At the AAG Conference 2014 Gregory Ioffe, who is from Russia and now teaches at Radford U in Virginia, gave a talk about modern Belarus. He both confirmed and challenged some of my impressions of Belarus. From my brief readings I had thought Belarus to be a country totally dependent on Russia, a backwater, full of corruption, and in some ways a lost cause.
But Ioffe said Belarus actually has better upkeep, grooming, governance, and roads that neighbor Ukraine and much less corruption. He said Belarus also gets a much higher number of Schengen Visas(1) than other post-Soviet countries.
He said Belarus' umbilical cord with Russia is not cut, and 70% of those polled would not mind joining Russia if it meant economic improvement. He said there are two major considerations, independence and economic improvement. Belarus has a long border with Russia and is crossed by many Russian oil and gas pipelines to Europe.
He said Belarus defied clichés: there is no anti-Russian sentiment and it is distinctly non-Russian, though without a strong identity.
In recent years Radford U has had several connections with Belarus:
-Just this month on 1/12/15 Belarus' President Alexander Lukashenko visited Radford to talk with Ioffe
-6'11 basketball center Artsiom Parakhouski played at Radford and was named Big South Player of the Year in 2009 and 2010
Ioffe also mentioned that Belarus had for centuries been part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, which looking at maps was quite large. He also noted that Belarus' Polish Catholic minority is found in large pockets on its Polish border in the west. This is part of a general E-W divide, he said, and there are fewer empty agricultural fields in the west.
(1) Schengen Visas allow access to Europe's open-border Schengen Zone countries
Good article on future of Belarus and other post-Soviet stateshttp://en.delfi.lt/central-eastern-europe/artemy-troitsky-belarus-will-be-a-normal-european-country-not-so-optimistic-about-russia.d?id=66924936
Understanding Belarus: Economy and Political Landscapeby Gregory Ioffe
http://gioffe.asp.radford.edu/images/pubpdfs/belarusecon.pdf
No comments:
Post a Comment