#15
Neue Zürcher Zeitung
January 5, 2002
Minsk: Soviet Reality Today
Daily Life in the Belarusian capital
By Patrick Nigg

Ten years ago, the Belarusian Soviet Socialist Republic became the independent Republic of Belarus. Under the leadership of its authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko, there has been much less change in the Belarusian capital Minsk than in other East European capitals. One feels no sense of a new start among its people. – The author is a freelance journalist living in Minsk.

Whenever I tell a local that I live in Minsk voluntarily, and am glad to be here, I am sure to be greeted by an utter lack of comprehension. Even upon my arrival, the Belarusian border guard wished me a "speedy return to Switzerland" - intending no nastiness, only friendliness. Most people you encounter in Minsk are convinced that life in Belarus is essentially impossible: the wages too low, the winters too cold, the potholes in the streets too deep, the bureaucracy too oppressive. Criticism of one's own country is quite fashionable here, as is its exaggeration.

Lenin and Dzerzhinsky Still on Their Pedestals

But the Belarus bureaucracy has earned its reputation. As soon as you enter a government office here, you find yourself in a world of uniforms, flags, stamps and marks of rank, while the hours of waiting can turn even the proudest resident into a humble supplicant. The representatives of authority are strict and very conscious of their own power. They are also constrained in a very tight corset of competence, and except for a few helpful exceptions they all know exactly the limits beyond which a problem is no longer in their own bailiwick. In many respects, in externals as well as the self-image of officials, the old Soviet Union still remains surprisingly present here. The White Russian entry and departure visa for resident aliens, for example, entitles the holder to pass the "border of the USSR" (the visa form was printed in 1992). On the streets of Minsk, too, traces of the old days still remain. Lenin, long since toppled from his pedestal in other East European countries, still stands uncontested in front of the government building, and even Felix Dzerzhinsky, the founder of the Soviet secret police, has his park and his statue right across from the once-and-present KGB building.

In the downtown area of this metropolis of 1.7 million people, there is little evidence of the economic pressure that bears down so heavily on the country as a whole. The city is clean, the number of expensive Western automobiles on the streets seems to increase every day, the house fronts are in immaculate condition. And law and order reign, since the militia is ubiquitous. Once or twice a day, when the men in uniform line up at 15-meter intervals along the curbs - their faces to the passing pedestrians, their batons behind their backs, the roadway suddenly swept clear of traffic - and the presidential Mercedes sweeps past with its escort, a West European gets a funny feeling in the pit of his stomach. But the people of Minsk are calm in the face of Alexander Lukashenko's monarchical mode of rule. It is a traditional fact of life here that the masters live by different rules from those that govern the common folk.

Lukashenko's Prediction

"If things are going well for the government, they're going well for us," says Sasha in describing the basic attitude of his compatriots. People here are happy and proud to show outsiders the city's new, largely glass railway station, the expensive and handsomely designed metro station. Such prestige structures are "gifts to the people," so they can never be too elaborate, while in many parts of the city water must be boiled before it is safe to drink.

"You will live badly, but not for long." That somewhat ambiguous promise was reportedly made by then-presidential candidate Lukashenko to the voters in 1993. His critics are agreed that the man who has since then been the authoritarian ruler of this former Soviet republic and its 10 million people has at least kept the first part of his promise: most White Russians live badly. A comparison with neighboring Poland, Latvia or Lithuania is depressing. The fact that those countries are preparing to become members of the European Union is, on the one hand, symbolic of the economic and political backwardness that Belarus has garnered for itself in its decade of independence. At the same time, it is not only pessimists who fear that this country's future place on the outermost frontier of the EU will be a shady spot indeed. Its western and northern neighbors, especially Poland, have long been busy preparing their borders with White Russia to conform to the requirements of the Schengen Agreement. The only consolation is provided by a glance to the east and south, where Russia and Ukraine are not in much better shape than Belarus.

Outside of Minsk's downtown area, out where the slab-sided Soviet-era apartment buildings dominate the cityscape, you encounter urban misery on every hand: people who earn their living collecting empty bottles, people who search through garbage for something usable or even edible, people who spend their nights on radiators in staircases, people who obviously drink more than they eat. Here it becomes quite evident why the life expectancy of White Russians declined by 3.2 years from 1991 to 2000 - and here, too, one sees the relative poverty of the average population.

A Room with a Few

Like tens of thousands of people in Minsk, Olga, an orchestral violinist, lives in a "residential home." She shares her 15 square meters (161.4 square feet) of living space with another woman, and the two share a toilet and shower with eight other parties (one room to a party, some of which consist of three-person families). To avoid being dependent on the communal kitchen, the two young women have a hotplate and a water coil heater in their "apartment." The house rules are strict, the hallways are dirty.

Oleg is somewhat better off. He is 26 years old, a captain in the White Russian anti-aircraft force; married to a teacher, he has a 1-year-old daughter. Together with the wife's parents, the young family inhabits a four-room apartment - quite a comfortable living arrangement by Belarusian standards, but probably as good as it will ever get. Formerly, during the days of the White Russian S.S.R., young families generally lived with parents or in residential homes and waited for a good many years before they were assigned an apartment by the government. Today they have nothing left to wait for. State-owned apartments at merely symbolic rents are no longer provided, and the properties offered on the free market are not affordable to ordinary citizens like Oleg. He would have to pay a minimum of 80 dollars a month for a two-room apartment on the outskirts of the city.

The salary of close to 200 dollars a month that Oleg earns as an anti-aircraft officer is above average. A saleswoman must get along on the equivalent of about 60 dollars, a female university lecturer on 80-100 dollars. Nevertheless: "It's just barely enough, if you live modestly," says Oleg, and goes on to explain that "modestly" means no eating or drinking out, and certainly no visits to the disco. He is proud of his rank and enjoys his profession, but would change if he could earn more elsewhere. The military academy trained him as an electrical engineer, and he feels it is insulting that, with his education, his situation is so poor materially, while others "who have learned nothing, but have influential parents, make money in all sorts of businesses."

Perestroika's Bad Reputation

To the question of who is responsible for these conditions, Oleg replies that he doesn't really know, but "the whole filthy mess" began with perestroika. Almost everyone in the army supports the president, he says, because unlike the political opposition, Lukashenko would never vote in favor of NATO membership or cuts in the size of the military. "If I were a civilian, I might think twice about voting for the president," declares Oleg. But he prefers not to talk about politics. He doesn't know much about it, he claims, just enough to know that not much has changed in White Russia since the end of the Soviet era. That's why he doesn't want his last name used in this article: "I don't want to get an unpleasant letter from my ministry."

In another part of the city, an arts society is celebrating a festive evening. The host and his friends, most of them musicians and dancers, are not among the "novorishi," the nouveaux riches business moguls who are changing the look of Minsk's streets with their fancy cars. But thanks to engagements abroad, these artists have gotten their hands on some hard foreign currency and their work with state-run or state-supported ensembles has brought them the kind of contacts so important in dealing with government offices and officials. One of those contacts, an officer of the traffic police, has even been invited to the party and has kindly offered his help in the event that any of the guests find themselves with problems as a motorist. "If you don't want to live with torn wallpaper, you have to have plenty of adrenalin in your blood," declares the host. Life is stressful, he says, but there are ways to arrange things. And a change of government would only disrupt the network of contacts that he and his friends have so laboriously built up. No one here is seriously interested in the country's democracy deficit.