An Almost Doomed Country

Abstract

:“Belarus lives!” is the battle cry of Belarusians hungry for change. Unfortunately, its appearance is natural and logical rather than by chance, because for revolutionaries the life of the people seems more like a lethargy that does not rule out a quiet and unnoticed death. To rouse the land is their dream. But who said there should be some standard pace? The heartbeat of the youth and the old man are not the same, and an old man looks little like a young one.What place have our people chosen? How has that place determined the technology and rhythm of the main events of economic life? How did the system gain stability and why is it losing it? These are the questions the article will help to answer. The author asserts that the role of the country, be it a connecting link or a boundary between East and West, determines the rise and fall of its economic life. The virtually unchanged volumes of natural resources and drastic fluctuations in population size under the influence of external conditions create a distinctive type of outlook and economic strategy.But the sweep of the fluctuations has become so great-revolution, war, the building of Communism, and finally Chernobyl-that they are almost destroying the conventional world and conventional way of acting for the Belantsian. The world is becoming too hostile, while their way of acting is ineffective.A reclaimed, urbanized, and militarized country populated by a people whose culture stands opposed to any manifestations of external control faces the need to choose. The tasks have become insoluble working alone. Attempts to manage economic life through internal laws, even from a unified center, collapse one after the other.This tells on the well-being of every family, diminishes old age, multiplies illness and poverty, and weakens children. A lack of faith in the future conceals greater social misfortunes and sicknesses such as alcoholism and drug addiction. Along with radiation, this could inflict irreversible harm on the genetic stock of the people.To leave for another place, as our forefathers did, is impossible. The times are not the same. The “move” takes place within. But the external changes are powerful as well. Europe is full of intentions and a thrust toward creation, and Asia provides the materials for it. But Belants is becoming the bridge across which the goods and technologies of the West flow to Asia, and crude hydrocarbons go through enormous steel pipelines from the heart of Siberia to the West.The changes are changing people. There are growing numbers of those who understand that there is no point in Belarus becoming imitative, “like everyone.” The time has come not to imitate, but to learn. But in order to learn, a person needs much more, and, first and foremost, freedf!m. Internal freedom is provided only by a free life, that is, democracy. When the striving for freedom becomes the destiny of many, freedom quickly becomes a reality for them.