Belarus

C

World War II

In 1941, during World War II, the Nazi German army invaded Belorussia as part of a major offensive against the Soviet Union. The Nazis occupied the republic, imposing a brutal regime in which an estimated 2 million people perished. Jews, who at the time were the second-largest ethnic group in Belorussia, were especially targeted for imprisonment and mass executions in the Nazi death camps (see Holocaust). By the summer of 1942 the republic became the location of an extensive partisan movement, directed from Moscow, which played a major role in undermining the Nazi regime. In 1944 the Soviet Red Army drove out Nazi forces.

In the postwar years, Belorussia developed into one of the Soviet Union’s most modern manufacturing regions. The republic became the major Soviet center for the production of tractors and automobiles and an important base for chemicals and other products. Concurrently, the postwar years were marked by rapid urbanization. Minsk developed as the major center of economic, cultural, and political life and the largest urban center with a quarter of the republic’s urban residents. Communist Party loyalists dominated the leadership from the mid-1950s through 1980, with first Kiryl Mazurov and then the popular Petr Masherov leading the Soviet republic through a period of relative prosperity. Underlying this evident progress was a rigorous Soviet policy of promoting the Russian language and culture, resulting in a thorough Russification of the non-Russian population.

D

The Collapse of Soviet Rule

In 1986 Belorussia was devastated by the explosion at the Chernobyl’ nuclear power station in Ukraine (see Chernobyl’ Accident). More than one-fifth of the republic was contaminated with high-level radioactive fallout, and many of its residents were exposed. Also during the 1980s, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev introduced his political and economic reforms, perestroika (Russian for “restructuring”) and glasnost (“openness”), which encouraged a cultural rebirth in Belorussia. In October 1988 the Belarusian Popular Front (BPF) was formed, dedicated to the revival of the Belarusian language and to catalyzing the slow progress of de-Stalinization, or the reversal of repressive Stalinist policies, in the Belorussian SSR. In January 1990 Belarusian was made the sole official language of the republic. Later in 1990 relatively open elections were held to the Supreme Soviet, although the Communist Party won most seats and continued to dominate the legislature.

In 1990 Belorussia was one of several Soviet republics to declare sovereignty (the right to self government). Although a largely symbolic act, it took on new significance when Communist hardliners attempted a coup against the Soviet government in mid-August 1991. The coup attempt, which failed abjectly, precipitated the disintegration of the USSR. Following the lead of several other republics, Belarus declared its independence on August 25.

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In the following month, the Supreme Soviet of Belorussia elected as its chairperson a respected former vice-chancellor of Belarus State University, Stanislau Shushkevich, and changed the name of the state to the Republic of Belarus. The former state flag of the short-lived Belarusian People’s Republic of 1918 was resurrected, along with a state insignia displaying a knight on horseback (the former symbol of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania). In December a high-level meeting between Shushkevich, Russian president Boris Yeltsin, and Ukrainian president Leonid Kravchuk resulted in the formation of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), a loosely structured alliance open to all Soviet republics, with Minsk as its headquarters. Most republics joined the CIS, and the Soviet Union was formally dissolved in late December.

E

Belarus Since Independence

In 1992 the BPF attempted to force new parliamentary elections by collecting signatures from the public, but the attempt was rejected by the Communist-dominated legislature. Hardline forces thereafter regained control of political life. Shushkevich, long opposed by his prime minister, Vyacheslau Kebich, was ousted on trumped-up corruption charges in January 1994. As the economy deteriorated, Communist leaders sought closer ties with Russia, demanding among other things a military-security union. The first-ever presidential election in Belarus took place in July 1994 and resulted in an unexpected defeat for Kebich. A virtually unknown young politician, Alyaksandr Lukashenka, swept to victory with more than 80 percent of the vote in the final runoff. The victory of Lukashenka, a former state farm manager, signaled support from voters for his campaign against corruption and for closer ties with Russia.

E

1

Power Struggles in Government

As president, Lukashenka combined genuine popularity, especially in rural regions, with a repressive regime that openly emulated the Soviet past. Lukashenka immediately began to circumvent the constitution to assert his powers over the Supreme Soviet. In May 1995 he held national referenda that resulted in the removal of the state flag and emblem and their replacement by a flag nearly identical to that of the Belorussian SSR. Frequent demonstrations were held against the president’s authoritarian policies. In April 1996 the largest of these protests, involving about 70,000 people, resulted in numerous arrests and police-inflicted injuries. In September the government shut down the only independent radio station and froze the bank accounts of at least five independent weekly newspapers.

By late 1996 a power struggle had developed between Lukashenka and an intra-party majority in the Supreme Soviet. The president demanded a new referendum to extend his term in office and provide him with authority to dissolve the legislature, while the Supreme Soviet, led by chairman Semyon Sharetsky, sought to impeach the president. The referendum, which passed with more than 70 percent of the vote amid widespread allegations of vote fraud, resulted in a dramatic victory for Lukashenka. Russian prime minister Viktor Chernomyrdin played the role of intermediary and tried, unsuccessfully, to have the results of the referendum declared nonbinding. Lukashenka immediately signed its provisions into law as amendments to the constitution, despite an earlier ruling by the Constitutional Court that the results were to be used only for advisory purposes. Lukashenka dissolved the Supreme Soviet and created a new legislature, the National Assembly, composed entirely of his supporters.

E

2

Ties with Russia

In foreign affairs, Lukashenka pursued his long-held goal of unifying Belarus with Russia. In April 1996 Lukashenka and Russian president Boris Yeltsin signed a preliminary union treaty that proposed closer political and economic ties between the two countries. Earlier agreements already established their military cooperation and the stationing of Russian military units in Belarus. Lukashenka continued to push for full unification, but liberal Russian officials urged Yeltsin to agree to only a limited integration, largely due to Belarus’s authoritarian government structure. In 1997 the two leaders signed a union treaty that called for economic, political, and military cooperation but fell short of creating a single state. In 1998 Yeltsin and Lukashenka signed an accord for the two countries to eventually merge their currencies, customs regulations, and tax collection systems. Assistance from Russia has enabled Lukashenka to keep the economy relatively stable.

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