At the end of the year the Office of Statistics of Poland published information on the money spent in Poland by nationals from neighbouring countries. According to their report, from the period of July to September 2013 Belarusians spent $250m in Poland. Surprisingly, this figure...
Traditionally, Belarusians celebrated Christmas as a part of Kaliady – a two week long pagan holiday of winter solstice. However, today most Belarusians celebrate New Year's Eve as their main winter holiday. This tradition comes from Soviet times, when communists rejected...
The World Ice Hockey Championship will take place in Minsk on 9-25 May. Although not as extensive as those for the Winter Olympics in Sochi, preparation for this major sporting event is riddled with abuses and misteps. Belarusian authorities are accused of using...
On 13 December, a new waste sorting station will start working in the town of Masty in the Hrodna region. The European Union finances the project as a part of national programme for environmental protection in Belarus. Besides the waste management problem,...
The regime of Aliaksandr Lukashenka rejected the ethno-national model of state suggested by his predecessors in the early 1990s.Instead, he restored a soviet style “statist nation” with a centralised bureaucratic machine at its core. These are the conclusions reached in...
Last Saturday, the famous Belarusian band Lyapis Trubeckoy gathered over ten thousand fans, mostly young people who came from Belarus, at a concert in the Siemens Arena in Vilnius. Today a number of prominent Belarusian musicians face serious difficulties when...
Last week, the Belarusian Supreme Economic Court approved recalling the license of a major Minsk-based publishing house. The government apparently shut it down for publications which seemed too political. This decision dealt a serious blow to Belarusian-language culture since few publishers have produced...
On 19 November the European Humanities University (EHU), also knows as Belarusian university in exile, held elections for its Senate. Although the Senate is just one of several bodies which govern EHU, the result may affect the direction of EHU's reforms. Unlike previous elections,...
At the end of October the Office for Democratic Belarus (ODB) published the results of a public opinion poll entitled “Belarus and Eastern Partnership: National and European Values”. It shows that the attitude of Belarusians toward EU year by year...
An official myth describes Belarus as a country of mires and swamps. Indeed, Belarus has one of the largest wetlands on the continent, often the lungs of Europe. But peat extraction on an industrial scale in 1960s – 1980s led to...
On 19 September, human rights organisation “Innovation Platform” announced that political prisoner Mikalaj Aŭtuchovič cut his abdomen in protest to the abuse suffered by the prison administration. Shortly after that he published a letter in Narodnaja Volia newspaper where he explained why he had to...
Although Belarusians have enjoyed the same rights in hiring, pay and social benefits as Russian citizens since 1996, migration from Belarus to Russia more than tripled since 2010. According to the traditional view on high-skilled migration or brain drain, the home...
On 11 October, the Third International Congress of Belarusian Studies starts in Kaunas, a city in the west of Lithuania. The congress remains a unique event which brings together many scholars of Belarus. Some call the event an academic supermarket, as...
Observers named Belarusian writer Svetlana Alexievich among favorites for the Nobel Prize again this year. Alexievich's books come out in 35 languages. Her trophies include German, American, Polish, Swedish, Austrian and international awards, but not a single distinction from Belarus. Instead of...
