Belarus 2020

I wrote this today two years ago.

Lots of high minded British people want democracy in Belarus but spent two years trying to prevent the Brexit referendum result being implemented. They like democracy but not the demos, not hoi polloi. A lot of Americans want democracy in Belarus but hate it that ordinary people defied the bipartisan political establishment and brought Donald Trump to power. They then draw parallels between Trump and Lukashenko. Many of these people are very clever, very silly academics.

Talking of which, Timothy Garton Ash said,

'One worker at the Minsk tractor factory where Lukashenko was heckled, gave this impressively downbeat assessment: “The oligarch who runs the factory next won’t be any worse than the state is now.”'

The Christmas before last was the most fun I ever had, in Bitez near Bodrum with a great bunch of people who had floated there and stayed because of the pandemic. One of them was a Venezuelan with a Slavic name who lived in Minsk. He said he couldn't understand what the protests are about. 'Everything is so well run in Belarus.'