Where the Soviet system was rigid, today’s autocrats are flexible and pragmatic, writes Freedom House analyst Arch Puddington: Where the older generation of communists were bureaucratic and slothful, today’s dictators… Read more »
A tax on “social parasites” is stirring up public angst in Belarus, according to reports. A classic revolutionary situation may be unfolding in Europe’s last dictatorship, notes analyst Leon Aron:… Read more »
Street protests against a tax on adults who are not in full-time work spread from Belarus’s capital Minsk to other towns on Sunday, Reuters reported: Around 2,000 people took to… Read more »
The National Endowment for Democracy will host legendary Belarusian rock musician and activist Lavon Volski in conversation with Hungarian Ambassador András Simonyi on the role of independent art and culture… Read more »
Interested in strengthening local independent media in Belarus, aka ‘Europe’s last dictatorship’? The U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor (DRL) announces an open competition for… Read more »
The prospects of democracy in Belarus and Russia may be bleak, but pessimism is no excuse for inaction or apathy, according to Nobel laureate Svetlana Alexievich. Vladimir Putin is able… Read more »
Russia is taking refuge in ideas from its Soviet past, but this nostalgia collides with newer, darker forces, according to Nobel literature laureate Svetlana Alexievich. In an interview with The… Read more »
A citizen of Belarus who was born in Ukraine and writes in Russian, Nobel Laureate Svetlana Alexievich takes as her subject the “history of the Russian-Soviet soul”, The Times Literary… Read more »
While economic downturns are threatening the stability of the former Soviet Union’s “entrenched dictatorships,” the migration crisis is fueling populism in Eastern Europe, and reforms in the Balkans are in… Read more »
Belarus is often described as “Europe’s Last Dictatorship”; it has, after all, been led by Aleksandr Lukashenka’s iron fist since 1994. In his book My Story: Belarusian Amerikanka or Elections… Read more »