Belarus Seeks To Rejoin Russia After 5 Free Years Independence ‘Can’t Feed My Children,’ Worker Says

Pyotr Vladimirov considers himself a Belarussian nationalist. He wants what’s best for his country - even if that means abandoning sovereignty and joining a new Soviet-like union with Russia.

“Independence isn’t the wonderful thing everyone says,” the street cleaner said, resting on a park bench near a bust of Felix Dzerzhinsky, the founder of the Soviet secret police. “It can’t feed my children.”

The 55-year-old worker is an ideal spokesman for his president, Alexander Lukashenko, who is leading his nation back into the Kremlin fold five years after it gained independence in the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Belarus and Russia are expected to sign a treaty in Moscow on Tuesday for a new union expanding economic and political ties.

Many Belarussians are passively supporting the move, largely in hopes that mother Russia will rescue them from their economic woes. Presidential staffers joke that their boss should invest in real estate near the Kremlin.

But others deeply resent Lukashenko’s latest initiative and hope to seize the issue to shed Belarus’ docile image.

After Lukashenko announced plans for the new union on March 23, some 15,000 people took him - and his riot police - by surprise by demonstrating in downtown Minsk against the decision.

On the day the treaty is signed, Alexander Valadashchuk plans to join a protest organized by the opposition Popular Front.

“I hope they hear our shouts in the Kremlin,” the young artist said as he sped along Minsk’s wide thoroughfares in his rusty car. “I don’t want my country to be known in history as the one that voluntarily gave away its sovereignty.”

Still, his view is rare among Belarussians.

Nostalgia for the Soviet era is widespread in Russia, but across most of the 14 other former Soviet republics freedom from Moscow has outweighed concerns about their crumbling economies.

Not so Belarus. Reluctant to embrace the independence it never fought for, it is struggling to define itself and wondering if it’s worth the effort.

Shuffled for centuries among Russia, Poland and Lithuania, Belarus has had little experience as a sovereign state. An independent People’s Republic of Belarus existed for just nine months in 1918 before being divided between Poland and the Soviet Union.

Meanwhile, the quality of life has declined. Production output has halved since 1991 and continues to plunge. Outside the center of Minsk, store shelves are largely empty.

Lidia Markova was born in Brest, on the border with Poland, to a Ukrainian mother and Belarussian father. She lived in Moscow and Kazakstan and now sells seeds on a Minsk street corner to augment her $20 monthly pension.

“Who really knows what it means to be Belarussian?” the 62-year-old said, her sturdy build squared against the spring wind. “I don’t know if the president understands either, but he understands us, the people.”

So perhaps it’s not surprising that broke Belarus overwhelmingly elected Lukashenko in 1994, responding emotionally to the charismatic former state farm director’s calls for closer ties to richer Russia.

Lukashenko’s “reforms” have also taken a decidedly backward turn. He has closed several opposition newspapers, reinstituted the Russian language in government and beefed up the secret services.

When he faces parliament, Lukashenko seems to be trying to prove himself as a politician. But his composure disappears quickly and he shouts angrily at opposition lawmakers.

Stanislav Shushkevich, Lukashenko’s predecessor as head of state and now a parliament deputy, compared the president to “a teenager given a car who doesn’t know how to drive.”

For Shushkevich, who signed the agreement dissolving the Soviet Union with Boris Yeltsin in 1991, the new union treaty will be particularly painful.

“Lukashenko doesn’t have the right to sell our sovereignty,” he said.