Belarus - Easter buns and bureaucrats

Brief introduction into the history of Belarus:

"Where are you from?" - "I am from Belarus". - "Where? Belgium? Brazil?" These are the most typical comments I get from people when I tell them where I am from. They tend to think I pronounced it wrong and keep trying to give me suggestions of all the countries they know that start with a "b". I surrender and say "Byelorussia" instead of "Belarus". This always results in the inevitable "Ahh, Russia". Only a few people so far have surprised me with having heard of or even been to Belarus, a country which is not an administrative part or even autonomous region of Russia, but an independent state. Actually, it's not even the political side which matters, it's the fact that Belarusians have a national psyche and typical physical appearance different from Russians. Without a doubt there are many cultural similarities, similar cuisine and same festivals between many of the former USSR republics (especially Russia, Belarus and Ukraine), but it doesn't cancel the fact that those always exist in the bordering countries, yet it's the differences not the similarities that define the distinct ethnic groups.

Belarus has a different ethnic group from Russia and is nowadays a politically independent state (you could even say, too independent, as the country is in a kind of political and economic isolation from most of the world). Historically, it used to be part of the Kievan Rus (a network of principalities with major centers in Novgorod, Polatsk and Kiev) from 9th to 12th centuries. Then, between 13th and 15th centuries, it became part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania - a powerful ancient European state where due to the predominance of Eastern Slavs the Ruthenian language was used for most state needs and where during the state reorganization the differentiation evolved between Russian, Belarusian and Ukranian languages. In the 16th century contemporary Belarus became part of the Lithuanian-Polish Commonwealth (Rech Pospolitaya) where the Belarusian aristocrats were gradually polonized (so became Catholic instead of Russian Orthodox). Between 16th and 18th century the Commonwealth was in a state of semi-permanent warfare due to continuous invasions by the Tatars.

Then following the mid-17th century's violent wars between the Commonwealth and the Tsardom of Russia, Sweden, Bradenburg and Transylvania and internal conflicts, the Tsardom of Russia annexed most of the Eastern part of the Commonwealth (including Belarus). In the end of the 18th century after an infamous division of Poland between its neighbours Russia, Prussia and Austria modern-day Belarus became a part of the Russian Empire, in which the Belarusian culture suffered from the first waves of Russification. Ironically, World War I was the short period during which the Belarusian culture started to flourish - the short-lived Belarusian National Republic was pronounced in March 1918 but ceased its existence at the age of a new-born (9 months) in January 1919 when it was pronounced the Belorussian Soviet Socialist Republic after the occupation of Minsk by the Soviet troops. Following the short Polish-Russian war, Belarus got divided between Poland and Russia in 1920, with subsequent Polonization policies in the Polish part and - after only a brief period of Belarusian revival - Russification in the Soviet part (a policy which resulted in the execution of the major part of the Belarusian elite).

In 1939 when Russia invaded Poland in the course of World War II, most of eastern Poland (including Belarus) was annexed by the Soviet Union. Following the German occupation during the World War II the nazis attempted to establish a puppet Belarusian government (Belarusian Central Rada) but in reality imposed a brutal regime, killing hundreds of thousands of civilians. During the war the Belarusian guerrillas (partisans) who were hiding in forests and swamps (using the unique local knowledge of these challenging nature zones) organized into a well-coordinated Resistance movement and were inflicting heavy damage on the German supply and communication lines, destroying the German trains, fuel dumps, telegraph wires etc. In total Belarus lost a quarter of its population during the war, including practically all its intellectual elite. In 1945 after the end of the war Belarus became one of the founding countries of the UN, followed by the Soviet Union itself.

The post-war period saw the shaping of the new Belarusian economy which was controlled exclusively from Moscow. During this period Belarus became a major industrial center of the Soviet Union, with a focus on heavy machinery. A lot of Russians migrated into Belarus during this time, which resulted in the decrease of the Belarusian peasant part - the "carrier" of the Belarusian language and culture. The "culture campaigns" enforced all throughout the Soviet republics at that time were meant to establish Russian as the language of the huge USSR and bring about a new amorphous uniform culture and on paper everybody's equality. Everybody's, but as it turned out in practice, except for the party officials. ("All animals are equal but some are more equal than others." George Orwell) As part of these campaigns, Russian was forced as the only language for teaching, work, public affairs and official documents. Probably due to the proximity to and the consequent ease of migration from Russia, after a hundred years of this cultural and linguistic genocide the Belarusian language fell into a coma, from which it never recovered.

After Belarus declared its national sovereignty in July 1990 and became part of the Commonwealth of Independent States as the Republic of Belarus after the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991, there have been several attempts to revive the language as the primary native language for Belarusian people. These campaigns focused mainly on schools: all textbooks (except the natural sciences) were translated into Belarusian and for a few years kids (including me) were studying most of the subjects in Belarusian. Additionally, a much bigger accent was put on studying the Belarusian history, literature and the language itself. This was called "Belorussizatsiya", or "Byelorussification". They say, it did seem to be effective to a certain degree, as apparently small kids were starting to speak Belarusian to their parents at home. The parents were not happy... So Byelorussification failed, for probably the same reason that the language almost died in the first place - the main quality of the Belarusian psyche, tolerance, or rather over-tolerance. Now, tolerance is a beautiful trait in itself, but not when it's applied to the nation's political and economic situation and in an extremely high degree. In short, Belarusians are too tolerant, many times to the excessive degree of inertia, which means that they'd complain but never do anything about a situation that bothers them. I think it comes from the fact that the nation had to co-exist with so many nations through the years of history, but also due to the fact that for a hundred years people were brought up according to the Soviet principle of collective ownership which undermined any "taking initiative" gene that could have ever existed in the Belarusian people.

Minsk, train station:

Osipovichi, birch tree alley:

Osipovichi, two of the several churches that were built over the last few years for the increasingly growing parish:

One of the truly amazing things during our visit to Belarus was the weather - on any given day dazzling sunshine and heavy snowfall would replace each other in a matter of minutes, many times a day. This is not how spring used to be in Belarus, but we keep hearing similar things about the local weather all around the world. One word for it - global climate changes. Below are photos from a snowfall period:

Osipovichi, being a tiny provincial town, due to its location on the crossroads of many railways is an important train station (hence the monument of an old train). It's a two hours drive by "elektrichka" - electrical train - to the capital, Minsk:

A typical neighbourhood in a typical Belarusian city:

The forest in Belarus is just everywhere, for instance it's 5 minutes walk from my mum's place, and almost anybody else's place :-) Almost all of this forest is natural, with only 22% planted: