White Russia Still Pretty Red

My and Julia's dear friend, whom I will call Natasha, is from Belarus. She cares about as much for politics as I do for NASCAR, but she has reported enough about her country's President to give me some clues as to what sort of a guy he is.

President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko is referred to, in a tongue-in-cheek fashion, as "our father" by many Byelorussians and makes frequent television appearances in which he demonstrates to his people his efforts to spur on the economy. One of his favorite tactics? Calling the administrator of collective farming for an area, asking about the current wheat harvest projections, and demanding “well, can’t we do any better!?”

The typical response, a well rehearsed, “We’ll do our best, sir!”

* Opposition schmoposition, as long as I'm president. *
Our friend Natasha is married to an American, who has visited Belarus on occasion and, it didn’t surprise us to hear, is in love with the country. He, however, was surprised to hear that, when visiting Romania with my wife, I do not have to thoroughly report my whereabouts to state security officers and generally do not receive phone calls from said officers reminding me that I am being watched. No, such things are not at all common in most former Eastern-Bloc countries.

Not so in Belarus. The secret service is still pervasive there. Foreigners are still looked upon with suspicion.

The charming, throw-back idiocy of Belarus’ current regime doesn’t end there. The International Herald Tribune aired a very fine piece yesterday on some of its even more endearing attributes, particularly those that have to do with what political dissenters can expect in that country. Suffice it to say, a good number of them have disappeared under mysterious circumstances. Lukashenko, amazingly, has yet to garner less than 75% of the “vote” in Byelorussian presidential elections. To quote an opposition member, Lukashenko "does not like figures below 75%."

And who can blame him?


Meanwhile, Belarus has one of the poorest economies in Europe (ranking above only the likes of the Ukraine, ALbania, and Bosnia), as Lukashenko persists in pushing through his vigorous program of "market socialism" (a term that is about as internally logical as "benevolent child molestation").

* And as to the obvious question *
Why?

The truly interesting question in all this is "why?". I never thought to ask it until I read a recent Reason Magazine article by [I'll fill in his name later.] He cites the work of economist [again, the name to be added later] positing that, as between a thief that occasionally raids my homeland and a thief that sets up shop there (read: a dictator), I should prefer the one that sets up shop. He, at least, has a vested interest in keeping me well off so that he may steal from me for years to come.

That, at least, is what a truly self-interested dictator would do. It rather fairly predicts exactly what happened in Chile in the 1980's when their dictator, Pinochet, hired Chicago-school economists to swoop down on the country, liberalize its economy (this causing an economic boom of huge proportions), and allow him to live off the fat.

What, then, is the problem with our man Lukashenko?

My current theory is that he actually isn't in it to enrich himself. Rather, he truly believes that "market socialism" is just the sort of contradiction-in-terms that's going to make Belarus richer and its people happier.

Heaven save us all from the idealists. For my money, I'd prefer to be ruled by a self-interested thief.


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