PONARS Eurasia
  • About
    • Contact
    • Membership
      • All Members
      • Core Members
      • Collegium Members
      • Associate Members
      • About Membership
    • Ukraine Experts
    • Executive Committee
  • Policy Memos
    • List of Policy Memos
    • Submissions
  • Podcasts
  • Online Academy
  • Events
    • Past Events
  • Recommended
  • Task Forces
    • Ukraine
  • Ukraine Experts
Contacts

Address
1957 E St NW,
Washington, DC 20052

adminponars@gwu.edu
202.994.5915

NEWSLETTER
Facebook
Twitter
YouTube
Podcast
PONARS Eurasia
PONARS Eurasia
  • About
    • Contact
    • Membership
      • All Members
      • Core Members
      • Collegium Members
      • Associate Members
      • About Membership
    • Ukraine Experts
    • Executive Committee
  • Policy Memos
    • List of Policy Memos
    • Submissions
  • Podcasts
  • Online Academy
  • Events
    • Past Events
  • Recommended
  • Task Forces
    • Ukraine
  • Ukraine Experts
DIGITAL RESOURCES
digital resources

Bookstore 📚

Knowledge Hub

Course Syllabi

Point & Counterpoint

Policy Perspectives

RECOMMENDED
  • Ukraine Task Force: Getting Ukraine Right: From Negotiations Trap to Victory

    View
  • Ensuring Genuine Results? A New Electoral Design in Uzbekistan

    View
  • Ukraine, Taiwan, and Macron’s “Strategic Autonomy”

    View
  • After Violence: Russia’s Beslan School Massacre and the Peace that Followed

    View
  • Ukraine’s Unnamed War: Before the Russian Invasion of 2022

    View
RSS PONARS Eurasia Podcast
  • The Putin-Xi Summit: What's New In Their Joint Communique ? February 23, 2022
    In this week’s PONARS Eurasia Podcast, Maria Lipman speaks with Russian China experts Vita Spivak and Alexander Gabuev about the February meeting between Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, and what it may tell us about where the Russian-Chinese relationship is headed.
  • Exploring the Russian Courts' Ruling to Liquidate the Memorial Society January 28, 2022
    In this week’s PONARS Eurasia Podcast, Maria Lipman chats with scholars Kelly Smith and Benjamin Nathans about the history, achievements, and impending shutdown of the Memorial Society, Russia's oldest and most venerable civic organization, and what its imminent liquidation portends for the Russian civil society.
  • Russia's 2021 census and the Kremlin's nationalities policy [Lipman Series 2021] December 9, 2021
    In this week’s PONARS Eurasia Podcast, Maria Lipman chats with social scientist Andrey Shcherbak about the quality of the data collected in the recent population census and the goals of Vladimir Putin's government's nationalities policy
  • Active citizens of any kind are under threat [Lipman Series 2021] November 5, 2021
    In this week’s PONARS Eurasia Podcast, Maria Lipman chats with Alexander Verkhovsky about the Kremlin's ever expanding toolkit against political and civic activists, journalists, and other dissidents.
  • Russia's Legislative Elections followup [Lipman Series 2021] October 4, 2021
    In this week’s PONARS Eurasia Podcast, Maria Lipman chats with Tanya Lokot and Nikolay Petrov about the results of Russia’s legislative elections and about what comes next.
  • Why Is the Kremlin Nervous? [Lipman Series 2021] September 14, 2021
    In this week’s PONARS Eurasia Podcast, Maria Lipman chats with Ben Noble and Nikolay Petrov about Russia’s September 17-19 legislative elections, repressive measures against electoral challengers, and whether to expect anything other than preordained results.
  • Vaccine Hesitancy in Russia, France, and the United States [Lipman Series 2021] August 31, 2021
    In this week's PONARS Eurasia Podcast episode, Maria Lipman chats with Denis Volkov, Naira Davlashyan, and Peter Slevin about why COVID-19 vaccination rates are still so low across the globe, comparing vaccine hesitant constituencies across Russia, France, and the United States.  
  • Is Russia Becoming More Soviet? [Lipman Series 2021] July 26, 2021
      In a new PONARS Eurasia Podcast episode, Maria Lipman chats with Maxim Trudolyubov about the current tightening of the Russian political sphere, asking whether or not it’s helpful to draw comparisons to the late Soviet period.
  • The Evolution of Russia's Political Regime [Lipman Series 2021] June 21, 2021
    In this week's episode of the PONARS Eurasia Podcast, Maria Lipman chats with Grigory Golosov and Henry Hale about the evolution of Russia's political regime, and what to expect in the lead-up to September's Duma elections.
  • Volodymyr Zelensky: Year Two [Lipman Series 2021] May 24, 2021
    In this week's episode of the PONARS Eurasia Podcast, Maria Lipman chats with Sergiy Kudelia and Georgiy Kasianov about Ukrainian President Zelensky's second year in office, and how he has handled the political turbulence of the past year.
  • Belarus
  • Recommended | Рекомендуем

Dictatorland: Belarus

  • December 26, 2018
  • PONARS Eurasia

(BBC) In this episode, Ben Zand travels to Belarus to experience the sinister and at times bizarre side to living in a dictatorship.

Ben begins his journey in Belarus by heading to President Lukashenko’s home town. He sees a small shrine to the president before setting off to find a mysterious spring in the woods which Lukashenko apparently drank from as a child, and to which he attributes some of his dictatorial manliness and prowess. Ben then heads to Belarus’s capital city, Minsk. This is a country that most Brits only hear of once a year, during the Eurovision Song Contest. And so Ben gets an introduction to the place from Belarus’s 2011 Eurovision entrant, Anastasia. She sang a song called I Love Belarus, and from Ben’s conversation with her it doesn’t sound like she was lying. She insists that people in the country are content with the leadership.

But, Ben wonders, perhaps that is because of the infamous KGB. Belarus is the only former Soviet Union country that hasn’t bothered to rebrand its secret service, and still calls it the KGB.

Perhaps it isn’t surprising – this is a country in which the president apparently isn’t worried about PR. When accused of being a dictator by the German foreign minister – who is homosexual – President Alexander Lukashenko responded by saying that he would rather be a dictator than be gay.

Given which, Ben wants to know more about what life is like for gay people in the country. So he heads to one of the most testosterone-fuelled environments he can find – an ice hockey stadium – to talk to a journalist who covers LGBT rights for a channel that’s illegal in Belarus and has to broadcast from neighbouring Poland.

Having had a taste of dissent in Belarus, Ben goes to visit Pavel, a serial protester who at only 28 years old has already been to prison 19 times. Ben hears about his most famous protest, which saw him place teddy bears with pro-democracy slogans outside government buildings. Pavel was arrested, and when a Swedish organisation heard about the stunt, it decided to go even bigger: it flew a plane over Belarus and threw 1,000 teddies out of the window, with more slogans attached. Lukashenko was so terrified of the teddy bear invasion that he fired the head of his air force and expelled the Swedish ambassador.

But Ben also hears from Pavel how Lukashenko seems to be softening up a bit, in a bid to cosy up with Europe. Pavel hasn’t been to prison for over a year. And there is even a protest happening in Minsk, which Ben decides to go to. Though the protest is a promising sign of increasing freedoms in the country, Ben still comes face to face with the KGB, who are busy filming all the protesters – including Ben. It’s a surprising and uncomfortable end to a journey through a country that seems to be trying to change, slowly.

Programme website: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08n…

Credits: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04x…

Presenter Ben Zand Series

Producer Olly Bootle

Executive Producer Mike Radford

Previous Article
  • Central Asia
  • Recommended | Рекомендуем

Dictatorland: Kazakhstan

  • December 25, 2018
  • PONARS Eurasia
View
Next Article
  • Policy Memos | Аналитика

Circumstances Have Changed Since 1991, but Russia’s Core Foreign Policy Goals Have Not

  • January 3, 2019
  • Dmitry Gorenburg
View
You May Also Like
View
  • Recommended | Рекомендуем

Ukraine Task Force: Getting Ukraine Right: From Negotiations Trap to Victory

  • PONARS Eurasia
  • May 25, 2023
View
  • Commentary | Комментарии
  • Recommended | Рекомендуем

Ensuring Genuine Results? A New Electoral Design in Uzbekistan

  • Akrom Avezov
  • May 19, 2023
View
  • Commentary | Комментарии
  • Recommended | Рекомендуем

Ukraine, Taiwan, and Macron’s “Strategic Autonomy”

  • Maurizio Delli Santi
  • April 30, 2023
View
  • Recommended | Рекомендуем

After Violence: Russia’s Beslan School Massacre and the Peace that Followed

  • Debra Javeline
  • April 24, 2023
View
  • Recommended | Рекомендуем

Ukraine’s Unnamed War: Before the Russian Invasion of 2022

  • Dominique Arel and Jesse Driscoll
  • April 15, 2023
View
  • Recommended | Рекомендуем

A Rock and a Hard Place: The Russian Opposition in a Time of War | New Voices on Eurasia with Jeremy Ladd (April 11)

  • PONARS Eurasia
  • April 9, 2023
View
  • Commentary | Комментарии
  • Recommended | Рекомендуем

Russia’s Regional Governors: Backing the War, Upholding the Status Quo

  • Irina Busygina and Mikhail Filippov
  • April 7, 2023
View
  • Recommended | Рекомендуем

Opinion | Why Do Russians Still Want to Fight?

  • Marlene Laruelle and Ivan Grek
  • March 31, 2023
PONARS Eurasia
  • About
  • Membership
  • Policy Memos
  • Recommended
  • Events
Powered by narva.io

Permissions & Citation Guidelines

Input your search keywords and press Enter.