On the Scene: Belarus in Winter

Minsk

SCIENTISTS have recently established the theoretical possibility of time travel, and you don’t have to be an astrophysicist to know that they are right. A slow train from Warsaw to Minsk, the capital of Belarus, will do. You board in bustling, neo-capitalist Warsaw in the mid 1990s and you disembark in Brezhnev’s Soviet Union in the mid 1970s. Comrade Lenin still beckons from statues, a bronze Felix Dzerzhinsky still faces the KGB headquarters, red stars still adorn the caps of militiamen and soldiers. Switch on the television, and Communist Party hacks will harangue you for hours. For those who miss the good old days of the Cold War, this is the perfect destination for a nostalgia tour.

RS

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Radek Sikorski

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Minsk

SCIENTISTS have recently established the theoretical possibility of time travel, and you don’t have to be an astrophysicist to know that they are right. A slow train from Warsaw to Minsk, the capital of Belarus, will do. You board in bustling, neo-capitalist Warsaw in the mid 1990s and you disembark in Brezhnev’s Soviet Union in the mid 1970s. Comrade Lenin still beckons from statues, a bronze Felix Dzerzhinsky still faces the KGB headquarters, red stars still adorn the caps of militiamen and soldiers. Switch on the television, and Communist Party hacks will harangue you for hours. For those who miss the good old days of the Cold War, this is the perfect destination for a nostalgia tour.