Vitali Silitski

Vitali Silitski is director of the Belarusian Institute for Strategic Studies. He has been a visiting fellow at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law at Stanford University (2006–2007), and a Reagan-Fascell Democracy Fellow at the National Endowment for Democracy (2004–2005).

April 2009, Volume 20, Issue 2

Reading Russia: Tools of Autocracy

Arguably a flawed democracy in the 1990s, Russia took a distinctly authoritarian turn under President Vladimir Putin from 2000 to 2008. The country now lives under a façade democracy that barely conceals the political and administrative dominance of a self-interested bureaucratic corporation. The regime manufactures consent by means of three tools: information and propaganda campaigns…

October 2006, Volume 17, Issue 4

Belarus: Learning From Defeat

The Belarusian presidential election of March 2006 appeared to be an exercise in meaninglessness, while the protests against manipulation by the Lukashenka regime seemed a study in futility. But appearances can deceive.