Sociologists have arrived at a conclusion that Belarusians are prepared for integration with Russia, but they want to live like in Germany. The capital still appreciates its independence, but the provinces that have tightened their belts because of the economic crisis believe that the establishment of a Russian-based unified state will ease their life and bring back the advantages of once the most prosperous republic of the USSR.
“I vote with both hands for the Union. It will be easier together. I am also wholeheartedly for the Russian ruble because nobody takes our Belarusian money, whenever I go,” says a 57-year-old pensioner Tamara Rakova.
She stood frost-bound, with a folded-up sack under her arm, on the snow-covered main square of Krasnopolye, a district center of Mahilow oblast, bordering on Russia, together with others in the hope that peasants will come to sell grain in honor of the public holiday, Day of the Collective Farmer.
The provinces have already felt the hardships of the second consecutive poor harvest and the chronic shortage of foodstuffs. Last winter, butter was rationed in Krasnopolye: 200 grams a quarter per family member. Now, there is neither rationing, nor butter, nor eggs. Agricultural production recorded a 10% decline.
Another group lined up by a store: bread was delivered. Each in the line of pensioners, mostly wearing old padded vests, clenched two loaves in hand, the prescribed limit.
The old people grumbled: this time bread was twice as expensive as before. They would count up at length the stacks of rabbits (nickname for the Belarusian ruble — Ed.) eaten up by hyperinflation. To ease their life, the government announced denomination on New Year’s Eve: the Belarusian rubles, now counting by the thousands and millions, will be robbed of three zeros.
“We live like in a fairy-tale: the further, the more scary,” a young woman sighed.
Official propaganda claims that the fulfillment of the treaty will improve the life of Belarusians and ensure Russian domestic prices for oil, gas, and electricity, as well as single transportation fares.
This is a widespread opinion, but there are also many skeptics in the country.
“Why should I share the same apartment with my brother? There will be no free oil, and let Russia first resolve its Chechnya problem,” thinks Yevgeny Malashenko, a 55-year-old Krasnopolye resident.
ADVOCATES OF A UNION WITH RUSSIA BELIEVE THEY WILL RESURRECT THE PAST
The enthusiasts of a union state, mostly the elderly provincial electorate, see the future united Russia- based formation as something resembling the USSR, headed by Alyaksandr Lukashenka who is for them the symbol of harsh rule.
“After the war, we had everything, but now it has disappeared somewhere, as if plunged into the abyss. Lukashenka is a man of gold: he will unite with Russia and invoke Stalinist laws. And everything will be the way it was,” reasons 78-year-old Anna Kondratenko in a Krasnopolye store under the approving nods of those standing in line.
“Are you crazy? Lukashenka in power means a Berlin wall on the whole perimeter of the Union,” a man objects.
He is upbraided by the gloomy old people: be careful not to wind up behind bars.
Mr. Lukashenka himself has never hidden his desire to take part in the elections of president of the union state or at least to become, without elections, vice-president under Boris Yeltsin. However, Moscow spurned these proposals, while Mr. Yeltsin’s resignation and the advent of Vladimir Putin left no niche for the Belarusian advocate of unity on the Russian political Olympus.
BROTHERS
Nevertheless, the Belarusian President has supporters in Russia, as well as in the whole post-Soviet space. “Listening to Lukashenka, I hear pain for both Belarus and Russia. He did not ruin the previous system,” says Leonid Morgach, head of the Krasnaya Gora village council, member of the Communist Party which won the local elections three years ago.
Krasnaya Gora is a Russian district center, fifty kilometers away from the Belarusian Krasnopolye. They are twinned. On the central square there is exactly the same monument to Lenin with a shock of snow on its head, and on the way we saw the same villages abandoned due to the Chornobyl radiation and smothered in snowdrifts.
However, the Krasnaya Gora dwellers do not bear the seal of poverty and shabbiness which catches the eye in Krasnopolye. Stores and bazaars strike you with plenty, in comparison with their Belarusian counterparts. But pensioners also sigh here: everything is so expensive.
The Russian Prosecution Service is suing Morgach for separatism: the media highlighted a story that Krasnaya Gora wants to join Belarus. However, the village council head thinks that the press wrongly interpreted his aspiration to the reunification of the two countries into one state on the basis of the Belarusian experience.
“Some turn for help to Clinton, others to the UN, but we turned to Lukashenka. We exchanged oats for malt and tractors for harvesters and paid without any money. The Belarusians helped us restore the brewery, also free of charge. Yes, we are poor, and we go to outhouses, but is everything all that bad?” says Morgach.
Times are changing. Well- stocked, though expensive, store shelves in Krasnaya Gora are in contrast with scarcities in the neighboring Belarusian district centers. Back in Soviet times, the Russians, living in these undernourished environs, would go shopping to the Belarusian Homyel, where sausages were always in stock.
“In the times of the so-called stagnation I used to fly by plane to Homyel for beer: at that time they were better supplied than we. There were three flights a day, and the fare was only two rubles. Please explain to me why I should renounce those times?” Morgach says. @PZ NO BORDER, BUT ROADBLOCKS
Officially, there is no longer a border between Belarus and Russia. But the road between Krasnopolye and Krasnaya Gora is blocked by a control barrier: Belarusian police, stationed in a railway car, inspect the baggage of rare travelers to prevent the outflow of scarce items into Russia.
Nonetheless, contraband Belarusian sour cream, a watery but cheap product, totally absent in Krasnopolye, has flooded the market from border Russian villages to Smolensk.
“We like Belarusian service: they bring foodstuffs on bikes right to your doorstep and ask if you need anything. There was a time when we didn’t even buy bread in the store. But now they probably seem to have tightened up: the sellers seldom come,” says the 23- year-old Nikolai from the village of Zaborye abandoned by most residents due to radiation.
It is easy to avoid the Krasnopolye road barrier between Belarus and Russia through the field and woods. However, it in fact partitions two worlds and two time zones. Belarus more and more distinctly symbolizes socialism with its centralized administration, leveling, and shortages. Russia even in its Red regions is moving toward the opposite pole by all accounts.
“Lukashenka is perhaps all right. But first give me the lists and programs, and then we’ll see for whom to vote in the future union,” says the 84-year-old Russian woman Maria Motolyga, shoveling away snow drifts by her house in the village of Lotaky.
Belarus is right beyond her garden. The neighbors did not wake up in a new state on the next day after the treaty on a union state was concluded in December 1999.
Politicians may endlessly play the integration card, but the people are building their own life.
