In with the East Wind: A Mary Poppins Kind of Life - Belarus: Pyotr Volkovich and the Belarus Peace Committee
The Belarus Peace Committee In the waning days of Soviet power in the late mid-1980s, I led a group of US Senators’ wives, who called themselves the Peace Links, to Moscow. They had been invited by the Soviet government’s Women’s Committee, and they had a number of meetings with various women’s groups and government groups as well as a side trip to Uzbekistan (which will be covered in this series when I get to the countries that being with the letter, U). My job was to serve as translator, interpreter, explainer of culture, and to make sure the Soviet government kept its promises to this group, the latter task being much more complicated than the others, especially when the wives decided they wanted to go off-script and needed me to negotiate changes that might not have been the most comfortable for the government representatives. Somehow, I managed, and that story will be in the book of countries that begin with the letter, R. Right now, I am honoring the Belarusian conne...