Saturday April 25 - Minsk

Saturday, April 25. Today we tour Minsk with Karina, a reference librarian at the Academy of Sciences library. This tour does not follow a typical tourist approach, for one thing, we travel on foot. Also, our primary goal is to visit newspaper and bookselling kiosks, etc, as well as bookstores. We manage to visit what must be the majority of such operations in downtown Minsk. The city is very quiet, but this is the day before Orthodox Easter, so it is to be expected.

We see one building that bears a sign that it is the headquarters for the working group of the Commonwealth of Independent States--this is the only we see of Minsk's status as capital of this non-country. When I hear optimistic remarks in Minsk about the future of Belarus, it is not in connection with the commonwealth, but rather concerning its future as a "bridge between east and west."

During our walking tour, Dr. Levner notes the greater availability (and at reasonable prices) of basic foodstuffs in the government operated stores. Purchases of such items requires both rubles and coupons, which are intended to keep non-Belarus persons (such as Dr. Levner) from buying these items and returning to Russia, Ukraine, etc. Belarus citizens also receive special booklets with yet other coupons which allow the purchase of expensive goods, such as refrigerators. These can only be used by the named bearer. Nevertheless one sees older women trading in these coupons and booklets on the street.

Most noticeable to me is that I virtually never hear Belarusian spoken on the street, although I listen very carefully. Everyone speaks Russian in Minsk to one another even informally, at least as far as I observed. After ballet (Giselle), I went to the mid-night Easter service at the main Orthodox church. It was necessary to wait from 10 PM until midnight, when the service began. The service was rather disorganized, with many of the active participants reading from scripts, and with the local metripolitan (head of the church) continually muttering instructions to his troops. Not much rehearsal, apparently.

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At least we had a day for tourism in Minsk. And it was orthodox Easter, which was interesting. As was typical during this and many other visits to Russia and the former Soviet Union, local librarians were glad to spend some of their time off showing us around. I in particular, an American librarian from Washington DC who could carry on a conversation in Russian, was a little unusual.