Why History Matters in Belarus

... worst-case scenario would be a Polish-dependent, weak state dominated by an opportunistic, Western-oriented, new capitalist oligarchic class that would privatise state assets... ... are the kinds of foreign-linked oligarchs who, in league with Wall Street, ransacked Russia in the 1990s under Boris Yeltsin, until Putin began to turn it around in 2000... ... Belarus as an independent nation, or must it now choose between being absorbed by the Poland—Lithuania—NATO constellation of power, or by metropolitan Russia, which is the real cultural homeland...