Belarus voters overwhelmingly chose pro-Russian leadership and integration with Russia.

Evidence

Unlike Armenia, Belarus has little sense of national identity. It is also even more dependent on Russian support. Many of its residents seem to identify as much with Russia as with their own country. In January 1994 the legislature replaced the centrist and moderate nationalist who was head of state with a conservative pro-Russian. In July 1994, 80 percent of the voters elected as president an extreme pro-Russian ally of Vladimir Zhirinovsky. Belarus early joined the Commonwealth of Independent States, was a charter member of the economic union created in 1993 with Russia and Ukraine, agreed to a monetary union with Russia, surrendered its nuclear weapons to Russia, and agreed to the stationing of Russian troops on its soil for the rest of this century. In 1995 Belarus was, in effect, part of Russia in all but name. — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 446

Categorization

• SEED: Essay angle: how a country without a strong national identity becomes absorbed by a larger neighbor — Belarus as the archetypal case of voluntary, electoral erasure of sovereignty.
• XREF: Connects to questions of national identity formation and state weakness in post-Soviet space.