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Abstract
This paper returns to a topic the author dealt with in a more basic form some years ago. But it also makes an attempt to conceptualize the development of independent Belarus through its population migration to urban centers and especially its capital city, a development that dates exclusively from the post-1945 period, but that paradoxically has prevented this republic from experiencing the sort of modernization processes evident elsewhere in Europe. It takes as its starting point the pioneering work by the German historian Thomas Bohn titled The Minsk Phenomenon and develops it further by linking it to demographic issues, current health concerns, and problems in industrial development.
Notes
1. My premise is that it is premature to analyze the consequences of the current crisis, which is a result of several factors, particularly the fall of oil and gas prices in the Russian Federation and its impact on related industries in Belarus.
2. Arguably, the pursuit of a national policy stemmed directly from periodic rifts with Russia starting in 2002. The president has stated frequently, however, that he perceives no differences between Russians and Belarusians. He also adheres to the concept of the Russia–Belarus Union and has taken an active, albeit sometimes dissenting, role in the Customs Union of Russia, Belarus, and Kazakhstan. The term is not new, as it refers to the period of independence-seeking in Latin America in the early nineteenth century and featured in Benedict Anderson’s seminal work Imagined Communities (Citation2006), but with respect to the post-Soviet republics, one of the first instances of its usage was by Ukrainian publicist Mykola Riabchuk to describe Eastern Ukrainians, who are Russian-speaking but nonetheless supported the 2004 Orange Revolution. Ioffe (Citation2006, 191) has applied it to Belarusians as well, which is a rational deduction as long as one takes into account the undulations of the history of the republic in the twentieth century, some aspects of which are noted below.
3. See, for example, the poll conducted by the National Institute for Socio-Economic and Political Research (Minsk-Vilnius), June Citation2016, indicating a rise in the percentage of respondents in a hypothetical vote in favor of joining the EU (a majority still opposes it).
4. See tut.by, 27 August 2012: http://news.tut.by/society/307054.html. According to this same source, urban population growth is forecasted to peak in 2020, when 7.2 million people will live in cities.
5. NSCRB (Citation2016, 2) indicates that the average lifespan for men rose from 64.7 years in 2011 to 66.6 years in 2012, and for women, there was a similar increase from 76.7 to 77.6 years.
6. See, for example, FPS Research Center, 14 February 2012, http://forsecurity.org/belarus-ahead-ex-ussr-urbanization-rates.
7. The process of peasants moving to cities as cogs in a socialist experiment is not dissimilar to that described by Stephen Kotkin (Citation1997) in his study of Magnitogorsk, but different, in that it took place in a non-Russian republic without an ethnic urban elite of its own.
8. Only from 1956 did the republic’s Communist Party have ethnically Belarusian leaders. But these figures – Kiryl Mazurau (1956–1965) and Petr Masherau (1965–1980) – were former partisans and devotees of the socialized model. In this sense, they had been effectively de-Belarusianized, or perhaps more accurately, they had subsumed their ethnic identity to that of Homo Sovieticus. The partisan leaders led the republic until October 1980, when Masherau died in a motor accident.
9. Lukashenka did not erase the original names entirely, but gave them to more minor streets of Minsk. See http://www.sb.by/post/43468/.
10. Bon (Bohn) (Citation2013, 330). Bohn’s work is the definitive examination of the development of the city of Minsk as an example of urban planning and urbanization under the Soviet Union. I have explored the use of war and its commemoration for political propaganda in Marples (Citation2014).
11. The main opposition newspapers are either bilingual or in Belarusian, such as Nasha Niva and Narodnaia Volia. But in general, newspapers are less popular than social media sites.
12. Charnysh (Citation2015).
13. Neighboring states have expressed concern about problems of security stemming from the construction of the station so close to the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius (as well as another nuclear power station under construction in the Kaliningrad region). The two states are concerned about electric power lines from the two nuclear plants intruding on Baltic electricity links to other EU countries. See http://www.kurier.lt/ministry-litvy-i-polshi-soveshhayutsya-po-povodu-sinxronizacii-i-bezopasnosti-ostroveckoj-aes/. The first reactor is scheduled to come into service in 2018 and the second in 2020, each 1200 megawatts in capacity. See http://belsat.eu/ru/news/rossiyane-sobrali-korpus-eksperimentalnogo-reaktora-dlya-vtorogo-energobloka-ostrovetskoj-aes/. The Homeland Union–Lithuanian Christian Democratic Party has reportedly gathered 65,000 signatures opposing the building of a nuclear plant in Astraviec. See https://charter97.org/ru/news/2016/7/11/212925/.
14. The right to resettlement is based on the level of Cesium-137 in the soil in curies per square kilometer. Levels of one to five curies are in this category. After Chernobyl, areas with more than 15 curies/sq km in the soil were subject to evacuation.
15. One is reminded of Gorbachev’s ill-fated anti-alcohol campaign of 1985. See Bhattacharya, Gathmann, and Miller (Citation2013).
16. Yarik (Yaraslau) Kryvoi in Belarus Digest. http://belarusdigest.com/story/cheap-booze-people-belarus-5528.
17. One could add here alcohol-related accidents, particularly involving agricultural machinery.
18. Added to these comments, but as yet undetermined are the consequences of the conflict in Ukraine and Russian intervention in Crimea and parts of the Donbas. At the least, they have led to questions about how Belarus can remain neutral and develop its own political and social path, particularly in light of its commitments to the Eurasian Economic Community, the Collective Security Treaty Organization, and the Russia–Belarus Union, all of which are directed and controlled firmly by Moscow.
19. For a brief summary of current economic problems in Belarus, see Marples (Citation2015) and http://belarusdigest.com/story/moment-truth-digest-belarus-economy-24746.