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- Following the election day, neither Tikhanovskaya nor the representatives of her campaign called for protests or strikes. She was transported to Lithuania, evidently under threat to her and her family from the authorities, where she remained largely silent as the strength of the protests grew; after eight days of resistance, she expressed willingness to assume a leadership role in the transfer of power and organization of new elections. While national sovereignty – under perpetual threat from Russia – remains an acute issue, the opposition leadership borne out of the nationalist protests and politics of the late 1980s and early ‘90s, which dominated the resistance of previous years, now is a non-factor. As a result, heretofore “apolitical” parts of the population with an aversion to nationalist politics joined the struggle. The lack of leadership during the current protests has been not so much a hindrance to resistance, but its condition of possibility. The decentralized fronts of struggle and heterogeneous forms of protest speak to the emergence of “civil society” – a term widely used in Belarus to designate unofficial networks of grassroots organizations and initiatives of mutual help – as the decisive political factor in the coming struggle. The kind of politics that will take shape in Belarus hinges on this emergent force.