On August 9, 2020, my home country, the Republic of Belarus, held another presidential election, in which, according to the official results, the incumbent president, Alexander Lukashenko, once again won by a large margin. On that very day, I began reading Lukashenko: A Political Biography, written by Alexander Feduta, a former ally of the president who worked in his first campaign headquarters and in his first government. When he wrote the book, Lukashenko had already been in power for 10 years, and even then, the author noted many changes in the initial promises and direction chosen by the country’s first and, so far, only president.
Today, Lukashenko has been in power for 26 years. Many of today’s voters were born during his rule, attended kindergarten, went to school, grew up, and became parents themselves. And for the second month after the election, protests in Belarus have not subsided, as the authorities attempt to brutally suppress them.
Why did I start reading this book? In 1994, I was 17 years old, not yet eligible to vote, and probably not very interested in politics at the time. But my coming of age took place “in the Lukashenko era.” I wanted to understand how Alexander Grigoryevich came to power and what kind of person he was. I remember all the events described in the book, but I could hardly assess them back then in the way a person “over forty” can now.
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