Alexander Grigoryevich Lukashenko - Early Life
Alexander Grigoryevich Lukashenko was born on the 30 August 1954, in the settlement of Kopys, Orsha district, Vitebsk region. Belarusian. He grew up and was reared without a father. Lukashenka's official website is laconic on the topic, saying only that the president "grew and was brought up without a father." The identity of Lukashenka's father has never been disclosed. The president's patronymic, Ryhoravich, indicates his father was called Ryhor, or Grigory in Russian. One somewhat questionable account maintains the mysterious Ryhor may have been a one-eyed married man who saw his son as a small boy just a handful of times.
Details about Lukashenka's mother, Katsyaryna Trafimauna Lukashenka, have been somewhat easier to uncover. Journalists in the 1990s reported that Katsyaryna spent the early 1950s working in a flax-processing factory in the city of Orsha. She then returned to her native village of Aleksandria in eastern Mahilyou Oblast, her 2-year-old son, Sasha, in tow. Lukashenka would later refer to Aleksandria as his birthplace. His official biographers have since offered a third version, saying he was born in nearby Kopys, in Vitsebsk Oblast.
Young Sasha -- the boy destined to become Belarus's first president -- was reported to have had a difficult childhood. He was deeply disliked by his peers in the village, who tormented and mocked him as an extramarital scion and a bastard. Sasha repeatedly pledged to take revenge on all of them as soon as the opportunity presented itself.
Since his youth he had to put upon his shoulders a considerable part of the care for his family. He was interestedly taking part in the social life of the collectives, in which he studied or worked. He graduated from two higher educational establishments: the Mogilev State University named after A.A. Kuleshov (1975) and the Belarusian Agricultural Academy (1985). Historian, economist.
In 1971-75, Lukashenka studied history at the Pedagogical Institute in Mahilyou. After graduating, he married Halina Zhaunerovich, a childhood acquaintance, and fathered two sons, Viktar and Dzmitry. His wife, who has never served in the capacity of first lady, was eventually dispatched to a lonely home in the country. Lukashenka is believed to have spent his recent years living with a mistress, with whom he reputedly has a child. "I'm not a family man," he has confessed, "because I've devoted my life to my work."
Despite his teaching diploma, Lukashenka never pursued a teaching career. He went on to graduate from the Belarusian Agricultural Academy and from there took up a number of low-profile, politically flavored jobs in the provinces. He alternately worked as a Komsomol instructor; a "politruk," or political propaganda officer in Belarus's KGB border-troop unit; deputy director of a construction-materials factory; and deputy director and party secretary of a series of collective farms. In 1975-1977 and in 1980-1982, A.G. Lukashenko served in the frontier troops and in the Soviet Army. After his service in the Army he worked in Komsomol and Communist party bodies, in the economic sphere - as deputy manager and manager of enterprises of industry, building materials, agroindustrial complex of the BSSR.
The early, provincial years of Lukashenka's career gave the future president invaluable insight into the character of ordinary Belarusians -- collective-farm laborers and industrial workers -- who now form the backbone of his support. He mastered their natural idiom, a plebian version of Russian mixed with Belarusian syntax and pronunciation. All this made it easy, when the time came, for him to appeal directly to the people's hearts, without bothering himself much about their minds. No other politician in Belarus -- in either the elite or the opposition -- has ever had such a forceful, almost hypnotizing, grip on an audience as Lukashenka.
Lukashenka also shared two more traits with those on the low end of the Soviet social spectrum: he was ashamed of his rural origins, and, as a result, loathed everything that was traditionally associated with them. In Belarus, this meant the native Belarusian language and indigenous culture. At the same time, however, he felt a deep-seated resentment toward the Russian-speaking urban nomenklatura, whose ranks were firmly off-limits to ambitious but insignificant country bumpkins like himself.
Lukashenko, like any peasant, relies first and foremost on craftiness to achieve his objectives. As a former Soviet Army political officer, the dictator understands the use of ideology as a veneer to mask the true intentions of one's actions. Lukashenko can make decisions, including harsh ones, but he knows to stop short of allowing opponents to tie him to extra-judicial executions.
In 1990 A.G. Lukashenko became a people's deputy, he was elected to the Supreme Council (Parliament) of the Republic of Belarus. Speaking at parliamentary debates, he was voicing resolute criticism of extreme viewpoints of the politicians. He held the post of chairman of the Supreme Council committee on fighting corruption (as it was popularly termed). Lukashenko did not embrace nationalism and was the only lawmaker in Soviet Belarus to vote against his country’s independence in 1991.
|
NEWSLETTER
|
| Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list |
|
|
|
