Understanding Belarus and How Western Foreign Policy Misses the Mark [Hardcover]

The scholarly component in this volume is impressively high, making it perhaps the best study in English of a little-known and under-researched country. . . . [Ioffe] bears an immense knowledge of things Belarusian . . . [and] he sheds much needed light on the polity, economy, and society actually obtaining in [Belarus].An important and timely book, articulating topical and emerging issues in Belarusian studies. . . . [Ioffe] takes a critical look at the established views on such issues as Belarusian identity, language use (Belarusian versus Russian), relations with Russia (unification versus independence), Aliaksandar Lukashenka as a political figure (the reasons behind his genuine popularity among his people and his rejection by the west, despite the wests acceptance of some much less democratic Central Asian leaders), the growth of the Belarusian economy . . . and, finally, the projections for the opposition. . . . [A] carefully researched and significant book that tries 'to understand Belarus on its own terms.Effortlessly captivates a much broader audience and essentially calls 'well-known truths about the country into question. Understanding Belarus is a book about challenging facts, challenging qualifications and polemic conclusions, a book that touches one personally. . . . It craftily weaves together Belarus complicated domestics with its foreign relations, in addition to critically assessing the logic of international society. . . . Ioffe successfully manages to turn Belarus regime 'inside-out to expose its sui generis logic of survival that responds to the often inflexible politics of great powers.Grigory Ioffe's thorough and extremely insightful study . . . provides a balanced, well-structured and information introduction to the nature of nation-building and the political regime in contemporary Belarus.Grigory Ioffes Understanding Belarus and How Western Foreign Policy Misses the Mark is a profound, learned book that will force the reader to questilĂ)