Precerpt from In with the East Wind: A Mary Poppins Kind of Life - Belarus
Belarus
I was bonded to Belarusians in myriad ways. I made the
acquaintance of Pyotr Volkovich, Vice President of the Belarus Peace Committee,
in Moscow in Soviet days; he became a bright light in my life and, apparently,
I in his. Later, I taught and consulted in Belarus—for the K-12 schools and the
Ministry of Education.
About Belarus
In the 1980s, Belarus was one of the more conservative
republics of the Soviet Union. Minsk, the capital, was a city of wide
boulevards, austere Soviet architecture, and quiet order. It had been almost
entirely destroyed during World War II — 80% of the city flattened — and
rebuilt in the postwar years with a kind of monumental symmetry. By the 1980s,
it was a center of Soviet industry and administration, but not of political
reform. The local leadership was cautious, slow to embrace Perestroika, and deeply
loyal to Moscow.
The country itself was mostly flat, forested, and rural.
Villages dotted the landscape, and collective farms (kolkhozy) were still the
backbone of rural life. Belarus lacked the agricultural richness of Ukraine or
the industrial might of Russia, but it had a quiet, steady rhythm — factories,
schools, apartment blocks, and a population that had endured staggering losses
during the war and rebuilt from near ruin.
Gomel, Belarus’s second-largest city, lies just north of the
Ukrainian border — dangerously close to Chernobyl. When the nuclear reactor
exploded in April 1986, radioactive fallout drift northward, and Belarus
received about 70% of the contamination. One third of the country’s territory
was affected. Nearly 2.2 million people — almost a fifth of the population —
lived on contaminated land.
The Soviet response was slow, secretive, and inadequate.
Many residents weren’t evacuated. Children kept playing outside. Crops were
harvested. Over the next five years, thyroid cancer among children increased
twentyfold. People in Gomel and surrounding villages began to experience a
strange, invisible erosion — not just of health, but of trust, stability, and
psychological safety. Some left. Many stayed. Depression and quiet despair
settled in.
Most people still spoke Russian in daily life. (Thank
goodness! That was lingua franca for me. I could understand Belarusian, but I
could not speak it.) Belarusian language and identity were, however, quietly
present, just not dominant. The country’s affiliation with Russia remained
strong — culturally, linguistically, and economically. When the Soviet Union
collapsed in 1991, Belarus became independent, but the transition was muted.
There was no dramatic rupture, no sweeping reforms. Instead, there was
continuity — and eventually, consolidation under Alexander Lukashenko, who came
to power in 1994 and steered Belarus back toward a Soviet-style
authoritarianism.
Unlike its neighbors, Belarus did not rush into
privatization or Western integration. The economy remained largely
state-controlled. The cities grew slowly. Minsk became cleaner, more modern,
but retained its Soviet bones. Gomel recovered, but the legacy of Chernobyl
lingered — in health statistics, in memory, in the soil.
The people, caught between two cultures, managed. And I managed with them. Because that is what you do when reality says you must. And besides, I was a guest. I came to know members of the Belarus Peace Committee, administrators and teachers in the public schools, and a wonderful man named Sasha, who sacrificed his life in the aftermath of Chernobyl because that is also what you did, if you lived in Belarus.
Volume 1: ABC Lands
by Dr. Betty Lou Leaver
For more posts about and from this book, click HERE.
For more posts by and about Betty Lou Leaver, click HERE.
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