In the language of the spy novel, Minsk might once have been described as a hot-bed of intrigue. It had the reputation of being a mysterious and enigmatic city, slow to give up its secrets. To the active imagination, it might have been peopled by fur-hatted triple agents and glamorous attaches with unknowable eyes, all tangled up in vast webs of conspiracy and plotting dangerous liaisons in the hideaway dachas of the snow-dusted woodlands.
But this was back in the old days, deep in the chill of the Cold War, when Minsk was an important centre in the USSR, hard-wired into the power sources of Moscow. Now, though, it's a dreary and grey place; and even if it is the capital of Belarus, there is a feeling of dour provincialism. A downbeat city centre with few stores fans out bleakly to a perimeter sprawl of cement tower blocks and dead factories. The natives are courteous and polite but seem a little depressed, like people who've seen one cold morning too many. They have the look of folks haunted by a lingering suspicion that life has moved elsewhere.
Soviet times
"We are a nation that is nostalgic for the Soviet times," says President Alexander Lukashenko. "We can only be proud of this."
Critics of Mr Lukashenko would suggest that he is a man acting very much as if the Soviet times never really ended. On paper, Belarus is termed a "presidential republic", and as president Lukashenko has the ultimate call on matters of national import. Elections were supposed to be held last year but were cancelled. Opposition figures who organised mass protests in Minsk were arrested and jailed. Amnesty International has expressed concern about the reported disappearances of some politicians and has accused the government of harassing and intimidating those who speak out against it.
It is claimed locally that the old KGB apparatus in Minsk remains more or less intact and now operates for Lukashenko's government.
Meanwhile, the economy is pretty much shot. Belarus was traditionally a strong agricultural centre, but the fall-out from the Chernobyl accident in neighbouring Ukraine put paid to much of its prime farming country. It still exports tractors, but that's about the size of it.
In Minsk, then, everyday life now seems to be a dreary monotony of scrimping and scraping and the equations of home economics just don't work out. The average monthly salary is around $30, but supermarket goods seems no cheaper than they are here. The currency, the Belorusian rublei, is all but gone to God. A couple of decimal points were knocked off in an impromptu devaluation last year but most of the notes are still worth little. You see them blowing around with the trash in the breezy walkways beneath the gaunt tower blocks.
Grow vegetables
Under the old regime, most workers received small apartments, so at least there is no rent to pay. Some were granted woodland dachas too and these are generally used to grow vegetables. People manage to eat, but little else.
One woman told me that going out for a drink was now an annual event. By way of small consolation, the local chocolate is excellent and this is a ferociously sweet-toothed country.
You can understand that there may be some truth in Lukashenko's words that the Soviet past does indeed glow seductively in the collective memory.
Minsk was always the most loyal of allies to Moscow and was subsequently well looked after. There was never a shortage of work in the enormous state factories concentrated around the city.
It was at one of these factories that a young American defector began working in December of 1959. Lee Harvey Oswald was employed as a "regulator first-class" (which translates as unskilled metal worker) in a plant that made radios and TVs, but an initial enthusiasm for his duties quickly waned.
He felt that the 15 worker-motivation meetings a month and the compulsory daily gym sessions were a bit much.
Comrades in Cuba
Oswald would eat at the fried-cabbage stands on the cold side-streets of the city and be appalled that his new workmates were seemingly unconcerned about the struggle of their comrades in Cuba. He'd sit in his small apartment and listen to Tchaikovsky on the phonograph, the soft strings competing with the whining gales that come off the Minsk river in the icy winters. He fell in love with Marina Pusakova and they married two weeks after the Bay of Pigs, on the very day that Fidel Castro was awarded the Lenin Peace Prize. By the middle of 1962, they had transplanted themselves to Dallas, Texas, where Lee heard about a job going at the School Book Depository.
Oswald's time in Minsk is recreated beautifully in Don Delillo's novel Libra, but the evocative city the American writer describes has in the meantime been stripped of its spice and enigma and is now just the struggling capital of a country that is fast becoming a pariah state. Lately, Lukashenko has been urging a reunification with Russia and the motherland is smiling flirtily at his advances. If it comes about, this reunification may seem for some a return to a more certain and idyllic era, even if the idyll never truly existed.