Powerlessness and Conformity
Belarusian Youth at the Crossroads
Deutsche Fassung
Abstract
For the past two decades, there has been an authoritarian regime in Belarus under Aliaksandr Lukashenka. The state-controlled media paint a picture of a contented youth, but reality looks different. More and more young people, especially the most educated, are emigrating. They are fleeing from economic decline, political tedium, and repression. Others conform, seek refuge in indifference. Neither the pro-regime Belarusian Republic Youth Union, nor the oppositional Young Front reaches a significant number of young people. The country is marked by stagnation and the geriatrification of the nomenklatura.
(Osteuropa 11-12/2013, pp. 121–136)