Belarus and its Flight from Democracy: Political Discourse and the People’s Choice at the 1994 Presidential Elections
Belarus and its Flight from Democracy: Political Discourse and the People’s Choice at the 1994 Presidential Elections

Summary/Abstract: The article seeks to answer to the question: what defined people’s choice when they voted for the first time, in 1994, Aleksandr Lukashenko into office. While agreeing that there is a significant amount of research on this topic, the author aims to illuminate what exactly helped the electorate to navigate and choose between the nearly identical promises of social justice and well-being, which were made by all six candidates for the presidency in 1994. Correspondingly, the article explores key-texts created in the first years of the country’s independence (between 1991 and 1994) by the Belarusian Popular Front and its leader Zianon Paz’niak and by (and on behalf of)Aleksand Lukashenko, to date the only Belarusian President. As a result, an explanation that relies on the decoding of the voices represented by the candidates’ texts is offered. These voices were part of an ideology brought out by a new political discourse.

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