Ten Years out of Sight

The monop­o­lists are rep­re­sent­ed through­out the coun­try in the form of postal depart­ments and kiosks. On Jan­u­ary 10, 2014 Bel­posh­ta was includ­ed into the State Reg­is­ter of eco­nom­ic enti­ties that occu­py dom­i­nat­ing posi­tions on Belaru­sian mar­ket in ser­vices of “sub­scrip­tion, deliv­ery and re-address­ing of print­ed mass media prod­ucts”, and, accord­ing to anti­mo­nop­oly leg­is­la­tion, a monop­oly does not have the right to deny ser­vices accord­ing to the free­dom of con­tract. Bel­sayuz­druk was not includ­ed in the reg­is­ter, as it is split into sep­a­rate legal enti­ties in each region.

In 2006, around 20 non-state peri­od­i­cals were denied ser­vices of the two monop­o­lists, and this put edi­to­r­i­al offices and read­ers into a com­pli­cat­ed sit­u­a­tion. When con­tracts with the out­lets were annulled, the monop­o­lists explained that it was eco­nom­i­cal­ly unrea­son­able to sell them, how­ev­er this argu­ment seemed void because some out­lets were sold in dozens of thou­sands. The peri­od­i­cals had few options left: to apply for ser­vices of pri­vate shops and trade points or to send the news­pa­pers as reg­u­lar mail (so-called edi­to­r­i­al sub­scrip­tion) which rais­es the price sig­nif­i­cant­ly.

Only in 2008, in thaw­ing rela­tions between the offi­cials in Min­sk and the EU, Bel­posh­ta and Bel­sayuz­druk resumed their con­tracts with two all-nation­al bi-week­ly Nar­o­d­naya Volya and week­ly Belaru­sian-lan­guage Nasha Niva.

The eco­nom­ic pres­sure con­nect­ed with dis­tri­b­u­tion obsta­cles led sev­er­al out­lets to clo­sures, among them Sal­i­dar­nasc, BDG.Delovaya Gaze­ta, Birzha infor­ma­cii (Hrod­na), Liakhav­it­s­ki Chas (Liakhav­itchy), Mest­naya Gaze­ta (Vaukavysk), Khimik (Navap­o­latsk), Miastsovy Chas (Pin­sk), Gaze­ta dlia Vas (Ivat­se­vichy), Bobruyskij Couri­er (Babruysk). There are also some news­pa­pers that lost peri­od­ic­i­ty or dropped attempts to pub­lish in paper ver­sions, or do it sel­dom, like Tovarisch; Viteb­skij Couri­er (cor­rec­tion made: the news­pa­per has paper ver­sion with cir­cu­la­tion 1000). Also, in August 2014, Niasvizh­s­ki Chas closed down through eco­nom­ic hard­ships.

The out­lets that by now have issues with dis­trib­u­tors: