Minsk to Mist

If someone says something bad about Belarus or Belarusians as a nation, I will start mentally exterminating them. The only nation you can criticise is your own, regardless of whether you were born into it or if you earned your way into it with your efforts to integrate.

I haven’t lived in Belarus for 7 years and do not see my future there; however, this is and will always be my native country. Just like you can’t change which family you were born into, you can’t change where you were born and who you are by origin. And I actually see a lot of fun perks about where I’m from (more on this here if you are interested).

Even though I have chosen a different country for my present and my future, I am still entitled to be vocal about what things make me ick about the nation that raised me. And today, I tried listing 10 of them that I have been trying to eradicate from my mind and my lifestyle. It’s not that easy. But I think I might be on track.

An important disclaimer: this post only refers to regular human beings that I have encountered throughout my lifetime and the typical behaviours they (and myself) have demonstrated. Hence, the post is very subjective and doesn’t apply to every single Belarusian. Also, I deliberately did not say anything about politics. That’s a big separate issue that I don’t really want to talk about.

#1. Perfectionism

Even when perfection is unachievable.

For those of you who have been following my MBA journey (here, here, here and here if you haven’t yet but would like to learn more), you’ll be pleased to know that I have successfully completed my first module. The score I got is 74%, which qualifies as ‘passed with merit’.

I shared the screenshot on my Facebook feed. When I spoke to my mother, I only limited the communication to ‘yeah, I passed, all is good’.

Because, had I shared the scope, the question that would have ensued would be: ‘Oh, that’s not much, how come it’s not 100% or at least 90%?’

No matter how hard you try and no matter how far you have managed to go compared to where you started, it has to be 100% – or it’s a failure. Anything less than A is not good enough and will be meticulously scrutinised as to whether you even tried hard enough. Which brings us to the next point:

#2. Relentlessly comparing yourself to others

And judging – others or yourself, or both at the same time.

Are you the top of your class? Are you smarter/ prettier/ thinner/ faster/ taller than anyone else in your group? If no, that’s a good enough reason to hate yourself about how you are ‘not good enough’. If the answer to any of those points is ‘yes’, you’re in luck – you now get this wonderful opportunity to look down on anyone who’s behind you in any aspect of their life and judge them.

Oh, she’s way too skinny! Oh, and this one is horribly fat! Oh shame, this one is not wearing brand new clothes. Oh disgrace, this one should have had her hair properly brushed! Oh, and just look at those eyebrows, she really should spend tons of money to get them done, even though after that she’d look like a neandertal (and we’ll judge her for that).

Just make sure to be relentless. Otherwise, you won’t be good enough at judging!

#3. Feeling guilty for having a rest

What made you think you even deserve a break? Have you done all your to-do’s for today? What about getting a head start on those to-do’s you have for tomorrow? Don’t you have enough chores? Well, here’s some more!

If Cinderella took place in Belarus, she wouldn’t stand a chance of making it to the ball. And not because of the dress getting ruined or fairy godmother not being real – it’s because the family would have found a million other chores Cinderella was supposed to sort out prior to even thinking of having fun.

And that brings us to:

#4. Being unambitious is frowned upon

Regardless of how successful in life your parents are, what sort of talents and interests you have, the opportunities there are in your town, and even if you have a good enough health to pursue big ambitions, you absolutely have to at least dream of becoming a millionaire. Or a director of the town’s biggest factory. Or maybe moving abroad and building an incredible career there – only to then listen to your parents about how bad it is ‘in the West’ and how you should seriously consider coming back.

Not wanting to buy your own property at an unaffordable mortgage rate (25% interest rate is pretty normal in Belarus, BTW) is a reason for grave concern and judgment. Working the same job for 10+ years, no matter how much you like it and no matter how happy it makes you, prompts a ‘what is wrong with you?’ question. If you go for a man who doesn’t make tons of money or at least enough for you to never work a day in your life means you’re ‘settling’. And if you do marry into money, then you HAVE to have kids (otherwise, what’s the point of your existence?!) AND make sure they are raised to become millionaires.

Yet, if you do become successful, we get into:

#5. Underestimating your own achievements

Because ‘pass with merit’ at 74% (even if you manage it with a full-time job, a wedding prep, a marathon prep and Crossfit) is not something to boast about. Neither is figuring out a work problem that no one else but you could tackle. Neither is losing a lot of weight when you have been a fatty your entire life.

At work, I often need to coach my co-workers (most of whom are from Eastern Europe) for interviews with clients from the UK and the US. The hardest part of that process is to teach them how to present their achievements, as most of them are adamant they haven’t done anything impressive. Delivering multiple working projects, fixing technical problems that no one else could fix or building the software architecture that made even a seasoned client go ‘wow, great job!’ are considered to be ‘well, it’s just day-to-day work really’. Their entire lives, just like me, my colleagues were discouraged from marking our accomplishments and forced to take them for granted.

And that is related to:

#6. Praise is rare

We are very greedy on complimenting each other. ‘You look great!’ directed at a co-worker will be met with a lot of suspicion and wondering if you are trying to manipulate the recipient of said compliment. Expecting praise for cooking a nice meal is sheer audacity – ‘what, am I supposed to thank you for cooking food, are you insane?!’ Landing a new big client for your company is not a cause for celebration; at best, you will get a cold distracted ‘oh, congrats’ from your coworkers.

Some Eastern Europeans to whom I spoke about this tendency argued that at least, unlike in the UK, our praise is genuine and sincere. I fail to see how these two are mutually exclusive. 

#7. Disrespect towards our own language and culture

When I meet someone who doesn’t know much about Belarus and they learn where I’m from, they usually assume my native language is Belarusian. And get shocked when I say that I have two native languages (more on that here, if you are interested). They get even more shocked when they find out that I hardly ever speak Belarusian, same as most of my former compatriots.

The Belarusian language is my secret weapon, my way to say that I am not Russian, a part of my identity and the hand I hold open to connect to other Slavic people whenever I can. Yet, when I call my mother, we speak Russian. When I speak to my colleagues back in Minsk, we speak Russian. Inertia is a b*tch. Switching to Belarusian in day-to-day communication, although not a big feat, would require quite a lot of mental capacity, which, frankly, already has more claims on it than I can bear.

Or does it? Or did we as a nation simply chose to be lazy and live by the ‘oh, well, why would I need to change if everyone around me speaks Russian anyway?’ mantra?

Which makes me think of:

#8. Focus on complaining, not opportunities

While you have to be ambitious and perhaps dream of moving abroad, you have to bear in mind that nobody really needs you there. The ‘oh, who needs us there anyway?!’ slogan is the most typical excuse for someone from the former Soviet Union explaining why they would love to go and live elsewhere – but who needs them some place else? The fact that there’s about 281 million international migrants in the world, and most of them weren’t badly needed by their new countries is conveniently ignored.

There are always tons of excuses for not going to the gym, not learning foreign languages, not leaving a job that pays peanuts while your classmates in a different industry make really good money, and so on. For years, my mother had been whining how she wanted to learn English, if only she wasn’t too busy with work and running the household. As a family, we used to travel abroad, and my parents, not speaking a word of English, could only communicate via my brother or me. Then, over a decade ago, my mum retired, her children became adults, and our father passed away. No need to work, no need to look after anyone. To this day, the best she can manage in English is ‘Happy Birthday’, when it’s my partner’s birthday and she calls to wish him well.

When someone tells me that Brits love complaining, I suggest that our two nations should host the Olympics in complaining. Belarusians would win – and complain what a stupid game it was. Brits would be runners-up – and complain about losing to Belarus.

#9. Being cheap – even when it makes zero sense

Washing and storing every single plastic bag they come in touch with, saying that’s their way of being frugal. Yet, out of around 5,000 plastic bags at home, they only re-use three or four per year.

Finding a tiny scratch on a car means you absolutely have to throw a tantrum. Not because you have to fix it (you don’t, it’s just a tiny scratch). Because, when the time comes for you to sell it, the cheapskate buying it from you will try to halve the asking price on the basis of that tiny scratch.

Refusing to throw away old clothes. Forget that it’s no longer fashionable, nice-looking or even hygienic to wear. What if there’s a nuclear war? What if there’s a deficit time, when you can no longer go and buy stuff that you need?

Nicking stuff from the hotel’s breakfast buffet to have it later… oh wait, never mind, I’ve seen it in Britain or British-dominated foreign resorts more than once…

But that, surprisingly, has nothing to do with the last point:

#10. Alcoholics

If, reading that, you are picturing beer-filled Scots who drank Boston dry, think again.

Belarus is consistently in the world’s top 10 on alcohol consumption. This is notorious. Nothing to be proud of.

There’s nothing wrong with having a glass of wine with your supper every now and then or a few beers when you’re hanging out with friends. The problem arises when it becomes an addiction, and the normal sight in any town at 7 am is a bunch of alkies queuing up in front of a grocery store that is about to open. Because they need they hangover fix (‘opohmel’), which can be a beer or – move often than not, sadly – a bottle of vodka.

A typical sight at 7 am in any Belarusian town – or a Russian one, for that matter

Obviously, none of these indicate that Belarusians are bad people. Most of those things come from the horrible Soviet times when people couldn’t just go and buy the things they need in a grocery store, or when the Soviet education system discouraged students from having their own opinions or praising themselves or each other. The Soviet Union has been gone for decades, yet, those things take time to fully eradicate. I am quite proud of my generation of Belarusians and how far we have already managed to come in shaking these off.

It is, however, still work in progress.