He is from the USSR and a native Russian speaker, haven't you understood?and you are clearly not American.
Probably it looked similar. My grandmother used to say that Minsk was very clean, that the defieciency was smaller.It probably looked pretty bad there about 5 years ago.
Where did you find this information? I don't think it is connected to employment.I'd say that it's the result of the 100% employment drive in Belarus.