Solidarities, after Socialism, by Dasha Kuletskaya – March 2025

After a fraudulent election in Belarus, protestors flooded the streets of Minsk, reclaiming spaces and symbols the authoritarian government had long controlled.

From Places Journal

Growing up in Minsk in the 1990s, every day on my way to school I passed the state fashion design institute, the “House of Models,” a building famous for the monumental artwork covering the façade. Sculpted by Anatoliy Artsimovich in 1979, an imposing metal relief depicted nineteen people marching solemnly shoulder to shoulder — soldiers, miners, factory workers, a woman with a baby, a young pioneer — some with a raised fist or gun, others with a hand on their heart, their faces sharing an expression of fierce resolve. Above their heads, in bold, angular letters, floated a title: Solidarity.

Solidarity, of course, was the rallying cry of the global proletariat — “Workers of the world, unite!” — and a recurring theme in Soviet art. 1 Yet for my generation, the word held little meaning. The years after Belarus declared independence were full of hardship. Transitional steps toward decentralizing power and privatizing state assets led to inflation and unemployment, and the abstract promises of democracy lost their appeal in the light of everyday needs. In 1994, a wave of nostalgia carried the former Soviet bureaucrat Alexander Lukashenko to the presidency, in the first free and open election in the history of Belarus. There has not been another one since.

Whatever meaning solidarity held for older generations was antiquated. For the next three decades, Lukashenko’s regime devoted itself to preserving and polishing symbols of the Soviet past, which are inscribed today throughout Minsk, in streets and squares named after the heroes of the October Revolution, in monuments celebrating the Great Patriotic War, and in institutions like the state security agency, the KGB, which only in Belarus still bears its Soviet name. 2 As the gap widened between an idealized past and the harsh realities of everyday life, a whole generation — mine — grew up thinking of the old slogans as empty signifiers.

Detail of the Solidarity relief. [© Isabel Sommerfeld via Flickr under License CC BY 2.0]
The same building occupied by a KFC restaurant, 2017. [© Yauhen Attsetski]

We watched capitalism burrow into the communist shell, creating a monstrous chimera. Kentucky Fried Chicken moved in beneath Solidarity, occupying the ground floor of the fashion institute. At the national scale, Lukashenko maneuvered between Russia and the European Union, securing direct and indirect subsidies from both sides, and paying for the social system with rents from Russian oil and gas. 3 All the while, the quality of life was being eroded by stagnant incomes and pensions and the outflow of skilled labor. Corrupt elites manipulated the law for their own gain. 4 At the age of 20, I left home to study architecture in Vienna. I was not the first in my social circle to leave the country, nor the last. I returned home twice a year to visit family and friends, only to find each time that someone else had emigrated.

From: Dasha Kuletskaya, “Solidarities, after Socialism,” Places Journal, March 2025. Accessed 23 May 2025. https://doi.org/10.22269/250319

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Dasha Kuletskaya, born in Minsk, is an architect and researcher focusing on the interconnection of architecture and economy in the context of contemporary capitalism. 

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