Grand Opening: April, 19 2008

I was an ideal Soviet citizen.  I believed in Soviet ideals and I was convinced that the principles of communism were good.  It was only the implementation that was bad.  This was the biggest mistake of my life.  There on the screen is the picture of the person who convinced me I was totally wrong.  He is Karol Wojtyla–later Pope John Paul II–whom I met while I was a visiting professor in physics at the Jagellonian University in Poland , in 1974.

After listening to five sermons by Karol Wojtyla during the Catholic festival of Corpus Christi I finally realized that we in the Soviet Union were going the totally wrong way and would never achieve what we planned to achieve.  Physics–my major teaching subject–was similar in the United States, Poland, and the Soviet Union, but in the humanities we had only propaganda while you in the West had the social sciences and in Poland there was something in between.

Why did Poland come earlier than we to democracy?  The answer is simple:  thanks to education.  In Poland in 1974, out of a population of 30 million some three million per year regularly went abroad for various educational purposes.  In the same year, from the whole Soviet Union, which had at that time around 311 million people, only 100 thousand were able to travel abroad for education.  These figures are not comparable at all.  The Soviet Union was kept in isolation.

After the three partitions in the late 18th century of the Commonwealth of Poland, of which it was a part, Belarus came under Russian rule:  first tsarism, then communism.  And now we have “Lukashenkism.” All have isolated Belarus from the humanities sciences and knowledge.  The tsarist rulers forbade Belarusians to go abroad to study.  Then they banned use of the Belarusian language, and finally they forbade Belarusians to call themselves Belarusians.  And only at the beginning of the last century, when tsarist rule was weakened could we witness the national revival with our national intelligentsia that was born and with our greatest poets: Janka Kupala and Jakub Kolas and Maksim Bahdanovich.

The most important feature of both tsarist and then bolshevist rule with regard to Belarusians was the effort to extinguish free thought in Belarus, foremost among its intelligentsia.  And unfortunately in many respects those rulers managed to achieve this.  Particular attention was paid to the “Russian School,” a concept the implementation of which was expected to help eliminate any traces of national identity.

This formula was first introduced by the 19th century Russian governor in Belarus and later on by the Bolsheviks.  As an example of this approach, when I was a pupil and studying the Soviet version of history, I learned that  Kastush Kalinouski was portrayed as a national hero because he opposed tsarist rule and fought against serfdom, but this was not true.  He was not fighting against serfdom.  The truth is that he aroused people not against serfdom, but against Russian rule.

When the Russian Empire was weakened to the extent that non-Russian nationalities living in the empire began to declare their independence, brave people in Belarus decided to do the same as their neighbors.  On March 25, 1918, they declared creation of the Belarusian Democratic Republic.

The government of the Belarusian Democratic Republic, following in the same path as the new governments in Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, achieved a lot.  Unfortunately, it did not live long; because of pressure from the Bolsheviks the capital was shifted to Grodno, and soon the government had to go into exile. When the Soviets came they created a Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic, then shortly afterward joined Belarus and Lithuania in a Lithuanian-Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic.

The worst was that with their seizure of power the Bolsheviks–in Belarus as in Russia– tried to exterminate all those who were able to think and to develop free thought.  They exterminated the members of the government of the Belarusian Democratic Republic who had remained in the country.  By 1937 almost all of them, and those associated with them, were dead.  This was the common practice for the Bolsheviks.

The Belarusian Democratic Republic from the first days of its existence paid great attention to education.  The founders understood that the educated people would create a civilized state.  This process of promoting education, begun by the government of the Belarusian Democratic Republic, continued somehow for a time under the Soviet rule, with the Bolsheviks creating in 1921 the Belarusian State University.  They invited professors to join the faculty, including from Russia, but the language of teaching–even among the professors from Russia –was Belarusian.

Thanks to the efforts of its government, the Belarusian Democratic Republic was recognized by twelve countries, among which were Austria, the Baltic states, and some others.  Belarus was proceeding on the same path as the Baltic states, but our efforts were stopped artificially.

The approaches that were devised by the first minister of education of the Belarusian Democratic Republic, Arkadz Smolich, were replaced by a totally different concept when the Soviets came to power.  Nonetheless, thanks to these first efforts of that government, Belarus managed to develop to the top rank during the Soviet era in education, including higher education,  especially in the fields of physics, mathematics, chemistry, and engineering.

(NOTE:  Here there is a gap in the recording.  Mr. Shushkevich spoke of Belarus during the Soviet period; the Gorbachev period and growth in national assertiveness in the Soviet republics; the coup against Gorbachev; how support for the failed coup among Communist parliamentarians in Belarus led to Mr. Shushkevich’s appointment as parliamentary speaker; Belarus’ declaration of independence; the collapse of the Soviet Union; and Mr. Shushkevich’s efforts in promoting Belarus’ national renaissance in Belarus in late 1991 and early 1992.)

He was open to new ideas and he stood for the national revival of Belarus, so we managed to convince the communist majority to adopt our national symbols.  We continued to try and educate the communists who were in majority in the parliament, but our sincerity and openness was both a good and bad thing.  Our fellow citizens were following the whole debate on television.  A bad aspect was that when the public saw democratic parliamentarians publicly criticizing each other, this was not understood.  A good aspect, for example, was that thanks to our parliamentary debates in the city of Grodno 80% of parents opted for their children to be educated in Belarusian.  We even attracted to our side many parliamentarians-veterans, who–even though they themselves insisted on speaking Russian–became convinced of the need for their children and grandchildren to be educated in the Belarusian language.  They understood that this was one aspect of an independent state.  All this process of national revival was done voluntarily.

We were so engaged in this work of voluntary national building that we did not perceive the threat coming from the communists, those who elected Lukashenko and then changed the constitution in order to make it non-democratic.

And what do we have now, today?  We have today a kind of mini-Soviet Union.  It is now legal–established in law–that the authorities can act to violate the elementary rights and freedoms of the citizens.  For example, this past March 25 we planned to commemorate our Freedom Day, the anniversary of establishment of the Belarusian Democratic Republic, by gathering at the Jakub Kolas Square in Minsk.  The whole square was blocked by the special police forces, which were brought to Minsk from all parts of Belarus.  They did everything to prevent people from celebrating the anniversary.  Instead, participants gathering near the Academy of Sciences to march to the square were told by the police to immediately disperse and go to another spot at the edge of the city where people walk their dogs.  So, while freedom of assembly is guaranteed by the constitution, the authorities do everything to prevent us from enjoying this right.

Elections, in point of fact, make no sense at all in Belarus.  The Electoral Commission simply ratifies the figures that were given to it by the authorities.  I can quote for you an example.  In 2004, during the parliamentary elections, the Gallup polling agency was present in Belarus.  According to exit interviews conducted by this polling agency, the democratic candidate in the district where I live received 63% of the vote, with a possible  1% margin of error.  According to the official results, however, this same democratic candidate received only 6% of the vote.

The question then becomes:  Why do we tolerate this government?  My answer would be that it is very difficult in Belarus to protest against it.  We know that the West considers the government illegitimate.  However, there is one player that is protecting this government from being criticized and removed.  That player is Russia.  Whenever one wants to criticize the government of Belarus, Russia rushes to protect it.

I will answer a second question that you might want to ask me:  Why do we in Belarus have a rather dismal economic situation when we can see a certain growth, for example with regard to industrial production and to gross national product.  According to normal statistical methods, most of our state-run enterprises in Belarus as well as most collective farms are not profitable.  But everything is corrected due to Russian oil and gas support.  Please do not think that Russia loves Belarus and therefore supports it as a gift.  It is not true.  In fact, Belarus pays for this through the risk to the lives of its citizens in protecting Russia and especially when the Belarusian military is completely subordinate to the Russian army.  And Russia ‘s air defense system in its western region is run by highly qualified Belarusians.

I will support this thesis by citing cynical statements from the Russian doctrinal concept of foreign and defense policy.  There was a report prepared by the Karaganov Council for Foreign and Defense Policy in Russia.  According to this report, Russia identifies the processes underway in the former Soviet republics as those of nation-building and national self-identification.  The report stated that the more quickly Russia succeeds in preventing these processes from occurring, the cheaper it will be for Russia itself.  Another example of Russian cynicism is the proposal of Putin for Belarus to join the Russian Federation as another entity of that federation.

But I don’t want to scare you too much, so I will turn to more optimistic thoughts.  What do we in Belarus have to do in this situation?  The first step was done by young politicians.  I considered myself a child politician in the early 1990s, because I first entered politics in 1989 and by 1991 found myself in the position of head of Belarus ‘ parliament.

Right now, just efforts by individual prominent persons will not be enough to change things.  We need that the whole young generation of Belarusians, those studying at the Belarusian State University or Polytechnic Academy, for example, should complement their knowledge in the technical sciences with more advanced knowledge in the social sciences through greater use of the Internet, television, and other means of education.

When we have an academic center here in Kansas that is providing Belarusian students with understandable, accessible information about the social processes in the democracies and also in Belarus, it then becomes impossible to cut this information flow to Belarusian viewers and listeners.

I am convinced that those who have experienced life in free societies and understand how those societies work will be different people when they come back to their home country of Belarus thanks to, among others,  the Center for Belarusian Studies.  And through them change will come soon in Belarus.

There is an old proverb:  It is better to see once than to be told a thousand times.  I recall once when I was lecturing at the Ecole Normal in France how I was surprised that the students there were taught how to protest.  So when there were riots in France with burned cafes and cars the people who suffered from that were not too unhappy since they had insured their property.  The point is that everyone has the right to protest in a democratic society.  I am convinced that thanks only to education will it be possible to first renew our a sense of human dignity and start in truth to be called “human persons” as our greatest poet Janka Kupala said as the beginning of the 20th century.

I can only express my sincere thanks to Southwestern College, to Ambassador Swartz, to Paulina Survilla for everything you are doing.  I am convinced that as your efforts and activities expand we will quickly come to a democratic, free, and lawful Belarus.