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Mikalai Statkevich: I Believe Belarusian Army Has Officers-Patriots

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Mikalai Statkevich: I Believe Belarusian Army Has Officers-Patriots
At a demonstration against the State Committee on the State of Emergency near the House of Government
PHOTO Uladzimir Karmilkin, vytoki.net

Belarusians should remember the lessons they learned from the coup of 1991.

One of the opposition leaders, former political prisoner Mikalai Statkevich recalls the events of August 19, 1991 in an interview to charter97.org.

– The August coup took place in the Soviet Union 25 years ago. You were a direct and active participant of these events. What was happening in Belarus then?

– Back then, the Soviet Union, being a multi-national country, had lost the common unifying communist idea. The glasnost destroyed that fundament. We, a group of the Belarusian officers, presumed then that the Soviet Union would collapse. We feared that the military men will resist to that, using the methods of the common army, as it happened in Yugoslavia, which led to the blood-shed civil war.

Therefore, the group of the Belarusian officers started the work on preparation of the Belarusian army. I started with printing the materials under a pseudonym in mass media, and then I began writing openly, since spring-1991. Alongside with the longing for freedom of the national republics, the authorities’ reaction also escalated, there was a contradiction going on. I had quit the Communist party by that moment. I did it in winter of 1991, after they ran the people over with tanks near the TV tower in Vilnius.

Later I decided to join the Belarusian Social Democratic Assembly, which had a fraction of military men then. When we found out on August 19 that the coupists had seized the power, we decided to facilitate creation of the organization of the Belarusian officers. On the same day we, mostly the reservists and two servicemen, got together. One Major then got scared and disappeared, so I was the only military serviceman left.

Together with then-reserve senior lieutenant Siarhei Chyslou and reserve lieutenant colonel Henadz Bankevich we took the decision to announce creation of the organization of the Belarusian officers. The motivation behind this was simple: we had no idea what might happen the next day, but we wanted to and felt obliged to furnish resistance to the coup. I was supposed to address to the military men. It is much more effective when an officer addresses to the army, than civil persons.

In the morning on August 20, we gathered at one of the lecture halls of the Belarusian State University. Upon the initiative of the BPF representative Victar Ivashkevich we chose the name for the organization – the “Belarusian Union Of Military Men”, wrote the declaration indicating the aims of the independent Belarusian army, and adopted the appeal to the servicemen of the Belarusian military command region. Independent trade unions copied these documents and handed them out to the people near the military units’ facilities. We set patrols near all military units to know when the army would move to the city center as a demonstration was planned there.

Journalist of the Belarusin Radio Vasil Siamashka, who used to host a youth musical program back then, suggested I should speak on air. I arrived to the radio studio, and we recorded my speech three times, as the operator’s hands were shaking, moreover, everything was recorded on tape reels, the tape kept tearing off, and their boss ran into the studio all the time and shouted “They will kill you all with entrenching shovels!” This was how the paratroopers dispersed a peaceful demonstration in Tbilisi several months before. My speech went on air. Many people heard it. In the evening I made this speech at the demonstration in Lenin Square. I have no idea which channels were used, but my appeal was broadcasted throughout the whole territory of the Soviet Union.

We had very little time, and the situation was unclear, but we did all we could. I think we did more that was possible to demand from a person in such situation.

I fond out later that, after this speech, in connection with the fact that I urged not to follow the military men’s orders, I could be subjected to the article which prescribed death by the firing squad for treason. This was considered undermining the army's defense capability.

After the defeat of the coup they published phone numbers with an offer to rat out those who supported the coup. Then I found out that the General Prosecution had started a case against me but terminated it in two days.

I remember that panic, I remember some representatives of the military school tried to put pressure on me, and then called and apologized. They said “You are committing a crime!” some two days before and then shouted out “Junta Fell!” All that happened. The country seemed so mighty and collapsed after a little push, as it got rotten inside and had no backbone.

Those who hope that the current regime in Belarus will last forever, should remember this. Belarusians should remember the lessons they had learned from the coup, when dozens thousand people in Moscow went out to stand against the army and the tanks, to defend their freedom. And they were victorious. Another point is how they used their victory… Still, they could do it. Belarusians also could return their freedom.

I remind once again that we will have a chance to demand real elections without this obvious farce - who is interested in it anyway? September 12, 6 p.m., Kastrychnitskaya Square. Come, we will win together!

PHOTO Uladzimir Karmilkin, vytoki.net

– How did you manage to preserve the national self-awareness at the background of the powerful influence of the Communist ideology? The history was re-written, they hammered false realness into the children’s heads since the early age.

– During the last decade before the collapse of the Soviet Union it became clear to many people that the Soviet Union was going the wrong path and got rotten inside. The people realized that they needed alternative elections, democracy, economic reforms, to stop decaying of the society. When perestroika happened, the glasnost opened the eyes of those Belarusians, who wanted to learn, on their own history.

It was then I understood our nation had been deliberately humiliated, they blacked out the history and all its outstanding facts. They were destroying us, in fact. I was completely outraged by that and decided to resist. This is why we created the group of officers in the military school in 1990. They were professionals. In all, the Belarusian military movement was created by successful officers. If in Russia and Ukraine it were the officers whose careers went down the drain, in our country it were, to a certain extent, the idealists, the people with a huge feeling of responsibility for their country, who started the movement.

I think that the Soviet Union hadn’t managed to destroy this national feeling here. When we got he alternative information about our people, our past, this propelled the desire to act.

In 1990, I developed the concept of the creation of the Belarusian army and even managed to publish it in the newspaper "Literature and Art", which dared to do this thanks to Anatol Viartsinski, the member of the Supreme Council and the well-known Belarusian poet, a man with a capital letter. I am very grateful to him.

We wanted to lay the foundation, to awaken the national consciousness, to give an example of the struggle for our country, so that it would inspire the patriots later on, and we would eventually get the independent Belarus. Even if they would dispose of us after that. We did everything possible so that the fact remained in history: there were Belarusian officers-patriots who fought for their nation.

– Our army is largely integrated with the Russian one, they created a "union state". In case of the Russian military invasion, will we find such bold patriots?

– Then there were officers who wanted to serve their people. And I'm sure that in today's Belarusian army, in spite of the oath to Lukashenka, this anti-national policy, there are patriots!

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