New Eastern Europe Magazine

We are publishing this special issue with an aim to honour the plight of Belarusians whose democratic choice made in August 2020 was shamelessly snubbed by Alyaksandr Lukashenka. Not only did he blatantly falsify the election results to stay in power for at least another term, but he and his regime brutally suppressed the social discontent that emerged in reaction to the electoral fraud. As a result, we no longer see photos of mass demonstrations or even courtyard meetings that were coming to us from Minsk and other Belarusian cities a year ago. Instead, we receive more and more information about the brutal treatment of political prisoners, whose numbers keep growing week by week, which we cover in this issue. Sadly, the Belarusians are currently faced with few choices for the future, and many have decided to flee.

Yet despite all this we decided that the main theme of this issue should focus on “Belarusians. One year in protests”. We choose this theme because we are convinced that regardless of its form and location, the ongoing discontent of the Belarusian people shows that they are not giving up and are determined to continue. As Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, the leader of democratic Belarus, said in an interview for NEE: “Victory will come to us in the end, it will be difficult, but certainly well deserved.”

This issue also represents the 10th anniversary of New Eastern Europe. Our first issue was published in October 2011 – a time when the situation in Central and Eastern Europe was substantively different than what we see today. Nevertheless, our mission over these last 10 years has been to bring the voices and ideas of the region to you and help us all better understand how these countries fit into the global dialogue, breaking down stereotypes along the way.