The National Ideology and the Basis of the Lukashenka Regime in Belarus

Abstract

The rule of Alyaksandr Lukashenka in Belarus has created one of the most resilient authoritarian regimes in post-communist Europe but the sources of its stability have not been clearly understood until now. The article suggests that President Lukashenka's authority is sustained on the basis of a national ideology, which he uses to drive his economic, social and foreign policies. The Belarusian transition reveals a new type of national mobilisation in the post-communist area: egalitarian nationalism. It is suggested that this ideology provides the principal source of the failure of democratisation and the authoritarian consolidation in post-Soviet states such as Belarus.