Lukashenko's Fiasco Has Become Apparent

• 27.07.2026, 8:02

In many respects, the Belarusian countryside is now in a worse state than it was during the turbulent 1990s.

At a conference call on July 21, Alexander Lukashenko ordered that those who perform poorly and fail to observe labor discipline in agriculture—especially during the harvest season—be sent to the army.

How is it that, over the course of three decades, the dictator has still failed to bring order to the agricultural sector?

Thirty years ago, Alexander Lukashenko made numerous promises, writes Alexei Mazartov for the website “Belarusians and the Market”. He was particularly generous with his promises to Belarusian farmers, who for many years had been his main electoral base. Over the past thirty years, Lukashenko has fulfilled only one of all these promises—he preserved the collective farms. And in many respects, the Belarusian countryside found itself in a worse situation than it had been in during the turbulent 1990s.

For the USSR, Belarus served as both an assembly plant and a breadbasket republic. The volume of food exports from the Byelorussian SSR significantly exceeded the volume of imports. In 1991, 2.5 billion rubles’ worth of food was exported from Belarus to other republics, while imports totaled just over 500 million rubles.

In 2000, after six years of Lukashenko’s rule, the grain harvest in Belarus totaled 4.6 million metric tons. In 1990—the year the Belarusian authorities so love to compare their current situation to—Belarus harvested 7 million metric tons of grain.

In terms of meat production, Belarus finally reached 1990 levels only in 2017. As for milk production, the country did not surpass 1990 levels until 2020. However, potato production has never managed to return to 1990 levels.

On the other hand, Lukashenko, as he promised, did not allow the unique Soviet system of collective and state farms to be dismantled. He left it virtually untouched since Soviet times. The share of private farms in agricultural production still amounts to less than 3 percent.

And this mere 3 percent, by the very fact of its existence, tarnishes the picture of prosperity painted by the collective farm system of agricultural production. As of 2020, the profitability of production in collective farms stood at 4.7 percent. For private farmers, it was 21.4 percent. The profit per hectare for private farms was $350. For collective farms, it was about forty.

But after 2000, oil prices began to rise, and a flood of Russian subsidies poured into Belarus. Lukashenko now had a chance to finally prove the total superiority of large-scale commercial production over primitive family farms.

From 2000 to 2013, government investment in the sector totaled $50 billion. The following seven years added just as much. In other words, average annual government subsidies to agriculture amounted to $5 billion.

For some reason, this did not help agriculture. When he launched the rural revival program, Lukashenko promised that within ten years, the average yield in Belarus would rise to 45 centners per hectare. Last year was the closest the country came to this figure. But even then, the average yield was still lower, at 43 centners per hectare. In all other years, it has hovered around 35.

Meanwhile, in Lithuania—even without grandiose programs—yields rose from 19 centners per hectare in 1992 to 47 in 2020. Last year, Belarus boasted an unprecedented record harvest. It harvested 10.7 million metric tons of grain—including corn and rapeseed. Excluding rapeseed and corn, the total comes to less than 9 million metric tons. In Lithuania, whose population is one-third the size of Belarus’, the harvest was 8 million metric tons, excluding rapeseed and corn.

Belarusian food exports last year totaled $10 billion. Lithuania, with a population—once again—three times smaller, sold $8 billion worth of food products.

So it’s no surprise that the Belarusian authorities like to compare everything to the 1990s. But they don’t like to compare themselves to their neighbors. Yet even comparisons to the 1990s don’t always work in modern Belarus’s favor.

They’ve managed to preserve

In 1995, the profitability of grain production stood at 71%. By 2020, it had fallen to less than 10%. In 2020, when it was still possible to speak openly about this, Belarusian officials acknowledged that 70 percent of Belarus’s agricultural enterprises were unable to function without constant state support.

The total debt of agricultural enterprises to banks is approximately 20 percent higher than their annual agricultural output.

The notorious price disparity, which Lukashenko promised to eliminate, has become even more glaring over the past thirty years. Whereas in 1991 it took 16 metric tons of first-class wheat to buy an MTZ tractor, today you would need 190 metric tons.

Efforts to bridge the gap between urban and rural areas have also failed. In February 2026, the average salary in Belarus was 2,700 rubles. The average salary in agriculture was 2,200 rubles.

Revitalizing and Developing

In 2005, Lukashenko announced the launch of a program to revitalize and develop rural areas. A key element was the construction of agricultural towns. The purpose of the program was to ensure that life in the countryside was no worse than in the city—that there would be running water, sewer systems, and heating; that villages would have not only a store but also a school, a kindergarten, and a sports club; and that people would want to live there.

Over the course of twenty years, these grand promises have been scaled back to meeting only the most basic daily needs.

“In these little houses—in the agricultural towns, collective farm houses, or ‘presidential’ houses, as they’re called—well, you don’t have to, excuse me, have to ‘go to the outhouse’ outside in the winter—everything’s built right there,” they boasted on the CheZa program on Channel One.

In other words, the sports clubs didn’t pan out, so you’ll have to make do with a heated outhouse. But even with a heated outhouse, in reality, it didn’t work out everywhere. According to a study conducted by the ThinkTanks project, as of the end of last year, only 60 percent of the rural housing stock was connected to the water supply. Half of the residential buildings had hot water and central heating.

There are, of course, exemplary agricultural towns. You just have to try hard to find them. In 2016, ten years after the program’s launch, the State Control Committee made an effort. The agency conducted a large-scale audit to determine how people actually live in these agricultural towns. It turned out that in some places, no one lives there at all. Of the 300 agricultural towns inspected, nearly half—130—were found to have vacant homes.

In other words, they built the houses, but couldn’t find anyone willing to live in them. This is because, very often, these identical, attractive little houses were built without taking actual needs into account. They were built in places with no social infrastructure whatsoever, where there are no jobs, and where there is no regular transportation to the nearest settlement. In other words, the authorities thought it would be enough to simply build the houses, and people would flock there like starlings, move in, and settle down. What could have gone wrong?

Thanks in no small part to Lukashenko himself, the rural electorate—which he has always considered his own—has shrunk significantly over the past three decades. In 1990, about one million people were employed in Belarus’s agricultural sector. By 2023, that number had fallen to 250,000. By 2024, it was already down to 236,000.

In 1996, 3.2 million Belarusians lived in rural areas. By 2024, fewer than two million remained. The Vitebsk and Grodno regions have lost half of their rural population over the past thirty years. In total, 1,800 villages in Belarus have completely disappeared during this period.

And it will only get worse. Because according to this ThinkTanks study I mentioned earlier, one-third of rural residents are retirees. Young people—that is, those under 30—make up only 17 percent of the rural population. Over the past 23 years, 13,000 children were born in the countryside. Thirty-seven thousand died. So if this trend continues, very soon there may not be enough farmers left in the country to “save the country” yet again.