The official from the Belarus visa section hurdles the stairs from his basement den with hostile intent. He is clearly not happy about my repeated buzzing on the intercom. I’m fixed with an icy glare. “What is your problem?” he demands.

Measured in journey time, Belarus isn’t a distant country; the flight from Gatwick to its capital, Minsk, takes less than three hours. But in many ways it is a world apart

I explain that the lady in the embassy upstairs had told me on the phone to turn up after 2pm with my documents. “She did not say that,” he growls. “We are closed.” He turns on his heels. “But I’ve come a long way …” I begin. The door slams shut and I am left on the Kensington pavement clutching a sheaf of forms and photographs, letters of invitation and my passport. It is clear the audience is over. And – for the record – she did say that.

Eventually, after much pleading, my Belarus visa materialises, allowing me to set off on my journey to the country 25 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Measured in journey time, Belarus isn’t a distant country; the flight from Gatwick to its capital, Minsk, takes less than three hours. But in many ways it is a world apart. President Alexander Lukashenko’s authoritarian republic has been labelled the “last dictatorship in Europe” and, after my visa troubles, I am braced for a throwback trip to the Eastern Bloc, replete with Soviet-style customer service and bureaucratic officialdom.

Lukashenko: in charge since 1994 Credit: GETTY

The first impression I have of Minsk is still of the city built by Stalin. The original was all but destroyed in the Second World War, and on that wasteland the Soviets created a showpiece to demonstrate their resilience. Uncle Joe and his builders weren’t big on nuance. Mini-me despots like Kim Jong-un can only aspire to such strutting pomposity. The eight-lane boulevards, the parade ground squares, the neoclassical palaces of the people are all intended as a thumping display of state power.

Stalin would approve Credit: RYHOR BRUYEU

If Stalin were around today, he would look benignly on Lukashenko’s own additions to the city. Big is still beautiful; the more eye-popping the better. One of the latest landmarks is the ominous looking National Library, the black diamond outline of which looms over its surroundings like an alien Death Star. The 236ft building is hard to miss during the day, though by evening there is a chance its silhouette could subtly merge into the night. To mitigate against any such possibility the designers have installed LED displays on every facet of the diamond. After dark it becomes the most fabulous disco ball in Europe.

The National Library Credit: KOROLEV ANDREY

You don’t need much imagination to re-layer the Soviet past on to Minsk. Communist iconography is all around. Lenin Square may have been renamed Independence Square but the metro station still bears his name and a commanding statue of Vladimir Illyich dominates the deco façade of the House of Government (one of the few surviving pre-War buildings) on the north side of the piazza.

It’s also back to the future at GUM, the state department store, on the arterial boulevard of Independence Avenue. Though unlikely to be mistaken for Harrods, the store does have a similar grandiosity. Much of the GUM range would not look out of place at a provincial car boot sale: matryoshka dolls, Beatles wall clocks circa 1964 and cheeky bequiffed plaster monkey ornaments. Here, though, these talismans of kitsch are fresh off the production line.

Also on Independence Avenue I come upon a bust honouring the Belarus-born Felix Dzerzhinsky, founder of the notorious Cheka (the precursor of the KGB). It is in a small park across the road from the imposing headquarters of the KGB. The Russians have acknowledged the toxicity of the brand and renamed their own security service – but in Belarus, KGB it stays.

Independence Square Credit: RYHOR BRUYEU

Trying to read the ideological map of Minsk is not straightforward. At the next intersection (with Lenin Street) the logos of McDonald’s and TGIFridays compete loudly for passing trade. There is just one block separating the vanguard of burger capitalism from Iron Felix, the revolutionary enforcer. The dissonance increases in Svobody 4, near the old town hall. The bar opened a few months ago and there is no hint of Stalin’s Minsk in the cool stripped-down interior. The rioja is from Spain, the risotto from Italy, the funk is East Village and the concrete walls are pure Dalston. Men with luxurious facial hair are de riguer and some even sport telltale topknots. The “last dictator in Europe” may have erected a tin curtain around this country but the commandos of global hipsterdom have sneaked in under the radar.

The following morning I meet my guide. “Welcome to Belarus,” she says, “My country is a pancake.” It’s an unorthodox greeting. But, she says, geography has been unkind to Belarus, making it a buffer between ruthless powers: a pancake to be flattened. We make our way to the Stalin Line Museum 16 miles north-west of Minsk, driving past Victory Square then along Victory Boulevard and Victory Lake, past the Motherland monument proclaiming, inevitably, victory.

Nearly 40 per cent of the population was killed in what they call the Great Patriotic War; the trauma continues to define the psyche of the country. The Stalin Line was a Soviet defensive Maginot Line stretching from the Finnish border to the Black Sea. The concrete pillboxes in their original emplacements at the museum have been restored to their wartime state, bristling with 76mm howitzers and Maxim machine guns.

Inside the Museum of the Great Patriotic War Credit: ALAMY

The line took more than a decade to construct. However, when tested in June 1941, the fortifications were no match for the Blitzkrieg. They crumbled within days under the Nazi onslaught. The eventual “victory” would be a long time coming and at an almost unimaginable cost.

The museum also houses a park of military equipment where children are encouraged to play among the big boys’ toys – tanks, Katyusha rocket launchers, Soviet era MiG jets and ballistic missiles which must once have been targeted at us in the West. Left out in the open and ravaged by the elements the machinery of death looks defanged and unglamorous. There is also a souvenir shop; where else in the world can you buy an entirely irony-free Stalin fridge magnet?

Essentials

Regent Holidays (020 7666 1244; regent-holidays.co.uk) offers a seven-day itinerary with three nights in Minsk, three nights in Vilnius and train transfer from £995 per person. The price includes flights from Gatwick, flying with Belavia to Minsk, and from Vilnius to Luton with Wizz Air, accommodation in four-star hotels with breakfast, half-day city tour of Minsk, an excursion to Grutas Park and all transfers. A full-day excursion to the Stalin Line costs an additional £205. Upgrade to the five-star Hotel Narutis in Vilnius from an additional £85 per person.