MINSK, 10 September (BelTA) – The work on the book Superposition. Parallel Worlds was interesting and allowed revisiting the time when the construction of Belarusian statehood began, BelTA learned from the book’s author Sergei Musiyenko before the presentation of the book published by BelTA’s publishing house with assistance of the Information Ministry.
The texts were written by the head of the analytical center EcooM, member of the scientific advisory group under the State Secretariat of the Security Council of the Republic of Belarus Sergei Musiyenko. He has witnessed and taken part in many political processes in the country.
Sergei Musiyenko said: “Work on the book turned out to be a very interesting project. I may be already accustomed to writing books but it was wonderful immersion into the age when the construction of Belarus’ statehood began. A surprisingly interesting time. It is pity that I hadn’t explored the topic before. Thanks to BelTA I’ve immersed myself into this topic. I described posters of the Parallel Worlds exhibition but it was not a description of the posters totally from the point of view of art. These are my recollections influenced by 30 years of experience. It is surprising to read about some innovation, which was being implemented in our state, about proposals of the president and check out what happened 30 years later. It is an unforgettable feeling.”
The author remarked that the state had made virtually no mistakes: “I honestly admit that we would have pointed them out. But I haven’t found any. I perused newspapers in the Presidential Library dated by these years and studied them closely.”
According to Sergei Musiyenko, Belarus received its development impulse in the first few years of state construction. “We didn’t build only roads. We built the security system, the Armed Forces, social security, the education system, art and culture. We built everything and nobody helped us with the process. We didn’t have advisors due to a simple reason: nobody knew how it should be done. Not only in our country but in the world. No one had the experience of leaving the rigid plan-based system of the socialist state – the Soviet Union – and floating freely without resources. When the president visited the National Bank for the first time, he came out and said it was so empty that a mouse had hanged itself. Money was present formally in some accounts but it didn’t exist physically,” he stressed.
Sergei Musiyenko pointed out that any branch of the Belarusian economy was a mess. “There were disasters everywhere. After spending the time in the archives I’ve determined that the year 1996 is 2020 to the third power. Because the foreign political situation and the domestic political situation were so complicated. In my book I wrote about it, too,” the author added.
Asked how much time it took to create the book, Sergei Musiyenko said that he had lived in the library and the archives for half a year. “A magnificent and very interesting project. And it is a manifold campaign: we organize an exhibition, write a book, and demonstrate a film,” he concluded.
It is a unique publication because it presents the entire diversity of materials from state-run and opposition printed media of the mid-1990s, which are not available to the general public. Newspaper headlines reflect the country’s life at the beginning of the efforts to establish Belarus’ independence. They also reflect the problems and challenges Belarusians faced and how the young state tackled them.
The book is already available for sale in the retail chains Belkniga and Akademkniga.
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