Stories and ideas

Before the anti-government protests that shook Belarus in 2020, a thriving tech-industry existed in the country. Recent events such as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have shown that a plateau in output is all but assured for at least the next few years. Overall, it appears that the country has suffered from a severe brain drain as talented workers have fled the authoritarian state.

Belarus was once called the “Silicon Valley of Eastern Europe”. From 2005 to 2016, exports of IT services and products grew 30 times over. The share of IT exports in Belarus’s total exports of goods and services increased from 0.16 per cent to 3.25. In 2021 the IT sector was contributing almost a third of GDP growth. However, after the outbreak of Russia’s full-scale war in Ukraine, the situation changed dramatically.

There is an ongoing "total purge" to cleanse the world of sensitive people capable of love. It is my conscious choice to engage in socio-political art. This is my feeble attempt to make a change.

The Moldovan government has recently made an effort to move closer to the European Union. This has been particularly true following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. As the country heads towards pivotal elections in the autumn, people across the country are trying to work out what is best for the future.

Since 2020 the Belarusian media field has lost up to ten important independent publications. Some of them did not survive the financial crisis while others were taken over by propaganda or decided to avoid covering politics. The decline in the number of independent media outlets and the difficulty in reaching audiences within the country, where consuming truthful news can result in criminal charges, affects the overall political mood in the country.

In 2023 Belarus ranked 167th out of 180 countries in press freedom, according to Reporters Without Borders. Since the political protests in 2020, the regime of Alyaksandr Lukashenka intensified its persecution of the free press. Currently, there are 35 journalists imprisoned on criminal charges, serving sentences in prisons where they face torture and isolation from the outside world and their families. From 2020 to 2023, nearly 600 journalists and media professionals were arrested, according to Press Club Belarus.

First there were the peasants who went from being subjects of the partitions to pioneers in the Wild West. Then there was the wave of educated people fleeing the communist regime. Among the Poles migrating to Canada were also veterans of the Second World War, in whom Canadian soldiers found a replacement for German prisoners of war.

The journey across the Atlantic was long and difficult. The ship sailed to Canada for a month. Walter F. Chuchla recalls that the ship rocked in all directions and seemed about to break in half. The sea was so rough that the travellers were not allowed to leave their cabins for four days. Disease outbreaks and crowding were also a problem. Many people were dying. Minors were allowed to travel in pairs, on a single ticket, as long as they used one bunk and shared a meal.

This year marks the 80th anniversary of the deportation of the Crimean Tatars, which reminds us of the double tragedy these people face. First in 1944, on Stalin’s orders, they were displaced from their homeland. Second, when after years of struggle, they returned home and rebuilt their lives in independent Ukraine. Despite this, Crimea was annexed by the Russian Federation in 2014. Since 2022, when the full-scale invasion started, the peninsula has been turned into a base for the Russian army.

I visited Crimea for the first time in May 2000. It was the 56th anniversary of the deportation of the Crimean Tatars. In Simferopol a gathering was organized to commemorate the victims of the deportation. Many people held blue Crimean Tatar flags. Some held posters detailing the story of their displacement, and some made demands to the authorities. At that time, and even more so in the years to come, it seemed that the tragic fate of the Crimean Tatars belonged to history. This was the case until 2014. Once the Russian Federation had annexed the peninsula, the Tatars were once again deprived of their right to honour the memory of the deportation as they wished. Worse, they found themselves faced once again with repression.