Belarus: After Independence, Before Lukashenka

Workers near a boxed statue of Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin meant for display in Svyatsk, western Belarus, in September 1991. The newly delivered statue remained boxed, with the local authorities unsure what to do with the monument after Belarus won its independence from the Soviet Union one month before this photo was taken.

The white-red-white flags of independent Belarus are seen among a crowd of people marking the 100th birth anniversary of Belarusian author and national figure Maksim Bahdanovich in October 1991.

As the Soviet Union faltered in 1991, the Belarusian S.S.R. became the independent Republic of Belarus in August and unveiled its own flag, coat of arms, and national anthem. 

Children learn traditional embroidery techniques in a class of Belarusian culture in Minsk in December 1991.

While the culture of Belarus enjoyed a revival after the country’s release from Soviet authoritarianism, its immediate political and economic direction remained uncertain.
 

Stanislau Shushkevich, the first leader of independent Belarus (center left), during a meeting with Russian President Boris Yeltsin (center right) in December 1991.

Shushkevich, a famed scientist, hoped for a “Belarusian neutrality” in which the newly independent country’s military “will never join either NATO or Russia.”

A fish stall in Minsk in January 1992 photographed after prices had quadrupled for the food staple.

Like other newly independent post-Soviet countries, Belarus faced economic turmoil as it transitioned to the free market and crime and corruption ran rampant through the 1990s.

A photo that purports to show a criminal being detained by officers of the Vitebsk Ministry of Internal Affairs in April 1992.

Many legitimate businesses were taken over by well-connected criminals amid the "wild capitalism" of the 1990s, while others were extorted by street gangs who operated throughout the country. 

Students of Belarus’s police academy in Minsk in June 1992

Israel’s then-Foreign Minister Shimon Peres visits the grave of his great-grandfather at an abandoned Jewish cemetery in Volozhin, west of Minsk, in August 1992. Peres was born in the village but emigrated as a boy to today’s Israel. Decades of tensions between Israel and the Soviet Union had made it nearly impossible for Peres to revisit his home village before 1991. 

Left-wing activists with a sign featuring the leaders of Ukraine, Russia, and Belarus calling for restoring “the friendship of peoples” in January 1993. Belarusians had voted overwhelmingly to remain within some form of multinational union in a 1991 referendum held on the future of the U.S.S.R.

A wall of Belarusian-made televisions on sale in Minsk in May 1993

A soldier is seen alongside scrapped fighter jets at a military base in the Brest region of western Belarus.

Independent Belarus inherited arms-reduction obligations that were initially agreed between the Soviet Union and the United States. Minsk removed and destroyed all of its nuclear weapons infrastructure. Some 3,000 Belarusian tanks and armored vehicles and 130 military aircraft were also destroyed through the 1990s as part of the Western-backed demilitarization process.

Then-U.S. President Bill Clinton walks with Stanislau Shushkevich (second from left) past a guard of honor in the opening moments of the first and only visit by a U.S. president to independent Belarus on January 15, 1994.

Clinton waves Belarusian and American flags in downtown Minsk during the U.S. leader’s January 1994 visit, which was widely viewed as a "thank you" for Belarus's transfer of its nuclear weapons to Russia. Clinton's six-hour stop in Belarus included a visit to a memorial honoring victims of Stalin's repressions on the outskirts of Minsk. Four months after Clinton left Belarus, the country held its first presidential election. 

Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka greets heads of state during a meeting of the Commonwealth of Independent States in October 1994.

Lukashenka, a former collective farm manager and KGB border guard, was sworn in as president on July 20, 1994, after campaigning on an anti-corruption and pro-Russian platform. It would be independent Belarus’s last free election.

Soon after his inauguration, Lukashenka proposed what became the Union of Russia and Belarus. In the years that followed, several of Lukashenka’s political opponents disappeared and are believed to have been murdered as the new leader embarked on a push to return Belarus to a Soviet-style authoritarian state.