Quotes of the Day

Nikolai Statkevich tried to buck the system in 2001: he ran for President of Belarus. The country calls itself democratic, but President Alexander Lukashenko, in power for 11 years, runs it like the last dictatorship in Europe and brooks no challenges to his neo-Stalinist rule. That's why Statkevich, 49, leader of the opposition Social Democratic party, found himself confined to a prison barrack in the town of Baranovichi, 120 km west of Minsk, the nation's capital. Last March, the government sentenced him to three years of forced labor for "resisting the authorities and obstructing traffic" during a protest in October 2003. So now Statkevich rises to the dawn sound of reveille, submits to a body search and roll call, then walks for an hour to a damp, cold shop where he repairs radios. This is the only work authorities will allow Statkevich, who holds a Ph.D. in technical sciences, to do. At 6 p.m. he walks back to prison for the night.

None of that has cowed Statkevich. He meets a Time correspondent during his lunch break in a modest café routinely bugged by the local kgb. (Lukashenko's secret police expressly retained the old Soviet acronym to play on Belarusians' ingrained fears.) But the prisoner of conscience doesn't seem to care what listeners might hear. "They packed me away because I said I would run for the presidency again," he says, looking as trim as the lieutenant colonel of Soviet missile forces he once was. "They assigned me to a room with six brutes, drunk, dirty, unkempt," he says. "In a week I taught them to behave and wash their socks." Then he turns serious. "In these 15 years, the Belarusian people have acquired a national identity and the desire for an independent country of their own. First it was just a minority, then this feeling took over the majority," he says. "The same will happen with democracy. It's the minority who start." Throughout lunch, a plainclothes cop is standing by the window outside. "He is a police major," says Statkevich. "Not a bad guy, but he has to follow the kgb orders."

A kgb of the old school is just part of what makes Lukashenko's Belarus such a throwback to the Soviet past. Statkevich is not the only opposition leader doing time: in the last decade, at least 4,000 citizens have been imprisoned on political charges. Under a law passed in 1998, any word or action interpreted as an offense against the President can be punished by up to five years in jail. Lukashenko's writ is enforced by the highest number of police per capita in Europe, and his government has cracked down hard on human-rights and democracy organizations that criticize him. The U.S. and Europe have repeatedly condemned Belarus as an outpost of tyranny.

Even at the forgotten edge of the Continent, a land where one man ruthlessly controls all state institutions, the economy and the media would seem ripe for the kind of popular uprising that has swept other repressive regimes from power in Ukraine and Georgia. Yet here the public at large seems to show little taste for rebellion. Opinion polls are highly unreliable: some show 60% of the population opposes Lukashenko, but others say 60% support him. The Belarusian character is temperate and slow to anger, and so far, the majority has kept silent.

So Belarus could remain in Lukashenko's grip for some time to come. Last year, in a referendum widely censured as fraudulent, the President rammed through a constitutional change allowing him unlimited terms in office. By next July, he intends to run for his third five-year term, in effect sealing his presidency for life — this in a European country of some 10 million educated, skilled and remarkably law-abiding people. Lukashenko's hold on power is shored up by the Kremlin, where Russia's leaders are as determined as he is to prevent another people's revolution. In an interview last July on tvts, a Moscow-based channel, Lukashenko made his position plain: "I will defend my state and my presidential power with weapons."

Even so, dissidents are agitating for change. Ten parties, ranging from nationalists to communists, agreed in October to nominate physicist Alexander Milinkevich, a former university professor and vice mayor of the city of Grodno, as their single candidate to run against Lukashenko. The objective, Milinkevich tells Time, is simple: "Restoring Belarus to a democracy." But since "free democratic elections are no longer possible in this country," he says, the opposition may try to emulate Ukraine, urging citizens into the streets in a peaceful protest against a rigged vote. The risks of a bloody crackdown are obvious. Nobody wants to die, says Milinkevich, "but living under this dictatorship doesn't leave our children any future either."

When the Soviet Union crumbled in 1991, most people of Belarus were taken aback by their sudden freedom, and shocked by an onslaught of corruption. In 1994, they elected Lukashenko, 51, a former state farm boss, popularly known as the Batska (which means both father and leader). The charismatic member of parliament with a bushy mustache and a talent for fiery oratory built his presidential campaign on a pledge to stamp out corruption, rein in the high-handed bureaucracy and restore ties with Russia. Many voters hoped that such an alliance would ease the burden of cleaning up after the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster next door in Ukraine, which contaminated almost 23% of Belarus and still costs the government nearly 25% of its meager $3 billion budget.

The Batska promised to prevent Russian-style plunder of the new nation by capitalist oligarchs. But voters never imagined he would take them back to the Stalinist past. Once in office, he rolled back privatization, stifled economic reforms, renationalized most banks, stepped up centralized controls and preserved collective farms. Minsk today looks like the set for a 1950s Soviet movie. Its broad boulevards, designed for military parades and tanks, are clean, orderly — and dull. Monotonous rows of Stalinist apartment blocks line the streets, and there are no traffic jams or bright advertising to bring life to the city. The omnipresent police keep crime in check, but also beat up "undesirables" in broad daylight. Some modern shops stock luxury consumer goods — at least in their windows — but most shoppers earn wages that barely cover staples. At night harsh floodlights glare over silent, empty streets.

Exporting leftover Soviet weapons worldwide and, allegedly, serving as a conduit for illegal arms trafficking from Russia, help keep the Lukashenko state afloat. It is also dependent on Russia for the country's main legitimate source of income: two oil refineries that process cheap Russian crude and sell it to Europe as high-priced diesel and other heavy fuels. All the oil and weapons export revenues flow into the shadowy presidential budget that the Batska personally controls. Otherwise, he claims, unworthy officials would embezzle the money. That makes him "the only oligarch in this country," says Anatoly Lebedko, chair of the opposition United Civil Party (ucp). "He can redistribute profits at will among state-owned and even private enterprises." From these proceeds Lukashenko maintains a Soviet-style welfare state providing basic medical services, education and pensions — though the payouts are meager. Yet relations with Russia remain uneasy: there is no love lost between Lukashenko and Russian President Vladimir Putin, says Andrei Sannikov, former Belarusian Deputy Foreign Minister, and the Kremlin is keen to bring Belarus back into Russia's fold. If Moscow were to shut off the oil, Lukashenko's regime would collapse. But for now, the ornery President holds off another democratic revolution on Russia's borders.

Lukashenko does that the old-fashioned way. Every corner of the 208,000-sq-km country comes under his iron fist. He personally appoints all officials from ministers and regional governors down to village store managers — who are fired or arrested if they fail to deliver. The Batska's authority does not rest on a monolithic party but on a personal ideology, such as it is, based on his own proclamations. A sample: "Private property has the right to exist, but it must be under the state's control." Lukashenko has decreed his views must be taught at schools and universities, and ordered every company, state-run or private, to name a director for ideology who functions as the regime's political commissar. "The President," says a senior Western diplomat, "controls all levers of power in government as well as in society."

To maintain that supremacy, Lukashenko relies on raw force and on keeping Belarusians dependent on the state. No less than 80% of the population live on federal salaries, pensions, stipends and subsidies. This repressive climate has fueled rumors about the fate of those who oppose the regime. When, in 1999, Gennady Karpenko, a former member of parliament then challenging the President, died of an apparent brain hemorrhage, people were swift to suggest he had been murdered. Three more prominent opposition activists have since disappeared. And in 2000, when a Russian TV cameraman was kidnapped and murdered, some alleged he had been the mistaken victim of a politically motivated assassination. Christos Pourgourides, delegated by the Council of Europe's parliamentary assembly to look into these cases, concluded in a January 2004 report that top state officials took steps "to cover up these disappearances" and "may themselves be involved." All such charges have been flatly denied by Lukashenko and his aides.

In public, Belarusian citizens display a remarkable indifference to the rigors of their life. At home, though, they're grumbling. Alex, a small businessman who refused to give his last name, says he envies the freedom people have "to make money and live" in Ukraine. "They don't have to pay bribes now, they are no longer afraid of the police, fire inspectors, tax officials and other extortionists," he says. Tanya Trupsh, 38, a former television journalist, quit her job when private stations lost their independence. "You're free to say whatever you please," she says, "as long as you don't say it in public." Sometimes it's not enough to keep things private. Last August the kgb raided the apartments of several students who had e-mailed each other cartoons lampooning Lukashenko. The youths now face trial and stiff prison terms. Late last month, the rubber-stamp legislature passed a bill outlawing virtually every form of political dissent and authorizing wider use of pretrial detention, and stiffer jail sentences. It will come into effect just as the presidential election campaign kicks off. "Of course you'll elect me," the Batska declared earlier this month. "What else can you do?"

Western nations have criticized Lukashenko's regime, but have done little else. Last April, while attending a nato meeting in Lithuania, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called Belarus "the last remaining true dictatorship in the heart of Europe," and said "it is time for change to come." Lukashenko and other officials have been barred from traveling to the U.S. and Europe, and last month, the European Union threatened Belarus with sanctions for suppressing freedom of speech. Still, Belarus' opposition leaders fret that Western governments do not do enough about the country's plight. "We're not a pivotal area, like Ukraine," says Milinkevich, "so the world doesn't really care."

It won't be easy for Belarusians to free themselves. The opposition parties that still exist are not allowed to publish newspapers, and face routine police harassment. Their ranks have dwindled to several thousand members. But leaders are hoping that a show of unity behind one candidate might make a difference at the polls. Even so, Milinkevich is already looking beyond the July vote. He says a senior law-enforcement official told him privately that the police might switch sides if tens of thousands march against a rigged election.

Lukashenko is convinced Belarusians prefer his stability and government handouts. He knows how to make small, insignificant gestures. Late last month, after a Swedish diplomat visited Statkevich in a very public show of solidarity, Lukashenko allowed the dissident to spend his nights at home with his seriously ill father. But his days are still spent in forced labor. And as long as Lukashenko is President, real freedom will remain elusive for Statkevich — and 10 million other Belarusians.

• YURI ZARAKHOVICH / Minsk
• Belarus is Europe's last dictatorship. Is it immune to change?