Disaffected Russians
Turn for Advice
To Voice of Belarus
---
Mr. Lukashenko's Broadcasts
Tout Old Soviet Controls;
Down With Free Markets

MOSCOW -- Russia is looking west.

Just ask Tomas Korganov, a Moscow musician who has cast his eyes --and ears -- westward and found a cure for Russia's ills. "They have shown us the way forward," he says.

During the Cold War, fed-up Russians turned for solace to the BBC, Radio Liberty and the Voice of America. Today, Mr. Korganov and others are tuning in to the voice of Alexander Lukashenko, former collective-farm manager, ice-hockey fanatic and political pinup for Russia's disaffected. Mr. Lukashenko is the president of Belarus, Russia's western neighbor and defiant outpost of opposition to Moscow's post-Soviet orthodoxy of free markets and free thinking.

"When you hear him, you know you can believe him. He does not cheat people's hopes like our politicians," says Mr. Korganov. "He does what he says."

As the roof fell in this past summer on Moscow's financial markets, Mr. Lukashenko's soothing voice entered a cacophonous debate over what to do. Courtesy of the Belarus Ministry of Communications, Russians can now hear six hours of news and views each day from the reluctantly former Soviet republic.

Beneath the shortwave static lies a message of compelling clarity for a swelling army of antimarket malcontents and pro-Soviet dreamers. Mr. Lukashenko has no time for Moscow muddle. His economic creed is simple: "State regulation. I repeat, state regulation."

He is firm on other issues, too. When two American balloonists drifted across his domain during an international race, his military shot them down. When foreign diplomats in Minsk, his capital, resisted an order to vacate their homes in a leafy compound, workmen welded shut the American ambassador's front gate. When a local pizza restaurant put too much ice in its margaritas, his officials shut it down.

For Yuri Bondarev, a Russian author whose books on the triumphs of the Red Army tormented Soviet schoolchildren, Mr. Lukashenko is a prophet whose time has come. "Every one of his statements is a new step forward in understanding of the nation," he says.

If this is the future, it looks a lot like the past. And that is its appeal for Russians looking for solid ground. Penetrating deep into western Russia, Belarus Radio offers a daily trip down memory lane into a cozy world free of chaotic debate, ear-shattering pop music and grim bulletins on the collapse of the ruble. The Belarus currency, nicknamed the "bunny rabbit," is even more sickly, but listeners are spared the bad news.

Instead, they get wholesome, uplifting fare -- how Belarus keeps streets clean and prices low, how it pays salaries on time and makes the enemies of the people do time, and how it dreams of one day putting the fragments of the Soviet Union back together again. It is not a formula with mass appeal, especially since announcers frequently lapse into Belarussian, a Slavic language close to Russian but not close enough. (For those eager to catch every word, Mr Lukashenko, who goes by the name of Batka or Daddy, has published a collection of speeches and aphorisms.)

Russians who prefer to look farther west than Minsk for guidance could once dismiss Mr. Lukashenko and his Russian fans as marginal and mostly geriatric oddballs. Mr. Korganov, for example, is 73. The fringe, though, is now filtering into the mainstream. Russia's new prime minister, Yevgeny Primakov, 68, began his career under Nikita Krushchev. His economic policy maker, Yuri Maslyukov, ran the Soviet planning agency, Gosplan.

But the old creed isn't confined to old-timers. Among new converts is Alexei Ulyanov, a 21-year-old economics major at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations. President Clinton visited a month ago and lectured students on the "failed policies of the past." Mr. Ulyanov wasn't impressed. Though too young to feel nostalgia for the Soviet Union, he is old enough to have decided he doesn't like what replaced it.

While a member of the generally middle-of-the-road Yabloko party, he says Russia needs a strong state and strong leader to run it. Mr. Lukashenko, he believes, could be the man. He also admires former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet. "At certain stages of development, democracy is not the answer," he says.

A procession of Russian politicians and regional governors has trekked to Minsk to watch, and often applaud, the clock being turned back. Mr. Primakov visited yesterday. Russian television crews have poured in to record what Mr. Lukashenko proclaims an "economic miracle."

The traffic out of Belarus has been equally heavy: The International Monetary Fund pulled out; most U.S. and European diplomats left this past summer after Mr. Lukashenko ordered them to vacate homes located near his own and find other accommodations.

For many Russians, Mr. Lukashenko is a Slavic Robin Hood. He regularly rounds up businessmen who try to obey the market instead of his orders. A recent opinion poll ranked him Russia's third-most-popular politician. With ambitions far bigger than his own 10 million people, he says he might run for the Russian presidency. He is unlikely ever to win, but he will help shape the campaign. His would-be voters don't mind that he has a foreign passport. "We all belong to the same big Soviet family," says Vyacheslav Shtruzhkov, a Moscow engineer who makes frequent visits to Belarus. He likes what he sees: factories fueled by cheap state credits and regular police roundups of troublemakers.

Belarus says its gross national product increased 10% last year, compared with an increase of less than 1% in Russia. Mr. Ulyanov, the economics student, points to empirical evidence, too: On a recent trip to his hometown on the edge of Siberia, he found that the only shoes he could buy came from Belarus. Western economists scoff at Belarus statistics and say the country is actually a model of what not to do. Mr. Lukashenko pioneered many of the things now feared in Russia: empty shelves, a burgeoning black market and long lines.

The more foreigners carp, though, the greater Mr. Lukashenko's appeal. He champions a robust pan-Slavic solidarity that brooks no nonsense from outsiders. Valery Ganichev, chairman of the Union of Writers of Russia, sees Belarus as an ideological guerrilla base for the reconquest of Russia. "During the war, Belarus partisans looked to Moscow for help." Now, he says, it is the other way around.

The Kremlin, anxious about Mr. Lukashenko's almost hypnotic appeal, tried, briefly, to keep him out of Russia. Last October, it withdrew landing permission for his plane to prevent a trip to the towns of Lipetsk and Yaroslav.

Nonetheless, the roadshow has rolled on. On a tour of Russia's far east, Mr. Lukashenko spoke at the Vladivostok Marine Academy and delighted his audience with a vow to protect the "glory of the Soviet army" and jokes about crushing protest rallies.

Russia's economic debacle has put him in a bind. It has helped spread the antimarket discontent on which he thrives. But it has also exposed the flaws of his "market socialism." Dependent on Russia for oil, gas and markets, Belarus is reeling.

Mr. Korganov, the Moscow musician, says he would still vote for Mr. Lukashenko, as a slap in the face to Moscow's post-Soviet order. He says he has never trusted fashion. In the Soviet era, he used to listen every day to radio broadcasts from the West. "They told us things we didn't know ... Now they just say the same thing as our government. It used to be a lot more interesting."