Feduta shares the story of a personal mistake

It is Christmas day and I have withdrawn to a cabin surrounded by a snowy landscape but with few possibilities of following Belarusian events. Instead, I have started reading Lukashenko – a political biography (Lukashenko – politicheskaya biografiya) by the well-known journalist Aleksandr Feduta.

I have been wanting to get hold of his book since it came out this past spring. But first, people in Belarus told me it was in short supply. Then some friends got an extra copy, and wanted to send it to Stockholm by mail, but the local post office refused to touch it. A few months later, someone was kind enough to ask Feduta himself about a copy for me. The message came back that Feduta was angry with me for something bad he thought I had done a couple of years ago. He did not have a spare copy.

Recently, I called Aleksandr Feduta and told him there was no true reason for him to be angry with me. It seemed that he actually believed me. And, as if the invisible Christmas spirit of forgiveness had intervened, his book now finally has found its way to me.

Feduta is well placed to tell the story of Lukashenko’s rise to power in 1994, since he worked in his election staff. This was a mistake that he shared with many others of those who would later become the president’s most prominent critics. Like Viktor Gonchar, whom the regime murdered in 1999, or Anatoliy Lebedko, who now heads the United Civil Party where most of the state apparatus’s defectors seem to end up.

Although Lukashenko’s person received an extremely scandalous treatment the other year in the anonymously authored internet book Nashestvie, Feduta’s more open treatment of some issues feels more credible. One example is the incident when Lukashenko, serving as director of a sovkhos farm, beat up a drunk tractor mechanic. Here, we learn that beating his workers was more or less a habit for Lukashenko.

Quotes from an article written by Lukashenko when he was a member of parliament, published in Narodnaya Gazeta 25 May 1991, also make for interesting reading. It is titled “Dictatorship – the Belarusian version?”, and accuses a proposed government programme for Soviet administrative-style “economic populism” and suppressing “free enterprise” and “free pricing.”

The article continues:

“…And finally: for the enhancement of executive discipline… the council of ministers is granted the right of extraordinary measures – to appoint and remove the heads of ministries, agencies, executive organs, companies and organisations… There is only one conclusion: we are faced with a Belarusian version of dictatorship in economy and politics…”

This critique by Lukashenko against his later presidential self shows rather clearly, along with other examples, that the Belarusian president’s driving force is not ideological conviction but rather a personality disorder. Making this point alone would be worth having Feduta’s book translated into English for.

Merry Christmas, Aleksandr Iosifovich!

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PS. For those interested in this book, who wants to make it easier for themselves than I did, it can be ordered from here.

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