So in your writing, you've written about how former Soviet republics such as Ukraine have forged a new

national identity on the basis of framing the Soviet era as one of a period of the nation being

subordinated within an imperial system and perhaps also talking about the kind of corruption

that Lukashenko was vocal about, as you say, but that over time Belarus became

an outlier in this regard, both politically and economically, in continuing to valorize

aspects of the Soviet era. That difference between the politics of someone like Lukashenko

and the other post-Soviet states, does that simply reflect his own political

background and his own preferences? Or do you think that has roots in the specific history of

Belarus as a Soviet republic? Well, absolutely. It has very clear roots because from the very

beginning, Lukashenko was extremely populist politician.

He didn't really invent anything.

He was trying to find out what people actually are ready to go for

and try to capitalize and employ this for his own ends,

for building his own political career.

So when in 1994, there were three major candidates

for president, and one of them was Soviet aparachic who promised to maintain connection with Russia,

but he was very clearly associated with the party leadership. There was a Belarusian National Front leader, Pazniak,

very clearly nationalist, ethnic nationalist, who promised to build anti-communist Belarus

and who was going to create one nation, one language, to erase all vestiges of the Soviet Union and the Soviet legacy,

from education, from history. And people were really scared of this radical change because they

didn't really know what to expect. And Lukashenko offered the third way, which on the one hand

was supposed to be very smoothly moving away towards independence, but at the same way, which on the one hand, was supposed to be very smoothly moving away towards independence,

...