Editorial Foreword

The year 2018 marked a jubilee of Belarusian statehood. On the Day of Freedom, March 25, the 100th anniversary of the Belarusian People’s Republic was celebrated. Even though the BPR existed for less than one year, from March 9 to December 3, 1918, it is a critical component of Belarusian national identity. Belarus is a young state, although the Rada of the Belarusian People’s Republic is the world’s oldest incumbent government in exile.

Another 100th anniversary, associated with the establishment of the Belarusian Soviet Socialist Republic on January 1, 1919, symbolizes the historical drama and non-uniformity of Belarus’s national identity. In the meantime, the Day of Independence of the Republic of Belarus, the main celebration of the statehood, is traditionally associated with the day the Nazis were expelled from Minsk on July 3. Only quite recently the Belarusian authorities have embraced Belarus’s “longer” history as part of the Soft Belarusization policy.

Belarusian Yearbook 2019 is a comprehensive analysis of the key developments in the main sectors of the state and society in 2018.

Main trends of the year

• Amid preparations for the election campaigns of 2019/2020, economic and political reforms stalled. The authorities focused on maintaining and strengthening “sovereignty”, “independence”, and “stability” within the Soft Belarusization trend.
• Contradictions became more conspicuous between the conservative political headquarters (Alexander Lukashenko’s Executive Office) and the economic headquarters (the Sergei Rumas-led renewed government), which tends towards discrete reforms.
• Tensions built up in the country’s personnel policy in the wake of the failure to ensure a more compact and efficient state machine.
• Control and punishment prevailed in nearly all spheres of public life; the government’s security, defense, and law block managed to maintain its positions, despite the damage it was doing to progress achieved by other agencies in foreign and economic policies.
• The recovery growth of the economy was exhausted, and the private sector is not in a position to make up for the failures of the public sector.
• None of the conflicts in Belarus’s trade and economic relations with Russia have been resolved, which put additional pressure on the national currency.
• Slow normalization of relations with the West continued, albeit amidst procrastinated negotiations on crucial bilateral agreements.
• Sovereignty and independence were fixated in public conscience as important values.

Since 2003, the Belarusian Yearbook project has evolved as a joint endeavor of the Belarusian expert community to compile, conceptualize, and deliver a chronicle of Belarus’s contemporary history.

Contributing to Belarusian Yearbook 2019 were independent analysts and experts, as well as specialists representing various think tanks, including Institute of Political Studies “Political Sphere”, Belarusian Institute for Strategic Studies (BISS), Belarusian Institute for Public Administration Reform and Transformation (BIPART), School of Young Managers in Public Administration (SYMPA), Minsk Dialogue Expert Initiative, Ostrogorski Centre, Belarusian Economic Research and Outreach Center (BEROC), MACROCENTER Macroeconomic Research Center, Belarus Security Blog analytical project, Centre Ecumena, Foreign Policy Council Ukrainian Prism (Kyiv), Institute of International Relations (Warsaw, Poland), Belarusian Analytical Workroom (BAW, Warsaw), Public Bologna Committee, Agency for Social and Political Expert Appraisal (Vilnius), and the website of the expert community of Belarus Nashe Mnenie (‘Our Opinion’).