Challenging Europe’s Last Autocrat

On September 9, 2001 seven million voters in Belarus – a country wedged between Russia and a soon-to-be enlarged European Union – will vote for president. Vladimir Goncharik, chairman of the official trade union federation, is challenging incumbent President Alexander Lukashenko, a man who has, since his election in 1994, transformed Belarus from an emerging democracy into an authoritarian state resembling the old Soviet Union.