兔子跟三毛搞基？

白俄罗斯的卢卡申科取代金正恩成为中国新宠
Forget Kim Jong Un—China’s New Favorite Dictator Is Belarus’s Aleksandr Lukashenko.

原文地址：http://www.thedailybeast.com/art ... ndr-lukashenko.html
翻译：龙腾

Forget Kim Jong Un—lately, the bigwigs in Beijing have been heaping praise on Aleksandr Lukashenko, the man Condoleezza Rice once nicknamed “Europe’s last dictator.”

忘记金正恩吧，在北京的大人物们现在极力赞扬的是亚历山大卢卡申科，这位白俄罗斯总统被美国前国务卿赖斯称做“欧洲”最后的独裁者。

Twenty years ago, Belarus bustled with hope and anxiety. Flat, forested, and landlocked between Poland, Ukraine and Russia, it had never truly known national autonomy. The Soviet Union, which had defined the territory of modern Belarus, was dead. What looked like the end of history to jubilant spectators across the West was for many Belarusians the beginning of an inscrutable future. The election of 1994 was the first free vote in the history of the Belarusian people, and they turned to a man called Aleksandr Lukashenko to carry them forward.

20年前，白俄罗斯希望和焦虑并行，这片平坦被森林覆盖的内陆国家，在波兰乌克兰和俄罗斯之间，从不知什么叫国家自治。曾经了定义了现代白俄罗斯的领土的前苏联，已分崩离析。对于西方的旁观者来说，历史走到这里令人激动的是白俄罗斯人开始了他们前途未卜的未来。1994年的选举是白俄罗斯历史上第一次自由公投，他们选举了一名叫做亚历山大卢卡申科的男子来带领他们前行。

Two decades on, there has not been another unrestricted election in Belarus. Minsk, the capital, is a picture of unbearable desolation. At dusk, workers emerge from gargantuan Soviet-built blocks and disappear into the darkness. There is a chilling silence on buses and in the subway. The fear of being watched chokes conversation. The only public assemblies that aren’t dispersed with force are the long queues outside the exchanges. At the central train station, young people who may be students furtively introduce themselves as currency dealers, offering up to 10,000 roubles for one American dollar. We want to get out of here, they say. But very few do. Why? “Because Belarus is a prison.”

20年过去了，在白俄罗斯没有再发生其他不受限制的选举，首都明斯克，一副满目疮痍令人无法忍受的景象，黄昏，工人从苏联时期的庞大建筑走出，消失在夜色里。公交和地铁里一片冷寂。对于被监视的恐惧，让人们的谈话哽咽。唯一没有被驱散的公众聚会场所的大厅门口拍着长队。在中央车站，很多人年轻人也许还是学生，偷偷介绍自己是外汇贩子，10000白俄卢布可以兑换1美元，他们说，他们想要离开这个国家，但是很少人这样做，为什么，他们说“因为白俄罗斯就是监狱”

For 20 years, Lukashenko has ruled Belarus in the fashion of his hero Joseph Stalin. Public assembly is banned, the press is censored, the Internet is monitored, telephones are tapped, and people’s livelihoods—and lives—depend on avoiding politics. Far from rejecting it, Lukashenko relishes the title, bestowed on him by Condoleezza Rice, of Europe’s last dictator. “I am the last and only dictator in Europe,” he said in 2012. He has already appointed his nine-year-old son, Kolya, as his successor.

在这20年里，卢卡申科用他的偶像斯大林的方式统治着白俄罗斯，公共集会场所被禁止，媒体需要审查，互联网被监控，电话被窃听，人们的生计和生活，都要依靠无法避开的政治。美国前国务卿赖斯赋予他的称号，“欧洲最后的独裁者”，卢卡申科不但不拒绝，而且很欣赏。“我是欧洲最后而且是唯一的独裁者”，他在2012年这样说，他已经任命他9岁的儿子，蔻亚，作为他的继承者。

Brussels and Washington may no longer be able to contain Lukashenko as he builds a Stalinist dynasty in the heart of Europe. Originally, it was the idea of a “Russian sphere of influence” that deterred the West from applying significant pressure on Lukashenko. This was always an exaggeration. Belarus has relied on Russia to keep its debt-financed economy afloat—yet for all its apparent power, Moscow has not been able to persuade Lukashenko to recognise the Putin-supervised sovereignty of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. His erratic behaviour in handling Russian oil pipelines prompted Moscow to seek alternative routes of supply. Now, conscious of his diminishing utility for Putin and eager to brandish his independence from Russia, Lukashenko has found a new patron: China.

布鲁塞尔和华盛顿也许不能容忍卢卡申科，在欧洲之心的位置建立一个斯大林式的王朝。最初，由于“俄罗斯势力范围”这个概念阻止着西方对卢卡申科施加更大的压力，但这个理由被过分夸大，白俄罗斯依靠俄罗斯使其融资经济系统运转流畅，然而就表面来看，俄罗斯已经不能说服卢卡申科，让他承认普京监管下的阿布哈兹和南奥塞梯自治。他在处理俄罗斯石油管道上的古怪行径，促使莫斯科方面寻求其他的供应路线。如今，卢卡申科觉察到俄罗斯的用处逐渐式微，强烈的想摆脱俄罗斯的影响更加独立，卢卡申科找到了新的老大:中国。

The friendship with Beijing has yielded considerable benefits for Lukashenko. In 2002 and 2007, he made minor concessions to evade Western sanctions. But when Washington imposed fresh sanctions in 2011, a year after he violently suppressed a mass uprising against his rule, Lukashenko was rattled only momentarily. Within weeks, China had filled the void, offering not just a billion dollars, but also an assurance of “full backing for [Lukashenko’s] stance on domestic and international questions.”  Last week, the relationship was deepened further when Xi Jinping, the Chinese president, conferred his country’s prestigious Friendship Award on Lukashenko’s visiting prime minister. Lukashenko, in turn, has promised China a “stronghold in Europe.”

和北京的关系，让卢卡申科获益巨大，在2002年和2007年，他做出了极小的让步就摆脱了西方的制裁。在他暴力压制住了对他统治不满的暴动的一年后，2011年华盛顿政府再次威逼新的制裁，那次卢卡申科也仅仅是虚惊一场，因为在数周内，中国就趁势而入，不仅仅提供10亿美元，还保证“全面支持卢卡申科在国内和国际问题的立场。”之后的一周，两国的友谊走得更深，中国领导人习大大，给卢卡申科的总理米亚斯尼科维奇了授予中国人民共和国友谊奖，卢卡申科投桃报李，许诺给中国一块“欧洲的要塞”

Despite the influx of Chinese cash into Lukashenko’s coffers, life for ordinary Belarusians remains grim. The Red Church in the centre of Minsk, once a symbol of Belarusian nationalism, is now a place of mourning. Every evening, families assemble around the imposing bronze statue of Archangel Michael, the patron saint of Belarus, in the churchyard to memorialize the friends, siblings, parents and children who have been taken from them—killed, imprisoned, or “disappeared” for opposing Lukashenko.

尽管从中国涌入的现金到了卢卡申科的保险柜里，但是一般白俄罗斯人的生活依然严峻，明斯克市中心的红色大教堂，曾经是白俄罗斯民族的象征，而如今却成了哀悼之地，每个夜晚，都有家庭聚集在白俄罗斯的庇护神大天使米迦勒的铜像之前，在教堂的院子里纪念他们被夺走的朋友，兄弟姐妹，父母，孩子，这些人因为反对卢卡申科，或者被杀，或者监禁，或者“人间蒸发”。

Three years ago I met Svetlana Gorohovik, a young activist, at the prayer meeting outside the Red Church. Her husband was serving a five-year sentence in a Minsk prison for taking part in the demonstrations of December 19—a hallowed date for thousands of Belarusians who occupied Minsk’s Independence Square in 2010, demanding a second round of voting after Lukashenko pronounced himself re-elected with an absolute majority for a fourth term. Lukashenko had hoped that the biting cold of December would forestall protests. It did not. The roads and avenues leading up to Independence Square filled up with thousands of Belarusians buoyed by the Orange Revolution in neighbouring Ukraine.
It seemed like the beginning of a revolt. Lukashenko dispatched the state militia. Gorohovik and her husband were among the injured protesters carted away by the police to undisclosed detention centres. At a hasty trial four months later, Gorohovik’s husband was sentenced to five years in prison. His wife, permitted two seven-minute phone calls each month with him, will be approaching 30 by the time of his release. Independence Square, the site of the carnage of December 19, was only a few yards from where we stood. A statue of Lenin gleamed in the middle of it. “All of us grew up knowing only one leader,” Gorohovik said, referring to the other protesters arrested that night. “They say I should be happy that I am not in jail. Actually, I am ashamed of this freedom.”

三年前，我在红色大教堂外的祈祷会上，见到一名年轻的活动家格洛霍维克，他的丈夫被判5年监禁正在明斯克监狱服刑，原因是参与了2010年12月19日游行示威，那是个可怕的日子，卢卡申科宣布已绝对优势赢得第四任总统任期，数千名白俄罗斯人占据了明斯克独立广场，要求重选。卢卡申科以为12月的冷风可以阻挡抗议者，但是没有，通往独立广场的街道上堵满了白俄罗斯人，他们被邻国乌克兰橘色革命的成果所鼓舞。这一切都像是起义的开始，然而卢卡申科出动了国家军队，格洛霍维克和他的丈夫也在受伤的抗议者其中，被警察强行带到秘密拘留中心。四个月后，一场仓促的审判，判决格洛霍维克的丈夫五年监禁，格洛霍维克每个月可以和丈夫打两次七分钟的电话，她的丈夫被释放出来将年近30，12月19日惨案的发生地独立广场，距离我们所在的地方只有一步之遥，在这里一尊列宁雕像不寒而栗，格洛霍维克说“我们长大到现在只认识一位领导人”，当说道其他被逮捕的抗议者时她说“有些人说我没被关进监狱应该感到高兴，但事实我无地自容”

Following the Soviet Union’s demise, the speaker of Belarus’s interim parliament rejected the presidential model for the new state. Then Bill Clinton visited Belarus in 1993—and members of parliament, enticed by the sight of the charismatic foreign leader, dismissed the speaker’s reservations and voted for a presidential system. Lukashenko, who was serving as chairman of a committee investigating corruption, seized the opportunity. He was energetic and youthful, not yet 40. Pensioners watching him on television were moved to tears. And although his official reports made no startling revelations about corruption, senior politicians, worried that he possessed damaging details about them, were afraid to confront him.

苏联解体后，白俄罗斯临时议会的发言人拒绝了新国家将采用总统制，之后克林顿在1993年访问白俄罗斯，议会成员被这位有魅力的领导人所怂恿，驳回了发言人的意见，开始为领导人制度投票。卢卡申科，当时作为腐败调查委员会主席，抓住了机会，当时他精力充沛而且年轻，还不足40，退休的老人们在电视上看到他感动的流出了眼泪。尽管当时他的办公室称没有威胁揭发官员腐败行为，但是高级政客担心卢卡申科握有毁坏性证据，而不敢对抗他。


Lukashenko won the presidency in a run-off vote the next year. It took him two years to consign the constitution to the trashcan, expand his powers, re-introduce the death penalty, incarcerate his opponents, and consolidate his control over the media. He withheld the salaries of parliamentarians who refused to rubberstamp his laws, and lawyers who challenged him were disbarred. By 1999, several prominent figures in the Belarusian opposition had vanished. Yuri Sivakov, a member of the cabinet, gained notoriety as the superintendent of Lukashenko’s alleged “death squads.” Lukashenko retained the outward rituals of democracy—elections, trials, parliamentary debates. But the presidential ukase became the ultimate land of the law. As a Belarusian legislator phrased it at the time:“Why are we sitting here? Why are we passing laws?”

卢卡申科在之后的一年后的决定性选举中赢得了的总统宝座，他用了两年的时间把宪法扔入垃圾站，来扩大自身权利，重新引入死刑，监禁他的政敌，加强他对媒体的控制，他扣发那些拒绝通过他的法律的议员的薪水，挑战他地位的律师也被取消从业资格，到了1999年，白俄罗斯反对派几个重要的人物都已经消失，西瓦科夫，一名内阁成员，作为卢卡申科所谓的“杀人小组”的头领臭名昭著，卢卡申科保留了民主的外表---选举，审判，内阁，辩论。但是总统的命令才是一些法律的最终解释，一名白俄罗斯立法者当时描述“我们坐在这里意义何在，我们通过法律意义何在？”

As the opposition to Lukashenko grew, he unleashed a campaign of terror against credible candidates who participated in the presidential elections. Of the nine who stood against him in 2010, seven saw the inside of a prison. One afternoon in Minsk, I met Alla, the mother of Lukashenko’s nearest rival in the 2010 vote, Andrei Sannikov. One of the brightest young members of Lukashenko’s first cabinet, Sannikov became increasingly disillusioned and quit the government in 1996. He started Charter 97—a pro-democracy movement modelled on Vaclav Havel’s Charter 77—and pioneered the use of the Internet in Belarusian politics.
He built a young team of computer mavens and creative artists. European politicians respected him. Lukashenko openly despised Sannikov and his wife, Irina Khalip, an investigative reporter of international renown. In September 2010, three months before the elections, Oleg Bebenin, Sannikov’s press secretary and a cofounder of Charter 97, was found dead outside Minsk. The police called it a suicide. But Natalia Koliada, an exiled Belarusian theatre activist who knew Bebenin well, rejected the official version when I interviewed her in London a year later. Bebenin, she told me, had recently returned from a holiday with his wife and their five-year-old son, and was working on innovative campaign models for the election ahead. His death, she said, was announced as a suicide even before an official autopsy was carried out.

随着反对卢卡申科的力量增长，他对参与总统竞选的选举人施展了恐怖行为，在2010年公开反对他的9人中，7人被投入监狱。在明斯克的一个下午，我见到了阿拉，他是卢卡申科在2010年选举中最有力的对手Andrei Sannikov的母亲，他是卢卡申科第一届内阁闪耀的年轻成员，Sannikov觉悟之后在1996年推出政府，他开始97宪章活动，这个活动仿照瓦茨拉夫·哈维尔的77宪章，在白俄罗斯政界首先使用了互联网，他组建了年轻人为主的电脑专家和艺术家团队，欧洲政治人物都很尊敬他，而卢卡申科公开鄙视Sannikov和他有国际声望的记者妻子Irina Khalip，在2010年9月大选还有3个月之前，Sannikov的新闻秘书，也同时是宪章97的共建者Oleg Bebenin，被发现死于首都明斯克外，警方称是自杀。
但是Natalia Koliada，以为被驱逐的白俄罗斯活动家，他非常了解Bebenin，在一年之后在伦敦接受采访的时候，完全否认了官方的说法，那时候的Bebenin刚刚和他的妻子和5岁的儿子从假期回来，正努力为即将到来的选举进行革命性的新选战，他的死，连尸检都没有进行就被判定为自杀。


If Bebenin’s “suicide” was meant as a warning to Sannikov, it did not work. His name went on the ballot. On the night of December 19, as he was addressing the crowd at Independence Square, Lukashenko’s men pushed him to the ground and struck him repeatedly on the head and legs. Sannikov began to bleed profusely. Khalip, Sannikov’s wife, tried to drive him to a hospital; both were detained en route. No medical treatment was given. In the weeks following their arrest, Belarus’s secret police—which still goes by the Soviet name of KGB—tried to seize their three-year-old son, Danil. Because Danil’s parents were going to be incarcerated for years, Lukashenko reasoned, it was in the child’s interest to be raised in an orphanage. In the ensuing global outcry, Khalip was released, placed under house arrest, and given custody of her son. Sannikov, however, was sentenced to a five-year term. Alla, his mother, did not know where he was.
Sannikov—isolated, and reportedly tortured, starved and nearly murdered inside his cell—was released in 2012. After spending some time in Britain as a political refugee, he moved to Warsaw to be closer to Belarus. His wife and son remain in Belarus, captives of the Lukashenko regime.

如果Bebenin的“自杀”是在警告Sannikov，将是徒劳。Sannikov的名字最终还是上了选票，在12月19日的夜里，他在独立广场集聚了人群，卢卡申科的人却将他推倒在地，反复击打他的头部和腿部，Sannikov 血流不止，他的妻子Khalip试图带他去医院；但是两人在路上都被拘留。完全没有医疗救治，在几周之后，白俄罗斯的秘密警察---依然沿用苏联时期克格勃的名字---试图逮捕他们三岁的儿子Danil，因为Danil的父母将入狱很多年，卢卡申科解释道，在孤儿院长大是这个孩子的福利，由于世界上广泛的强烈抗议，Khalip之后被释放，换成了软禁，还给了她儿子的监护权，Sannikov被判刑5年，他的母亲阿拉，甚至不知道他被关在哪里。Sannikov被隔离，据称还受到折磨，挨饿，在牢房里几乎被杀，最终他在2012年被释放，之后在英国政治避难，后又搬到了华沙，一个接近白俄罗斯的地方，他的妻子和儿子依然在白俄罗斯，作为卢卡申科政权的人质。


Absorbed into Bolshevik Russia by the Red Army in 1919 Belarus was so thoroughly assimilated by its neighbour that, when it emerged as a sovereign state from the detritus of the Soviet Union, its inhabitants were no longer certain what it meant to be “Belarusian.” “A person who does not understand who he is,” the political scientist Ales Ancipienka once explained, “is actually a Belarusian.” Politically conscious Belarusians felt that in order to honor their independence they had to revive Belarusian identity. Lukashenko, shaped by the colonial experience, stifled their project in infancy.

在1919年被布尔什维克俄国吸收，白俄罗斯完全被他的邻国同化，当这个国家从苏联的碎片中重新成为独立国家，这个国家的居民早已不在知道什么叫做“白俄罗斯人”。政治学家Ales Ancipienka曾解释“人与人不再相互了解”，“这就是白俄罗斯”，政治觉醒的白俄罗斯人认为光耀他们的独立就必须恢复白俄罗斯的认同感，而成长于殖民时代的卢卡申科，却把这一进程中断。

The central paradox of present-day Belarus is that the first truly independent Belarusian state in history thrives by obliterating the lineaments of Belarusian nationhood. The Pahonia, emblem of the Belarusian nation drawn from the insignia of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, is banned under Lukashenko. Belarusian, spoken by about 37 percent of the population, is discouraged; Russian is privileged. Official historiography places the origins of Belarus in Soviet ideology. Even Independence Day has been moved from the anniversary of Belarus’s declaration of sovereignty—July 27, which repudiates the Soviet past—to the anniversary of Minsk’s liberation by the Red Army on July 3, a date that glorifies Russia.

如今白俄罗斯的核心悖论就是，白俄罗斯历史上第一次真正意义上的独立，却没有白俄罗斯族人的身影，白俄罗斯的国徽柏康理亚，来自于立陶宛大公国的统治者，被卢卡申科所禁止，引起了37%的白俄罗斯人不满；俄罗斯在这个国家享有特选，官方历史将白俄罗斯置于苏联的意识形态之中。白俄罗斯独立日原本是7月27日，是纪念白俄罗斯宣布独立，否认苏联的日子，也改成7月3日，那是红军解放明斯克纪念日，摇身一变成了歌颂俄罗斯的日子


Lukashenko’s critics, particularly in the West, accuse him of seeking to Russianize Belarus. He did once seek to reunite Belarus with Russia in the hope of ruling the union for life. But after the ascent of Vladimir Putin—a man whose style of governance was prefigured by Lukashenko—Lukashenko dedicated himself to shaping Belarus into a lodestar of his ides. His template for government was the peasant fantasy he dreamed up during his years of service on a Soviet pig farm. He cast himself as the Batka—father —of Belarusians in the drama he decided to enact. Two decades later, the production is a flop. Yet Lukashenko’s power only grows.

对卢卡申科的批评，特别是来自于西方的，指责他在俄罗斯化白俄罗斯，他曾经想要结合白俄罗斯和俄罗斯，希望可以终身统治这个联合体，但是随着普京的上位------普京的上位后的统治方式卢卡申科早已料到，卢卡申科开始按照自己的思想原则改造白俄罗斯，政府在他的设想里就是他苏联时期养猪场里的民工，他把自己铸造成巴特卡，他决定去扮演戏剧里是白俄罗斯人的国父的角色，20年过去了，结果不甚理想，但是卢卡申科权力的增长却没有中断过。

Individual tales of loss can generate mass action only if they are able to coalesce into a collective narrative. In order to resist Lukashenko, Belarusians must be able to do something as trivial as talk among themselves. After the events of December 19, the political space of the opposition has shrunk to the point of extinction. The Belarusian opposition is trapped in a zugzwang: personal casualties are the cost of their political progress.

个别的失败会激起更多的反抗行为，只要人们联合在一起。要抵制卢卡申科，白俄罗斯人必须做些什么，就如他们窃窃私语般，在12月19日之后，反对派的政治空间已经逼近灭绝，白俄罗斯的反对派已深陷囹圄：个人的牺牲只是政治进程的代价。

The opposition in Belarus has always depended on international support for its cause. Vladimir Neklyayev, the dissident poet widely regarded as the conscience of Belarus, told me some years ago that only crippling sanctions could bring down Lukashenko. That possibility, thanks to autocratic China’s decision to underwrite Lukashenko’s tyranny, is now sealed. On the twentieth anniversary of the first free affirmation of their democratic will, Belarusians are once again a people lost to history.

白俄罗斯的反对派总是依靠于国际支援他们的事业，异见者诗人Vladimir Neklyayev，被认为是白俄罗斯的觉醒，在几年前告诉我，只有严厉的制裁才会让卢卡申科下台。由于专制的中国决定担保卢卡申科的暴行，制裁的可能性已被封印。在他们民主意愿第一次得到自由落实的20周年纪念日上，白俄罗斯人再一次，成了迷失在历史中的人。
白俄罗斯的卢卡申科取代金正恩成为中国新宠
Forget Kim Jong Un—China’s New Favorite Dictator Is Belarus’s Aleksandr Lukashenko.

原文地址：http://www.thedailybeast.com/art ... ndr-lukashenko.html
翻译：龙腾

Forget Kim Jong Un—lately, the bigwigs in Beijing have been heaping praise on Aleksandr Lukashenko, the man Condoleezza Rice once nicknamed “Europe’s last dictator.”

忘记金正恩吧，在北京的大人物们现在极力赞扬的是亚历山大卢卡申科，这位白俄罗斯总统被美国前国务卿赖斯称做“欧洲”最后的独裁者。

Twenty years ago, Belarus bustled with hope and anxiety. Flat, forested, and landlocked between Poland, Ukraine and Russia, it had never truly known national autonomy. The Soviet Union, which had defined the territory of modern Belarus, was dead. What looked like the end of history to jubilant spectators across the West was for many Belarusians the beginning of an inscrutable future. The election of 1994 was the first free vote in the history of the Belarusian people, and they turned to a man called Aleksandr Lukashenko to carry them forward.

20年前，白俄罗斯希望和焦虑并行，这片平坦被森林覆盖的内陆国家，在波兰乌克兰和俄罗斯之间，从不知什么叫国家自治。曾经了定义了现代白俄罗斯的领土的前苏联，已分崩离析。对于西方的旁观者来说，历史走到这里令人激动的是白俄罗斯人开始了他们前途未卜的未来。1994年的选举是白俄罗斯历史上第一次自由公投，他们选举了一名叫做亚历山大卢卡申科的男子来带领他们前行。

Two decades on, there has not been another unrestricted election in Belarus. Minsk, the capital, is a picture of unbearable desolation. At dusk, workers emerge from gargantuan Soviet-built blocks and disappear into the darkness. There is a chilling silence on buses and in the subway. The fear of being watched chokes conversation. The only public assemblies that aren’t dispersed with force are the long queues outside the exchanges. At the central train station, young people who may be students furtively introduce themselves as currency dealers, offering up to 10,000 roubles for one American dollar. We want to get out of here, they say. But very few do. Why? “Because Belarus is a prison.”

20年过去了，在白俄罗斯没有再发生其他不受限制的选举，首都明斯克，一副满目疮痍令人无法忍受的景象，黄昏，工人从苏联时期的庞大建筑走出，消失在夜色里。公交和地铁里一片冷寂。对于被监视的恐惧，让人们的谈话哽咽。唯一没有被驱散的公众聚会场所的大厅门口拍着长队。在中央车站，很多人年轻人也许还是学生，偷偷介绍自己是外汇贩子，10000白俄卢布可以兑换1美元，他们说，他们想要离开这个国家，但是很少人这样做，为什么，他们说“因为白俄罗斯就是监狱”

For 20 years, Lukashenko has ruled Belarus in the fashion of his hero Joseph Stalin. Public assembly is banned, the press is censored, the Internet is monitored, telephones are tapped, and people’s livelihoods—and lives—depend on avoiding politics. Far from rejecting it, Lukashenko relishes the title, bestowed on him by Condoleezza Rice, of Europe’s last dictator. “I am the last and only dictator in Europe,” he said in 2012. He has already appointed his nine-year-old son, Kolya, as his successor.

在这20年里，卢卡申科用他的偶像斯大林的方式统治着白俄罗斯，公共集会场所被禁止，媒体需要审查，互联网被监控，电话被窃听，人们的生计和生活，都要依靠无法避开的政治。美国前国务卿赖斯赋予他的称号，“欧洲最后的独裁者”，卢卡申科不但不拒绝，而且很欣赏。“我是欧洲最后而且是唯一的独裁者”，他在2012年这样说，他已经任命他9岁的儿子，蔻亚，作为他的继承者。

Brussels and Washington may no longer be able to contain Lukashenko as he builds a Stalinist dynasty in the heart of Europe. Originally, it was the idea of a “Russian sphere of influence” that deterred the West from applying significant pressure on Lukashenko. This was always an exaggeration. Belarus has relied on Russia to keep its debt-financed economy afloat—yet for all its apparent power, Moscow has not been able to persuade Lukashenko to recognise the Putin-supervised sovereignty of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. His erratic behaviour in handling Russian oil pipelines prompted Moscow to seek alternative routes of supply. Now, conscious of his diminishing utility for Putin and eager to brandish his independence from Russia, Lukashenko has found a new patron: China.

布鲁塞尔和华盛顿也许不能容忍卢卡申科，在欧洲之心的位置建立一个斯大林式的王朝。最初，由于“俄罗斯势力范围”这个概念阻止着西方对卢卡申科施加更大的压力，但这个理由被过分夸大，白俄罗斯依靠俄罗斯使其融资经济系统运转流畅，然而就表面来看，俄罗斯已经不能说服卢卡申科，让他承认普京监管下的阿布哈兹和南奥塞梯自治。他在处理俄罗斯石油管道上的古怪行径，促使莫斯科方面寻求其他的供应路线。如今，卢卡申科觉察到俄罗斯的用处逐渐式微，强烈的想摆脱俄罗斯的影响更加独立，卢卡申科找到了新的老大:中国。

The friendship with Beijing has yielded considerable benefits for Lukashenko. In 2002 and 2007, he made minor concessions to evade Western sanctions. But when Washington imposed fresh sanctions in 2011, a year after he violently suppressed a mass uprising against his rule, Lukashenko was rattled only momentarily. Within weeks, China had filled the void, offering not just a billion dollars, but also an assurance of “full backing for [Lukashenko’s] stance on domestic and international questions.”  Last week, the relationship was deepened further when Xi Jinping, the Chinese president, conferred his country’s prestigious Friendship Award on Lukashenko’s visiting prime minister. Lukashenko, in turn, has promised China a “stronghold in Europe.”

和北京的关系，让卢卡申科获益巨大，在2002年和2007年，他做出了极小的让步就摆脱了西方的制裁。在他暴力压制住了对他统治不满的暴动的一年后，2011年华盛顿政府再次威逼新的制裁，那次卢卡申科也仅仅是虚惊一场，因为在数周内，中国就趁势而入，不仅仅提供10亿美元，还保证“全面支持卢卡申科在国内和国际问题的立场。”之后的一周，两国的友谊走得更深，中国领导人习大大，给卢卡申科的总理米亚斯尼科维奇了授予中国人民共和国友谊奖，卢卡申科投桃报李，许诺给中国一块“欧洲的要塞”

Despite the influx of Chinese cash into Lukashenko’s coffers, life for ordinary Belarusians remains grim. The Red Church in the centre of Minsk, once a symbol of Belarusian nationalism, is now a place of mourning. Every evening, families assemble around the imposing bronze statue of Archangel Michael, the patron saint of Belarus, in the churchyard to memorialize the friends, siblings, parents and children who have been taken from them—killed, imprisoned, or “disappeared” for opposing Lukashenko.

尽管从中国涌入的现金到了卢卡申科的保险柜里，但是一般白俄罗斯人的生活依然严峻，明斯克市中心的红色大教堂，曾经是白俄罗斯民族的象征，而如今却成了哀悼之地，每个夜晚，都有家庭聚集在白俄罗斯的庇护神大天使米迦勒的铜像之前，在教堂的院子里纪念他们被夺走的朋友，兄弟姐妹，父母，孩子，这些人因为反对卢卡申科，或者被杀，或者监禁，或者“人间蒸发”。

Three years ago I met Svetlana Gorohovik, a young activist, at the prayer meeting outside the Red Church. Her husband was serving a five-year sentence in a Minsk prison for taking part in the demonstrations of December 19—a hallowed date for thousands of Belarusians who occupied Minsk’s Independence Square in 2010, demanding a second round of voting after Lukashenko pronounced himself re-elected with an absolute majority for a fourth term. Lukashenko had hoped that the biting cold of December would forestall protests. It did not. The roads and avenues leading up to Independence Square filled up with thousands of Belarusians buoyed by the Orange Revolution in neighbouring Ukraine.
It seemed like the beginning of a revolt. Lukashenko dispatched the state militia. Gorohovik and her husband were among the injured protesters carted away by the police to undisclosed detention centres. At a hasty trial four months later, Gorohovik’s husband was sentenced to five years in prison. His wife, permitted two seven-minute phone calls each month with him, will be approaching 30 by the time of his release. Independence Square, the site of the carnage of December 19, was only a few yards from where we stood. A statue of Lenin gleamed in the middle of it. “All of us grew up knowing only one leader,” Gorohovik said, referring to the other protesters arrested that night. “They say I should be happy that I am not in jail. Actually, I am ashamed of this freedom.”

三年前，我在红色大教堂外的祈祷会上，见到一名年轻的活动家格洛霍维克，他的丈夫被判5年监禁正在明斯克监狱服刑，原因是参与了2010年12月19日游行示威，那是个可怕的日子，卢卡申科宣布已绝对优势赢得第四任总统任期，数千名白俄罗斯人占据了明斯克独立广场，要求重选。卢卡申科以为12月的冷风可以阻挡抗议者，但是没有，通往独立广场的街道上堵满了白俄罗斯人，他们被邻国乌克兰橘色革命的成果所鼓舞。这一切都像是起义的开始，然而卢卡申科出动了国家军队，格洛霍维克和他的丈夫也在受伤的抗议者其中，被警察强行带到秘密拘留中心。四个月后，一场仓促的审判，判决格洛霍维克的丈夫五年监禁，格洛霍维克每个月可以和丈夫打两次七分钟的电话，她的丈夫被释放出来将年近30，12月19日惨案的发生地独立广场，距离我们所在的地方只有一步之遥，在这里一尊列宁雕像不寒而栗，格洛霍维克说“我们长大到现在只认识一位领导人”，当说道其他被逮捕的抗议者时她说“有些人说我没被关进监狱应该感到高兴，但事实我无地自容”

Following the Soviet Union’s demise, the speaker of Belarus’s interim parliament rejected the presidential model for the new state. Then Bill Clinton visited Belarus in 1993—and members of parliament, enticed by the sight of the charismatic foreign leader, dismissed the speaker’s reservations and voted for a presidential system. Lukashenko, who was serving as chairman of a committee investigating corruption, seized the opportunity. He was energetic and youthful, not yet 40. Pensioners watching him on television were moved to tears. And although his official reports made no startling revelations about corruption, senior politicians, worried that he possessed damaging details about them, were afraid to confront him.

苏联解体后，白俄罗斯临时议会的发言人拒绝了新国家将采用总统制，之后克林顿在1993年访问白俄罗斯，议会成员被这位有魅力的领导人所怂恿，驳回了发言人的意见，开始为领导人制度投票。卢卡申科，当时作为腐败调查委员会主席，抓住了机会，当时他精力充沛而且年轻，还不足40，退休的老人们在电视上看到他感动的流出了眼泪。尽管当时他的办公室称没有威胁揭发官员腐败行为，但是高级政客担心卢卡申科握有毁坏性证据，而不敢对抗他。


Lukashenko won the presidency in a run-off vote the next year. It took him two years to consign the constitution to the trashcan, expand his powers, re-introduce the death penalty, incarcerate his opponents, and consolidate his control over the media. He withheld the salaries of parliamentarians who refused to rubberstamp his laws, and lawyers who challenged him were disbarred. By 1999, several prominent figures in the Belarusian opposition had vanished. Yuri Sivakov, a member of the cabinet, gained notoriety as the superintendent of Lukashenko’s alleged “death squads.” Lukashenko retained the outward rituals of democracy—elections, trials, parliamentary debates. But the presidential ukase became the ultimate land of the law. As a Belarusian legislator phrased it at the time:“Why are we sitting here? Why are we passing laws?”

卢卡申科在之后的一年后的决定性选举中赢得了的总统宝座，他用了两年的时间把宪法扔入垃圾站，来扩大自身权利，重新引入死刑，监禁他的政敌，加强他对媒体的控制，他扣发那些拒绝通过他的法律的议员的薪水，挑战他地位的律师也被取消从业资格，到了1999年，白俄罗斯反对派几个重要的人物都已经消失，西瓦科夫，一名内阁成员，作为卢卡申科所谓的“杀人小组”的头领臭名昭著，卢卡申科保留了民主的外表---选举，审判，内阁，辩论。但是总统的命令才是一些法律的最终解释，一名白俄罗斯立法者当时描述“我们坐在这里意义何在，我们通过法律意义何在？”

As the opposition to Lukashenko grew, he unleashed a campaign of terror against credible candidates who participated in the presidential elections. Of the nine who stood against him in 2010, seven saw the inside of a prison. One afternoon in Minsk, I met Alla, the mother of Lukashenko’s nearest rival in the 2010 vote, Andrei Sannikov. One of the brightest young members of Lukashenko’s first cabinet, Sannikov became increasingly disillusioned and quit the government in 1996. He started Charter 97—a pro-democracy movement modelled on Vaclav Havel’s Charter 77—and pioneered the use of the Internet in Belarusian politics.
He built a young team of computer mavens and creative artists. European politicians respected him. Lukashenko openly despised Sannikov and his wife, Irina Khalip, an investigative reporter of international renown. In September 2010, three months before the elections, Oleg Bebenin, Sannikov’s press secretary and a cofounder of Charter 97, was found dead outside Minsk. The police called it a suicide. But Natalia Koliada, an exiled Belarusian theatre activist who knew Bebenin well, rejected the official version when I interviewed her in London a year later. Bebenin, she told me, had recently returned from a holiday with his wife and their five-year-old son, and was working on innovative campaign models for the election ahead. His death, she said, was announced as a suicide even before an official autopsy was carried out.

随着反对卢卡申科的力量增长，他对参与总统竞选的选举人施展了恐怖行为，在2010年公开反对他的9人中，7人被投入监狱。在明斯克的一个下午，我见到了阿拉，他是卢卡申科在2010年选举中最有力的对手Andrei Sannikov的母亲，他是卢卡申科第一届内阁闪耀的年轻成员，Sannikov觉悟之后在1996年推出政府，他开始97宪章活动，这个活动仿照瓦茨拉夫·哈维尔的77宪章，在白俄罗斯政界首先使用了互联网，他组建了年轻人为主的电脑专家和艺术家团队，欧洲政治人物都很尊敬他，而卢卡申科公开鄙视Sannikov和他有国际声望的记者妻子Irina Khalip，在2010年9月大选还有3个月之前，Sannikov的新闻秘书，也同时是宪章97的共建者Oleg Bebenin，被发现死于首都明斯克外，警方称是自杀。
但是Natalia Koliada，以为被驱逐的白俄罗斯活动家，他非常了解Bebenin，在一年之后在伦敦接受采访的时候，完全否认了官方的说法，那时候的Bebenin刚刚和他的妻子和5岁的儿子从假期回来，正努力为即将到来的选举进行革命性的新选战，他的死，连尸检都没有进行就被判定为自杀。


If Bebenin’s “suicide” was meant as a warning to Sannikov, it did not work. His name went on the ballot. On the night of December 19, as he was addressing the crowd at Independence Square, Lukashenko’s men pushed him to the ground and struck him repeatedly on the head and legs. Sannikov began to bleed profusely. Khalip, Sannikov’s wife, tried to drive him to a hospital; both were detained en route. No medical treatment was given. In the weeks following their arrest, Belarus’s secret police—which still goes by the Soviet name of KGB—tried to seize their three-year-old son, Danil. Because Danil’s parents were going to be incarcerated for years, Lukashenko reasoned, it was in the child’s interest to be raised in an orphanage. In the ensuing global outcry, Khalip was released, placed under house arrest, and given custody of her son. Sannikov, however, was sentenced to a five-year term. Alla, his mother, did not know where he was.
Sannikov—isolated, and reportedly tortured, starved and nearly murdered inside his cell—was released in 2012. After spending some time in Britain as a political refugee, he moved to Warsaw to be closer to Belarus. His wife and son remain in Belarus, captives of the Lukashenko regime.

如果Bebenin的“自杀”是在警告Sannikov，将是徒劳。Sannikov的名字最终还是上了选票，在12月19日的夜里，他在独立广场集聚了人群，卢卡申科的人却将他推倒在地，反复击打他的头部和腿部，Sannikov 血流不止，他的妻子Khalip试图带他去医院；但是两人在路上都被拘留。完全没有医疗救治，在几周之后，白俄罗斯的秘密警察---依然沿用苏联时期克格勃的名字---试图逮捕他们三岁的儿子Danil，因为Danil的父母将入狱很多年，卢卡申科解释道，在孤儿院长大是这个孩子的福利，由于世界上广泛的强烈抗议，Khalip之后被释放，换成了软禁，还给了她儿子的监护权，Sannikov被判刑5年，他的母亲阿拉，甚至不知道他被关在哪里。Sannikov被隔离，据称还受到折磨，挨饿，在牢房里几乎被杀，最终他在2012年被释放，之后在英国政治避难，后又搬到了华沙，一个接近白俄罗斯的地方，他的妻子和儿子依然在白俄罗斯，作为卢卡申科政权的人质。


Absorbed into Bolshevik Russia by the Red Army in 1919 Belarus was so thoroughly assimilated by its neighbour that, when it emerged as a sovereign state from the detritus of the Soviet Union, its inhabitants were no longer certain what it meant to be “Belarusian.” “A person who does not understand who he is,” the political scientist Ales Ancipienka once explained, “is actually a Belarusian.” Politically conscious Belarusians felt that in order to honor their independence they had to revive Belarusian identity. Lukashenko, shaped by the colonial experience, stifled their project in infancy.

在1919年被布尔什维克俄国吸收，白俄罗斯完全被他的邻国同化，当这个国家从苏联的碎片中重新成为独立国家，这个国家的居民早已不在知道什么叫做“白俄罗斯人”。政治学家Ales Ancipienka曾解释“人与人不再相互了解”，“这就是白俄罗斯”，政治觉醒的白俄罗斯人认为光耀他们的独立就必须恢复白俄罗斯的认同感，而成长于殖民时代的卢卡申科，却把这一进程中断。

The central paradox of present-day Belarus is that the first truly independent Belarusian state in history thrives by obliterating the lineaments of Belarusian nationhood. The Pahonia, emblem of the Belarusian nation drawn from the insignia of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, is banned under Lukashenko. Belarusian, spoken by about 37 percent of the population, is discouraged; Russian is privileged. Official historiography places the origins of Belarus in Soviet ideology. Even Independence Day has been moved from the anniversary of Belarus’s declaration of sovereignty—July 27, which repudiates the Soviet past—to the anniversary of Minsk’s liberation by the Red Army on July 3, a date that glorifies Russia.

如今白俄罗斯的核心悖论就是，白俄罗斯历史上第一次真正意义上的独立，却没有白俄罗斯族人的身影，白俄罗斯的国徽柏康理亚，来自于立陶宛大公国的统治者，被卢卡申科所禁止，引起了37%的白俄罗斯人不满；俄罗斯在这个国家享有特选，官方历史将白俄罗斯置于苏联的意识形态之中。白俄罗斯独立日原本是7月27日，是纪念白俄罗斯宣布独立，否认苏联的日子，也改成7月3日，那是红军解放明斯克纪念日，摇身一变成了歌颂俄罗斯的日子


Lukashenko’s critics, particularly in the West, accuse him of seeking to Russianize Belarus. He did once seek to reunite Belarus with Russia in the hope of ruling the union for life. But after the ascent of Vladimir Putin—a man whose style of governance was prefigured by Lukashenko—Lukashenko dedicated himself to shaping Belarus into a lodestar of his ides. His template for government was the peasant fantasy he dreamed up during his years of service on a Soviet pig farm. He cast himself as the Batka—father —of Belarusians in the drama he decided to enact. Two decades later, the production is a flop. Yet Lukashenko’s power only grows.

对卢卡申科的批评，特别是来自于西方的，指责他在俄罗斯化白俄罗斯，他曾经想要结合白俄罗斯和俄罗斯，希望可以终身统治这个联合体，但是随着普京的上位------普京的上位后的统治方式卢卡申科早已料到，卢卡申科开始按照自己的思想原则改造白俄罗斯，政府在他的设想里就是他苏联时期养猪场里的民工，他把自己铸造成巴特卡，他决定去扮演戏剧里是白俄罗斯人的国父的角色，20年过去了，结果不甚理想，但是卢卡申科权力的增长却没有中断过。

Individual tales of loss can generate mass action only if they are able to coalesce into a collective narrative. In order to resist Lukashenko, Belarusians must be able to do something as trivial as talk among themselves. After the events of December 19, the political space of the opposition has shrunk to the point of extinction. The Belarusian opposition is trapped in a zugzwang: personal casualties are the cost of their political progress.

个别的失败会激起更多的反抗行为，只要人们联合在一起。要抵制卢卡申科，白俄罗斯人必须做些什么，就如他们窃窃私语般，在12月19日之后，反对派的政治空间已经逼近灭绝，白俄罗斯的反对派已深陷囹圄：个人的牺牲只是政治进程的代价。

The opposition in Belarus has always depended on international support for its cause. Vladimir Neklyayev, the dissident poet widely regarded as the conscience of Belarus, told me some years ago that only crippling sanctions could bring down Lukashenko. That possibility, thanks to autocratic China’s decision to underwrite Lukashenko’s tyranny, is now sealed. On the twentieth anniversary of the first free affirmation of their democratic will, Belarusians are once again a people lost to history.

白俄罗斯的反对派总是依靠于国际支援他们的事业，异见者诗人Vladimir Neklyayev，被认为是白俄罗斯的觉醒，在几年前告诉我，只有严厉的制裁才会让卢卡申科下台。由于专制的中国决定担保卢卡申科的暴行，制裁的可能性已被封印。在他们民主意愿第一次得到自由落实的20周年纪念日上，白俄罗斯人再一次，成了迷失在历史中的人。