Originally Posted by Basil77
More or less true. There was some chaos in early 90s while Shushkevich was the president (as it was all around former USSR and Eastern Europe), but it quickly ended with Bat'ka's coming to power in 1994.
It depends on what exactly you call a 'dictatorship'. Compared to ultra-liberal conditions in some Western European countries, Lukashenko's Belarus may seems a bit authoritarian (not much criticism of the president on state TV and papers, several dozens of prisoners are supposedly jailed for political reasons, the lack of free and open elections, etc.), but AFAIK at least there are not such _things like Guantanamo or secret CIA jails (or even something close to that) in Belarus, so it's a big question for me who is a 'dictatorship' and who is not. Besides, if you are just living your life and don't mess with big politics all this 'dictatorship' business doesn't affect_ you at all. Moreover, as I mentioned before, social conditions for ordinary people in Belarus are noticeably better than in, say, Russian or Ukrainian province, so Lukashenko's policies have _much support in ("among Belorussian people" but "in Belorussian society") Belorussian society.