I often meet people from different countries. Some of them are students; some are strangers who walk the streets of New York. I guess New York is the best place to run into a foreigner, get to know each other and become friends. Our conversations would usually start with one question:
Where are you from?
Next come a pattern: I am from Ukraine. Wow, here is a Ukrainian!
I am from Lithuania. Great! Here is a Lithuanian guy.
Hey, where are you from? I am from Belarus. Oh, there is a Russian guy!
I am sorry? I am a Belarusian…

Come on Man! What Belarusian? You speak and think in Russian, your flag is a copy of the Soviet Union, we don’t here much about glorious Belarusian past or culture…Whenever Belarus comes up, we hear more things along the lines like Soviet Union, Russia and so on and forth.

This dialogue is a bit improvised, but its major point is here: Belarus is not considered by many as a separate and unique State. And people who hold such point of view are somewhat right. In the past years, Belarus became anything but a country with sharply defined cultural and historical borders.

We can put blame on many factors: small country with shattered cultural heritage thanks to its “buffer zone” status during numerous conflicts between West and East. Blurry national identity thanks to the communism and so on and forth. But major blame should be put on us, Belarusians because our destiny is in our hands, especially now, in the 21 century. And, here, I would like to say that not all of us forgot our roots or accepted excuses. Not all of us lost a touch with our history, and this small video clip is dedicated to them…To people who remember, cherish and want to revive our Belarusian heritage. It is a tribute to people who wants to be known as Belarussians not somebody else…It is our sincere Thank You…

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 22nd, 2006 at 4:34 pm and is filed under Free Belarus. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.