My life’s work is literature, which has humanity at its very centre. I’m subsequently accustomed to viewing historical past not a lot as an account of occasions however because the tales of people that create occasions.
The yr 2020 was for Belarus an occasion involving a whole bunch of hundreds, certainly hundreds of thousands of individuals. This was the yr of the August Revolution, which ought to have introduced freedom and democracy however as a substitute led to slavery and tyranny.
Might issues have turned out otherwise? How, after 33 years of independence – even when it was in lots of respects merely formal – have we arrived at a degree the place we discover ourselves on the verge of dropping our nation?
Trying to hunt solutions to those questions, in 2021 I started to write down a novel concerning the individuals who created the occasions I witnessed – after which put it to at least one facet. It was all too shut and painful, a ache that induced coronary heart spasms and tears. And you’ll’t write a novel in tears – or, for that matter, a historical past of a time that was removed from being merely unhappy.
After the occasions of 2020, my coronary heart now not had the power to look at what is occurring in Belarus – to witness the destruction of its language, tradition and historical past, to see its folks spreading out the world over to save lots of themselves from repression. This could now not be known as emigration – it’s an exodus. It’s already apparent that the journey will probably be a protracted one. Wsick we even ‘return’ as Belarusians? Right here I’m speaking not solely about those that are overseas but additionally these at house – in itself a form of exodus.
Home of Authorities, Minsk. Picture: Andrey Filippov / Supply: Wikimedia Commons
Departure into exile means the destruction of every little thing which could allow us to outlive within the metaphorical desert. Probably the most scary factor is having no means of preventing this destruction. It’s a form of ache that even made me envy my older colleagues, who had already gone to a greater world and didn’t need to witness how every little thing for which that they had labored, and certainly lived, was being destroyed.
This is the reason I took up the supply to publish my e-book in Poland, in any case my makes an attempt to have it printed in Belarus had failed. I arrived in Poland and returned to the novel that I had begun in Minsk.
A folks in want of a nation
I had completed nearly half of the novel when the conflict in Ukraine escalated right into a full-scale invasion. I spotted then that I wouldn’t be capable to reply querys about why the state of affairs in Belarus is like it’s. I may see all of the conceptual errors that had been made in politics in what I had written and was compelled to desert the novel. Once I started work on it anew, the conflict grew to become my start line.
The destiny of Belarus has at all times been decided by conflict. That’s the way it was within the 18th century (after the Seven Years’ Battle and the three partitions of Poland), within the nineteenth century (after the conflict of 1812) and within the twentieth century (after World Battle I and World Battle II). The twenty first century isn’t any exception: the destiny of Belarus is now being determined by Russia’s conflict on Ukraine.
A conflict wherein individuals who, not so way back, noticed themselves as brothers are now killing one andifferent is akin to an Historical Greek tragedy. It’s not straightforward to know the producers, the actors and the set designers of those tragedies, however it’s rather more tough to grasp the refrain. Within the classical tragedies by Euripides, Aeschylus and Sophocles, the refrain personified the folks, whose position it was to interpret occasions and choose the actions of the heroes from a ethical standpoint.
When the ‘ancient chorus’ of Russia sings the praises of a fratricidal conflict, and in Belarus the folks pay attention and appear to present their silent consent (‘it’s none of our enterprise, is it?’), what sort of society are we coping with? ‘You people, you people of Belarus, you are plain and simple, blind like moles’: these phrases by the poet Maksim Bahdanovich are an emotional outburst, devoid of that means. The persons are not plain and easy; they don’t seem to be blind. It’s merely how issues have turned out traditionally: the folks of Belarus haven’t turn out to be a nation. They haven’t fallen in love with what’s theirs sufficiently to wish to turn out to be a nation.
We endure from oikophobia: disdain for what’s ours – our language, tradition and historical past. We regard nearly every little thing that isn’t ours as superior. That is primarily a illness from which numerous peoples have suffered at totally different occasions in historical past, however within the Belarusian case it’s persistent. Till we rid ourselves of this illness, till we come to like ourselves and what’s ours, there’s nothing or nobody to assist us turn out to be a nation within the fullest sense of the phrase.
In reality, it isn’t solely Belarusians who’re affected by this; so too are our japanese neighbours – maybe to a fair better extent. No Belarusian has ever written about Belarus in the way in which that Russians have written about Russia: ‘It is Russia’s sole future to point out the world how to not reside and the way to not do issues’, wrote the nineteenth century Russian thinker Pyotr Chaadayev.
A query of east or west
It’s typically accepted that speaking concerning the position of affection within the historic nation-building course of will not be one thing a scholar would do. However I’m a author, not a scholar. And, as a author, I do know that the perfect literature is about households: John Galsworthy’s The Forsyte Saga or Leo Tolstoy’s Battle and Peace. It’s true, not solely in these novels however in all of the novels I’ve learn – whatever the creator’s nationality – {that a} household is a household solely when there’s love. And a folks is a household, and the world is a household of peoples that rests on a basis of affection, which a fratricidal conflict has immediately demolished.
Thank God we’re not taking part in a direct position on this conflict. Nonetheless, the repressions that started after the occasions of August 2020 are of a sort unprecedented since Stalinist occasions; they represent an act of outright conflict by the state upon the individuals who reside in it. A conflict with ourselves. The query is: can we cease it, or will it lead us to nationwide suicide? This could have been inevitable if we had absolutely joined the Russo-Ukrainian conflict.
Without Ukraine, the way forward for Belarus is incorporation into the Russian Federation – ‘voluntary attachment’ to Russia both as six separate provinces or as a complete nation known as Belarus, as Putin put it in 2000, shortly after turning into president. It’s after all potential to exist even after incorporation (in any case, this was our state of affairs for nearly two and a half centuries, first throughout the Russian Empire after which as a part of the USSR), however this does increase the query of the potential of the Belarusians to develop right into a fully-fledged nation.
I accomplished a novel known as Gey ben Hinom (The Valley of the Son of Hinnom) simply earlier than Russia attacked Ukraine – one thing that each one students, politicians and political pundits mentioned would by no means occur. Within the novel there’s a dialogue between Stalin and Yanka Kupala, our nationwide genius. Stalin says: ‘The Russian nation is a great nation, comrade Kupala. Could the Belarusians have defeated the Germans? Could the Georgians have? No. But the Russians did. They could even defeat Ukraine if they wanted to.’ To Kupala’s query, ‘Why would they want to defeat Ukraine?’ Stalin replies, ‘What do you mean, why? Because they’re Russians.’
In fact, that is literature, not politics or political science. The dialogue itself will not be even all that important to the plot of the novel. However, it appeared – in a flash of what artwork critics name artistic instinct – to write down itself. On the very eve of conflict.
What led to the conflict? This conflict will not be solely about territory; actually, it isn’t about territory in any respect, not about Crimea or the Donbas. Its trigger is way deeper. It’s civilizational. As one in every of my Ukrainian poet-friends wrote to me in a letter, ‘We are existential enemies for them, just as they are for us. Quite apart from its deep roots and its tragedy, this war is biblical in essence. It’s us or them. No extra, no much less.’
‘Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet’, wrote the English poet Rudyard Kipling, a sentiment later repeated by the Russian poet Aleksandr Blok. True, this components is turning into slowly blurred on the earth (for instance in South Korea, the place West and East are apparently coming collectively), however Russia is an exception. From the earliest phases of its statehood, Russia has chosen the East as its civilizational mannequin, with its postulate that ‘all power is vested in one fist’. Throughout the ‘Russian world’ that is as of late termed ‘Russian power’, an idea elaborated within the Nineteen Nineties and designed to suit a single particular person who stands above the legislation.
That is the way it was beneath the tsars, the way it was beneath the Communist Get together’s normal secretaries, and the way it has proceedd to be beneath Russia’s presidents. Vladimir Putin just lately went as far as to declare that the Golden Horde was higher for Russia than ‘western conquerers’. Ukraine, alternatively, was ready by its historical past to take a decisive step in the direction of becoming a member of the move of western civilization and its precept of the separation of powers. This will not be the first reason behind the conflict of civilizations, however it isn’t the least of them both.
Squandered alternative
Russia has chosen its path, simply as Ukraine has chosen one for itself. Belarus, nevertheless, has not made a alternative. It’s nonetheless caught between two paths.
This led on to the failure of the Republic of Belarus to make any use by any means of the independence it had acquired. On the very begin, independence offered the nation with the chance to take choices that have been freed from a severely weakened Russia. That is precisely what the Baltic international locations did and, by aiming for membership of the European Union, saved themselves. In Belarus there was nobody to place ahead such proposals – neither among the many conservatives (communist and pro-Soviet) nor the democrats, nor even the Belarusian Standard Entrance (the most important opposition power on the time), whose chief advocated a totally unbiased Belarus, unattached both to the Russian Federation or the European Union. It was then that I printed an article entitled ‘Between the Poles’, wherein I requested how an iron submitting may hold its stability between the 2 poles of a magnet. It’s unimaginable. In reply, I heard that it’s unimaginable in physics, however potential in politics.
This was the primary political mistake that might be considered historic, as a result of it was primarily step one in the direction of the lack of Belarus’ newly gained independence. Consider the period of time that needed to move earlier than even Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky – who berated Belarus for its collusion with the aggressor – may lastly declare that ‘Europe is the Balkans and Moldova, and there is one day bound to be a Europe Day for Georgia and a Europe Day for Belarus’.
In fact, the Belarus of 1991 wouldn’t have been invited to hitch the European Union right away. Time was important for the fulfilment of the required situations, simply because it was for the Baltic states. Nonetheless, it might not have meant dropping time in our historical past that we now have now misplaced. It could have been our chosen path.
‘What about the Union State between Belarus and Russia?’ we’d retort right here. ‘Isn’t {that a} path to the East? Isn’t it a alternative?’ Sure, it’s a alternative. However it’s not a path as a result of it’s not a alternative of civilizations. It’s a political alternative. And politics can change as shortly because the climate.
The risks of improvisation
The second mistake was made by the rulers of the unbiased Republic of Belarus once they have been signing the Belovezha Accords, the 1991 treaty that formally abolished the USSR and established the Commonwealth of Unbiased States (CIS) as a substitute.
I was fairly effectively acquainted with Gennady Burbulis, the Russian overseas minister on the time; we had met again within the early Nineteen Eighties in Sverdlovsk, once I was studying poetry to the scholars of the Urals Polytechnic there, and he was delivering lectures on Marxist-Leninism. I requested him if, throughout the signing of the Accords (wherein he was straight concerned), there had been any form of consideration of the results – political, financial, social – of the doc to be signed. He replied that there had been nothing of the sort; only a little bit of ‘thinking on the fly’. That’s precisely what he mentioned, I’ll bear in mind it for so long as I reside, ‘thinking on the fly’. This considering on the fly produced the components ‘The USSR hereby ceases to exist as a subject of international law and as a geopolitical reality.’
All effectively and good: it ceases to exist. However what then? The accords have been signed with no situations or addenda, with no ensures from the initiators of the doc (the Russian management). Most significantly, there have been no ensures of the integrity of the Belarusian and Ukrainian states. Yeltsin and Burbulis could not have thought of this. In spite of everything, they have been making an attempt to unravel an influence downside: they have been unable to take away Gorbachev as head of the Soviet state, so that they eliminated the state he dominated from beneath him.
Nonetheless, this was one thing the signatories from Ukraine (Leonid Kravchuk and Vitold Fokin) and Belarus (Stanislav Shushkevich and Vyacheslav Kebich) ought to have considered. They knew historical past, they knew Russia, they knew that Russia’s overseas coverage had at all times been the seizure or ‘return’ of lands that have been ‘historically Russian’ – even permitting for the actual fact the nation was then within the throes of a political and financial disaster and so unable to bask in something like that. Nonetheless, it was silly to not ask what would occur subsequent. What ensures have been there that Russia wouldn’t return to its previous imperial concept of ‘gathering the lands’? That is exactly what Russia has returned to. It’s now ‘gathering the lands’.
There are those that may say that Russia would have damaged any ensures it gave anyway, simply because it broke the agreements contained within the Budapest Memorandum. Sure, that’s potential. Nonetheless, I’m not speaking of Russia’s accountability, however of the accountability of these to whom the folks of Belarus and Ukraine had entrusted their destiny.
Yeltsin was determined to take away Gorbachev and would have signed any form of ensures. Nonetheless, the Belarusian and Ukrainian heads of state proposed nothing. Later, they let everybody know what smart politicians they have been. If it hadn’t been for the agreements, they mentioned, there would have been conflict! So what they did in Belovezha in 1991 was successfully to log off on a conflict in Ukraine in 2014.
Sabotaged by self-interest
The third historic mistake was made throughout the marketing campaign to elect the primary president of Belarus. As a substitute of agreeing on one single candidate for election, the democratic opposition events began preventing one another. In consequence, Hienadź Karpienka, a deputy of the Supreme Soviet, was faraway from participation within the elections. This was a politician who possessed charisma and the air of authority that got here purely to a person with sound managerial abilities: he had been director of a giant manufacturing unit and was on the time mayor of a metropolis. He may have received the election. After which Belarus would have received.
There are numerous who keep that Belarus would have received if Zianon Paźniak had been victorious within the nation’s first presidential election in 1994, adopted by Karpienka within the subsequent election. They embody the previous member of the Supreme Soviet of Belarus Siarhei Navumchyk in his reminiscences of 1994. That is political fantasy. How may a nationalist have received in a Sovietized nation with no sense of nationhood? It may have occurred the opposite means spherical: first the tolerant Karpienka, adopted by the unconventional Paźniak. However issues didn’t end up both means, as a result of the opposite contributors in these occasions weren’t desirous about Belarus. They have been desirous about themselves. They thought up a means of holding Karpienka out of the elections; a means that, to place it mildly, was not precisely respectable.
Aleh Trusaŭ, the chairman of Stanislav Shushkevich’s electoral staff, persuaded 14 members of the social-democratic get together Hramada to withdraw their signatures nominating Karpienka for the presidency. Ethical questions apart, the electoral legislation didn’t enable for such an ‘initiative’. Along with Alaksiej Dudaraŭ, the pinnacle of Karpienka’s electoral staff, I attempted to steer him to face up for his rights – within the electoral fee and within the courts, which at the moment have been nonetheless actual courts. He categorically refused, although he was not categorical by nature. He wouldn’t go to court docket. Certainly, he wouldn’t even speak about Trusaŭ’s ‘initiative’. ‘Anything that starts with malice will end in the same way,’ he mentioned. ‘And I do not want to have anything to do with it.’
Why have I lingered for thus lengthy on what could appear to be a personal episode in our latest historical past? I’ve executed so as a result of, like a cancerous tumour of amorality, it metastasized. The situation with signatures repeated itself in 1996, a dramatic yr which may have turn out to be a turning level however didn’t. Seventy-three deputies put their signatures to a movement to the Constitutional Court docket to question the president for apparent violations of the structure. Nonetheless, twelve of them withdrew. As within the case of Karpienka, these withdrawals had no authorized power, and the Constitutional Court docket agreed with that. However whereas the judges have been analyzing the legislation, Alyaksandr Lukashenka managed to carry a referendum, the outcomes of which gave him untrammeled energy; neither the courts nor the legislation itself had any management over him. Not a kind of who signed after which withdrew their signatures has ever proven any penitence.
It says loads that of the fourteen who first supported Karpienka however subsequently bought him out, just one man has ever sought forgiveness: the poet Anatol Viarcinski. For all the remainder it’s water off a duck’s again. In all of the elections that adopted, each the regime and the opposition engaged in machinations and falsifications. Within the presidential elections of 2010, solely one of many 9 opposition candidates succeeded in acquiring the required 100,000 signatures. All the remainder have been registered on the idea of falsified lists. It was like this in 2015, when all of the opposition candidates submitted faux lists, and in 2020, when the one opposition candidate to submit an inventory of utterly real signatures was Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya. That’s how the opposition got here to hitch the overall deception that held the entire nation in thrall.
No recipe for revolution
There’s a preferred saying that goes ‘You can lie your way through the world, but you can’t lie your means again’. It was exactly the deception employed within the presidential elections of 2020 that turned the protests right into a revolution. Perhaps it didn’t change the political system or the way in which the state was run, but it surely did change the mentality of a society that would now not reside with lies.
Why did the revolution not succeed? There are a number of causes. Earlier mass protests in Belarus (such in 2010) had loads of leaders however not sufficient bizarre demonstrators. The state of affairs was reversed in 2020: there was no scarcity of demonstrators, however few leaders. Those that did present themselves have been unprepared and never able to assume the burden, although they actually shouldn’t be blamed for this (I do know from my very own expertise how tough it’s).
Through the use of the form of protest methods (decentralization) that had been employed efficiently in Armenia, the ‘new’ Belarusian opposition distanced itself completely from the ‘old’. Earlier opposition politicians had expertise of organizing mass protests, but not a single one was supplied a spot on the Coordinating Council, none of whose members had any such expertise. All of the ideas made on the idea of that have have been seen as an try and impose the technique utilized in 2010, which not one of the new politicians needed to listen to about. ‘We’ll come to energy by peaceable means, with out violence’, they mentioned. Nonetheless, within the absence of a frontrunner (who in Armenia grew to become head of state after the victory of the revolution), methods of self-organization didn’t work.
A successful revolution doesn’t essentially imply violence, barricades and capturing. In Ukraine, even earlier than the barricades have been erected, the Maidan had compelled the pinnacle of state Yanukovich to supply the submit of prime minister to the opposition and name parliamentary elections. Nonetheless, the opposition rejected the supply. This was a mistake which infected the state of affairs and in the end led to capturing. This might have been averted if the opposition had accepted the authorities’ proposals and saved up the stress on them to make sure that the proposals grew to become actuality.
One thing related may have been executed (or at the least tried) in August 2020 in Belarus. It’s now obvious that there was a danger hooked up to this. And a giant one. Russia was already planning one other incursion into Ukraine (one thing we didn’t know on the time). Russia wanted Belarus as a troop deployment space. A 2010-style revolution may have given rise to aggression. There have been Russian tanks mendacity in wait close to Smolensk: the conflict may have begun in Belarus, not Ukraine.
Maybe the opposition’s try and take energy by peaceable means saved us from bloodshed. However was the street to freedom ever taken with out sacrifice? If such a factor has ever occurred, it implies that freedom is ‘easy come, easy go’. Freedom has no worth if no value has been paid for it.
The one path to freedom
The primary purpose for our present state of affairs was outlined within the nineteenth century by the Russian thinker Alexander Herzen. ‘The state has established itself in Russia like an army of occupation’, he wrote. ‘We do not feel the state to be part of ourselves or of society. State and society are at war with each other. The state’s conflict is punitive, society wages a partisan marketing campaign.’ Herzen wrote this a very long time in the past, however it’s nonetheless related at this time. What has lengthy decided the destiny of Russia could now be utilized additionally to Belarus, the place the idea of ‘Russian power’ – an individual above the legislation – is written into the structure.
‘Russian power’ will solely disappear from Russia by means of civil unrest. This unrest is inevitable after the unjust, fratricidal conflict waged not by the folks of Russia, however by the state, i.e. the military of occupation stationed in Russia. After its disappearance, a brand new window of alternative will open, which we should use, avoiding the errors made within the early years of Belarusian independence.
This received’t occur tomorrow. As Herzen wrote, ‘People cannot be liberated to a greater extent than they are already liberated inside.’ That is the one path to freedom, and nowhere has it ever been quick.
This translation was supported by the S. Fischer Basis. The German translation was first printed in dekoder.
