The housewife taking on a dictator

This time last year, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya was a stay-athome mother; now, she is the public face of a campaign to topple Alexander Lukashenko – the Belarusian leader known as Europe’s last dictator. “All this was accidental,” she told Christina Lamb in The Sunday Times. “I didn’t have any intention to be the leader or run this revolution.” She only took on the mantle when her husband, Sergei, an opposition blogger who had decided to run in last August’s elections, was jailed last May. Lukashenko mocked her “spurof-the-moment decision” to take his place: he said she belonged in the kitchen. But her message resonated, and when Lukashenko claimed victory in the rigged election, 200,000 people poured into the streets to protest. Had he underestimated her? “He underestimated all Belarusian people,” she says. “It wasn’t offensive to me when he said ‘she’s in the kitchen’ because that was the reality: I was usually a woman preparing food for children; but I was one of millions... When he wanted to mock me, he mocked everyone.” Tikhanovskaya, 38, fled the country after the poll, and is now living with her children in Lithuania; her husband is still in jail. She’s keeping up the fight from exile (she is in touch with world leaders including Angela Merkel). Yet she doesn’t see a long-term future for herself in politics. “My hero is Princess Diana,” she says,

“because of the kindness of her heart... This is what I feel. I am the leader of a revolution by fate, but I’m too kind-hearted for this role. I just want to take care of everyone.”