44 THENEWYORKER,DECEMBER13, 2021
campaign viable, released a prerecorded
video, in which he affirmed his candi-
dacy. “For twenty-six years, the dicta-
tor has been running the state, and
running it with mismanagement and
criminal negligence,” he said. But, with
Siarhei in prison, someone had to file
the paperwork for him. The task fell
to Sviatlana.
On May 14th, she visited the Cen-
tral Election Commission to register
on his behalf, but officials refused to
accept her signature. Tsikhanouskaya
went home dismayed. “I thought it was
over,” she said. That night, though, she
hit on an idea: what if she filed to run
for President herself? Tsikhanouskaya
filed her application hours before the
deadline. When the commission’s judg-
ment was due, five days later, she re-
turned to the offices, carrying a speech
to read if her candidacy was denied.
The commission’s chairwoman seemed
surprised by her presence. She asked if
Tsikhanouskaya really intended to run
for President, or if she would just serve
as a “sparring partner” for her husband.
Tsikhanouskaya replied, “I’ve dreamed
of this all my life.”
T
he same day, Siarhei was released
from jail. Sviatlana told me that,
when he arrived home, he was shocked
to discover that his wife had decided to
run for President. Although she was
listed as the candidate, she promptly
disappeared from public view. Siarhei
began a whimsical campaign; on the
trail, he posed with a life-size cutout of
his wife. Sviatlana told me that her hus-
band didn’t really think that Lukashenka
could be deposed. He was running a
protest campaign, in the hope of inspir-
ing his fellow-citizens. “He showed peo-
ple how to be brave,” she said.
Sviatlana did not consider herself
the primary candidate. “It was Siar-
hei’s campaign,” she said. “Everyone
understood this.” Still, there are indi-
cations that Siarhei was irritated by
her place on the ticket. In a video re-
cording, he can be seen talking to Svi-
atlana by phone while driving with a
friend. She was reading a list of local
campaign coördinators. “Have you got
it wrong again?” he said. “Read on,
please. People are waiting!” He signed
off, “O.K., see you, Mrs. Presidential
Candidate.” Before he finished, Sviat-
lana had hung up on him. He turned
to his friend and said, “I have to put
up with it now.”
Under Belarusian rules, anyone run-
ning for President needed to collect a
hundred thousand signatures to qual-
ify. In past elections, this was a desul-
tory phase of the campaign. This time,
Belarusians lined up by the thousands
to give their signatures; together, Tsikha-
nouskaya, Babaryka, and Tsepkalo col-
lected more than half a million. Each
candidate represented a distinct con-
stituency: Babaryka, professionals and
young people; Tsepkalo, government
workers; and Tsikhanouskaya, people
from the towns and villages.
With popular enthusiasm surging,
Lukashenka tried to seize control of
the election. On May 29th, Tsikhanouski
was arrested again, charged this time
with assaulting a police officer; videos
show that the confrontation was staged
when he was attacked by an unidenti-
fied woman. Babaryka was also arrested,
on charges that he had embezzled from
his bank. Tsepkalo was denied a spot
on the ballot; he later fled the country.
Suddenly, Lukashenka was the only
major candidate remaining.
Members of the defunct campaigns
decided to draft Sviatlana, whose name
was still on the ballot, to lead a com-
bined effort. They found her reluctant,
conscious that her husband’s aides didn’t
respect her. “She was actually crying—
it was very emotional,” a former aidetold me. But she agreed. “I am doing
it for my husband and the people who
supported him,” she said.
Only three weeks remained until the
election, and Tsikhanouskaya had no
training in politics. “She knew noth-
ing—literally nothing,” her aide Anna
Krasulina told me. “We told her, ‘You
will need a political platform,’ and
she said, ‘What is a political platform?’
We told her she would need to meet
journalists. She asked, ‘Why do I haveto meet journalists?’” On the stump,
though, she was f luent and forceful,
portraying herself as an ordinary citi-
zen stifled by an unresponsive autocrat.
“I’m tired of enduring, I’m tired of being
silent, I’m tired of living in fear!” she
told a crowd in Minsk. “What about
you?” The crowd roared back.
There was no time to plan. “We did
everything on our knee,” Tsikhanou-
skaya said. “I was lost, really.” A part of
her still wished that she were at home.
“I would rather be with my children
and my husband, frying up cutlets,” she
told supporters. The team decided on
a minimal platform. Tsikhanouskaya
said that her career in politics would
last no longer than it took to accom-
plish the release of political prisoners,
new elections, and the writing of a new
constitution. “This put a lot of her po-
tential rivals at ease,” another former
aide told me.
Maria Kalesnikava, the flutist who
had run Babaryka’s campaign, signed
on to join her. So did Tsepkalo’s wife,
Veronika. At their first public appear-
ance, a photographer captured the three
of them, each making a distinct gesture:
Kalesnikava forming a heart with her
fingers, Tsepkalo f lashing a V, and
Tsikhanouskaya holding up a fist. The
photo went viral, and they began re-
peating the pose wherever they went.
The crowds grew quickly. Gleb Ger-
man, the press aide, recalled, “It was like
riding a big wave. Everyone just had
this feeling that this is the moment we’ve
been waiting for, for twenty-six years.”
Skeptical observers suggested that
Tsikhanouskaya was merely the bene-
ficiary of unusual circumstances. “The
people would have supported whoever
was in her place,” Igor Ilyash, a jour-
nalist in Minsk, told me. “She was a
symbol.” But, to many Belarusians, her
distaste for politics made her a more
effective vehicle for yearning and anger.
Tsikhanouskaya suggested that the right
political model for the moment was not
an intellectual like Václav Havel, the
Czech playwright turned President, but
a relatable victim of historical circum-
stance, like Princess Diana. “She con-
nected with ordinary people,” she said.
The country and the candidate were
remaking themselves at the same time,
Zaretskaya suggested. “When your qual-
ities are not necessary, they are sleep-