Poetry and Space
The newly found interest in the history of the country and its cities also provoked demand for lectures and guided walks led by historians. In “peaceful times” a guided walk around your district would seem a rather boring activity, something that you wouldn't join in your normal everyday life, especially if it rained. But in the autumn of 2020 such walks became acutely political and exciting. If some people in your group had white-red-white umbrellas, drivers in the passing cars honked to greet our small group, thinking that it was a demonstration. Through such historical walks people discovered that their neighborhoods had a long history, that there were rivers hidden underground, and that famous people lived in these streets. In this snippet from a guided walk around Staražoŭka – one of the historical districts of Minsk – the historian Paŭlina Skurko reads a poem by Vasil Vitka who used to live there:
The poem and the historian’s commentary list toponyms that are long forgotten
By 2022 such walks became too dangerous and many city tour guides were arrested for “distorting the history of Belarus,” of using non-official historical narratives, or even for speaking in Belarusian. Ihar Khmara, a tour guide and historian, was detained in 2022 for speaking Belarusian in public but sentenced for “active participation in group actions that grossly violate public order” (Viasna 2022a). Since 2023, a state licensing of tour guides and audio guides was introduced that led to a deficit of professional guides.
The language issue is extremely important for Belarusian politics. In previous years, Belarusian was the predominant language of the protests – of slogans, chants, speeches, prayers, and songs. For example, during the demonstration and rally for the Belarusian independence from Russia held on the 20 December 2019 all speeches, chants (“Independence!”, “No to unions with imperialist Russia!”, “Disgrace!”), and patriotic songs sung by the protesters were only in Belarusian.
In 2020, the scale of the protests grew a lot, involving hundreds of thousands of Russian-speaking people who were previously not engaged in politics in any way, and often shunned the Belarusian language. As a result, the protest became bilingual, with a prevalence of Russian. The alternative presidential candidates were Russian-speaking too and wanted to distance themselves from “the old opposition.” The new politicians were wary of using the banned white-red-white historical flag and the “Pahonia” coat of arms[13] – afraid that the masses would not like these “nationalist” symbols. They were not too comfortable using the Belarusian language and careful not to openly criticize Russia’s crucial role in supporting the regime. But the protesters adopted the white-red-white flag as their own, and interest in the Belarusian language rose. It is now winning back some space among younger people and the “cultural elite”, but is a hazardous marker (Coakley 2022).
There are evidences that the Belarusian speaking people were treated worse in detainment. During mass detentions in 2020 they sometimes were “color coded” with a marker on their forehead, or with a spray paint on their clothing (Abłamiejka 2022) and then beaten more severely. Letters to and from political prisoners were censored, therefore writing in Belarusian in correspondence with prisoners heightened the chances that letters wouldn’t reach their addressees. A political prisoner Anatol Latushka was “strongly advised” not to write letters in Belarusian, because the censor of the Viciebsk colony, where he was imprisoned, “never learned this language and doesn’t understand it at all” which means she won’t pass the letters on (Naša Niva 2022e).
Poetry helped to proliferate the Belarusian language in 2020. Many people heard contemporary Belarusian poetry for the first time during courtyard cultural events and discovered that it didn’t consist only of boring texts of long dead authors that you learned at school, but also of words of young people who lived nearby and immediately reacted to current events with their poetry (Achilli 2022).[14]
The state propaganda used poetry too. In August 2020, a small girl, allegedly from Donbas, toured pro-Lukashenka rallies reading poems that warned Belarusians about the horrors of war. I am politically biased but when a child recites a poem obviously written by someone else, by a much older person, and when she doesn't know how to pronounce certain words, I can't shake the feeling that it is an exploitative and violent act performed on a child.
Here is a recording or her from a pro-Lukashenka event near the Kijeŭ cinema where the “DJs of Changes” subverted a state-organized gathering two weeks earlier.
Listening to the local poets at local courtyards had a quite different effect on me. Again, I am biased, but here I heard genuine emotions, and felt that these words rendered the pain of the poets themselves. Here is Uładź Lankievič telling that “we're fed up of hiding and partizaning”:
we're dancing in the streets
and thus we say: stop!
this is our dance in a public place
this is our dance not approved by anyone
every time we fill it with a new sense
we're dancing even when we stand still
When he read a poem about this very place where the poetry evening was held and where he used to teach his wife to ride a bike, poetry and urban topography suddenly merged. People named this abandoned empty space with cracked asphalt the “Chess Yard”, as huge concrete chess pieces used to decorate this former children playground. Children were always a part of such concerts, theater performances, and poetry readings. Some of them would draw at a small table in a corner, while in another corner their parents would sign postcards to political prisoners. Other kids sat on their fathers' shoulders or just ran across the improvised stage under the chestnut trees, sometimes trying to “help” the actors and musicians to perform.
These evenings were celebrations of a newly found solidarity and freedom in spite of the harsh situation. Without music, art, and creative expression, the dramatic events of 2020 would have been unbearable, and the following years proved how people longed for such “temporary autonomous zones” (Bey 1991). But these joyous evenings didn't last long. Understanding the musicians, poets, and actors role in inspiring and consolidating people, the authorities increasingly repressed artists and event organizers. Dozens of musicians were arrested during and after the concerts. By November 2020, making such events became almost impossible.
In the absence of “visible” protest leaders – people who could be counted as the demonstrations leaders – the enforcers arrested musicians who often were in the front ranks. A clip showing the Irdorath band’s bagpipe performance of protest anthems inspired courage and joy in people. This fantasy-folk band is well-known all over Europe, especially in Germany where they used to play at festivals like Wave Gothic Treffen. In August 2021, the band members were violently captured and imprisoned for “organizing actions that grossly violated public order" (Viasna 2021b). DJ, concert promoter, and cultural activist Alaksandr Bahdanaŭ (Papa Bo Selektah) was also sentenced for playing at demonstrations with his portable DJ-decks. The drummer Alaksej Sančuk (Sanchuk) was accused of coordinating the protests and, after spending several months in a prison, he was sentenced for six years for “organizing disorder” and “teaching people to clap their hands” (Viasna 2021a). Repressions against musicians started already in August 2020, and being a musician added to the risk of harsh treatment and tortures. When milicyja officers found out that Andrej Shklioda from Pinsk was a guitarist and a luthier, they deliberately damaged his fingers by sticking pins under his nails (Media-Polesʹe 2020a). As a result, his hands become numb and his fingers lost sensitivity. Yet he didn’t even take part in voting: “I know that my voice will be stolen anyway” (Media-Polesʹe 2020b).