Hansbury’s book examines Belarus’s 2020 uprising, Lukashenka’s survival strategies, and the West’s response. While insightful and engaging, it overlooks key diplomatic efforts and naively suggests Russia could mediate change. Despite its flaws, it remains essential reading on Belarus’s political crisis.

Belarus’ popular uprising that took place in the summer of 2020 after the presidential election brought the country, a small central European republic of 9.3 million people, to the attention of a world audience. For the next few weeks, crowds of over 200,000 battled with police to contest the election results, which officially gave Lukashenka, president since 1994 over 80% of the votes and his main challenger, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya under 10%. 

The book is divided into five sections, each of which is followed by an “interlude”–in the fifth section that word is replaced with “Coda” to discuss Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and its impact on Belarus. Most of the book concerns the rise of Lukashenka and the period of his leadership, relations with Russia, and the reaction of the West.  

Hansbury writes in a style that immediately draws in the reader, including some asides, witty remarks, and his reactions to things of which he disapproves. It is refreshingly easy to read. As with any book trying to cover such a complex series of events, there are significant omissions, some of which limit his analysis of events. For example, in assessing Western attempts to communicate with the regime and steer it onto a more democratic path under Lukashenka, the most substantial effort was surely that of Ambassador Hans Georg Wieck, who headed the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) Advisory and Monitoring Group in Minsk. In 2001, it was Wieck who, frustrated by the government’s duplicity over attempted dialogue, promoted the presidential candidacy of trade union leader, Uladzimir Hancharyk, who received over 16% of the vote. The OSCE office thereafter was deprived of its influence and Wieck was denied a visa. 

Hansbury’s analysis of the reasons why the 2020 elections were so different from predecessors is convincing. He provides four: a faltering economy; social policies of the government, including the ignoring of the Covid-19 pandemic; a population tired of suffering and anxious to prosper; and the unpopularity of the president, as evidenced by his visit to the Minsk Tractor Works (MTZ) where he was jeered by workers and told to resign. One might add the growth of social media, which he acknowledges implicitly by his focus on Telegram’s NEXTA channel and its activities. 

He is also insistent that the results of the 2020 election are not known: “Lukashenka did not win the election but did not lose it either”; and “anecdotal evidence” (!) suggests Lukashenka is backed by one-third to one-quarter of the population”. In general, he is critical of the opposition leaders, citing a comment that Tsikhanouskaya is a very good actor but was not a serious candidate, and based on the comment by “a former official in the regime,” Pavel Latushka, the deputy head of the Coordination Council in exile has “an authoritarian tendency.”  

Highlighted also are Lukashenka’s methods of survival: empowering the KGB, changing the Constitution, intrigues such as bomb threats, and savaging the media, while extending the lengths of prison sentences. He notes also how Lukashenka sought to limit integration with Russia using soft Belarusization–though this should be attributed mainly to Foreign Minister Uladzimir Makei–and avoiding involvement in the larger state’s various conflicts and wars (prior to 2022). Nevertheless, the dictator was obliged eventually to recognise Russia’s annexation of Crimea.  

In the later chapter, entitled “The West Reacts”, the author seems to lose his way. It consists mostly of an anti-western diatribe, combining his contempt for the use of sanctions as a means to punish the regime and the failure of the West to remove Lukashenka after the elections. The two require further elaboration.  

Hansbury does not approve of sanctions as a means to deal with the problems of Belarus. He also thinks that Belarus has not been treated fairly because other authoritarian regimes such as Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan are not treated in the same manner. Perhaps the comment is relevant when referred to Azerbaijan, but Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan are not in Europe, nor were they members of the Eastern Partnership project that embraced countries of the EU neighbourhood.  

Sanctions are indeed difficult to apply, and as Hansbury notes, the United States’ sanctions are less critical because it is not a major trading partner. The EU, however, is a divided entity much of the time, thus sanctions are one policy on which all members can agree. In some respects they are more symbolic than material, and yet as the author notes, Belarus is desperate to have them removed, and its economy is struggling. So, perhaps they do work. 

Referring to the time when the West lifted sanctions on Belarus in the spring of 2016, Hansbury comments sarcastically “Say it in an undertone: Brussels engaged in realpolitik”. Nevertheless, “The first big test of how geopolitical the EU would be soon presented itself and the EU roundly failed the test.”  What test had they failed?  

The book’s answer is clear but quite unusual. The West should have made a deal with Russia in 2020. The reasons: Russia had not opposed the Tsikhanouskaya trio’s election campaign, in contrast to its response to elections in Ukraine. In June 2021 at the St. Petersburg Economic Forum, Putin stated that Russia would remain neutral in the conflict in Belarus–the matter was the decision of the Belarusian people. Western states should have joined with Russia to “force Lukashenka to make concessions to the opposition”. 

The statement reads like something out of a fantasy world. Hansbury has explained how Russia filled up depleted ranks of Belarusian television, how it provided a loan of $1.5 billion to shore up the economy for the beleaguered president. One wonders about the very concept of Vladimir Putin advising concessions to the opposition, let alone remaining neutral. The more likely response from Moscow was admiration for the brutality with which the authorities replied to the opposition’s demands. 

In fairness, such naivety is not limited to the author of this book. Presidential candidates Andrei Sannikau and Uladzimir Niakliaieu also opted to go to Moscow during the 2010 election campaign to try to solicit support from Russia. They failed completely because Russia is not interested in supporting opposition campaigns. A bad pro-Russian leader is better than none at all.  

One wonders why Hansbury should have posed this idea. One possibility is that he was influenced by the people with whom he works, most notably the analyst Artyom Shraibman, who appears only once in the Index, but is cited no fewer than twenty-times in the book, always to support a point being made, such as the start of a sentence, “As Shraibman astutely observes…”  

The book nevertheless is essential reading and a considerable achievement. Its clear writing style, critical information, and generally balanced judgement. It is fitting to end with Hansbury’s last sentence: “In the end tyrants always fall.” 

This is a review of Paul Hansbury’s Belarus in Crisis: From Domestic Unrest to the Russia-Ukraine War (Oxford University Press, 2023). ISBN: 9781787389380

David R. Marples is a Distinguished Professor, Department of History & Classics, University of Alberta and teaches Russian and East European history. He holds a PhD in Economic and Social History from the University of Sheffield, UK. Dr. Marples is author of seventeen single-authored books and five edited books on topics ranging from 20th Century Russia, Stalinism, contemporary Belarus, contemporary Ukraine, the Chernobyl disaster. and 20th century Russia. His recent books include Stalin (2022), The War in Ukraine’s Donbas (2022), Understanding Ukraine and Belarus (2020), Ukraine in Conflict (2017), ‘Our Glorious Past: Lukashenka’s Belarus and the Great Patriotic War (Stuttgart, Germany: Ibidem Verlag, 2014), and Heroes and Villains: Creating National History in Contemporary Ukraine (2008). His chief areas of interest are Belarus, Ukraine, and Russia).

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