BELARUS DIGEST

By lhar Lalkou

Belarusian society is deeply split. Less than a decade after the establishment of an independent Republic of Belarus, one part of society is so radically separated from the other that if a casual observer were to overhear conversations and read articles by the two groups, it could be concluded that they live in different worlds. Of the parameters that identify a nation, place of residence is the only thing these two groups have in common. They differ by language, their historical memory, identity (despite the fact that both call themselves Belarusians, the meaning is completely different), relations with other nations (dose and distant), their vision of the country ’s future development, etc.

It sometimes seems that these two groups would feel more comfortable in two different countries. The two Belaruses already have two totally separate sets of national symbols. One set comprises the knightly emblem Pahonya (a knight on horseback against a red shield) and the white, red and white flag. The other set comprises’ a traditional Soviet shieldless emblem look-alike framed by a garland and a red and green flag with an ornamental pattern. The Pahonya was inherited by Belarus from the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (GDL), a state in which the ancestors of most Belarusians dominated during the greater part of their history (in the 13″‘-18″ centuries).

Together with the white, red and white flag, the emblem was adopted as the national emblem of the Belarusian People’s Republic (BPR), the first state to appear on these lands after the break up of the Russian empire. These symbols are still used by the BPR government-in-exile that had to leave Belarus in 1920 under the blows of Soviet Russia’s Red Army. These symbols were also the first state symbols of the independent Republic of Belarus between 1991 and 1995.

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A senior ideologist Mikalaj Čarhiniec, who had proposed to impose censorship restrictions on a concert of the German industrial rock band Rammstein, has demonstrated what the ideology of the current political regime in Belarus is.

Official ideology of today’s Belarus can be described as post-Soviet left-wing conservatism. The Belarusian government is principally averse to democracy and civil liberties. Therefore it also has a very negative attitude towards any cultural or social phenomena like drugs legalization or the LGBT rights movement.

Belarusian bloggers and foreign media have been actively discussing the prospectives if the concert’s cancellation. However, Andrej Hiro, Ambassador of Belarus to Germany, pointed out today that members of Rammstein had all received visas for Belarus and that the proposal to impose censorship restrictions on the concert had been “a private initiative”.

A scandal of this kind is nothing new for Rammstein. It could only increase the popularity of the band, which is probably more famous in Belarus than in Germany itself. In show business there is no such thing as bad PR after all.

Not content to oppress the country’s democratic opposition or rail against Western imperialism, the autocratic regime of Belarus has declared the German industrial rock band Rammstein to be an enemy of the state.

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Despite having one of the highest student ratios in Europe, a virtually free higher education, and laws making study abroad difficult, the best and brightest young Belarusians continue flocking to or at least dreaming of expensive Western universities. The situation is exacerbated by Minsk’s practice of closing down independent-minded educational institutions and expelling Belarusian students and Western lecturers for refusing to toe the official line.

On February 18, representatives of the Nordic Council of Ministers visited the European Humanities University (EHU) in exile. EHU was founded in Minsk in 1992 “in order to open our minds to those values constituting the basic principles of democracy,” according to Professor Anatoli Mikhailov, EHU’s rector and one of its founders.

EHU was closed for political reasons in Belarus in 2004. It was then reorganized in Vilnius at the invitation of the Lithuanian government. Since 2006, EHU has enjoyed the status of a private Lithuanian university. Currently, EHU is the only Belarusian university offering western-standard education. EHU is also the only Belarusian university that still retains a degree of autonomy from the authorities.

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Gone is the time when Belarusians were one of the smaller ethnic groups in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. And it is clear that the decades of Soviet rule made Belarus lose the traits that the Rech Pospolita was so famous for: ethnic diversity, religious tolerance, and democratic attributes of political system.

A brief thaw in the Belarusian-Polish relations came to an end once the Belarusian authorities cracked down on the Union of Poles in Belarus. Forty ethnic Poles as Belarus have been arrested, some sentenced to five-day jail terms, and Andzelika Borys, the leader of the Union of Poles, was fined for $360.

On February 17, the Belarusian court ruled that the Union’s headquarters must be turned over to a pro-Minsk Polish group that is not recognized by Warsaw. In short, the Union of Poles has suffered the fate of a typical Belarusian NGO.

Polish President Lech Kaczynski and Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski, who had in the past led the European effort to improve relations with Belarus, both chastised Minsk over its boorish behavior with regard to ethnic minorities. EU Parliament President Jerzy Buzek, a Pole, also called on Minsk to mind its manners when dealing with NGOs.

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Ethnic Poles rising in western Belarus was what Minsk and Moscow happened to choose as a scenario for their 2009 joint military exercise. As if ashamed of its lack of judgment last year, the Belarusian leadership is now doing everything possible to make such a far-fetched plot more plausible.

On February 8, Belarusian police burst into the Polish House in Ivyanets, owned by the Union of Poles in Belarus (ZPB), and ordered the staff to vacate the building. This wasn’t the first attack on the Union of Poles and the Polish House by the Belarusian authorities. In 2005, Hrodna militia took the office of the Union of Poles forcing a change of leadership.

In January, Minsk also started a criminal prosecution against Taresa Sobal, the director of Polish House in Ivianiec. Sobal is being accused of failing to properly register a 2004 financial grant received by the Polish House from the former leader of Polish Union Tadevush Kruchkouski.

Actions of the Belarusian authorities evoked sharp criticism by the president of the EU Parliament Jerzy Buzek, who is Polish. Speaking in Stasbourg on Feb. 10, Buzek urged Minsk “to stop taking drastic measures against the Polish minority.” He said “acceptance of EU norms with regard to ethnic minorities” was essential for improving the EU-Belarus discourse.

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Google has dedicated today’s logo on its Belarusian website google.com.by to the 19th century Belarusian painter Napaleon Orda. The painter was born on February 11, 1807 in a manor near Pinsk into the family of a local landlord. The logo depicts Orda’s painting of the Čaćviarcinski palace in Hrodna.

Two years ago Google had also marked the birthday of Marc Chagall, another painter from Belarus.

Read the full story here

Something the Belarusian bloggers have been laughing about during the past week: the state media had been actively explaining the necessity for the recently introduced regulation of the Internet by the need to fight copyright breach. And here we go – the state television itself is now being accused of the same, with ripping a whole sitcom being a much more serious thing than downloading pirate music from the web.

This scandal is not going to influence the introduction of internet regulations in any way but is simply more than illustrative.

The creator of Big Bang Theory has accused the Belarusian government of ripping off his sitcom.

The East European country has just launched its own sitcom called The Theorists based around the same premise as Chuck Lorre’s American series – in which two socially awkward geeks live opposite a hot waitress.

In the CBS original, shown on E4 in Britain, the main character are called Sheldon, Leonard, Howard, Raj and Penny; in Belarus they are called Sheldon, Leo, Hovard, Raj and Natasha.

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A new monograph, Writing in a Cold Climate: Belarusian Literature from the 1970s to the Present Day, by Prof Arnold McMillin, a distinguished researcher of Belarusian literature, has been published in the UK.

This is a pioneering work of such kind in English, up-to-date and reflecting on Belarusian literature through the eyes of the western scholarship. The book launch will take place in London on 25 February, 5.30 pm (Masaryk Room, floor 4, SSEES, 16 Taviton St, WC1H 0BW).

In the publisher’s words:

Belarusian literature, which survives and, indeed, flourishes in the face of unfavourable domestic political conditions, deserves to be far better known in the West. It continues to flourish as an important aspect of national consciousness in a semi-denationalized state, and at its best can compare with the literature of its Slav neighbours including Russia.

The present monograph, the first of its kind, attempts to describe and assess the work of nearly two hundred writers and literary groups, ranging over poetry, prose and drama. The coverage includes provincial as well as metropolitan literature and groupings, and pays particular attention to seven outstanding authors of the period, to historical writing which is particularly important in a country where history has been suppressed and denied, and to the youngest generation of talented poets and prose writers born in the early 1980s at the very end of the Soviet Union’s existence.

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The chapter on Belarus was included in the Greenwood Encyclopedia of LGBT Issues Worldwide published earlier this year. The three volumes account for more than 1300 pages of important and timely information. This set has an ambitious scope with the goal of offering the most up-to-date international overview of key issues in the lives of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender individuals. Eighty-two countries are represented. Belarus chapter was written by Viachaslau Bortnik, Belarusian human rights defender and LGBT activist.

Bellow we provide excerpts from the chapter.

Overview of LGBT Issues in Belarus

While homosexual activity is no longer considered a crime in Belarus, and the age of consent for heterosexual and homosexual relations is equal, LGBT rights still remains a marginal topic in public discourse and does not play any role in national and or local politics.

Homophobia remains widespread throughout the country country, and instances of harassment and discrimination appear occur regularly. Many Belarusians believe consider homosexuality to be a disease, and some see it as a sin, but few consider it a legitimate sexual orientation.

President Lukashenka and members of Parliament parliament often make negative statements about homosexuals, which strengthens strengthening the homophobia in society.

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The Editorial Board of the peer-reviewed journal of political studies Political sphere (Palitychnaja Sfera) is currently inviting submissions for Issue 14 (spring 2010).

The main focus of the issue is nation, national project, idea of nation, ethnic conflicts.

Idea of nation as a political community (historic and theoretical perspective)

Idea of nation in Eastern and Central Europe

National projects as cultural and political phenomena

History of Belarusian nationalism

History of nationalism in Eastern Europe

Nationalism and cosmopolitanism as social phenomena

Nation, ethnicity, tradition

Ethnic conflicts, migration

Deadline: March 22, 2010.
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Indeed, despite laying in the geographical centre of Europe, Belarus is psychologically, mentally, still at the very outskirts of the continent.

Expansion of the EU has put an Iron Curtain between Belarus and Vilnia (Vilnius), that has been a Belarusian capital for centuries. It has put an border between Poland and the home country of several people known among the world’s most famous Poles – Tadeusz Kościuszko, Adam Mickiewicz, Michał Kleofas Ogiński and others. A border between the modern Republic of Lithuania and the Slavic-speaking eastern part of the hisorical region of Lithuania Propria that also included Navahrudak, Hrodna and Minsk.

Frankly speaking, “disintegrating churches, ruined public buildings, shabby homes and bumpy roads” is not exactly the landscape one would see in Belarus. Clean streets, well-kept towns and good roads is something that impresses tourists from Russia and Ukraine in today’s Belarus. But the problems are exactly the same as described in The Economist’s film review. Centuries-old ties between Belarus and its EU-neighbours Lithuania and Poland have been torn by Belarus staying outside the process of the European integration. One can only hope that Belarus would one day overcome this barrier, so that the EU would have more reasons to be called just Europe.

PLENTY of places have a claim to be Europe’s geographical centre. French geographers calculated in 1989 that it lies on a hill near Purnuškės in Lithuania. Belarusian cartographers think it is near the town that Russians call Vitebsk (Vitsyebsk in Belarusian). In 1887 in the then Austro-Hungarian empire, geographers erected a monument at Dilove, in what is now the Ukrainian province of Transcarpathia, marking what they reckoned was Europe’s real mid-point.

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An interesting example of Belarusian-British cooperation. Minsk authorities largely develop the city via construction of Socialist-styled flat-blocks. Surrounding villages that get incorporated into the city are gradually being destroyed and replaced with the same depressive flat blocks. It would be good if they would find some replacement for Soviet architecture. The story appeared on www.thisisnottingham.co.uk:

IT COULD be one of the biggest residential projects that Nottingham has ever seen, with homes for 20,000 people and all the shops, offices and hotels that go with it.

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