There are some interesting things going on in Belarus and frankly, I don’t even know where to start. Perhaps, let’s review diplomatic relationships, if such exists, between Belarus and the United States of America. Some might not be aware, but couple weeks ago Belarus side re-called its Ambassador and suggested that Americans do the same thing i.e. get the hell out of here, nobody really wants to go to America and therefore we don’t need that many visas and our slogan is “zhivu u Belarusi it tym ganarusya” or “I live in Belarus and I am proud”.

Oops, did I mention visas? Yeah, that’s right because this word brings us to another issue – Belarusian authorities plan to tighten up conditions under which Belarusian students or professionals can go abroad to study or work. The reason? Oh well, apparently there is “unhealthy” tendency among young Belarusians to jump ship and look for better opportunities somewhere else. So, essentially Belarusian authorities became worried about not only the state of financial capital but also about prospects of retaining human capital.

Oh no, why do they run away from prosperous Belarus where according to official lines democratic values are at the same level as in Austria? Don’t they have enough work prospects here, where official unemployment level is 1.1%? Well maybe statisticians should revise definitions of unemployment and then see this number skyrocketing to 10-15 % because it seems that they forgot to include 500 000 (at minimum) people who couldn’t find job in Belarus and were pushed to look for jobs abroad, 80000 to 90000 who didn’t register for unemployment benefits or 50000 small business owners who were left with nada as a result of draconian measures taken by the government.

I doubt that the government doesn’t know true values, tendencies and estimations. And precisely because of it they should be afraid that at some point there might be a situation where “men-in-black” i.e. riot police together with various followers will constitute Belarusian intellectual circles. And this is the problem because one would be hard pressed to detect fountains of creativity and thinking among individuals who follow and adore prescribed official values, the very same values that got stuck between Western and Eastern borders, exhausted their limited appeal, depleted resources and closed doors for opportunities. What’s next?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 2nd, 2008 at 11:12 am and is filed under Uncategorized. 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.