Photos by Bill Crandall

Belarus, 2000-2009

Twenty years after the pivotal events of 1989 in Eastern Europe, and the subsequent end of the USSR, Belarus is still searching for its post-Soviet national identity.

Despite fast rivers of change just over the horizon in all directions, the prevailing feeling in Minsk is one of waiting. Not anticipation, revolution is distinctly not in the air. A kind of resignation that change will not be swift and transformative, but could take awhile, perhaps generations.

But Belarusians are stoic people, they know how to wait.

[Music courtesy of Sigur Ros]