|  Point of VIEW.
A purely analytical perception...
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BELARUS Another
Place in Another Time |
Another Place in Another Time, Long Ago
During its early years Belarus (the name means "White
Russia") was inhabited by the Eastern Slavs, who lived off the land and spoke
a primitive form of Russian. In the ninth century what is now called Belarus was
part of Kievan Rus, (Kiev) a precursor of Russia and the Ukraine. During the thirteenth
and fourteenth centuries Belarus fell into the orbit of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania,
and eventually merged with it. The Grand Duchy and Poland formed a union not long
afterward that endured into the early part of the nineteenth century. When Poland
dissolved, Belarus became a small piece of the Soviet Union, and stayed that way
until the Germans invaded in 1941. When the war was over, the country reverted
to Russian rule. Whatever its history may be, Belarus is
not necessarily a place that would be high on your list of vacation destinations.
The country probably has less to offer that just about any other place on the
planet. The first obstacle that you would face is getting there; because of the
country's exclusionary attitude, scheduled airlines avoid it like a plague. Overland
routes are characterized by poor roads and constant, unnecessary security checks.
"…As we lurch and sputter westward beneath the clouds,
the most conspicuous geographic characteristic I detect about Belarus, spread
out below, is its lack of conspicuous geographic characteristics. Not a single
river, mountain range, depression, or eminence presents a natural border with
Russia or the other surrounding countries. Belarus is flat, covered with a mosaic
of forest, peat bog, and swamp; crisscrossed by rivers that, for the most part,
originate and terminate beyond its frontiers; traversed by highways running south
from the Baltic republics to Ukraine and east from Western Europe into Russia."
* The country is
geographically landlocked, bereft of natural resources * and industry, economically
bankrupt and remains totally dependent on Russia for its mere survival. * Wretched
Belarus has less foreign investment per capita than any other European economy
and at the rate they are going, the economy could soon equal that of Afghanistan
and Sudan, where foreign investment is non-existent. And this is in spite of the
fact that qualified workers only receive $70 a month. The country is bordered
on the West by Poland, Lithuania and Latvia on its west and north, Russia on its
north and east and Ukraine to the South. The country is not large, about the size
of the state of Kansas. "The
Belarusian economy is in a state of disarray that makes even Russia, by comparison,
seem a model of market-oriented restructuring. There has been no meaningful move
towards privatization. Big factories, some linked to the arms trade, continue
to guzzle energy and raw materials, producing goods which no-one wants to buy.
Inflation is rampant, food prices continue to soar and ever more stringent restrictions
have virtually wiped out the markets where, even in Soviet times, farmers could
sell the produce of their individual plots." *
Belarus was a battlefield during all of World War II as the
fighting waxed and waned within its territory, as Russia and Germany took turns
stripping its meager resources to fuel their respective war efforts. Interestingly
enough, a greater percentage of Belarus’ population was wiped out during
than war than probably any other country on earth; thirty-percent. Moreover, it
was not until 1982 that the country’s population once again approached its
pre-war level. "The
great trauma of Belarus was not collectivization or purge trials but the Nazi
invasion and the Second World War. Whole cities, towns, villages and industrial
enterprises were turned in smoking rubble. An unspeakable nightmare of torture
and massacre began first against the many Belarusian's of Jewish descent, who
occupied not only a leading place among the intelligentsia but also among the
industrial working class and (despite the stereotype), in many parts of Belarus,
an important role in agriculture. No substantial village in Belarus escaped the
sight of the fascists hunting and killing children, first the Jews but quickly
enough their neighbors as well. In our still extensive woods, a remnant of the
brave youth, of all ethnic groups in Belarus, gathered to fight the partisan war.
By the time the Nazis were driven out in the second half of 1944, one quarter
of the population had been killed, and in most of the republic, every substantial
building destroyed." * While
the Belarusian standard of living is rapidly approaching absolute zero *, costs
for tourists have been kept artificially high.
Many observers believe that
it is almost to the point of indicating that the government is
making a hapless attempt to balance its feeble budget by gouging tourists.
However, assuming that you make the trip and are willing to put up with the astronomically
high prices for shoddy merchandise, once there, there
is literally no where to go and nothing to see. You would find that you have come
a long way just to visit abject poverty. Everything of historical or sightseeing
value has been long ago destroyed by the country’s numerous conquerors, who
seem to have grown so despondent once they took it over that each seemed determined
to destroy what little was left. Having said that, seeing that there was nothing
worth preserving, the government itself rebuilt the tattered republic by embarking
on a campaign of erecting structures that can generously be described as
prosaic and tedious, an unmatched
combination when you have time to kill. "One of the crummiest
countries to have emerged out of the dissolution of the Soviet Union is Belarus.
My opinion is shared by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe,
the Council of Europe and European Parliament, whose representatives as a joint
delegation have just reported that Belarus’ tyrannical President Alexander
Lukashenko and his government have done little to install a democracy since Belarus
achieved independence 10 years ago." *
From a geographical point of view, although
a country that was at best is almost featureless, Belarus
historically had another problem; because of its strategic location, even though
nobody cherished the thought of visiting it, military tacticians found that it
was crucially located and most difficult to defend. Thus, the
territory that we now call Belarus was habitually overrun
by armies wanting to go somewhere else, however it always seemed that Belarus
was the only direct way to get there. Most recently,
Poland, Lithuania and Russia have appropriated the country for
their own purposes. World War II was particularly brutal to the landscape
as it seemed that on alternate Mondays, the Russian and German Armies took turns
surgically cleansing the landscape. Because of this, Belarus probably suffered
a greater number of its people being killed, maimed and displaced during the war
on a percentage basis, than anywhere else on the globe. Historians’ best
estimates place the carnage at an astounding one person in four. However,
as If that wasn't bad enough, Belarus is just across the border from Ukraine,
in close proximity to Chernobyl. Scientists seem to agree that fully 70% of the
fallout spewed out by that disaster landed on Belarus. The radioactive fallout
has had a lingering effect, and there seems little question that this damage will
accompany the local citizens well into their next two generations. * One of the
worst aspects of the disaster was the fact that it caused over one-third of the
tillable land in the country to become totally unusable because of radioactively
induced contamination.
"Although there are no nuclear power plants in Belarus,
for some suspect reason, there are three such complexes very close to Belarus’
borders in Ukraine, Lithuania and Russia. From April 26-28, 1986, there was a
catastrophic accident at the facility near Chernobyl, Ukraine, less than 6 miles
from the southern border of Belarus – and more importantly, upwind. Over
20 percent of Belarus’ land was contaminated by radiation, and over one-half
million people had to be relocated. Seventy-five percent of the destructiveness
of the disaster fell on Belarus. This contamination still effects Belarus today,
country-wide. The (lack of) response by the government of the USSR, and the current
policies of the government of Belarus have compounded the destructiveness of the
catastrophe." * Thus,
a short visit to this country will not only give you an opportunity to visit one
of the dreariest sites on the planet, you will also get a wonderful opportunity
to catch a good case of radiation poisoning, something that you certainly couldn’t
find everywhere else. It is these types of optional side-tours that have made
exotic Belarus such an "in" tourist destination. Given the forgoing
statistic, it is not hard to fathom the fact that no less than twenty-percent
of the country’s annual budget has been directed toward ameliorating the
effects of the Chernobyl disaster. In spite of this enormous utilization of resources,
the situation remains critical and future budgets call for even more spending
to palliate Chernobyl’s aftereffect. Moreover, the
Russian, the Ukrainian, and Belarusian governments were not particularly forthright
when the Chernobyl accident occurred. They hid the details of the explosion in
spite of the fact that huge clouds of radio-active materials continued to spew
from the facility for months. These actions cost the lives of numerous people
that would have been alive today. Apparently, it was more important for these
governments to conceal their mistakes than to attempt to save lives. However,
this same type of activity is still going on in Belarus today, with the exception
of the fact that it is now affecting the essence of their very civilization:
"In
April 1986, the Soviet government withheld for several days critical information
about the Chernobyl explosion. Ironically, on March 20, 1997 President Lukashenko
has ordered university graduates to teach in areas affected with high levels of
radiation from Chernobyl. He said that he intended to "revive the Soviet
practice of dictating to university graduates what jobs they are to take after
graduation". This is a violation of the international concept of academic
freedom, basic for education in democracies. Professors at Belarusian schools
and universities are not free to choose the form and content of education. Surprise
check-ups are being made at schools as ordered by the President. They are supposed
to monitor if the teachers and the students work the way they are supposed to."
* As just about everyone
but Lukashenko seems to know, the brightest of a country’s students are usually
awarded scholarships for advanced training in elite facilities. That too, was
the way things worked before new leadership came to power. Lukashenko, increasingly
more paranoid, felt that these students that were educated overseas were
being imbued with philosophies that were somehow, anti-Belarusian. While he had
no evidence of this, he was unquestionably aware that these were Belarus’
brightest and best hope for the future. What did Lukashenko do with this opportunity?
He started out by running a public relations campaign through the government controlled
media accusing that these students of being enemies of the state. Their names
were published and within a short period of time, this highly educated cadre’
could hardly find work in Belarus. Even the few independent proprietors that were
extant in the country were unwilling to face the government’s ire by employing
them. Next Footnotes Top
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