Originally published at Belarus Digest. Please leave any comments there.

“Minsk Phenomenon” was the title of a 2013 Russian-language translation of University of Giessen historian Thomas Boehn’s book, which addressed the dominance of the city of Minsk in the development of contemporary Belarus.

In many ways the Belarusian capital is a symbol of ( Read more... )

Originally published at Belarus Digest. Please leave any comments there.

A country where parachuting teddy bears and clapping in public are illegal? Where one in eight people is employed by the military or the police? Where nobody speaks English at all? Why would anyone want to go there? These were the questions that friends and family asked when I ( Read more... )