Belarus: some reflections during the spring of 1997
The following are the author's reflections, written in a journal format, on his most recent trip to Belarus.
by David R. Marples
PART I
Miensk, April 17
I had no problems at the airport in Miensk, which I cannot say for an American companion I met on the plane. His suitcase was being ransacked as I went through customs. My friends met me, along with a driver. The airport road is under repair so only one side of the dual carriageway is in use for part of the way into Miensk. It looks like it has rained here for weeks. The road outside is a quagmire of mud and huge puddles, huge holes in it all over the place.
This morning I have to give up my passport to the woman at the Chornobyl Fund. She will then take it to the OVIR office and I have to get officially registered as a guest in Miensk. It is a tedious procedure and costs about 200,000 Belarusian rubles (a bit less than $10 U.S.), but it is dangerous not to do it. One of the justifications for deporting the chair of the Soros Foundation last month was that he had never got himself registered. The fund itself is in the hands of the KGB. Tonight is the opera. Tomorrow I am going to the northern city of Polatsak, the oldest part of Belarus, where a principality was formed in the 10th century that may have been part of, or autonomous of, Kyivan Rus'. A trip to Lithuania is also possible.
April 19
Yesterday I went to Polatsak, the oldest city in Belarus. There is no easy way to get anywhere in this country. It isn't a matter of simply getting a bus or a train, or even driving. In any case, the latter is impossible because you cannot rent a car other than at the airport and I don't imagine that is a simple undertaking. The trains run at very odd times. It's a legacy perhaps from the Soviet period when no one was supposed to see anything while traveling. Anyway I opted for the bus and one left at 7:40 a.m. There were only about 10 people on it and the road was very bumpy. As we traveled north the weather deteriorated, so that by the time we stopped at the second or third village there was blowing snow and it had become bitterly cold.
At the first stop the passengers scrambled to get off and headed for a tiny market where old women were selling oranges. I found a coffee shop. There, two young fellows, whom I took to be Georgians, enjoyed a mug of beer. One well-dressed woman was accosted by an old man, who had been sitting quietly in the window seat. He pointed to her fur coat and asked her to give it to him. She left hurriedly. The man soon followed.
Then the bus broke down. It had been struggling all the way but finally it gave up the ghost and collapsed once it had reached an official bus stop. The driver, who had been non-communicative throughout, got off with some very ancient looking spanners (I saw little in ancient Polatsak that appeared to be older), and started banging around ineffectually. The passengers sat and froze until a regular bus came to pick us up (about 45 minutes later). This one stopped at every stop and was very crowded by the time we reached Polatsak.
However, after that everything improved. The city has a population of about 80,000 and is a mixture of old and Soviet. Further to the north is the more modern industrial center, Novopolatsak. Every town here has a Soviet facade, the sky-rise apartment blocks and Socialist Realism of the World War II period. But Polatsak also has monuments to the defense of the city against Napoleon and on the site of the old St. Sophia Cathedral now stands a building renewed in the 17th-19th centuries, though you can still see some of the old stones and relics dating to the 10th century. It stands on a hill high above the Western Dvina River that runs to its mouth at Riga, Latvia, the next city to the northwest.
The area by the river is very pleasant. And though the people in this most ancient of Belarusian towns all speak Russian (at least all those with whom I spoke), they are much more open and friendly than in Miensk. There is none of the city bustle. There is a museum by the river located in a church (19th century by the look of it), which contains a fascinating depiction of the history of Polatsak with relics, maps and paintings. I found the whole city really interesting.
Finding a place to eat was a serious operation. There were plenty of coffee bars but almost no restaurants. However, the Hotel Dvina opened up at 5 p.m. The food was adequate and very cheap. The service was pure Soviet, with preparations under way for a large table and little attention being paid to individual guests or smaller numbers.
Then there was no way to get back to Miensk. One couldn't buy a bus ticket until 30 minutes before the bus arrived and, given the hordes around, that was going be difficult. It seemed in any case very restricting. So I bought a train ticket instead, for a train that left at 8:20 p.m., but got into Miensk at 5 a.m. Times are established, as noted above, for the inconvenience of passengers. I couldn't imagine for the life of me how a train could take nearly nine hours to get to Miensk. It would almost have been quicker to walk.
Tonight there will be a party, a belated birthday party for Liuba, a friend of mine from the Chornobyl Fund. Her sister and niece will be coming and possibly Vitalii, Nadia's husband. Politics have rendered this situation rather strange. The brutality carried out by the militia against the democratic opposition takes on a new meaning when I remember that Vitalii was one of the militia throwing his weight around in the main square, doubtless using his truncheon on anyone within the vicinity. All militia are being called up for such operations, as if a national emergency were in place. Thus the vast majority of troops in the square were called in from other duties.
April 20
I just talked this morning with Yelena Gapova from the State University. She and I had met last November in Boston and she has been working on a translation of my book. She told me that the book has just been reviewed by Adam Maldis, whom I have cited several times in the text. The man is a defiant defender of the national language at the present time and I am really quite thrilled by this news. On Wednesday I am to meet both Ms. Gapova and Mr. Maldis. Yelena has a heavy flu at present and can barely talk. She is also writing a review of the book for the U.S. Russian-language journal Demokratizatsiya.
Most of my day has been spent in the National Library in the reading room of the Russian section. The place was packed. I suppose on Sundays students have no classes and are free to come and study. I estimated there were about 300 people in there and the line-up for photocopying was hours long (not that I lined up, I hasten to add). I heard that the Library is going to be moved to another part of the city because the president's residence opposite is being expanded. As it is, there are signs everywhere warning people not to step on the path toward the main entrance or down the side of this building.
Politically, things are quiet. For now the street demonstrations have ended, and though the militia presence is formidable, the president has left on a trip to Southeast Asia, so the tension of recent times has been lifted. My Irish friend Adi Roche is bringing 40 containers of goods for Belarusian children at the end of the week and I am supposed to be in the town center on Thursday to watch them arrive. I am interested to know first whether they manage to cross the border.
The library is closed tomorrow (Monday) so I am going to visit Horadnia. It is supposed to be a very picturesque city and is close to the Polish border. Evidently some 80,000 Poles live there today and have retained their own language, churches and cultural institutions. That sounds like Ukrainians in Edmonton, but Edmonton is not located right next to Ukraine. I imagine the Polish influence on Horadnia will be overwhelming, especially given the Belarusian lack of national presence. Some of the locals are probably polonized themselves. The journey there takes five and a half hours by bus and costs almost exactly $10 U.S. round trip - not a bad deal. Of course it is not as far as all that time would warrant. A decent car could probably get there in three hours.
April 22
Horadnia was a good idea. I went with a couple of friends. The weather was very strange, a combination of clear sky and bright sunshine interspersed - when the wind blew - with blowing snow. It made for excellent views. This time the bus was packed. I must say I looked rather enviously at the Vilnius bus pulling out next to us, a journey of about the same length, but into Lithuania. Next time.
Horadnia region has a different history for much of the 20th century. Historically it is part of Poland in every sense, but it also was ruled by the Russian Empire at various times, including for an extended spell in the period 1795-1917. Even then, however, it remained ethnically Polish. Only after the Red Army annexed it in September 1939 were there fundamental changes.
This is the closest I have come to being in an area of my original Ph.D. project (when I wrote it, it was impossible to enter the USSR - at least for me). The western regions of Belarus and Ukraine were considered to be very sensitive.
After a Soviet annexation, thousands of Poles were deported in three waves from 1940 to the summer of 1941. Many of the nationally conscious Belarusians followed them. Often these deportees did not get very far. Many were massacred in the Kurapaty region of northern Miensk in a deserted area that is now a forest.
After 20 months, the Germans arrived and ended, in two vicious years, all Jewish life in Horadnia.
I took a picture of the area of the former Jewish ghetto, though it is now a wasteland. At the turn of the century, more than 50 percent of the population of Horadnia was Jewish. In a nearby museum there are many Jewish relics from this period. Today though, Jewish life is gone from Horadnia.
So what remains? Several magnificent and rich Roman Catholic cathedrals. There is no comparison to be made with the maintenance of the Orthodox churches that predominate here. The Catholic churches receive money (and bishops) from Poland and they must be very affluent. The main St. Sophia Cathedral could have been in Paris. The other one was locked, unfortunately, and is only open for services.
The city has an old and a new (Soviet) part. The main bridge over the Neman River was built in 1949 and bears two slogans, one denoting its date of construction and the other the 10th anniversary of the "reunion" of the Belarusian peoples in October 1939. I should add that it is the shakiest bridge used by masses of cars that I have ever been on. The whole ground trembled all the time and the fence itself reverberated so much from the sound that you couldn't really put your hand on it.
The new side of the town looks like a mistake. There are also many Soviet emblems on the east (old) side of the river, though somehow they fit in. I liked the socialist realism of the main theater, opposite which is a tank. There are statues of Soviet generals who "liberated" the city from the Germans. A massive statue of Lenin - unusually in a cap - stands in the main square. All the streets have Soviet names.
There is a superb pedestrian walkway with most of the main stores. It reminded me of the Arbat in Moscow, but it is not dissimilar to streets in Vienna. It is called Sovietskaya street. The main square is Lenin Square. There is also Engels Street, Marx Street, Komsomol park (!), the October Revolution street, etc., etc. Even Miensk has Belarusianized many of its street names. Not Horadnia, only 5 kilometers from the Polish border. But the Soviets somehow failed to consolidate their influence over the Catholic essence of the town. Its skyline is dominated by three Catholic churches, best seen from the western side of the river.
Before returning to Miensk, we saw some "new Belarusians," young and affluent people. Three of them were approached by a slightly older man who said he was an Afghan veteran who desperately needed work and money. One of the young toughs hit him at the side of the head after a few heated words. At the bus stop was a "mini-bar" that was crammed with young people. It only seated about eight. Loud rock music was playing and prices were high. A police car pulled up outside, but the policeman was clearly on amicable terms with the owner. He had a hasty glance at the books and left. We left shortly afterward because the atmosphere could not be described as friendly and we were noticeably taking up seating space. There was a real tension in the air, though not directed at us. As each young couple arrived, they seemed to outdo each other in terms of dress.
David R. Marples is professor of history at the University of Alberta in Edmonton and director of the Stasiuk Program for the Study of Contemporary Ukraine at the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, which is based at that university.
Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, May 25, 1997, No. 21, Vol. LXV
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