Undoubtedly, Belarus could already be an EU member. According to experts, its starting conditions in the early 1990s were no worse than those of Poland or the Czech Republic’s. This compact country with its relatively well-developed industry (being the former “assembly hall” of the Soviet Union), skilled and hard-working population, and historical and cultural roots bound with Europe, met all the requirements for fast-track integration with the democratic community of the Old World. Furthermore, the country was pervaded by a relatively democratic atmosphere characteristic of a parliamentary republic – the Belarus Supreme Council saw a liberal -Stanislav Shushkevich - come in to head it. What’s more, in quite a short time a Partnership and Cooperation Agreement (PCA) between Belarus and the EU was developed.
The romantic period of the young Belarusian democracy, however, rapidly came to an end. In 1994, the institution of presidency was established and the first presidential polls were triumphantly won by Alexander Lukashenko, a former Sovkhoz director. Factors which have also had an adverse impact on the pro-European trend in the young Belarus included the dismissal of democratic changes and the turn of foreign politics towards Moscow. This was the first negative breakthrough.
By force of inertia, in 1995, Lukashenko flew to Brussels to sign the PCA, yet the strategy to reinforce authoritarianism soon set him sharply against the West. The EU refused to recognise the results of the 1996 referendum (which granted the president virtually dictatorial competences and led to the dissolution of the Supreme Council of the Republic of Belarus) and froze ratification of the PCA. Belarus gained the image of the “last dictatorship of Europe”, while representatives of Belarusian authorities were denied the right to cross EU boundaries.
Using mass media, Lukashenko successfully managed to manipulate the collective consciousness, making the society believe that the blame for this confrontation rested with the traitorous imperialists of the West, averse to the independent direction of Belarusian politics.
The full text can be downloaded here in English and in Russian.
Aleksander Klaskousky – head of analytical projects at the Belarusian information agency BielaPAN (Minsk). A Journalist and reporter with 30 years of experience, he worked and has been working among others for: the youth magazine “Parus”, “Znamia Junosti” in the Perestroika era (its circulation amounted then to 800 thousand copies) and Belarusian TV in the 90. Between 2002- 2004 he edited an internet magazine www.naviny.by. He specializes above all in political analysis, publishing all his recent materials on the internet. The writes an internet blog on the “Nasza Niwa” website and regularly comments on current events on the Belarusian section of Radio Svoboda, Radio Racyja, the Polish Radio and the BELSAT channel. Moreover, he is an expert on media and a board member of the Belarusian Journalist Association. He lectures journalism at the European Humanistic University (EHU, Vilnius).