CEU Press
A Life for Belarus
Stanislau Shushkevich
- Title
- A Life for Belarus
- Subtitle
- The Fall and Postmortal Rise of the USSR
- Author
- Stanislau Shushkevich
- Price
- € 78,99
- ISBN
- 9789633865927
- Format
- eBook PDF (Adobe DRM)
- Number of pages
- 420
- Language
- English
- Publication date
- 20 - 12 - 2024
- Categories
- Discipline
- Social and Political Sciences
- Imprint
- Also available as
- Paperback - € 78,95
Dedication
Translator’s Note
Author’s Introduction
Chapter 1: My Folks, Myself, and Our Elite
Grandparents, Parents, Family
About Myself: Chronology and Statistics
About Myself (or, Confessions of a Sovok)
Belarus, the Belarusians, the Elite
Moscow’s Minions and/or Bad Apples That Some Revere to This Day
The Political and Creative Elite
Chapter 2: Batskaushchyna
Komarovka, My Little Motherland
June 1941
Remembered Forever
My School, My Teachers
My Mother’s Wisdom
Artek
A Crossroads
My Undergraduate Days
When Work Is a Pleasure
Placement Time
Chapter 3: Academy, Plant, and University
Graduate Travels and the Daily Routine
The Radio Engineering Plant’s Design Lab
Sasha and I Had a Pupil: Lee Harvey Oswald
The Return to My Alma Mater
The Department of Nuclear Physics and the Peaceful Use of Atomic Energy
Rave Reviews for My Candidate Dissertation, in Kharkov and Siberia
A Siberian Academician’s Achilles Heel
Chapter 4: The Institute Was Good, but the University Was Better
A New Assignment
From No Party Affiliation to Party Intrigues
The Alma Mater Revisited
What Rutherford Recommended
Irresistible Force and Immovable Object
A Thing for Travel
The Sakharov College
The New First Secretary of the Belorussian Communist Party
Chapter 5: Chernobyl
How the University First Heard about the Chernobyl Disaster
Chernobyl and Gorbachev
The Culprits and the Guiltlessly Guilty
Fukushima and Chernobyl
Chapter 6: To Moscow, to the Halls of Power
The Mausoleum and the Kremlin
The Elections: My First, the District’s Second
The First Congress
The People’s Deputies of the USSR: Capacity, Competence, and Capability
Chapter 7: The Road to Viskuli
Trouble in “the Constellation of Equals”
A Daunting Precedent
Estonia: November 16, 1988
Lithuania: May 18, 1989
Latvia: July 28, 1989
Azerbaijan: September 23, 1989
Georgia: March 9, 1990
The Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic: June 12, 1990
Uzbekistan: June 20, 1990
Moldova: June 23, 1990
Ukraine: July 16, 1990
Belarus: July 27, 1990
Turkmenistan: August 22, 1990
Armenia: August 23, 1990
Tajikistan: August 24, 1990
Kazakhstan: October 25, 1990
Kyrgyzstan: December 15, 1990
Summing Up
Chapter 8: Enter the Lesser Actors
Declarations of Autonomy
Summing Up—And What Next?
Meanwhile, in Tatarstan…
Chapter 9: A Thumbs Down for Kebich, or “I Wish I’d Known Who My Drinking Buddy Was”
A Touching Missive
An Acquaintance Begins
A Pack of Liars
Pick a Boat and Stick with It
The Saga of the Nails
A Red Herring for the “Intellectuals”
Who Is Like Family to You?
Chapter 10: At Viskuli, in the Belavezha Reserve, December 7 – 8, 1991
The Invitation
Expanding the Guest List
How People Still Thought
Solidarity among Some Very Big Names
Arrivals by Air and Land
Viskuli, Day One
Second Thoughts
Late in the Evening of December 7, the Bathhouse
December 8
Who Called Gorbachev and Who Called Bush, and When?
Futile Doubts, Ratification
Speaking for the People
Aftermath
And Decades Later…
Chapter 11: Belarus and the United States
My First State Visit to the USA
Pennsylvania Avenue: Blair House to the Capitol
Downtime
Meeting President Clinton
Clinton in Belarus
Where to ....
Stanislau Shushkevich
A Life for Belarus
The Fall and Postmortal Rise of the USSR
This memoir of the first president of an independent Belarus (1991-1994) tells about the revival of independent Belarus, the difficulties in establishing a democracy and a market economy, a hardened Soviet mentality, and the political immaturity of the intelligentsia and obduracy of the old nomenklatura.
Stanislau Shushkevich, born in 1934, narrates his path from a son of an “enemy of the people” to a doctorate in physics, and then to be the first head of independent Belarus. A series of entertaining essays discuss some major events as well as some minor ones that are barely known. The book describes Shushkevich’s role in hosting the Belavezha Accords, which brought about the end of the Soviet Union, and explores the motivation behind the decision for the de jure dissolution of the empire at a time when the major world leaders were categorically against the division of the USSR into independent states. The author draws particular attention to the role of the Baltic States in the late perestroika period. He also addresses the political passivity of the Soviet intelligentsia and the reasons for the revival of the Soviet Union in Russia and Belarus.
Shushkevich, who lives in Minsk, also provides valuable insights into contemporary Belarus, including an assessment of Lukashenka’s controversial role in recent events.
Author
Stanislau Shushkevich
Stanislau Shushkevich was first president of an independent Belarus (1991-1994), doctor of sciences, professor, Corresponding Member of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus.
