POVERTY IN BELARUS
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My family emigrated from Belarus to the United States in 1994 and since then I have not been particularly anxious to go back.
About four months ago I decided to go back for a couple of weeks to work on a photo essay about the 20th anniversary of the Chernobyl catastrophe;
what I saw on the streets of Byelorussian and Ukrainian cities and in everyday lives of ordinary people shocked me far worse than the aftermath of
a two-decade-old nuclear explosion.
I spent 3 weeks hopping trains between various cities in Ukraine and Belarus. I rented a car and crossed Belarus from South to North. I walked countless kilometers on the streets of Zhlobin, Minsk, Gomel, Polotzk and other Byelorussian towns. And everywhere I saw the same thing – as soon as you walk out of the downtown area and look past the architecture and attractions designed for tourists you see World War II veterans looking for empty beer bottles in garbage cans, old ladies selling whatever they can sell to buy groceries and drunks looking for money to buy yet another bottle of suspicious vodka.
In the United States you can barely turn on your TV set without hearing from some charity organization asking the viewers to sponsor a child in a third-world country. Every day we see news of starving people in Africa or of suffering political prisoners in North Korea. We hear constant talk about the conflicts between Israelis and Arabs and about terrorist attacks all over the world. We never hear about the overwhelming poverty in the countries that up until a decade ago were parts of the Soviet Union.
I went to Gomel, a small Byelorussian town where I was born I spent first 17 years of my life. I was exited about seeing some of my classmates and old friends – people whom I had not seen in more than 12 years. The more I wondered around the streets of my little hometown and the more people I spoke to the more I got depressed. Almost everything that I saw spoke to me of poverty, depression and despair.
In the 15 years of its independence Belarus has become what the Soviet Union was in the 1950s – a totalitarian state. The stores are full of consumer goods but very few people can afford them. The ones who voice their unhappiness are swiftly dealt with. The friend that I stayed with while I was in Gomel used to be the vice-dean of the history department at the Gomel University. During the last presidential elections he registered himself as a member of president Lukashenka’s opposition. He was immediately dismissed from his position – while he still teaches history he is no longer a vice-dean.
Another friend of mine recently had a heart attack. As part of his post-surgical treatment he needs to take medication that costs $40 per pack; a pack of pills lasts him for approximately two weeks and he needs to continue this treatment for 6 months. His monthly salary is about $250; most days he has to make a choice between sacrificing his own health and feeding his family.
On my drive through Belarus I passed a lot of villages and farms that had no electricity and no indoor plumbing; places like that take alcoholism to a whole new level. With no good jobs and no entertainment available to them villagers pass their time drinking. I’ve seen lines forming in front of local liquor stores as early as 9 in the morning. As I was driving through a small village in Northern Belarus I saw an old lady leading a goat to pasture. I stopped to ask her for directions to Polotzk when I realized that she was almost incoherently drunk. It was 10 AM… In Gomel I saw two raggedy-looking men passing an almost empty bottle of vodka on a park bench at 7:30 in the morning.
In Kiev I saw what was probably the saddest thing in my entire trip. It so happened that my visit coincided with Kiev’s anniversary. All the streets and plazas in and around downtown were literally filled with people. There were bands playing on every corner, people were drinking and dancing in the streets. As I was walking towards Khreshatik, Kiev’s central plaza, I saw an old man, his chest covered in World War II medals. He was drifting through the crowd, collecting empty bottles so he could sell them to a recycling plant. He came up to a young man and asked if he could have the kid’s empty beer bottle. The kid handed him the bottle and as the old man reached to take it the kid pushed him. The old man fell hard, breaking most of what he managed to salvage that day; the young man and his friends laughed.
I believe that there are very few people, at least in the United States, who are “pre-programmed” from birth to be losers. Most people are in certain positions in their lives, both economically and socially, because of the choices that they made. When I see a 40-year-old man working in McDonalds I know that he is there because he slacked off in high school or dropped out of college. When I run into a panhandler on the street I don’t feel guilty about the fact that he or she is begging for money, nor do I give them “50 cents for a bus” because I don’t believe that that money will do them any good – they’ll probably spend it on liquor and drugs.
However, when I was in Belarus, all of my cynicism evaporated and I felt incredibly sad seeing scores of people that have absolutely no social protection from the government and have to struggle for every penny and for every scrap of food. They are truly, absolutely, completely and royally screwed. For the vast majority there is no light at the end of the tunnel, no big payday to reward their efforts. An average Byelorussian citizen can be the most hard-working and well educated person, but unless he or she has friends in high places all the efforts are pretty much useless, and the only thing left to do is to spend one’s meager earnings on a bottle of vodka and drown all the problems in the magical clear liquid.
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