4) The Soviet Union with Cell Phones
May 5, 2009
March 31, 2008
at 8:39am
Friends and family,
This is the first mass email I have been compelled to write simply because I am so behind in the progression of the actual story of my trip, I have to tell at least those close to me how I am doing. I am currently in Minsk, the capital of the Republic of Belarus.
On the day I arrived, I met an old German man on the train who worked with the police and went to Belarus about ten times a year. He coached me through the process of how to deal with the border guards, what to write on my entry card, and exactly how far to zip open my bag so that the guard would probably not check it. I arrived in the Minsk train station to find Katrina waiting there for me. This amazing girl had already rented a flat for me, and we taxied there right away so that we could drop off my absurdly heavy luggage.
Here I am, back in the USSR. Really, this is no joke. Belarus split off of the Soviet Union in 1991 so that it could keep all the old system. It has everything it did under Communist rule…it has about 51% state-controlled economy, it has one basic political party, it has a socialist level of income, it has efficient police control and a low crime rate, it has the same secret police and surveillance systems, and…most importantly…it has all of the old buildings!
In Russia, in St. Petersburg and Moscow, the buildings have so much of an imperial stamp on it that you cannot afford to realize that the place has a history of hundreds of years. That is the feel of the place. Not so in Minsk. Minsk was flattened by the Nazis completely, and rebuilt with Stalinist architecture. Everywhere I go, I see an imposing Soviet Palace of Culture, or a mural of socialist realism art, with the hammer and sickle and the words CCCP written in huge red letters on the bottom. Public buildings still have a statue of Lenin outside it, pointing towards the future with his right hand, and a large banner with flags and the hammer and sickle in the center of it. The monument to the unknown soldier, in the center of the city, is a similar Soviet affair, with the same symbol and the words BCCP below it…which stands for the Belarusian Soviet Socialist Republic.
The train stations are all made of marble, and they have the same imposing motifs that I saw in the Soviet-designed Moscow metro. The same style exists on buildings all over the city…be it the robust three storey flats lining main street, or the old public ministry with the spikey-topped clock that protrudes from the top just like the Soviet-built embassy in Cuba.
A bare minimum of this stuff exists in Russia. In Russia and other places, the people have always been conscious of the abuses of the old Soviet system, and the national ideology and therefore the architecture has changed accordingly. This is especially true for states that have never really felt part of the Russian heartland: Ukraine, Poland, East Gemany, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia…and so many of the Eastern Bloc. Yet Belarus is the exception. It is known as White Russia, and while being just barely culturally different than Russia proper, it has never truly identified with Western Europe. It was not even a satellite state…it was part of the true Soviet Union for all of its existence.
When Communism fell, they elected the leader of a collective farm to power, who was very frightened that he would see his country suffer the awful economic dislocation, unemployment, crime, and other woes of post-communist nations in Eastern Europe. So the system was kept the same in all but name.
Interestingly as well, the grand majority of the country would rather keep it the way it is. The only people that oppose the ruling order are a few youth who want to join the European Union, and ironically, the Communist Party. These people are in extreme minorities here, but they get sensational attention in Western newspapers because Bush would prefer to knock down this Russian-friendly government with another Colour Revolution, and acquire a new ally within a few hundred kilometres of Moscow. But that is likely not going to happen. All it means is that the Belarusian secret police will probably bug my flat and read all my emails so that they can make sure I am not in cahoots with the CIA, or a Western journalist trying to help the opposition.
And nothing could be further from the truth. I wouldn’t dream of trying to change this magnificent Communist relic; indeed, I thank the gods that I was able to come here and walk through the biggest open-air museum in the world while it still exists. This is the only surviving piece of the USSR…it is the same in every respect from the grandeur of the monuments to the way that the guard scowls at you from his marble desk when you enter the state university. It is the Soviet Union with cell phones, and I am so happy to be here, I am planning to defect.
Kieran
