BELARUS NEWS AND ANALYSIS
DATE:
16/10/2008
Bluffer's guide to Belarus
By OLIVER HARVEY
Chief Feature Writer
WE might have SWP - but they've got the KGB.
England's next World Cup qualifying opponents are little-known Belarus, sandwiched between Poland and Russia.
And while Shaun Wright-Phillips could be running the wing for England tonight, the sinister KGB spy ring still operates in Belarus - known as White Russia.
It is a land-locked country where the Iron Curtain has yet to be drawn.
The former Soviet nation of ten million has been labelled "the last dictatorship in Europe".
Here we bring you the bluffer's guide to Belarus - 20 fascinating facts to impress your mates while you watch the game.
1. Belarus manager Bernd Stange was a Cold War spy.
As a team boss in East Germany - first at club Carl Zeiss Jena, and then for six years in charge of the national side - he informed for the Stasi, the secret police.
Under codename Kurt Wegner he was briefed to pass on any signs that his players were tempted to defect to the other side of the Berlin Wall.
2. Stange was also in the line of fire during his time as national coach of Iraq from 2002 to 2004.
He said: "My car was shot at. I had death threats because there was a picture in the newspaper of me with the British foreign minister Jack Straw and 5,000 footballs that he had given us.
"A photo of me with the mortal enemy! After that I had to leave the country."
3. Their most famous sports star is gymnast poster girl Olga Korbut - now 53 - who won four gold and two silver Olympic medals.
At the 1972 Munich Games she became the first person ever to do a backward somersault in competition on the beam.
4. President Alexander Lukashenko, 54, has stifled anyone speaking out against his 14-year rule. He warned that anyone joining opposition protests would be treated as a "terrorist", adding: "We will wring their necks - as one might a duck."
5. In 1995 he was said to have praised Adolf Hitler, saying: "The history of Germany is a copy of the history of Belarus.
"Germany was raised from the ruins thanks to firm authority, and not everything connected with that well-known figure, Adolf Hitler, was bad. German order evolved over the centuries and under Hitler it attained its peak." It was later claimed he was misquoted.
6. Opposition activists are closely monitored by the secret police - still called the KGB.
7. Belarus is the only country in Europe that practises the death penalty. Execution is carried out by firing squad.
8. England will face Belarus tonight at the Dinamo Stadium in capital Minsk. The ground - capacity 41,040 - was one of the venues of the football tournament at the 1980 Moscow Olympics.
9. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice described Belarus as the "last dictatorship in Europe". It only became a separate state in 1991, following seven decades as a Soviet republic.
10. Their star player is former Arsenal midfielder Alexander Hleb - who is out injured.
Manager Stange is a big fan of the Barcelona ace. He said: "When someone like Hleb is injured then the team are missing their Maradona, their Beckenbauer, their Pele."
11. Protests against Lukashenko were described as the Jeans Revolution. In the former Soviet Union jeans were a symbol of Western culture and so were recognised by Belarusian opposition as a symbol of protest against Lukashenko's Soviet-like policies.
Demonstrations failed to dent his hold on power.
12. Belarus is heavily affected by the fall-out from the nuclear explosion at Chernobyl in neighbouring Ukraine in 1986. Hundreds of thousands of people suffered high radiation doses. Around 20 per cent of agricultural land is contaminated and unusable.
13. British band the Levellers released single Belaruse in 1993. The lyrics have been interpreted as referring to the Chernobyl disaster.
14. Hollywood legend Kirk Douglas - born Issur Danielovitch in the US in 1916 - has Belarusian parents called Bryna and Herschel.
15. Belarus has its own rap music scene but the biggest band is NRM, inspired by the US rockers REM.
NRM - the initials stand for the Belarusian words for Independent Dream Republic - are banned from government-controlled radio stations.
The band, which is known for supporting democracy movements, had big hits with the albums LaLaLaLa and Acoustic Concerts At The End Of The 20th Century.
16. Hollywood film producer Louis B. Mayer was born in the Belarus capital Minsk in 1884. He is credited with making the first modern celebrities by creating the star system at American studio Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, now better known as MGM.
Stars he groomed included Clark Gable, Judy Garland, Greta Garbo, Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy. Mayer died in 1957.
17. Approximately 40 per cent of Belarus is covered in forests, reflected by the green stripe (as well as red) on the national flag.
18. Clothes designer Ralph Lauren - born Ralph Lifshitz in New York in 1939 - is the son of Belarusian Jewish immigrants.
19. Belarus was left devastated by the Second World War. Occupied by the Nazis between 1941 and 1944, it lost 2.2million people, including most of its Jewish population.
20. Science fiction writer Isaac Asimov was born in 1920 in the Belarusian village of Petrovichi, now part of Russia. His famous books include the Foundation series and the short-story collection I, Robot.
Source:
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article1809710.ece
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