BELARUS NEWS AND ANALYSIS

DATE:

19/04/2008

Southwestern opening Belarus center

BY STAN FINGER
The Wichita Eagle

Stanislau Shushkevich, former chairman of the Belarusian Parliament, is among those scheduled to attend today's events.

Culture and education are withering in Belarus as a dictatorial leader steers the eastern European nation away from Western influences and toward an existence reminiscent of life before the Soviet Union collapsed.

That, two political dignitaries from Belarus said Friday, adds significance and urgency to the role of the Center for Belarusian Studies, which opens today at Southwestern College in Winfield.

"Our mission is to promote the revival of the Belarus nation through higher education," said David Swartz, former U.S. ambassador to Belarus and a Southwestern alum.

Among those attending the opening will be Stanislau Shushkevich. As chairman of the Belarusian Parliament, he joined Presidents Boris Yeltsin of Russia and Leonid Kravchuk of Ukraine in declaring the Soviet Union's dissolution in 1991, creating a commonwealth of independent states.

"I would like to see Belarus become more like Kansas," Shushkevich said through an interpreter at the Hyatt Regency Wichita.

The nation and the state already have some things in common. They are about the same size and feature relatively flat topography. Each is landlocked, with residents known for a strong work ethic.

Belarus has more than 9 million residents -- about triple the population of Kansas -- and an estimated 11,000 lakes, carved out by glaciers.

Swartz was the first U.S. ambassador to Belarus after the Iron Curtain fell, and he has had a front-row seat as early optimism that accompanied the arrival of democracy has evaporated.

"In all of that time, we've seen things go from bad to worse in Belarus, whereas in the rest of the former Soviet Union republics things seem to be improving and normalizing," said Swartz, who is co-executive director of the Belarusian studies center.

Shushkevich lost to hard-liner Alyaksandr Lukashenka in a 1994 election shrouded in controversy, and Lukashenka has since assumed so much control that the CIA classifies him as a dictator.

Shushkevich likened him to a pawn who merely does whatever Moscow demands.

Ivonka Survilla, the president of the Belarusian Democratic Republic in exile, called her native country "the best-kept secret, not only in Europe but in the world."

Moscow covets Belarus for its resources and its work force, "and they always wanted to have it stay within their empire," said Survilla, who is the sixth head of the democratic government that was created at the end of World War I and ousted when the communists seized power a few years later.

She is in Kansas for today's event as well.

The center is "most important," she said. "There have never been any centers where people can come and study Belarusian culture, Belarusian history -- anything which is connected with Belarusa."

In turn, she said, Belarusians must learn about Western culture and ideas, if for no other reason than to recognize that what they are being taught in their schools and universities is badly distorted.

Shushkevich was a leading nuclear physicist before entering political life, and he taught physics in Poland, Yugoslavia and East Germany. But he said he learned more than he taught, particularly about the social sciences and the pursuit of knowledge -- particularly in several seminars given by a Polish priest named Karol Wojtyla, who would later become Pope John Paul II.

Those experiences made him realize that to flourish, Belarus must strengthen its ties to the West, he said.

Source:

http://www.kansas.com/news/local/story/377779.html

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