Belarus is routinely referred to as the “last dictatorship in Europe” due to its autocratic rule by Aleksandr Lukashenko, a former Soviet collective farm boss, since 1994. Lukashenko’s vise-like grip over the nation of 9.4 million means that the scale of mass protests—involving hundreds of thousands nationwide at their peak—against his claim of winning a sixth presidential term on 9 August 2020 astonished many observers. Yet the protests’ predominantly peaceful and determined spirit has long been characteristic of Belarus’s pro-democracy opposition, which—exceptional among former Soviet states—contains a significant Christian component. Alongside a Nobel laureate for literature, a tractor factory union leader, and a former minister of culture, the seven leaders of the opposition’s Coordination Council—formed by Lukashenko’s main rival Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaia in the wake of the disputed election—include a co-chair of the Belarusian Christian Democracy Party, Volha Kavalkova.

In this issue, the East-West Church Report begins an exploration of the extraordinary nexus between church and political life in Belarus with an introduction to the people and ideas that propel the country’s Christian pro-democracy movement. While some of this material dates back to December 2010—the aftermath of an earlier disputed election in which the movement crystallized—it remains key to understanding the role played by Christians in the current situation in Belarus.