Silitski

Odd Man Out Again: Explaining Belarus’ Post-Orange Transformation

A mountain of competing explanations seeks to account for the success of electoral “color revolutions” in some places and their failure in others. The comeback of Viktor Yanukovych, who was…

The 2010 Russia-Belarus-Kazakhstan Customs Union: A Classic Case of Prinuzhdenie k Druzhbe (Friendship Enforcement)

The Customs Union (CU) between Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Russia signed in November 2009 and enacted on July 1, 2010, was a breakthrough integration project in the post-Soviet space. It happened…

Wrestling from Brotherly Hugs: Prospects for Involving Belarus in Regional Energy Cooperation

Contradicting dire forecasts of economic crisis and even collapse, “Lukanomics” has managed to lead Belarus into a thirteenth consecutive year of uninterrupted economic growth. This stability, however, has been heavily…

The EU’s Eastern Partnership: Why It May Help Democracy Promotion and How the United States Can Help Move It Forward

The European Union’s Eastern Partnership (EaP) initiative, generally welcomed on both sides of the Atlantic as a positive step toward drawing the countries of Eastern Europe and the Caucasus into…

A Year After the Color Revolutions: Preemptive Authoritarianism and Challenges for Democratization in the Former Soviet Union

In 1989, citizens across central Europe went to the streets to bring down communist dictatorships and assert their right to live in free societies. More than a decade later, people…

Belarus: Back to Basics

by Vitali Silitski Belarusian Institute for Strategic Studies The Belarus presidential election developed under a carnival atmosphere—the major news of the campaign was a kitten brutally murdered by a…

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