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The land that perestroika forgot. While some of its neighbours are now fully fledged EU members Belarus (classified by the US as an outpost of Tyranny) is firmly clinging to its past. The last remaining European communist dictatorship, current president Lukashenko has been in power since 1994. The economy is one of the most restricted in the world with controls on prices and wages. To top things off the state security committee has kept the Russian name KGB. Throw in the hurdles to get a visa why on Earth would you not want to visit?...
I had planned to get a transit visa before I left Ireland which would have given me 2 days in the country. It’s pretty expensive and there’s not a huge amount to see so I figured it’d be enough. Unfortunately I ran out of time before the trip and wasn’t sure if I’d be able to get on at all. Luckily it proved very easy to pick one up in Kiev. Ukrainians don’t need a visa to travel to Belarus so the embassy isn’t exactly busy. The express fee for a transit visa is €40 and there’s a travel agent opposite the embassy who sorts
out the paper work for €1.2! To stay longer is much more complicated, you need a letter of invitation, hotel reservation to register the visa and the fees are much higher. I had the transit visa in less than 30 minutes!
It was a bit of a struggle buying the train ticket from Kiev to Minsk and again from Minsk to Vilnius. Talking loudly and/or slowly in English just isn’t enough! You just have to hobble together some Russian. The train itself was pretty nice and very cheap but the border crossing was one of the worst I’ve experienced. The border guard made me stand in the middle of the packed train while he literally took a magnifying glass and looked at every last page in my passport. When he was finished he passed it onto his colleague who did the exact same! I assume he was just being a dick, either that or the fact every intelligence agency in the world seems to be faking Irish passports has raised suspicions.
Arriving in Minsk was more or less what I expected. Everything in the shops was behind glass cabinets and I had to queue for 20 minutes to
Maccers!
Capitalism 1 Communism 0 get into a bank! 80% of the city was destroyed during WW2 and in the aftermath it was rebuilt as Stalin saw fit. It’s the archetypal Stalinist city. The main street was trebled in width and lined with a series of concrete monstrosities (one of which is now a Mc Donald’s). Everywhere you look there are buildings decorated with Soviet insignia. Every few minutes you spot another soviet statue or mural. There’s even a statue to the founder of the precursor to the KGB Felix Dzerzhinsky. Responsible for mass summary executions and widespread implementation of torture, the removal of his statue in Moscow was a seminal point in collapse of the USSR. Yet in Minsk the statue takes pride of place in front of the KGB headquarters.
I happened to pick up an English language newspaper never seen anything quite like it. It even had an article claiming the West was reconsidering the “Belarussian Economic Model” since the financial crisis. My personal favourite was an article about a visit Lukashenko made to Italy. It drew a series of comparisons between Lukashenko and Berlusconi. Both the Belarusian dictator and everyone’s favourite Italian have been in power for the same amount
of time. I wonder if the Italian press picked up on the same story!
Minsk is definitely the strangest place I’ve ever been. For those of us born after the fall of the iron curtain Belarus is about as close as we can get to visiting the USSR.
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Ger
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Sounds like Ireland in the 60s
Sounds like Ireland in the 60s without the architecture. I remember glass cases and queing for 20 minutes in a bank on a good day. I think they are right the old ways are best