BELARUS NEWS AND ANALYSIS

DATE:

23/02/2009

Belarus: Is That a Dissident Next to Your Dipstick?

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.

Source:

http://blogs.ft.com/brusselsblog/2009/02/belarus-is-that-a-dissident-next-to-your-dipstick/

Google
 


Partners:
Face.by Social Network
Face.by