who dominated; in
a photo from 2018, Lukashenka stoodwith his legs wide apart to lower him-
self to Putin’s height. During a meet-
ing last year on the Black Sea, the Rus-
sian news media showed Lukashenka
frolicking in the frigid waves, while Putin
stayed safely on dry land. State televi-
sion reported that Putin had asked him
to get into the water. “Putin enjoys hu-
miliating him,” Latushka, the former
minister, said.
Still, Lukashenka flourished. An ice-
hockey fan, he sometimes played for the
cameras, with conspicuous success. He
fathered at least one child out of wed-
lock—a boy named Nikolai, who is
widely believed to be his chosen succes-
sor. He has also maintained a string of
mistresses. The woman rumored to be
his latest, Maria Vasilevich, was crowned
Miss Belarus in 2018. (Vasilevich has de-
nied that the relationship is romantic.)
The pair appeared together at hockey
matches and at a formal dance. Early in
2019, Lukashenka awarded her a state
medal for contributing to a “spiritual re-
vival” in Belarus. In that year’s elections,
which resulted in a sweep for parties
loyal to Lukashenka, Vasilevich won a
seat in parliament.S
viatlana Tsikhanouskaya was born in
1982, during the last years of Soviet
dominion. She grew up in Mikashevi-
chi, a granite-mining town in southern
Belarus, where her father drove a truck
for a cement factory and her mother
worked as a cook in a cafeteria. In free
moments, her parents read as much as
they could, but they had to be careful
about what they discussed with their
children. “Like every family, we talked
about politics,” Tsikhanouskaya told me.
“But in the kitchen, whispering, so no
one could hear.”
When Tsikhanouskaya was three
years old, the Chernobyl nuclear plant
melted down across the border, and a
vast cloud of contamination spread.
Some seventy per cent of the fallout
landed on Belarus, and created an un-
precedented public-health crisis. Ra-
diation poisoned the rain, the grass,
the milk and meat of cows. Thousands
of people became ill. “We couldn’t es-
cape,” Tsikhanouskaya said. In the hope
of fending off sickness, her mother had
her drink red wine—one small glass
a day.
As a girl, Tsikhanouskaya studied