Subconsciously, Lukashenko Understands This
- Alexander Klaskovsky
- 9.11.2026, 10:17
You can't stop history.
On November 7, in the Shklov District, Alexander Lukashenko stated that “our quota for revolutions ran out long ago.” He repeats this mantra from time to time. However, the course of history does not bow to the autocrat’s mantras.
Belarus remains the only country in the world where the anniversary of the so-called October Revolution is officially celebrated. Even in Russia, where the event actually took place, the corresponding holiday has been canceled.
Why Is the Dictator Clinging to a Communist Holiday
At first glance, this seems paradoxical: an autocrat who fears revolutions has kept as a red-letter day on the calendar the date when a coup d’état took place in Russia in 1917.
He explained the decision to keep this holiday as follows: “I don’t want to rub salt in the wounds of the elderly.”
It seems, however, that the main reason is different: Lukashenko remains a deeply Soviet man, a “red,” to use the epithet Svetlana Alexievich.
He came to power under the slogans of a return to the “glorious past” and still preserves many elements of the Soviet system.
In 1995, the “young president” deliberately put the issue of state symbols to a referendum in order to abandon the white-red-white flag and the Pogon in favor of de facto Soviet symbols.
The sessions of the so-called All-Belarusian People’s Assembly are painfully reminiscent of the Congresses of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The Leninist Komsomol has been reincarnated as the Belarusian Republican Youth Union (BRSM). Lukashenko is attempting to control the economy in a command-and-control manner. In the “best” traditions of the communist system, dissent is being eradicated, and the category of “enemies of the people” (“extremists,” “traitors,” “fugitives”) has effectively been reinstated.
Lukashenko has repeatedly spoken out publicly in defense of Lenin and Stalin, demonstrating his commitment to the Soviet political tradition with its cult of strong authority and repressive methods of governance.
At the same time, he said yesterday: “I am not a supporter of revolutions, and as a historian, I do not want this to happen here.”
It would be more accurate to say: “As a dictator, I do not want to be overthrown.”
You Can’t Stop History
Lukashenko has been uttering anti-revolutionary mantras for many years now.
In 2005, shortly after the Orange Revolution in Ukraine, he declared that Belarus had reached its “limit on wars and revolutions.” But a year later, our first mass gathering in the Square took place. An even more powerful “Square” protest took place in 2010.
January 2011: “I give you a firm guarantee: the limit on revolutions and upheavals in Belarus has been exhausted.”
November 2012, interview with Reuters: “Belarus has exhausted its limit for revolutions.”
Finally, on August 4, 2020, the autocrat played the same old tune: “The Belarusian people exhausted their quota of revolutions and destruction in the last century.”
And this time, the mantra didn’t work: a few days later, a phenomenally large-scale popular uprising began against election fraud and violence by security forces.
It was suppressed using precisely Leninist-Stalinist methods. After 2020, the Lukashenko regime began an obvious drift toward totalitarianism.
And this is precisely the kind of situation where the people have the right to rise up against tyranny.
Lukashenko probably understands this subconsciously. He senses that his usurpation of power could backfire. That is why we hear these refrains about the “limit of revolutions.” But history shows that there comes a moment when no amount of incantations can help dictators.
Alexander Klaskovsky, “Belsat”