Quote Originally Posted by WhiteKnight View Post
that gap was fullfilled by credits from IMF and Russia. Now they set very rough terms. And the government got paralized. They simply don't know what to do...
The IMF is poison for any country, because loans from them, come with conditions.
Recently Ireland was almost forced to borrow from IMF and people were furious - they did NOT want it and I can't understand why it happened despite, almost everyone in Ireland being against it. This was covered quite extensively in British media.

Yes, I see an "unholy" mix of socialist economical policies here, and people who exist on very low incomes.... while at the same time there are some people who are shopping in designer shops and driving four wheel luxury cars - at least in Minsk.
Don't know what to make of it!

Some technical products are more expensive here than in the EU.
Some things are very, very cheap, almost free.

Most public buildings, apartment buildings, parks, pavements, roads and infrastructure seem to have been renovated and are clean and in a good state - much better than what I saw in Romania, Moldova and Ukraine. That is surely a good thing,

I respect the fact that they are trying, because I think it's a lot more fair and sensib than what has happened in Russia for example. I just hope (for the sake of people in Belarus) that they are not attempting to do something that is impossible.

Actually, we had quite a "strange" mix of capitalism and socialism in Sweden too, for all my life. Government plans and sponsored goods and housing alongside private industry etc. But our "experiment" started almost 100 years ago and we were lucky not to have anything destroyed by war or the chaos that took over in Eastern Europe in the 90s. And a lot of the socialist practices that S wedishpeople were used to, got scrapped in the 90s.
Is it possible to mix the two like Belarus is doing, in the 21st century?
I don't know...