STUDY OF BELARUSIAN ELITES:BETWEEN ALGEBRA AND GEOGRAPHY

After Nina Antanovič, the study of elites in Belarus has become topi¬cal among political science experts in the context of the 1996 Referendum which led to the formation of administrative top-down command structure, restraint the possibilities of political competition and marked taking up more pronounced autocratic features by the Belarusian regime. As a consequence, political-science analysts turned to the analysis of the essence and patterns of democracy, local elites, problems of political regimes, democratic transit (in which counter-elites had to play a significant role), problems of interaction between intellectuals and authorities (Antanovič, 2004). This paper is an at¬tempt to give an overview of historical account in the study of the Belarusian elite over the last 20 years.