Arriving in Minsk across a flat glacial plowed earth, the first impressions that you are entering a tightly controlled country are the border agents using a magnifying loupe to inspect your passport. Draw a line from Berlin to Moscow on the map and you will notice that it passes directly across the Republic of Belarus and straight by Minsk. This combination of flat landscape and military ambition led to the destruction of the city with devastating results. With over 80 percent of the city flattened, the victorious Soviet government made the decision to design the city from the ground up. It was to be a showcase of master planning, with its wide boulevards for military parades, town squares, interconnecting parks on the Svislach River. With housing a priority, large apartment complexes compliment the civic and municipal buildings. Massive monuments, communist era sculptures, an air museum curating the soviet military history of aerospace (including the world’s largest commercially produced helicopter) provides a glimpse of the remaining alliances to Mother Russia. Where in the west we think of World War II – here it is the great Patriotic War that did not begin until the German invasion of Operation Barbarossa sweeping across the Stalin Line of Defense (1941). Pogroms and the search for a Slavic slave force along with the genocide of Jews took their toll. But religion, despite the communist dogma saw a resurgence with the Orthodox and Christian church, along with its Cathedrals.

The pride of the red star remains.