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Short stories, fables and parables about love and enamouring, about life and reality, about polictic and decency

Entry for August 25, 2008
Entry for August 25, 2008 magnify
I watched interview with Tibet Dalay-Lama. His point of view seems attractive. He says “The only way for Tibet is a nonviolent one. Yes, Tibetan has its own culture, language and religion. It should be saved. But I see freedom for Tibet as freedom within autonomy of Chine. Tibet is a small country, with poor uncultivated economy. Tibet really needs Chine. Just allow Tibetans preserve our culture, language and religion”. Actually he said all this much better than me trying to retell :) Maybe it is necessary to have especial features reached by self-cleaning or something, to be able consider politic without all these emotions. Emotions make people crazy and emotions make people happy as well. But who really knows where the solution is… If there had not been the incident with Tibet, almost nobody has known about the problem outside Tibet now. On the other hand, does it any difference? Russian has been playing games in Caucasus region for long time. It’s clear Saakashvili wants protection of NATO as soon as possible. He could predict real war with Russia must accelerate the process of joining for Georgia. So the price is lives of thousands people. Russia has found all these victims acceptable as well. The question is why do both of parties not care about humanity, moral? Why do they kill people before eyes of all the world? Because it works? We all see and most of us understand it and it still works…
Monday August 25, 2008 - 06:06pm (MSD) Permanent Link | 0 Comments
The Key of the Belarusian Problem
The Key of the Belarusian Problem magnify
I visit other countries and keep thinking what is wrong with my country. It seems I have got the answer now. The point why it is so uncomfortable in Belarus, why culture and behavior our people look so unacceptable for a modern society is lack of self-esteem. Yeah, lack of self-esteem and as result nobody respects anyone. Well, if you use public conveyances you will notice almost all of them overcrowded, besides almost all of them are acting up and you have no guarantee to get to where you are going to. So nobody complains and takes it as a matter of course. But on the other hand only a little part of people pay for this passage. When a conductor (who sells tickets) or a controller (who checks tickets) comes to a passenger, the passenger just doesn’t care. Penalties are very little here, but besides if you refuse to pay them, they can do nothing to you. So you see, people don’t respect themselves and furthermore they don’t respect other people.

Above all it came out there is one another explanation of our national characters. You can observer in Belarus too many people behaving overly rude. I thought it’s just a part of our culture, but really it came from lack of self-esteem as well. People need respect but have not, so they feel unprotected. They need kind of armor to protect themselves against society. The easiest psychological armor to find is rudeness. People see it around from very childhood and they know it better than anything else. No matter where you are in Belarus you can meet youths and quite mature men who is cursing aloud everything with simplest Russian round oaths which is so well-known now all over the world. They put at that as much aggression as they can. The more you are aggressive the more you are secured.

It occurs to me nothing can force Belarus to change now. The only way is an unobtrusive influence to grass roots to make them respect themselves, but this way is locked by authority.

Monday July 28, 2008 - 05:47pm (MSD) Permanent Link | 0 Comments
Almost totally lost historical heritage
Almost totally lost historical heritage magnify

I was born in Bobruisk and have already told about the fate of Bobruysk fortress. My wife was born in Berezino (Biarezan). This town is known since 1501 and is mentioned in the historical chronicles pretty often. Such a great Belarusian families as the Sapegas and the Pototskys possessed the town within different historical periods. Pototsky manor was built in 1510-1550.



It was a majestic building on the bank of the Berezina river. You can easy imagine it watching at its ruins now. It seems as Soviet Regime didn’t care of this monument in the far tiny town at all. They used it as a school, as a hospital and so on. This place has been just a neglected ruins for the last few decades. Local youths are used to come there to drink alcohol. Rubbish of several people generations have been collecting there. It’s said the Polishes offered to reconstruct the manor, but Belarusian authorities rejected the offer. They don’t destroy in on purpose, but likely wait for its fall to ruin on its own.

Monday June 30, 2008 - 02:12pm (MSD) Permanent Link | 0 Comments
Lost historical heritage
Lost historical heritage magnify

When I chat with people on interpals.net and they ask me how is Belarus getting on I answer everything is not so bad right now except our culture. It’s has been degrading. What does it mean? It means a lot of things and one of the most obvious ones is disrespect for historical legacy. I used not to care so much for our history as our people do. But when I got a chance to visit Europe I became to learn history of different European countries including my own Belarus. When I visited Poland I saw with what solicitude they treat their history. I saw as people there know and respect their history, respect themselves. As for Belarusians, we not only know nothing of our real history, we are feed up with Soviet-alike made-up history. You see with such mind attitude we have saved almost nothing from historical epochs before Soviet Union. Besides our authority destroy all the last monuments which survived within Soviet period by means some miracle. It was said enough about destruction of Grodno historical center, but there was said nothing of Bobruysk fortress destruction.


The fortress was built between 1810 and 1836. It was one of the best surviving examples of fortification architecture and design in the first half of the 19th century. During Napoleon war the fortress was under siege for 4 months and wasn’t concurred. By 1900 the fortress lost its military significance and was converted into a jail, used by Polish occupation forces (1919—1920, about 1,000 deaths) and used for concentration camp by German occupation forces (WW2, about 80,000 deaths).







You can find in Wikipedia the Bobruysk fortress is registered as a national architectural monument of Belarus. It’s not true anymore. The fortress manage to live till millennium and you can see on photos was not in so bad state. However A.Lukashenko decided this is a good place to build gigantic Ice Palace, a monument of the new age. The fortress wasn’t destroyed during all the wars for last 200 years, but 2 years before this anniversary it was destroyed by workers. On the photo the building built on the place of Bobruysk fortress.




I wonder if there were headlines of newspapers in 1925 like “Tsar Alexander I arrives in Bobruysk for unveiling of the biggest building in the region”. We have had recently headlines about A.Lukashenka’a arrival to Bobruysk. It absolutely equals “Tsar Alexander I arrives in Bobruysk for unveiling of the biggest building in the region”. And this new building is erected on the bones of the fortress.

Tags: babruisk, belarus, bobruisk, bobruysk, fortress, historicalheritage, legacy
Monday June 30, 2008 - 01:53pm (MSD) Permanent Link | 0 Comments
Bobruisk, after 10 years
Bobruisk, after 10 years magnify
I went on holidays to Bobruisk town to visit my parent. The town of my youth changed noticeable for the better. Year ago the town was picked out to hold harvest festival «???????». Thus it was cleaned up and arranged. There is a tradition of Lukashenka's Belarus: every year a town of the country is turned into a masterpiece, where all the people of nearby villages can have the grand party. As for Bobruisk, due to this the town became tidy, making flashy with new fronts and now it the time of flowering especially attractive.



The town as I memorized it leaving 10 years ago represented a miserable sight. It had just finished period of "red mayor" comrade Romanenko's administration, who used to prevent any attempts of entrepreneurs of the region. The town turned into museum of socialistic surrealism that time. Now Bobruisk looks quite modern. And restored foot-street Socialisticheskaja (Invalidnaja) can serve as a reminder of the Bobruisk of Ilf and Petrov time. To be honest, I find today's Bobruisk outruns the capital in some ways. They use automatic punches in trolleybuses whereas in the capital you have to use primitive mechanic ones like "strike it stronger". All stops are announced on Belarusian language.



However town development lurches mental attitude of the people who do it. I've visited new miracle of Lukashenka's provincial "monumentalism" – Bobruisk's ice palace. This gigantic building has recently been built on the place of well-known Bobruisk's fortress. The biggest defensive complex of Europe was placed there in 1918. It amazed with its scale, but was morally archaic for its time. Now on its ruins is has been built the biggest ice palace of Belarus which is meant to suffer the fate of its smaller congeners – to be turned into banal covered market. What is the fate of the palace ruins? The bigger part is buried under the sport complex and some fragments are given to entrepreneurs to be modified into casinos and bowling centers. For the greater show here is placed the nunnery.



This trip gave me one another surprise. You know how it is, you are coming back to the town of your youth after years and can hardly recognize your own street. When I was a schoolboy I heard of the project to build a avenue, right behind my parents home. But since nothing happened for tens years we were not really in earnest about. But now I'm standing on the new avenue and I'm disoriented. The building, wherein my parents have been having the apartment for 30 years always was considered as a queer one. It was placed at a wrong angle towards nearby roads. Gee, now suddenly it became parallel to the avenue. It is unusual feelings when you find out all that was considered as wrong for years, actually was right whereas all around was wrong.

Tags: bobruisk, babruisk, belarus, traveling
Monday May 12, 2008 - 11:47am (MSD) Permanent Link | 0 Comments

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