br23 blog - minsk, belarus

That’s a photo of my grandma’s bedroom in her private house in a small town in Eastern Belarus. I took the photo exactly one year ago, on May 5, 2005.
In the corner you can see several Orthodox icons decorated with a traditional Belarusian towel (rucznik).
The portraits on the wall are of my grand grandmother, […]

München. RFE/RL Belarus Service. 1957-1958
This is a legendary team of Belarusian journalists from late 1950’s: the two guys sitting in front are Uladzimir Dudzicki (to the left; with glasses) and Piotra Sych (to the right). The people standing behind are (from left to right) Uladzimir Cvirka, Ryhor Krushyna, Barbara Wierzbalowicz, Janka Zaprudnik. All of them […]

I have discovered Wikipedia more than two and a half years ago. Since then I’ve used it regularly as a quick reference, and I also used to contribute to it a little bit, mostly to the articles about Belarus. Since then several Russian contributors (who openly express pro-imperial, pro-Soviet, anti-Western, anti-Belarusian and anti-Ukrainian political views) […]

• scotsman.com: Time to liquidate Scotland and sell off her assets, says expat historian
“The idea that Scotland might one day ‘be a nation again’ should simply be dropped. We had our chance, when everyone else in Europe had it, in the 19th and 20th centuries. But we calculated that the Union and the Empire were […]

My online friend Konst published a very nice photo report from Bundestag. Apparently, in an underground tunnel under Spree they preserve many tiles with the inscriptions from Soviet soldiers. I’ve been to Berlin twice and walked around Bundestag, but didn’t know about that tunnel. Here’s one of the photos:

The writing in blue pen says: […]

A mysterious panegyric verse on the arms of the famous [BLANK] family from the little-known New Testament published in the Holy Ghost Monastery in Vilnia (Vilnius) in 1623:

Клейнотъ гербовъ совытый, з двоякой цноты
Домом зацным неданы есть: пре дѣльность, труд, поты
Двема кресты з стрѣлою дом […] славных:
Бог, Свѣтъ, Моужство, Очизна, з вѣков стародавных
Вы выешыли: крестами врага […]

I’ve received an email announcement from France about an upcoming international conference on Belarus and Ukraine in Paris, in March 2006, and a culture week of Ukraine and Belarus, at the same time (March 20-25, 2006). Below you’ll find the complete text of the announcement with the details:
Call for papers
Conference «Ukraine and Belarus – […]

This year, on November 4, Russia for the first time in history officially celebrated the expulsion of Poles (actually, some Poles and a lot of Litvins-Belarusians) from Moscow. Back in 1612, the Muscovites drove out our Grand Lithuanian nobles from their capital, which our ancestors had occupied for several years. Nowdays the holiday is called […]

“The Muscovites were waxing powerful, but were still vassals. It was in that period [14-15th centuries] that the Muscovites began to call their state by the Greek name for Rus’, Rossiya (Russia), and to call themselves Russians. These Muscovite-Russians had never ruled over Kiev; but the disability did not prevent them from regarding Moscow as […]

As an ethnic group, Belarusians may be new to Americans but they are not newcomers to this country, and their first linkage with America may have been our ubiquitous soldier-adventurer Captain John Smith. Smith had traveled through Belarus in 1603 when it was part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and the craftsmen he brought to Virginia’s […]