Rewind: Minsk - Living the Hero City

This is a bit of a flashback. We are actually in Lviv now, in western Ukraine, and last night we waded through a crowd of demonstrators to get to our hostel on the Old City main square. It was more benign than it sounded. These protestors were nothing like what we read about their counterparts in Kyiv - who were clashing with the police, blockading and occupying government buildings and putting up barricades as we speak. The Lviv crowd felt decidedly more festive. There were more smiles than pumped fists, and photographs taken more for 'I was there' declarations than journalistic ones. Yet imagine the anti-climax of the group of young Ukrainians lapping up the nationalist passion when two clueless foreigners approached them for directions to a hostel.

A quick survey of the Twitter updates surrounding the entire furour unearthed the following: "We are Ukraine, not Belarus." There was a series of protests in Minsk in June 2011, amidst an economic crisis and an election won predictably by longstanding President Aleksandr Lukashenko. Protestors, anxious not to give the state any grounds for arrest, simply stood and clapped. These, numbering a few thousands, were not on the scale of the Euromaidan protests, which fielded upwards of a hundred thousand demonstrators. And in any case, security personnel nipped any disturbances in the bud by arresting dozens.

Indeed, Belarus is known popularly as 'Europe's last dictatorship', and today the Lukashenko regime shows no sign of faltering. The president deflected criticism against his authoritarian rule by claiming that it has most effectively ensured stability compared to other post-Soviet states. From a tourist's point of view that isn't very hard to see. I never felt as safe as I did in Belarus this side of the Urals, even back during Cambridge days. Stability is also buttressed by the memory of halcyon Soviet days - nourished by the prevailing municipal architecture not least, a plethora of Soviet-era monuments and a president for life.

Like most eastern European towns caught up in the fighting, Minsk was flattened during the Second World War. The Soviet government then rebuilt much of the city in the Socialist Realist style - grand, imposing and reflecting the inexorable forward march of socialism. There were pockets of pre-war Minsk which survived - the much-loved Trinity suburbs and a handful of churches. The denominational diversity of the churches captured the pluralism which never seems to be very far from the surface in all Russian polities.

In descending order from the top: the Cathedral of the Holy Spirit (formerly Greek Catholic before being handed back to the Russian Orthodox Church), the Alexander Nevsky Church (Russian Orthodox), and the Church of St's Simeon and Helen (Roman Catholic). The Alexander Nevsky Church was built within a military cemetery. Interesting, there were as many buried who died in 1937 (victims of Stalin's purges) as those who perished between 1941 and 1945 (WWII).

Again, in descending order from the top: standing on Victory Square (no prizes for whom and against whom it was obtained), the flag of the former USSR in Victory Park, a bust of 'Bloody' Felix Dzerzhinsky, who headed the Soviet secret police between 1917 and 1926, and standing (looking so un-socialist-ly round) before Lenin. We were glad to be able to take that last photograph, having read previously that the police were rather tetchy about photography since it stood just in front of the Belarus KGB headquarters. Yes it is still known as the KGB in these parts.

Mary never quite warmed to Minsk as I did (could have been the sub-zero temperatures) though she loved the handicrafts there. We bought the above from a art shop in the Trinity Suburbs - on the left a pisanky with the Holy Virgin and Child painted on it, and on the right a matryoshka-doll-like cat which is actually like Mr Wobbly Man from Noddy in Toyland. We haven't seen crafts the like of which we found in Minsk here in Lviv yet.

And we do miss sightseeing without constantly checking The Kyiv Post for updates and without the constant soundtrack of chants, horns and party music.