One of the most curious characteristics of revolutions is that they often begin when something happens that ordinarily would be quickly dealt with and contained but then capture the mood of the population of the moment and quickly grow into a fundamental challenge to the existing system.
That happened in Petrograd in February 1917 and in Kyiv in 2013, among others, and it now appears to be happening in Belarus where anger about a foolish effort by Minsk to tax those without jobs has prompted not just the largest protest in Minsk since 2010 but also demonstrations in other cities of that country over the last 24 hours.
It is of course possible that the Lukashenka regime will manage to suppress this popular rising or that Vladimir Putin will exploit it to achieve regime change or even annexation there, but it is absolutely clear that the Belarusian people have had enough of their incumbent dictator and are prepared to go farther and faster than even opposition figures had thought possible.
The demonstrations in the Belarusian capital on Friday were the largest and the most vocally anti-Lukashenka of any there since at least 2010.
But what is perhaps even more important is that similar protests are taking place in the Belarusian cities of Mohylev, Homel, and Hrodno as well, attracting far more people than even their organizers expected and with participants expressing far more radical and anti-regime views than many had ever done before.
