Perhaps I’m getting Marxist in my old age, but would it be wrong to suggest that economics is driving most things political in Belarus these days? That’s to say, does the world economic crisis explain the very modest gestures in the direction of political liberalisation that have recently been taken in what is emphatically Europe’s most tightly controlled state?

At the start of this year, with its economy tottering, Belarus devalued its currency by 20 per cent and negotiated a $2.5bn loan from the International Monetary Fund. Belarus has also secured a pledge of $2bn in credits from Russia, the giant neighbour from which it receives almost all its energy supplies at subsidised prices. Belarus has large debt repayments looming. The fact is, Belarus is in deep economic trouble and won’t get out of it without help from the IMF, the European Union and – let this not be forgotten in Western countries – Russia.

At the same time, President Alexander Lukashenko has relaxed political controls a little bit, allowing two independent newspapers to be sold through the state-run distribution network and setting up public consultative councils on human rights and media freedom. Opposition activists in Minsk told me last week that these measures didn’t add up to much and could be reversed at any moment. Moreover, two former political prisoners were rearrested earlier this month on what look like trumped-up charges of causing damage to property.

Nevertheless, EU policymakers have the impression that change – controlled change - may be on the horizon in Belarus. Some trace it to the appointment last July of one Vladimir Makey as the powerful head of Lukashenko’s presidential administration. Makey is an interesting guy. For one thing, he is, so I’m told, of mixed Lithuanian-Scottish origin (is “Makey” the Cyrillic spelling of “Mackay”?). For another, he trained as a foreign linguist and served in the Soviet armed forces in the communist era. About much of the rest of his career his official biography is not so specific.

Neither Lukashenko nor Makey is going to turn Belarus into a pro-Western country. It makes absolutely no strategic sense for a small country that, geographically and culturally, is so close to Russia. But Russia’s military smashing and de facto dismemberment of Georgia last August served as a wake-up call to Belarus’s leaders. If they want their country to remain independent, they need to draw a bit closer to the EU. And that means introducing a degree of political reform.

Economics explains a lot. But in the case of Belarus, so does the Russian bear factor.

Every year, back in communist times, British university students learning Russian used to get the chance to spend three months in the Soviet Union. If you were sent to Moscow or Leningrad (now St Petersburg), you’d hit the jackpot: wild times and minimal amounts of study were guaranteed. Kiev was held to be pretty good, too. But nobody, nobody at all, wanted to go to Minsk. It was as if a Russian learning English had hoped to go to London and found himself instead in Stoke-on-Trent.

Minsk, capital of what used to be called Soviet Byelorussia, and from 1991 the capital of independent Belarus, has changed quite a bit since then. But not in all respects. When I was there on a short trip last week, I found it hard to take my eyes off the huge Soviet-era sign in the middle of town that declares Minsk a “hero city” for its part in the victory over Nazi Germany. Belarus must be one of the few places on earth where the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution is still officially celebrated – not to mention “Tankmen’s Day”, another public holiday with Soviet military origins.

As in the 1980s, Belarus is a pretty difficult place to get into. I entered the country by car at a border point called Kammeny Log on the Lithuanian-Belarusan frontier. A grim sign there warns visitors (there aren’t many of them) that any attempt to bribe the border guards will earn you a fine and up to two years of “correctional labour” – or three years in prison.

For some bizarre reason, a Lithuanian who was travelling with me was ordered to buy health insurance at the border or else she wouldn’t be allowed in. It cost a mere €2, so this wasn’t some sneaky way of extracting large amounts of hard currency from foreigners to stave off national bankruptcy. Rather, it was perhaps just a way of delaying our entry, surmised a European ambassador in Minsk when I told him the story.

Getting out of Belarus is a bit of a palaver, as well. One border guard checks your car to see if there are the same number of people in it as there were when you entered Belarus. Another guard orders you to lift up your car’s bonnet to make sure … to make sure what? That you’re not hiding a revolver, a tin of caviar or a miniature dissident next to the dipstick?

More tomorrow on how the world financial crisis is threatening Belarus and confronting Alexander Lukashenko, Belarus’s authoritarian president since 1994, with some difficult choices between the European Union to the west and Russia to the east.