12 May 2026
There is a question which at first glance may appear secondary, since it concerns neither the clash of ideologies nor the conflict of civilizations, the themes on which public attention has traditionally been focused. In reality, however, its significance for understanding the modern world is far deeper and more fundamental than is commonly assumed.
It concerns the origins and nature of authoritarian regimes.
Why did the postwar era, built around the principles of the Charter of the United Nations, international law, and human rights, simultaneously become a period of rapid expansion of a new type of dictatorship, regimes that fit neither of the two dominant ideological models of the postwar world: neither the liberal system with its elections, institutional accountability, and rotation of power, nor the communist model with its collective decision making, party discipline, and socially understandable system of advancement?
Why was this space filled with figures who seemed to have stepped directly from a screen or theatrical stage, with endless parades, demonstrative military pageantry, exaggerated cinematic masculinity, and a feudal perception of the state as a personal domain and citizens as voiceless subjects?
Why did leaders begin to emerge across vastly different geographical spaces, from Asia to Europe, from Africa to Latin America, who looked astonishingly similar to one another, as if reproduced from the same template, despite the fact that neither political theory nor even literature, which often senses future psychological and social phenomena more subtly than other forms of thought, managed to foresee their appearance?
Does this not suggest that history truly entered a new phase of development, though now with characters no longer tragic in the classical sense, but rather grotesque, almost caricatured? And did the very existence of such regimes become a product of the postwar world order itself, within which a peculiar political vacuum emerged between the two global poles of power, allowing such states and leaders to appear? And why did this phenomenon continue even after the collapse of the Soviet Union, when the liberal model seemed to have achieved definitive victory?
It is precisely in these questions, in my view, that one of the least understood phenomena of the second half of the twentieth and beginning of the twenty first centuries is concealed.
Autocracies of the Old and New Type
Of course, autocracies have always existed. The concentration of power in a single pair of hands is not an exclusively modern phenomenon. Historically, however, rulers were still expected to possess something more than the mere ability to retain control and suppress society. In different eras, the legitimacy of power rested either on genuine military qualities, the ability to lead armies, defend the country, or expand its territories, or on the capacity to govern effectively and ensure economic and social development. Sometimes these qualities coexisted in a single figure, as with the Prussian Chancellor Otto von Bismarck or the Turkish leader Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, whose political will was combined with statesmanship and a sense of historical responsibility.
The monarchs and feudal rulers of antiquity and the Middle Ages, however cruel and despotic they might have been, nevertheless remained part of the warrior culture of their era. A king was perceived above all as a knight and military leader who personally participated in battles, risked his life, and remained bound, however imperfectly, by a code of honor, responsibility, and service. A ruler was expected constantly to prove his right to lead not only through birth, but through personal courage, the willingness to share danger with his army, and readiness to answer for the fate of the state with his own life. His authority rested not solely on fear of punishment, but also on his personal presence, bravery, endurance, and willingness to share the hardships of war with his soldiers.
Rulers of the past were embedded within a system of constant personal interaction with their military elite. This was reflected in collective meals, councils of war, campaigns, and shared celebrations after battles, where those sitting beside them were men who had fought and risked death together with them.
Alexander the Great held common feasts with his generals and soldiers after battles, drank from the same cups, shared the hardships of campaigns, and personally participated in combat, receiving severe wounds on multiple occasions. His authority rested not only on power, but on the sense of a shared destiny.
Julius Caesar constantly remained among his legionaries, ate the same food, endured the hardships of campaigns alongside them, and personally addressed soldiers before battle. He knew many centurions by name, while his officers were not court officials, but men with whom he had fought in Gaul and during the civil wars.
Genghis Khan built his authority on personal loyalty and collective participation in military campaigns. His closest circle consisted of warriors who had grown up with him in constant struggle, sharing spoils, danger, and nomadic life.
Medieval European monarchs also remained part of the military aristocracy. Richard the Lionheart personally took part in the Crusades and fought alongside his knights. French and English kings lived in military camps during wars, held councils with their vassals, and depended on the support of the nobility, which could both elevate a monarch and oppose him.
Even the absolute monarchies of the modern era preserved elements of the old military culture, in which the ruler was still perceived primarily as the supreme military leader, connected to his elite through personal participation in wars, campaigns, and risk.
Louis XIV, despite creating the magnificent court at Versailles, personally accompanied the army during the Dutch War and other campaigns. His presence in military camps and at sieges was regarded as an essential element of royal authority. French nobles were expected not merely to attend court, but to serve in the army, confirming their status through military service.
Peter the Great effectively destroyed the distance between monarch and army. He personally participated in the Azov campaigns, the building of the fleet, and the Great Northern War, worked at shipyards, and demanded from the nobility not decorative courtly manners, but military and state service. His inner circle was formed through shared campaigns and participation in real military actions.
Charles XII transformed his life into a continuous military campaign. He spent years with the army, slept in field conditions, personally led attacks, and repeatedly came under enemy fire. The Swedish elite perceived him less as a palace monarch than as the first officer of the state.
Napoleon Bonaparte brought this tradition to its limit. He lived on campaign with the army, personally appeared on the battlefield, knew his marshals by name, and built relations with the elite through shared military campaigns. His marshals were men who had marched with him through Italy, Egypt, Austerlitz, and Borodino, not bureaucrats appointed solely on the basis of personal loyalty.
This list could continue almost endlessly. Epochs, religions, forms of statehood, and political systems changed, yet the very nature of power remained remarkably similar for thousands of years: a ruler was expected personally to participate in the fate of the state, share risk with his elite, and at least outwardly remain subject to a code of military honor, service, and responsibility before history.
The figures who emerged after the Second World War belong to an entirely different type of power. They exist outside any culture of honor or service. They do not lead people into battle, do not share danger or hardship with society, and do not perceive the state as a historical mission or common cause. For them, the state is primarily a mechanism for preserving power and extracting rent. At the same time, it becomes an enormous stage for endless political spectacle, where television imagery matters more than reality and the preservation of personal control matters more than the future of the country.
What distinguishes them is not their ability to govern or lead society, but the theatricality of power itself. They appear to exist permanently on stage, transforming politics into an endless performance in which decorations, symbols, and the carefully constructed image of the ruler play the central role.
At the Carnival of History
In postwar Latin America, an entire gallery of regimes began to emerge in which absolute power increasingly combined with eccentricity, cults of personality, and the demonstrative personalization of the state. The country itself gradually became identified with the figure of the ruler, while the state came to be perceived as an extension of a single individual. State institutions lost their independence and turned into instruments serving personal power.
At the same time, the boundary between public authority and private property began to disappear. Power was no longer viewed as a social contract or a temporary mandate granted by citizens, but as a form of personal ownership over the country. The ruler ceased to be seen as a hired administrator acting in the interests of society. Instead, he increasingly perceived people, resources, the economy, and state institutions as his personal domain.
If old monarchies and feudal systems had at least been constrained by tradition, social estates, military culture, and certain notions of duty, the new personalist dictatorships increasingly transformed the state into a mixture of family business, political theater, and criminal enterprise.
Haitian ruler François Duvalier, who called himself “Papa Doc,” cultivated the image of a supernatural figure, combining political power with mysticism and religious fear. He appeared in public in the guise of a voodoo spirit, the master of cemeteries and death, seeking to instill the impression that his authority possessed an otherworldly nature. Repression was reinforced by superstition, while the dictator himself gradually became the central element of a peculiar religious political cult. State propaganda portrayed Duvalier not merely as a president, but almost as a mystical savior of the nation, demanding that he be called “El Benefactor” and “Savior of the Fatherland.”
Somoza effectively transformed Nicaragua into a family business. He established control over a significant part of the economy, from banks to landed estates. State resources gradually came to be perceived as the private assets of the ruling family, while power itself became a mechanism for extracting profit and accumulating personal wealth.
This became especially evident after the devastating 1972 earthquake in Managua. Enormous volumes of international humanitarian aid intended for rebuilding the country fell under the control of the Somoza family and structures connected to it. A substantial portion of reconstruction contracts, supplies of construction materials, food imports, and aid distribution was redirected through companies belonging to the regime’s inner circle. Against the backdrop of a destroyed capital and thousands left homeless, the Somoza family significantly increased its fortune.
In Panama, Manuel Noriega brought the fusion of the state and the criminal underworld to the point where the two became almost indistinguishable. He effectively combined the functions of head of state with participation in shadowy international operations, using state institutions to service illegal financial flows. One of the most notorious examples was his cooperation with the Medellín Cartel.
Panama was transformed into a convenient transit and financial hub for international drug trafficking: significant volumes of narcotics related funds passed through Panamanian banks, while the country itself was used as a corridor for transporting cocaine into the United States. Panama’s intelligence and security structures, placed under Noriega’s direct personal control, effectively protected these operations, gradually erasing the boundary between state administration and organized crime.
Alfredo Stroessner in Paraguay turned military parades and mass ceremonies into a central element of political cult, giving them an almost sacred significance. The army, the elites, and society were expected again and again to witness the visual embodiment of order, discipline, and the ruler’s absolute control over the country. This was particularly evident during the annual celebrations marking the anniversary of Stroessner’s rise to power and military parades honoring the armed forces, accompanied by massive troop marches and demonstrations of armored vehicles and aviation.
State institutions, schools, trade unions, and officials were required to participate in these events, while slogans glorifying the ruler filled the streets of the capital. Stroessner himself appeared on reviewing stands surrounded by generals, symbolizing the unity of the state, the army, and his own authority, transforming state ceremonies into theatrical confirmation that the regime and the leader were one and the same.
Rafael Trujillo in the Dominican Republic went even further. Schools, streets, government institutions, and entire cities were named after him, while the country’s capital, Santo Domingo, was officially renamed Ciudad Trujillo. Public space gradually turned into a gigantic stage set for a personal cult in which the very existence of the country was meant to be associated exclusively with the figure of the leader.
This was especially visible in mandatory public rituals of loyalty. In government institutions, portraits of Trujillo and slogans such as “God and Trujillo” were displayed alongside the national flag. Newspapers published daily glorifying articles, officials were obliged publicly to demonstrate devotion to the regime, and any sign of insufficient admiration was treated as political unreliability. Even church ceremonies were often transformed into displays of reverence toward the leader, creating an atmosphere in which Trujillo’s personality virtually merged with the state itself and with the national identity of the country.
Hugo Chávez in Venezuela transformed politics into an endless televised performance, governing the country live on air through his marathon program Aló Presidente. Before millions of viewers, Chávez issued instructions to ministers, announced new economic measures, dismissed and appointed officials, discussed domestic matters, and even sang songs. Government increasingly acquired the character of a spectacle in which the personal presence of the leader and his emotional connection with the audience became more important than institutional procedures or the stability of state mechanisms themselves. This tradition was later inherited by Nicolás Maduro, under whom political theater became fully entrenched as the foundation of the country’s political system.
In all of these cases, the state ceased to function as an independent political institution. It increasingly resembled the personal stage of the ruler, where ideology, the economy, the army, the intelligence services, and even national symbolism were subordinated to a single task: preserving the power of one individual and serving his family or inner circle.
Africa demonstrates authoritarianism in an even more vivid and expressive form.
Jean Bédel Bokassa in the Central African Republic, inspired by Napoleon’s coronation, crowned himself emperor in an extravagant ceremony, seated upon a golden throne, wearing a crown, and surrounded by luxurious carriages. Gold ornaments, expensive French suits, limousines, porcelain, and even an imperial throne shaped like an eagle were specially commissioned for the occasion. Against the backdrop of extreme poverty, food shortages, and economic crisis, the regime spent enormous sums constructing the theatrical image of an “African Napoleon,” transforming the state into a stage set for the ruler’s personal grandeur.
Idi Amin in Uganda likewise turned power into a grotesque cult of his own personality, assigning himself increasingly pompous and absurd titles. At first he styled himself “Father of the Nation” and “The Last Savior of Uganda,” presenting his rule as the only force capable of saving the country from chaos. Yet a merely national scale soon proved insufficient for him. Seeking to appear as a figure of global and almost mythological significance, Amin began calling himself the “Last King of Scotland,” the “Conqueror of the British Empire in Africa,” and eventually, much like the famous character from the Russian fairy tale about the golden fish, proclaimed himself “Lord of All the Beasts of the Earth and Fishes of the Sea.”
In Zaire, Joseph Désiré carried the personalization of power to an almost theatrical extreme. Rejecting his European name, he adopted a new one — Mobutu Sese Seko Kuku Ngbendu wa za Banga, which roughly translated as “the warrior who goes from victory to victory and cannot be stopped.” At the same time, he ordered citizens to abandon European names and surnames as part of the so called policy of “authenticity,” replacing them with African names such as “Born During the Rain” or “He Who Comes With Peace.”
This policy was accompanied by the effective imposition of a new state cult. Citizens were forced to wear specially designated “national clothing” instead of European suits, portraits of Mobutu hung in schools and government institutions, and television regularly broadcast scenes in which the leader appeared to symbolically “descend from the heavens” to triumphant music. Even the country’s name itself was changed: Congo became Zaire, not merely to emphasize a break with the colonial past, but to bind the new national identity directly to the ruler’s personality. At the same time, the national flag, coat of arms, and even the names of certain rivers and cities were changed. The new symbolism was meant to become inseparable from Mobutu’s regime and his policy of “authenticity.”
Hastings Banda in Malawi awarded himself the title “Ngwazi” — “The Conqueror” — presenting himself as the sole defender of the country’s independence against endless internal and external enemies. State propaganda cultivated the image of a man who supposedly knew better than the people themselves what society needed, and who therefore possessed the right to stand above laws and institutions. His portraits became mandatory in government offices, shops, and schools, while cinema audiences were required to stand and greet the president’s image before films began. Women’s party organizations welcomed Banda at official events with specially prepared songs and dances glorifying the “Father of the Nation” and his wisdom.
Macías Nguema became one of the darkest examples of African personalist authoritarianism. After Equatorial Guinea gained independence from Spain, he gradually transformed the country into a regime of total fear, where state institutions virtually disappeared, dissolving into the ruler’s personal power. He proclaimed himself the “Only Miracle of Equatorial Guinea,” demanded unconditional worship, and effectively placed himself above the state, the law, and even religion itself. Official propaganda cultivated the image of an almost mystical leader endowed with unique wisdom and an exclusive right to determine the fate of the country.
Under Nguema, the cult of personality was accompanied by the rapid destruction of the state itself. Mass repression, killings, and an atmosphere of permanent terror forced tens of thousands to flee the country, including a large part of the educated population. Schools began to close, education was restricted, and intellectuals, teachers, and priests were persecuted. The state gradually ceased to function as a system for governing society and instead became a space of personal power, fear, and arbitrariness, where any form of independence was perceived as a threat to the regime.
After Modernity
Endless cults of personality, cities renamed after rulers, television shows replacing actual governance, military parades as a form of political mysticism, eccentric declarations, and demonstrative self glorification — for a long time this entire collection of rituals, gestures, and political spectacles appeared grotesque, almost anecdotal. This was precisely how such regimes were perceived in the former Soviet Union during the study of international politics and the history of international relations. They seemed like strange exotic curiosities, peculiar political oddities, almost artistic misunderstandings possible only somewhere far away, within a different cultural and historical reality.
It appeared that such forms of power could exist only on the periphery of world politics, in countries with weak institutions, poorly educated populations, and a tribal culture of governance. They were perceived as something fundamentally alien to the European tradition of state administration, rational bureaucracy, and the very concept of the modern state founded upon institutions rather than the personal will of a ruler.
Over time, many countries in Latin America began gradually moving away from such models. Despite the heavy legacy of dictatorships, military regimes, and populist experiments, the region as a whole embarked upon a path of modernization, institutional strengthening, and political competition. Even where authoritarian traditions persisted especially long, societies gradually accumulated frustration toward endless political theater, corruption, and the substitution of state governance with personality cults.
Venezuela became a particularly revealing example. After the arrest of Nicolás Maduro, parliament applauded the release of political prisoners. These applauses were not merely emotional reactions to a specific event, but manifestations of accumulated internal disagreement with the very nature of the regime itself. Many deputies, who only recently had been forced into silence by fear of repression and arrest, had in reality long rejected the populist model of power built upon constant emotional mobilization, televised governance, and the cult of the leader.
Yet almost paradoxically, precisely at the moment when this political culture was gradually receding into the past in Latin America and even in many African countries, its elements unexpectedly began reproducing themselves across the post Soviet space. What only recently had seemed like exotic phenomena of distant continents suddenly became part of the new political reality of the former USSR.
In Turkmenistan, Saparmurat Niyazov proclaimed himself “Turkmenbashi,” the father of all Turkmens. He renamed the months of the year: January was named after himself, April after his mother Gurbansoltan, and September after his book Ruhnama. In this way he symbolically inserted his own biography into the structure of time itself, making it part of the state calendar.
His successor Berdimuhamedow continued this line, though in a different stylistic form — that of demonstrative universalism. He consistently portrayed himself as a doctor, writer, racing driver, musician, and athlete, regularly appearing in staged videos where he effortlessly hit targets with a pistol while in motion.
All these figures shared a striking number of similarities. It was difficult to determine whether they were consciously imitating one another or simply acting according to the same internal template. Most likely the latter: such systems inevitably gravitate toward similar forms, reproducing the same gestures, symbols, and political aesthetics regardless of country, culture, or skin color.
In Belarus, Lukashenko assembled almost the complete set of authoritarian techniques. Like Duvalier, who styled himself “Papa Doc,” Idi Amin, who called himself the “Father of the Nation,” and Niyazov, who proclaimed himself “Turkmenbashi,” the “father of all Turkmens,” he consistently imposed upon society the image of the batka — the single man supposedly capable of saving the country from collapse, external threats, and internal chaos.
This image gradually elevated him beyond an ordinary political role, transforming him into a figure standing above the state, the law, and the institutions of power themselves. Over time, propaganda constructed around him an entire system of definitions such as “guarantor of peace and stability,” “protector of the Belarusian people,” “architect of Belarusian statehood,” and “the leader who saved the country from chaos.” The existence of Belarus itself became increasingly tied to the ruler’s personality, cultivating the perception that without him the country would supposedly plunge inevitably into crisis, disintegration, and catastrophe.
From Hugo Chávez, Lukashenko borrowed the style of public governance that transforms state authority into an endless political show. Officials were demonstratively reprimanded live on television, кадровые решения made before the eyes of the entire country, ministers and governors publicly humiliated. The image was cultivated of a leader who supposedly personally controlled absolutely everything, from potato harvesting to methods for training biathletes and hockey players. As with Chávez, governance itself became replaced by a permanent televised spectacle in which emotional performances, improvisation, demonstrative “closeness to the people,” and the image of a ruler personally deciding the fate of the country mattered more than laws or institutions.
From Trujillo, vividly portrayed by Mario Vargas Llosa in The Feast of the Goat, Lukashenko seemed to borrow the demonstrative sense of entitlement to access young women as a special privilege of power. Public appearances alongside them, accepted silently by the surrounding elite, gradually became part of a political ritual and a symbolic display of the ruler’s status.
This was no longer merely about details of private life. Such behavior performed another function entirely: it became a demonstration to society of absolute impunity and the conviction that for the ruler there existed neither moral boundaries nor public constraints nor rules applicable to everyone else. The leader’s personal whims were meant to be perceived as something standing above norms and institutions, while the surrounding elite was expected not to notice what in any other political system would become a scandal or cause public outrage.
Like the African “Napoleon” Bokassa, who turned his children into princes, Lukashenko regularly appeared with his young son dressed in military uniform, while generals and officers were expected publicly to humiliate themselves by saluting the child, sending society the message that the state belonged to the family.
The similarity to Stroessner manifested itself in Lukashenko’s particular attitude toward mass state rituals, above all the annual military parades which, incidentally, have only a very conditional relationship to the country’s actual defense capability. Such events became political spectacles through which society was repeatedly encouraged to believe the same message: that the state, the army, the economy, and the country itself supposedly exist solely thanks to one man.
Yet in some respects the Belarusian ruler went even further. He noticeably expanded the genre of the classic authoritarian parade. Alongside tanks, which merely destroy the asphalt of the capital’s main avenues and require millions in subsequent road repairs each year, and columns of marching soldiers, the authorities also began displaying products of state industry and even ordinary household items. Furniture, bathtubs, and even toilets became part of state ceremonies, creating the impression that the ruler personally provides the country with everything it needs — from air defense systems to plumbing.
Equally revealing was the transformation of Belarus’s Independence Day itself. The principal state holiday was moved to July 3, the day of the liberation of Minsk during the Second World War, although the liberation of the capital, however historically significant, did not mean the liberation of the entire country. Yet this date proved highly convenient for constructing a new political symbolism in which war, victory, liberation, stability, and independence became increasingly associated with the image of the ruler.
Gradually, state propaganda constructed a narrative in which modern Belarusian statehood itself was presented almost as the ruler’s personal achievement. Historical memory became less a means of understanding the tragedy of war and national history than an instrument of personal political cult, with one man placed at the center of all symbolic connections.
From Mobutu Sese Seko, Lukashenko borrowed the desire to reshape state symbolism around his own authority. After coming to power in Belarus, the national flag and coat of arms were changed, while historical national symbols were replaced with new ones outwardly resembling Soviet imagery, though stripped of the ideological logic upon which the Soviet system had actually rested.
For all its authoritarianism, the USSR nevertheless formally relied not on the cult of one individual, but on the idea of collective party power, a vast state apparatus, and a specific ideological framework. In the Belarusian version, however, state symbolism increasingly became associated not with the state as an institution nor with historical continuity, but with a single political figure. The flag, coat of arms, and official state rituals gradually transformed into symbols not so much of Belarus itself as of one particular ruler.
At the same time, historical symbolism was actively displaced. The white red white flag and the Pahonia coat of arms, associated with the Belarusian national movement, the history of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and the independence period of the early 1990s, were increasingly portrayed as alien, dangerous, or even hostile symbols. The very notion of the “real Belarus” gradually became tied exclusively to the new state aesthetics and the existing system of power.
As a result, state symbolism increasingly ceased to serve the purpose of uniting society around a common history and instead became part of a personal political cult. The impression was cultivated that modern Belarus begins precisely with the current regime, while its flag, coat of arms, and national holidays exist primarily to confirm the special historical role of one individual.
From Nicaragua’s Somoza, Lukashenko inherited the very attitude toward the state as personal property that could be disposed of at his own discretion, almost like privately owned land.
Just as in Nicaragua, extremely valuable state land in Minsk worth hundreds of millions of dollars was handed over free of charge near the National Library, on the territory of the former Minsk 1 airport, and in Chelyuskintsev Park to structures connected with the Serbian Karić brothers, personally supervised by Lukashenko’s son Viktor. The protected Lebyazhy nature reserve, one of the most valuable environmental zones in the Belarusian capital, was transferred for residential development to Pavel Beliy, a hockey player who regularly appeared on the same line as the Belarusian “macho” during staged hockey matches.
Protected lands near Minsk were effectively handed over to foreigners as the ruler’s personal property. In particular, a Qatari sheikh received enormous forest territories in the Logoysk and Smolevichi districts totaling around twenty five square kilometers for ninety nine years as private hunting grounds. These areas were fenced off with barbed wire, depriving local residents, who for generations had gathered mushrooms and berries there, of access to the forests. They were treated as voiceless serfs with no right to enter land that had ceased to belong to society as a whole. Separately, Qatar received a twenty five hectare plot near the Dubrovskoye reservoir for the construction of the emir’s private residence.
From Noriega, Lukashenko borrowed the model of the state as a vast gray zone living off smuggling and shadow financial flows. After Russian sanctions against the West were introduced, Belarus suddenly became one of the largest suppliers of supposedly “Belarusian” seafood, parmesan, ham, apples, and pears, in volumes vastly exceeding the actual capacities of the Belarusian economy.
A separate sphere resembling Noriega’s narcotics trafficking became cigarette smuggling. After the tobacco market fell under the control of the Lukashenko family, Belarus increasingly turned into a major source of illegal tobacco for Russia, Poland, the Baltic states, and other parts of Europe.
For the sake of extraordinary profits, the state began dismantling anti tobacco policy. Across the country, a rapidly expanding chain of tobacco kiosks known as “Tabakerka” began appearing directly at bus stops, near metro stations, schools, and even children’s hospitals. Moreover, through special decrees, these kiosks received exclusive rights to sell public transportation tickets. As a result, anyone purchasing a bus or trolley ticket automatically found themselves standing before cigarette displays.
The state, which was supposed to protect public health, instead became one of the largest distributors of tobacco addiction. For the profit of a narrow circle connected to the interests of the “ruling family,” as they increasingly called themselves, people were deliberately drawn into smoking, including children and teenagers. Mothers with children, school students, and young people found themselves daily inside an artificially created environment of constant contact with tobacco products. Public health, rising youth smoking, and the consequences for society were pushed aside whenever the financial interests of the Lukashenko clan were at stake.
Enormous sums were also earned through various schemes involving Russian oil.
At the same time, like many similar rulers, he had to be “everything at once”: agrarian expert, economist, military strategist, educator, athlete, and even nutritionist. From the parliamentary podium he teaches ministers how to manage the economy, collective farmers how to raise cattle and when to harvest crops, military officers how to defend the country, athletes how to train, doctors how to heal, and teachers what to teach. From that same podium he also explains why one should not eat meat with potatoes for dinner.
Of course, it would be naïve to imagine that Lukashenko sat with a pencil studying the biographies of Mobutu Sese Seko, Idi Amin, Somoza, Nguema, or Banda, carefully listing elements for a future personality cult. Such similarities arise not because dictators read the same manuals, but because the very nature of personalist power almost inevitably drives systems toward the same forms of existence.
When state institutions gradually lose independence, when political competition, independent media, and public oversight disappear, power naturally concentrates around one individual. And together with this concentration almost inevitably emerge the same elements: cults of the “father of the nation,” endless parades, sacralization of power, rewriting of symbols, demonstrative luxury, and attempts to portray the ruler as the sole source of order, stability, and even the existence of the state itself.
That is why such different countries and continents begin to resemble one another so strikingly. What is presented inside the system as a unique national path, a special model, or an “original form of democracy” is in reality a rather standard collection of features characteristic of personalist authoritarianism. One could speak with equal justification not about Lukashenko, but about Obiang Mbasogo in Equatorial Guinea, Biya in Cameroon, Museveni in Uganda, and many other figures who are politically and psychologically remarkably similar to the Belarusian ruler. Only the flags, the names of countries, the costumes, and the decorations change.
The mechanics of power remain almost identical.
To be continued.
