ELON COLLEGE – Olga Vysotskaya knows more than anyone the effects of conflicts arising from political and ethnic differences. It has shaped who she is as well as her future.
Vysotskaya, 20, is a native of Belarus, a former republic of the Soviet Union. Three years after coming to this country, she will graduate with honors Saturday, May 22 with a bachelor’s degree in political science and international studies. She is among 38 foreign students enrolled for the spring semester at the college.
After graduation, she won’t return to Belarus, where her parents and brother still live. “The current president is very hard line. I don’t agree with his policies,” she says. Like other former Soviet republics, the country is beset with economic hardships and is seeking to unite with Russia in some sort of federation, she says.
She will spend the summer studying at Georgetown University and then enroll in the fall at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom. At Cambridge, she will study the violations of democratic norms in Belarus as well as the reasons for those violations.
“I want to become a peacemaker,” she says. “When I first came to this country I wanted to go back home to become president of my country. But it simply won’t do much good to go back because my opinion of the country and current government is not good.”
Vysotskaya, who speaks three languages and currently is learning French and Spanish, became interested in peacemaking and politics at a young age. “When I was a child I traveled with my parents to Georgia, another former Soviet republic. I can remember when the war began there between the separatists and other groups and how bad it was on the people.”
It was that experience coupled with growing up in Belraus that shaped her desire to become a mediator for some peacekeeping organization like the United Nations.
Vysotskaya is particularly troubled by what is happening in Kosovo. “I don’t support the NATO policy in that country. Bombing only makes people hate each other more.”
She believes the answer to ending much of the world’s strife is by educating children. “I would to bring children into international camps so they can get to know each other and learn not to hate,” she says
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