In 1981, Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Lukashenko of the Soviet Army is sent into Afghanistan and killed in action. 13 years later…
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The 1994 Belarusian presidential election was the first democratic election of the country’s head of state, held to replace the old position of Chairman of the Supreme Council. It was the first national election held in Belarus since the country seceded from the Soviet Union three years earlier. The first round was held on the 23rd June and the second on the 10th July.
The Chairman of the Supreme Council, Myechyslaw Hryb of the Belarusian Social Democratic Assembly (BSDH or ‘Assembly’), was not running to be elected to the new Presidency; instead, the Assembly party put forward Stanislav Shushkevich, who had been head of state from August 1991 to January 1994. Shushkevich advocated the continuation of state ownership of Belarusian industry, but also wished for the country to start making closer ties with Western nations.
Zianon Pazniak of the Belarusian Popular Front (BPF), the successor to the social movement of the same name that had led Belarus to independence from the Soviet Union, advocated a Belarusian nationalist platform as well as a socially conservative one, and placated the more liberal wing of his party by being even more pro-Western than Shushkevich, supporting eventual Belarusian membership of NATO and the European Union.
Prime Minister Vyacheslav Kebich ran as an independent. Like Shushkevich, he had significant experience in Belarusian politics, having served as Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Byelorussian SSR prior to Belarus declaring its independence, and he differed significantly from his opponents politically in that he had a pro-Russian stance, advocating for monetary union with Russia, the end of the ‘Belarusisation’ policy and the assertion of Russian as a legally recognised language of Belarus.
The campaign was fierce, with Shushkevich and Pazniak accusing Kebich of blindly supporting ‘Russians over Belarusians’. Despite this, the division in the pro-Western vote allowed Kebich to lead the polls, which Pazniak and Shushkevich sought to rectify by making it clear they would endorse each other depending who advanced to the second round.
Ultimately, 35.7% of the vote in the first round went to Kebich compared to 28.1% for Pazniak and 20.1% for Shushkevich. Every region voted for Kebich except Grodno and Minsk Regions, which voted for Pazniak, and Minsk city, which voted for Shushkevich. Kebich and Pazniak progressed to the second round, and Shushkevich endorsed Pazniak as he had pledged to.
Since their supporters commanded almost a majority of the vote between them, Pazniak was seen as the favourite. In response to this, Kebich worked to capitalise on the ideological divisions between BPF and Assembly voters, arguing that as President Pazniak would privatise Belarusian industry, accusing him of racism towards Russian-speaking Belarusians, and most strikingly, softening his Eurosceptic rhetoric. He claimed that he did not wish to antagonise Europe or the West, but felt union with those regions through NATO or the European Union was ‘not the way forward for Belarus’.
In the second round, Kebich narrowly prevailed over Pazniak with 51.9% of the vote to 45.3, and was elected the first President of the modern Republic of Belarus.