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Issue 2025, 3: Download.
A woman standing at the steps of the Palace of the Republic. PHOTO: BEN SHERMAN
Features THE SILENCE OF THE PINK CUBES
Minsk, the capital of Belarus, has always astonished foreigners with its peculiar eerie atmosphere. Broad, empty, impeccably clean avenues adorned with WW2 obelisks and pompous statues of Soviet heroes attracted untrained gazes reminding the guests of the city of the utopian settings by Orwell and Huxley. But to me, a born Minsker, they reminded more of a hospital — with the ghosts of the collective memory sanitizers leaders safeguarding imaginary peace and order
Published in the printed edition of Baltic Worlds BW 2025:2 pages 19-25
Published on balticworlds.com on September 23, 2025
Minsk, the capital of Belarus, has always astonished foreigners with its peculiar eerie atmosphere. Broad, empty, impeccably clean avenues adorned with WW2 obelisks and pompous statues of Soviet heroes attracted untrained gazes reminding the guests of the city of the utopian settings by Orwell and Huxley. But to me, a born Minsker, they reminded more of a hospital — with the ghosts of the collective memory sanitizers leaders safeguarding imaginary peace and order. […]
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by Olga Bubich
Is a Belarusian freelance journalist, photographer and memory researcher temporary based in Berlin as an ICORN Fellow. She is the author of the photobook The Art of (Not) Forgetting (2022) dedicated to the elusive nature of memory and ways to resist it.
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