If there was any question in anyone’s mind that Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez might not be a communist, that illusion was put paid to rest by Chavez’s visit today to Belarus, the last remaining dictatorship in Europe.

Agencia EFE reported the Venezuelan dictator’s visit to Europe’s most oppressive regime this way:

“We must make (Soviet Union founder Vladimir) Lenin’s slogan a reality regarding the unacceptability of the exploitation of man by man,” Chavez told the press.

The Venezuelan leader said he had come to Minsk to “seal a unity pact and lay the first stone for future relations between Belarus and Venezuela.” “Here, we feel among brothers and friends,” he added.

Chavez is the first Latin American leader to come to the former Soviet republic on an official visit.

He added that Belarus is developing a “social state model” like the one being constructed in Venezuela.

Now to put it into perspective, Chavez is scraping bottom on friends, having alienated most of his Latin American neighbors, the European Union states and the OPEC countries. East Asia is wary of him. The Eastern Europeans have always been wise to the egomaniac. The U.S.-Americans can’t stand him.

But Saddam’s gone, so all he has left are Zimbabwe and Cuba as real allies. Even North Korea (!) thought he was a little weird. That’s why he’s sought new friends and allies from the remaining dictator community. But not just any dictator, only prime dictators, true tyrants. That’s why he chose Belarus as his new friend and ally.

Both states are communistic, both are controlled by egomanic dictators, both are despised by their neighbors and both seek federations with old-line communist regimes of the past – Chavez of Cuba and Lukashenka of Russia.

Daniel’s got a really good analysis of this story here, along with a truly disgusting photo, redolent of the Brezhnev era, showing Chavez’s pastoral visit to something called “The Stalin Line.” You’ve never seen such a happy exuberant look on a brutal leftist dictator’s face as this.