https://ift.tt/3bD4WG2 On a hot summer day last August, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya was pacing up and down her empty apartment in Minsk, the capital of Belarus in Central Europe, her life—and her country—in turmoil. With her husband in jail, she had sent her two small children out of the country, to safety, and she now faced a stark choice, bluntly handed to her by the nation’s hard-line security forces: flee into exile herself, or face arrest. “I had a couple of hours, but I could not pack anything, because I was so overstressed,” she recalls. “It was a shock. I was not prepared for this.” Indeed, it is hard to imagine how Tikhanovskaya could have prepared for the jolting transformation of her life. Within the space of a few months, she emerged from obscurity to become the leader of Belarus’ biggest revolt in decades, determined to bring down President Alexander Lukashenko, who has ruled the former Soviet republic with an iron hand for more than 26 years as what many call Euro...
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