This article is made possible through a partnership with Transitions, a Prague-based publishing and media training organisation The spotlight of international media may have moved elsewhere, but Belarus’ political crisis drags on. After months of street protests after a dubious presidential election, longtime ruler Alyaksandr Lukashenka held a surprise inauguration ceremony on September 23. He is determined to prolong his 26-year rule of Belarus at any cost — and the costs could be substantial. There are now fears that the political situation in Belarus could quash one of the country’s most successful businesses. In mid-August, over 500 representatives of the country’s booming tech sector signed an open letter casting doubt on official election results, demanding the release of political prisoners and an end to violence and detentions of protesters. They have been irritated by the authorities’ internet blackouts aimed at preventing protesters organising over social media. Some threatened to relocate to neighbouring Poland, Ukraine, Latvia and Lithuania. The results of that, observers say, could be very worrying, as IT is a growing sector of the Belarusian economy. One could call the IT community a new “nobility” in the Belarusian reality. But that would be inaccurate: even though nobles often rebelled against the monarch to defend their privileges, they were still his servants. A more accurate comparison is with bourgeois democratic revolutions, with the middle classes at the forefront. In Belarus today, IT specialists are classic representatives of the middle class. There are software engineers in almost every country in the world. But for developed countries, a software engineer is an ordinary profession that is only paid above average. Not all young people dream of writing code or looking for bugs — they might want to become lawyers or doctors or start a business instead. But in Belarus, the IT sector is seen by many as the main if not the only means of social advancement. It contributes around five percent of the national GDP. Here there are IT companies where the average salary is between five and ten times more than in other sectors of the economy. Even if a Belarusian becomes a minister or director of a large state-owned enterprise after 20 years of service, they would probably still earn less on average than a senior figure in a tech company — an achievement they could reach more quickly. For example, the net salary of a senior software engineer in Belarus is around US$3,000, compared to the average Belarusian monthly salary of $500 (the median is around $350). This state of affairs didn’t appear right away. When the Soviet Union collapsed, Belarus inherited an education system with a strong engineering sector. But unlike other post-Soviet and post-socialist states, there was no mass privatisation in Belarus. Large enterprises continued to be administered by the state, in order to avoid unpopular economic reforms. This model was possible partly due to generous subsidies provided by Russia, in recognition of Belarus preserving close ties to Moscow. Thanks to a good price on international markets for hydrocarbons, this allowed the Belarusian economy to grow at a rate of seven to eight percent annually. But when the Belarusian currency collapsed in 2011, relations with Russia began to deteriorate. The country’s economy has been growing at a slower rate than the international average ever since. In the mid-1990s, enterprising engineers realised that it was possible to sell the work of a Belarusian software engineer for a substantial price abroad. The industry grew steadily; Belarusians were a highly educated people who were cheaper to hire than tech workers in western Europe or North America. By 2005, the tech sector was small but prominent; the authorities in Minsk even created the Belarus High Tech Park, a tax-free zone to aid its growth. Thus the relationship between the state and the IT community was built on the principle of non-interference. A friend’s story provides a good example of tech’s appeal. In 2008 Aleksey, a computer sciences student in his third year of studies, took a course at a private IT company. The 20-year-old was astounded by its fantastically beautiful office and the friendly employees. His starting salary was $500 a month. It was more than his mother earned as a software developer at a state scientific institute. Two years later, in his fifth year of study, he was earning US$2,000 a month, more than his mother and father combined — and his father was a top manager at a state enterprise. There are few other lines of work in Belarus today whose employees can tell similar stories.