Alexievich spent several years living outside Belarus after criticizing the country’s authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko, who is up for re-election on Sunday.
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After the last polls in 2010, when he claimed a near 80 percent landslide victory, Lukashenko launched a crackdown on his opponents that saw challengers jailed and unprecedented Western economic sanctions and travel bans slapped on him and his allies. None of the three candidates running against Lukashenko in Sunday’s poll represent a serious challenge to his rule and opposition figures have called for a boycott of the election. He also offered his capital, Minsk, as a venue for peace talks.
“The economic crisis should logically have led to a fall in trust, but this was neutralized by the Ukraine crisis, which seriously scared Belarussian society”, said Valery Karbalevich, who has written a biography of the president.
MINSK, Belarus | With a reporter’s eye and an artist’s heart, Svetlana Alexievich writes of the catastrophes, upheaval and personal woes that have afflicted the Soviet Union and the troubled countries that succeeded it. Her writings, characterized by plain language and detail so visceral it’s sometimes painful to read, won her this year’s Nobel literature prize.
“The government has falsified even the ballot form which contains not a single name of an opposition candidate”, Nikolai Statkevich, a former political prisoner who ran against Lukashenko in the 2010 presidential election, told a rally in Minsk on Saturday evening. She does not insert herself as a reportorial “I” who shares her impressions of and opinions about the people she interviews. “You know what will happen”.
Last week, the Belarussian leader said his country would not host a Russian military base, despite President Vladimir Putin ordering Russian officials to sign such an agreement in September.
Lukashenko’s conciliatory comments, made two days before a presidential election in Belarus in which he is seeking a fifth term, come amid a cautious rapprochement between Minsk and the West, long strained by his treatment of political dissent and poor human rights record.
Lukashenko enjoys a degree of popular support for his folksy, outspoken style and his regime’s durability. According to data received by the CEC 89 percent voted in favor of Lukashenko, “she said”.
Yaraslau Kryvoi, secretary of the Anglo-Belarusian Society, said the award means “Belarus is now on the political map of the world”. “Our system is established”.
Jacques Testard, an editor at Fitzcarraldo, said of Alexievich’s works, “Her books are very unusual and hard to categorise”. A few polling stations handed out doughnuts and alcohol to lure voters out.
“I am voting against everyone”, said Tatiana, a jeweller.
“By raising the issue to the agenda at such an inconvenient time for Lukashenko, Russian Federation wants to damage the impartiality of Belarus; block the country’s normalization process with the west; hamper consolidation of our strategic partnership with China and draw us into a new Cold War”, he said.
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Marina, a 21-year-old student said she based her choice on the candidates’ debate on television, which Lukashenko skipped.
