May 1, 2009

In Minsk, an 'Underground University' Goes Its Own Way, at Its Own Risk

By ANNA NEMTSOVA

Somewhere in an outlying district of this post-Soviet capital, four graduate students gather in a two-room apartment. It is in one of the city's hundreds of identical, five-story brick buildings, called Krushchyovki because they were built during the Khrushchev era. They surround every former Soviet city.

The location is semisecret. The students are gathered for a seminar on independent news media, a subject banned from the country's classrooms. They sit in a cozy circle and, one by