Stanislav Shushkevich (December 15, 1934) is a Belarusian scientist and politician. From 1991 to 1994 he was Chairman of the Supreme Council of the Republic of Belarus. He is best known as the representative of Belarus, who signed the Belovezhskaya agreements on the creation of the CIS.
Origin and years of study
Where did Shushkevich Stanislav Stanislavovich start his life? His biography began in Minsk in a Polish-Belarusian family. His mother Helena Razumovska was a translator and writer who published in Polish print media published in Belarus in the 1920s and 1930s, and his father was a Belarusian poet and writer. Three years after the birth of his son, he was repressed, served time in the mines of Kuzbass, and was released only in 1946. Returning to his homeland, he began to teach in a rural school. But according to the vile practice of Stalin's jailers, he was again arrested in 1949 and exiled to the Krasnoyarsk Territory. Finally returned to Belarus only in 1956.
It's amazing, but the stigma of "the son of an enemy of the people", which ruined (and even broke) the lives of manyStanislav Shushkevich's peers, apparently, did not affect his fate in any way. In 1951 he graduated from school, in the same year he entered the physics and mathematics department of the prestigious Belarusian State University (BSU), in the year of his father's release he graduated from it, and immediately became a graduate student at the Institute of Physics of the Academy of Sciences of the Belarusian SSR.
The beginning of a career in the Soviet period
After briefly working as a "menes" at his native institute, Stanislav Shushkevich leaves for the position of senior engineer at the Special Design Bureau of the Minsk Radio Plant. At that time, the plant was engaged in the development and manufacture of instruments for physical research. An interesting episode is connected with this period, which Stanislav Shushkevich himself readily recalls. Biography briefly brought him together not with anyone, but with the future official assassin of American President Kennedy Lee Harvey Oswald.
The fact is that in 1959 he came to the USSR on a tourist visa and declared his desire to stay in the USSR. After the refusal, he defiantly tried to commit suicide. They met him halfway and determined Minsk as his place of residence, and sent him to work at a radio plant. Shushkevich, who spoke English well, was assigned to study Russian with the American. According to his recollections, Oswald did not make any noticeable impression, he looked sluggish and indifferent, and he was a mediocre locksmith. However, this did not prevent him from acquiring a young wife in Minsk, with whom he soon returned back to the States.
Scientific career in the USSR
In 1961, Stanislav Shushkevich returned toBelarusian State University, where in six years he goes from senior engineer to head of the scientific laboratory sector. In 1967, he was appointed Vice-Rector for Research at the Minsk Radio Engineering Institute. According to the memoirs of Shushkevich himself, at the time of his new appointment he was non-partisan. This circumstance made it very difficult for him to work in a new place, since all important decisions at the institute were made at the party committee without his participation. Turning to the city party committee, Shushkevich demanded to find a solution to the problem. As a result, he was immediately accepted into the Communist Party, which allowed him to continue working without problems.
Since 1967, for two years, he has been working at the institute as vice-rector for science.
In 1969, Stanislav Shushkevich returned to the State University, where in 7 years he became a professor and head of the department of nuclear physics. Since 1986, he has been working as Vice-Rector of the State University for Science.
Beginning of political career
Before it began, Shushkevich Stanislav Stanislavovich was a well-known Belarusian scientist, Corresponding Member of the Belarusian Academy of Sciences, author of several monographs, more than 150 articles and 50 inventions, had various state awards.
In 1990 he was elected First Deputy Chairman of the Supreme Council of Belarus. After an attempted coup in the USSR in August 1991, he demanded the convocation of an extraordinary session of parliament, but was refused by its Chairman Nikolai Dementei.
After Boris Yeltsin's victory over the putschists on August 26, he was elected and. about. the President of Parliament, andAugust 31 became its chairman. During his tenure, he supported reforms towards a free market economy.
Belovezhskaya Accords
According to the memoirs of Shushkevich, he invited Boris Yeltsin to the former recreation center of the Central Committee of the CPSU in Belovezhskaya Pushcha in December 1991, not with the aim of destroying the USSR, but in an attempt to establish a mechanism for future economic ties between Belarus and Russia without the participation of allied bodies, which were conceived by Shushkevich in the future as purely decorative, something like a loose confederation. The idea to invite Leonid Kravchuk to the same place arose after Yeltsin's arrival was agreed.
This is how the three leaders of the Slavic republics, inhabited by fraternal peoples with a common root, gathered in Pushcha. According to Shushkevich, agreements on establishing economic ties between the three republics were reached, but the question arose as to whether it was necessary to apply for approval to the President of the USSR Gorbachev. All three really did not want to do this, but no one dared to openly propose to abandon the union treaty. Gennady Burbulis, close to Yeltsin, acted as an oracle who uttered a phrase that was fateful for all of us about recognizing the USSR as having ceased to exist. Shushkevich recalls that at that moment he “wildly envied Burbulis.”
December 8, Stanislav Shushkevich, together with Boris Yeltsin and Leonid Kravchuk, signed a document according to which the Soviet Union ceased to exist and was transformed into the Commonwe althIndependent States (CIS).
End of career
The further political career of our hero is very similar to the path of Leonid Kravchuk. An attempt to carry out radical market reforms, the monstrous inflation initiated by them, the depreciation of Belarusians' money savings - all this set he althy, non-comprador political forces against him, which in 1994 forced Shushkevich to resign. In the same year, he also tried to register in history as the first President of Belarus (Stanislav Shushkevich), taking part in the presidential elections, but won only 10% of the vote. Prudent Belarusians elected Alexander Lukashenko as president, under whose leadership the country has only a growing GDP since 1995 (the only one of all post-Soviet countries).
Since then, for more than 20 years, Stanislav Shushkevich has been in opposition to the Belarusian authorities. He takes extremely nationalistic and at the same time pro-Western positions, claims that since the end of the 18th century Belarus has been a colony of Russia, and compares the current order in his country with the "Third Reich".
