Russian military personnel driving vehicles without license plates, billboards advertising holidays in Moscow, and Belarusians facing the demand to speak “a normal language” — that of the aggressor country responsible for about 30,000 civilian casualties in Ukraine since 2022. As well as these, one can find many more indicators of the growing presence of the so-called “Russkiy mir” (Russian world) in Belarus, a state in which Putin’s occupation is using less obtrusive tactics.
By
Olga Bubich
September 18, 2024
With skillfully designed propaganda that presents the Soviet past in rosy colors only, little is remembered about the Gulag, repressions, censorship, and poverty. “People feel nostalgia for the taste of Soviet sausage,” a critical acquaintance of mine born in the Belarusian Soviet Republic commented. “But no-one remembers that they ate it only once a month”.
By
Olga Bubich
April 23, 2024
One out of four, and 1941 are two numbers everyone who went through the Soviet and post-Soviet schools in Belarus is familiar with. The former stands for the statistics of the Belarusians who died in the Great Patriotic War, the latter marks the year this war began. However, when I first came to Europe as a teenager, I was amazed to discover that no one actually knew either of my people’s heroism or our great victory. The war, as I found out then, did not even start in 1941 — nor was it defined as “patriotic”. Rather it was everyone’s — “world war” — with patriotism not attributed to nationalities.
Essay by
Olga Bubich
June 20, 2023
Issue 2024, 3: 
Baltic Worlds covers; the Baltic Sea Region, Eastern Europe, Russia, CentralAsia, Caucasus and the Balkan area.