MINSK, Belarus -- Those who missed the highlights of American history in civics class had only to turn on the television this week in Belarus, a small nation on Europe's eastern border where old Soviet-era propaganda machines are kept lovingly lubricated.

The program "America Without Makeup" described President Richard Nixon's attempt to bug Democratic campaign offices in 1972, President Ronald Reagan's covert sale of weapons to Iran, the Pentagon's arming of Iraq, and murky hints of conspiracy behind the deaths of New York Senator Robert Kennedy and actress Marilyn Monroe.

"It's not for nothing that people say democracy demands sacrifice," a narrator commented wryly. "Money doesn't smell -- that's the main principle of American democracy."

In Belarus, President Alexander G. Lukashenko has a stake in giving democracy a black eye: The US government is spending more than $9 million a year here developing a sophisticated political opposition and a well-informed electorate, tools to combat one of the most repressive dictatorships in the world.

Voters go to the polls today in an election that is widely expected to hand Lukashenko, Belarus's president since 1994, a third five-year term. In echoes of recent revolutions in Ukraine and Georgia, the opposition plans to muster thousands in the streets to demand a free election.

Belarus state security, still known as the KGB, has threatened to charge protesters "who try to destabilize the situation" with terrorism, prompting an immediate protest from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which has sent observers to monitor the balloting.

Thousands staged the largest opposition rally in years yesterday outside Minsk, with Lukashenko threatening to "wring the necks" of protesters disturbing the peace.

"We haven't seen such a politicization of people since perestroika," said opposition candidate Alexander Milinkevich, referring to the era that preceded the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. "The reason is not socioeconomic. It's a moral protest."

Lukashenko's government has all but shut down the independent media, arrested hundreds of opposition campaign activists, kicked and beaten one presidential contender during a campaign rally, expelled students and fired state workers who do not toe an ideological line that reads like a reissue of the Communist-era Pravda. The KGB has been accused of operating secret death squads responsible for some of the disappearances and deaths of half a dozen journalists, businessmen, and political opponents since 1999.

Why, then, does a recent InterMedia poll show Lukashenko drawing an easy 52.9 percent of the vote, far ahead of his rivals?

Belarus officials say it is because they have succeeded in doing what conventional wisdom in the West says is not possible: maintaining a state-run economy that is producing one of the strongest growth rates in Europe, generating increases in wages and pensions, boosting productivity, and minimizing the disparities in wealth that have destabilized so many of the former Soviet republics in their transition to market economies.

State-owned oil refineries here buy Russian oil and sell its products to Europe at a hefty profit. Collective farms abound, and have been merged with profitable enterprises such as tractor companies to bring their balance sheets out of the red. Unemployment is officially at 1.5 percent, although thousands more may simply be unregistered.

Advocates of overhaul say that 40 percent of government-owned enterprises are operating at a loss; private business is paralyzed by taxes and red tape; an estimated $1 billion in Belarus products are languishing in warehouses because they can't compete in the world market; and the entire economy is operating on the good graces of neighbor Russia, which buys large quantities of Belarusian goods and sells natural gas to its closest ally at subsidies worth an estimated $3 billion a year.

Still, many in Belarus say they are ready to vote again for Lukashenko, if only for the sake of stability and his pledge that the government will keep paying pensions and salaries, which are far below European levels just across the border but at least arrive on time.

"People want to live quietly. They want stability, they want jobs, they want their children to walk safely in the streets," said Yelena Yeseyeva, 40, a bookkeeper at a state-owned communal services company. "I think the president has chosen the right way."

Yet support for Milinkevich, a US-educated physicist chosen by a broad coalition of pro-democracy parties, and Alexander Kozulin, former university rector and leader of the Social Democratic Party, has been bolstered by a growing number of people in Belarus who say the nation's economic gains are illusory and its growing climate of repression intolerable.

"These are myths they're talking about. Simply myths. Yes, in Belarus there are no pension arrears. But if a pension in Russia were as small as it is in Belarus, it would be paid on time too," said Svetlana Kalinkina, managing editor of Narodnaya Volya, the last remaining independent daily newspaper in Belarus.

Milinkevich has traveled across Belarus and drawn unprecedented crowds, but has seen his supporters arrested and beaten. Opposition candidates were allowed to make addresses on state-run television and radio, but their remarks were censored.

US-funded organizations such as the National Democratic Institute and the International Republican Institute, banned in Belarus, have set up shop in neighboring Ukraine and Lithuania. From there, they run independent media development workshops, training activists to build democratic coalitions and sponsoring political training for women and youth -- activities that the Belarus government calls a covert attempt by the West to engineer a regime change.