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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Elsewhere who wrote (93721)	4/15/2003 8:58:55 PM
From: Dennis O'Bell	Respond to of 281500

Personality deformation after decades of dictatorship. I had to work with some guys from Minsk (Belarus) for a week porting CAD/CAM software for the multinational company I was supporting our workstations for. They had an office in Minsk, but they came to France to do this work in question. It was a profoundly disturbing experience. I know a number of Parisian expats from ex Soviet bloc countries, and have been quite impressed at how well balanced they are in spite of having to leave their country and take up nationality elsewhere. But these guys from Minsk were just amazing, you couldn't get them to lighten up and enjoy life for even a moment, it was as if they had a total distrust of anyone, anywhere. I've never seen anything like it before or since. And this was, mind you, only a few years ago, not pre-Wall. I can't imagine what life must be like under some of these regimes.