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 (kolkh...