In Belarus, traveler finds tones of home

By the time the U.S. Embassy in Minsk, Belarus, opens in the morning, there is often a line of… By the time the U.S. Embassy in Minsk, Belarus, opens in the morning, there is often a line of a hundred Belarusian youths, sometimes more. They are willing to sacrifice most of the upcoming day for the complex process of applying for a visa that will allow them to leave their small ex-Soviet country between Poland and Russia, and work or study in the United States.

Many of them have questions for me. Have I met a celebrity? Have I ever seen the Statue of Liberty? Do I know any Belarusians in America? Most speak English very well, and many know more about American culture and legal practices than the average American. One jokes by trying to read me the Miranda warning: “You have right to silence…”

Few of these people will get a visa, and of those who do, about half will violate immigration law and disappear into the United States.

Minsk is painfully monotonous outside its central district. The city extends in rays from Victory Square, at its center, and its buildings are mostly the same rectangular shape. During World War II, the Nazis and Soviets that fought so terribly over this ground that they leveled nearly all of the ancient landmarks of Minsk, and the city was rebuilt under the rule of Stalin, who favored practical, non-aesthetic architecture. The city’s uniformity sometimes makes it hard to remember where you are.

As I sit on the night train back to Grodno, the city in northwest Belarus where I am working, everyone stares at me. I had used up all of my Russian finding my berth, and I knew no Belarusian. After a while, a Belarusian soldier comes up to me and sits down. He asks what language I speak, and in his broken English, begins a conversation with me. He is glad to have the rare chance to converse with a native speaker of the language he is studying. Tourism is difficult because of Belarus’ isolationist approach toward Europe and America, and a Westerner in common class on a train is unheard of.

Lyosha and I order tea and tell stories of our homelands as a group of students at the other end of the car begin to play music and sing. He tells me it is a popular song from the Afghan Wars, in which many Belarusian soldiers died for a cause they knew and cared nothing about. Military service is obligatory for young Belarusian men. Some, like Lyosha, are glad for it, since there are very few jobs to be had in Belarus.

I arrive to Grodno, say goodbye to Lyosha and walk down Azheshka Street to the university for morning classes. The city is preparing for the upcoming celebration of May 9, the anniversary of the Nazis’ defeat on Soviet ground. Banners are being hung in Lenin Square, and the eternal flame is lit. The flame is no longer eternal, because of the national gas shortage, but no one knows what to call it except the “eternal flame.”

The university, all one building, is cold in the early May chill. The gas heating is not turned on until 10 a.m. I go to my first class and wait as the students file in. Mrs. Makedonskaya, a teacher at the lyceum across the city, has come to listen to me today. I had lectured to her class earlier in the week.

Her students had asked me about different states they had studied and what I had thought of the war in Iraq. The students I am facing now are future teachers of Belarus, nearly fluent in English and knowledgeable about America. I am almost ashamed to mention in my lecture that many Americans do not even know Belarus is a country.

Belarus and its government had freedom in their grasp for three years after the Soviet breakup of 1991. In 1994, Alyaksandr Lukashenko, a former Soviet deputy, took over the government, and the country has seen a decade of totalitarianism and poor human rights ever since. The old Soviet icons still remain in the streets and squares of Belarus’ cities, and Russian language and culture has dominance over the nation’s own. Mrs. Makedonskaya is a self-proclaimed “agitator,” on the lists of the Belarusian KGB — former Soviet secret police — for subscribing to an English-language newspaper that the government calls dissident.

“They probably have a man living across the street from me, making sure I am not poisoning my students with Western propaganda,” she jokes.

After classes, I walk up Lenin Street toward the bus station with some of the students. Ruslan, a tall 19-year-old, one of the few boys in the class, demonstrates his knowledge of the U.S. Constitution. Katya, one of the shyer students, asks me if there are mountains where I live. Many inhabitants of this flat, landlocked nation have never seen mountains or the sea.

As I return to my small village outside Grodno, a woman and two children charge toward me, followed closely by one of my roommates. Mrs. Strutsina, our upstairs neighbor, stands at our doorway screaming “tsigania,” Russian for gypsies, who sometimes show up at doors and ask for help.

Mrs. Strutsina had been looking for a few hundred rubles she could spare while the woman and her two sons had wandered around and taken everything of value they could carry. The recent accession of nearby Poland and Lithuania into the European Union had further tightened controls on the closest borders, trapping many Roma near Grodno.

My roommate trips one of the boys and holds him down in the dirt, shouting to the woman to stop. She pauses, as if to consider the value of her son versus her plunder, then drops the silverware she carried as my roommate slowly releases the boy. As the trio runs out of the village, my roommate and I pick up the recovered treasure and carry it back to the apartment building. He winks at me and says, “Another day in Belarus.”

Later that night, Mrs. Strutsina’s granddaughter brings us tea to thank us. I teach her to play backgammon as the gas goes off and we pull blankets out to keep us warm. I feel awkward, an American teaching a Belarusian a Russian board game. She has enough forces taking her nation’s culture away from her. But she smiles, capturing a piece of mine, so we keep playing.

Michael Mastroianni was proud to be called a “subversive” in Belarus. He can be reached at realityfactory@yahoo.com.