Part One: Brutal Dictatorship
-Minsk, Belarus. Need to get to the Zhadanovichi Market, which stocks everything you can imagine from home improvement to bacon covered in caraway seed (which I am told by the attractive young shopkeeper is the best guarantee against portliness), in a hurry? No problem. Unlike in the “capitol of the free world,” there are scores of private transport companies all competing to provide an inexpensive, rapid, and hassle-free alternative to the state-run bus system. The mirco-buses of these various firms stop when you wave them down, and unlike our own D.C. metro buses the driver is happy to make change for you. They travel on the same routes as the public transportation system but for a few roubles more (2,000 roubles =1 USD) they speed you to your destination in half the time. No wonder they are jam-packed as we return from this massive marketplace Saturday afternoon.
Contrary to what you likely hear, the “last Stalinist dictatorship in Europe” is bursting with private shop-owners selling their goods at Zhadanovichi to a steady stream of customers. From the crowds placing their orders, it appears half the population is remodelling its kitchen (and having done that three years ago, I pity them). Attractive ceramic tile made in Belarus. Tile imported from Poland or from further abroad. It is all on sale. And although the design of the Belarusian, Russian, and Polish-made couches is not my particular preference, I certainly cannot deny the variety and availability. I speak with the family who owns a shop selling domestic and imported kitchen ranges, hoods, and imported cooking utensils. In between taking orders they complain, as small business owners everywhere do, about the threat of big foreign sellers and ask me about the home improvement business in the United States.
In the building where clothing is sold, we are nearly run down by a shopkeeper rushing back to his shop with a pair of shoes presumably from his back stock in the size needed by his customer. Privately-owned clothing and shoe retailers bending over backwards to please their customers in the “last dictatorship”? Surely Uncle Joe is spinning in his grave. The clothing is much what you would see in any mall in the United States, from trendy things for young people to suits and dresses. Outside, Vietnamese clothing stalls compete with lower cost (and quality) imports from their own country.
We stop for an espresso in at a packed snack bar owned by Vietnamese and staffed by Belarusians, where locals drink beer, coffee, and eat enormous plates of sausages and fried vegetables whilst fogged in a cloud of cigarette smoke.
Later, amazingly in the one country in Europe that we are told fiercely suppresses all religions but the Orthodox Church, my colleague and I attend a standing room only Mass in a beautifully restored baroque Catholic Church which the Belarusian government returned to the Church after it had been used as a school of physical fitness during the communist era. At a bookstore near our hotel, I browse through a history of the Belarusian Jewish community – which is also shocking under a regime that we were told last week on the floor of Congress is violently and brutally anti-Semitic.
Earlier in the day, we pass the headquarters of the Belarusian KGB, the “brutal arm of the dictatorship.” As we snap picture after picture of the building, which is just right on the street, we notice not so much as a city police officer in the vicinity. Kids: don’t try this at Langley.
After reading so many horror stories about Belarus I am shocked at how absolutely normal it is. No McDonalds, we are told, are allowed in this dictatorship. However, I see a packed Golden Arches just down from KGB headquarters with an enormous poster enticing customers with a “Big Tasty”. People are shrinking in fear, we are told. However, people are actually quite open even when stopped in the street with questions about politics and their standard of living.
The opposition parties, which we are told are brutally suppressed, held a political rally disguised as a rock concert tonight, in the black-out day before the voting begins. Though as in scores of Western countries it is illegal to campaign the day before the election, this rally is held in the center of Minsk with rock bands blasting hard nationalistic tunes interspersed with admonishments by the M.C. to go out and vote for the opposition candidate. We do not see a single police officer at this concert/rally attended by more than a thousand Minsk youth. “Oh the police are all around us,” a semi-drunk youngster tells us when asked about it. “They are just undercover.” Considering the leather and mohawks we see through the crowd, it must be a very deep-cover operation.
Try holding a rally/rock concert in D.C.’s Lafayette Park with more than a thousand attendees and no permit. As a drunken man passes us saying “George Bush, veddy good! Angela Merkel, veddy good,” a youth explains that under the tyrannical rule of President Alexander Lukashenka, the government does not pay direct subsidies to small businesses! “Please tell me all about subsidies to small businesses in USA,” he pleads.
At the end of the rock concert/political rally, which concludes in a song about how Belarus will follow the Orange Revolution of Ukraine, and in great contrast to otherwise spotless Minsk, the park looks a war zone: beer bottles are thrown everywhere. It is absolutely trashed. The forces of progress and reform are on the march!
What is the point of all this? Lest I be guilty of what I accuse others of I will make clear that Belarus is no libertarian utopia. The state has maintained a strong role in the economy and has husbanded the transition in a very active manner. Unlike the “reformed” economies of, say, Romania or even neighboring Latvia, however, strong economic growth in Belarus is an objective reality, the shops are full of things that people actually want to buy, and the people are buying them. People are well-dressed and generally have a very pleasant demeanor. Families fill the snack bar at the huge downtown department store; fathers sip beer and read the paper while their children drink fruity drinks. You will not find this in the countries where the style of “reform” demanded by the US or UK has been undertaken. That is a simple fact.
There is simply no evidence to anyone but one utterly ignorant of history – or someone with a political axe to grind -- that Belarus is a “Stalinist dictatorship in the center of Europe.” It has simply taken a different path of reform that has suited its people well, which is why they keep electing the president whose policies have provided double digit" growth every year. As Ronald Reagan famously stated in the 1984 campaign, “ask yourself whether you are better off now than four years ago.” Perhaps Condi Rice should actually visit the place and even have a ride on the private micro-bus service before spewing such nonsense.
Election day. To be continued…
