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On Nation, Gender, and Class Formation in Belarus … and Elsewhere in the Post-Soviet World

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Elena Gapova
Elena Gapova*
Affiliation:
European Humanities University, Belarus
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Extract

“Liberal democracy, in truth, is the political arrangement under which capital thrives best.” Slavoj Zizek

“It's the economy, stupid!” (Slogan on the wall of Bill Clinton's headquarters during his presidential campaign in 1992).

On 9 September 2001 presidential elections were held in Belarus for the first time since Alexandar Lukashenka became the president in 1994. To remain in power for seven years instead of the four for which he had been elected, he changed the constitution. Held in an undemocratic manner, with falsification of voting results, repression of political opponents, and blocking access to most media for opposition candidates, the 2001 elections became the acme of the confrontation between the authoritarian executive power and the opposition, labeled either democratic or nationalist, depending on one's perspective. The voting situation and how Westernized urban intelligentsia perceived it can best be illustrated by the following submission to the Slavic and East European Languages and Literatures electronic bulletin board. The message was sent by a list subscriber from Minsk (reproduced exactly as it appeared, the sender's name omitted):

Type
Articles
Information
Nationalities Papers , Volume 30 , Issue 4 , December 2002 , pp. 639 - 662
Copyright
Copyright © 2002 Association for the Study of Nationalities 

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References

Notes

* An earlier version of this paper was prepared for “The Role of Women in Post-Communist Transitions” workshop series, organized by the Kennan Institute at Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, DC in 2001–02.Google Scholar

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