Cat's-Head Effect

Annushka generously pours oil around Drazdy.

Like the vast majority of native Minsk residents I have never visited the house of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party. Until last week. And all of a sudden I voluntarily dropped into there on the eve of October mayhem. I wanted to spend a half an hour or so in a warm place. And I went there. And it's worth it. It turned out that the first congress of the RSDLP was an increasingly instructive phenomenon for our modern history.

It seemed to me that some leaders were supposed to gather there, perhaps those whose names were then displayed on numerous memorial plaques of Soviet cities. No way, the congress was held by nine persons, anyone could hardly hear about not being a historian. Groups of of then opponents of the regime could not agree on anything and refused to send their delegates. And only nine persons gathered in Minsk. They met, had a drink and a snack, discussed the bloody tsarist regime and condemned it, and declared the congress successful. And soon they forgot about that. And their names appeared in this house, not on memorial plaques.

Of course, after the congress they were arrested, but released a few months later. Later someone else was arrested, others were exiled not for long. Compared to our reality it was not serious. And they could hardly imagine that in two decades their innocent meetings could turn into consequences that would make the whole world tremble for decades. It happened.

In 1906 Stepan Radchenko abandoned the revolutionary activity and peacefully passed away six years before the revolution. In 1912 Alexander Vannovsky left the RSDLP, became a Christian, and after the revolution he left for Japan and spent his life teaching Russian literature at the university. Pavel Tuchapsky taught history, and twilight years he spent working as a librarian in Kyiv. Kazimir Petrusevich left for Poland after exile and became a lawyer. After the revolution of 1905 Boris Eidelmangave up on the struggle, graduated from the university and began teaching. Nathan Vigdorchik studied medicine, taught and developed methods of disability examination. In 1908 Aron Kremer left for Germany. Abram MutnickShmuel Katz was the only worker at the founding congress of the workers' party and soon left for New York.

That's the whole story. They met and left. We went to exile and abandoned their activity. And hundreds of millions were left to hold the bag for decades.

Why do I tell you it for? Because in the times of historical turmoil no one and never can be sure that one or another event will become a historical, a crucial or, on the contrary, will fall into oblivion. And there is a piece of advice to numerous local analysts who write long columns "Statkevich collected only a hundred people on the square", "the opposition cannot agree", "the people are happy, no one goes anywhere", "the regime is strong, and the opposition is weak". Guys, please, recall the first congress of the RSDLP and its consequences.

You will never know how it goes. It should not be a joint large-scale constituent congress or a protest action with thousands of participants. It may be a broken cup of Mikalai Statkevich or spilled coffee on trousers or a run on the leg of Volha Mikalaichyk. Anyway, you won't be able to guess. A political analyst in modern Belarus is even more meaningless than a penguin turner.

As for the historical upheavals, the mankind has been living in such conditions since the late nineteenth and the early twentieth century. Who knows, perhaps, but for the First World War, there would be no first congress. The very senseless happenstance played the key role in the First World War, as the one gathering of nine persons in Minsk.

Comrades of Gavrilo Princip from the Young Bosnia did not participate in a terrorist attack: he was young, consumptive and crazy. Only two bombs did not explode, one crushed a car nearby, and other was left in terrorist's hands, because when he saw the wife of the archduke Ferdinand he could not throw the bomb at the lady. The car just changed the direction. Meanwhile, Gavrilo Princip dropped into Sarajevo Specialties and bought a sandwich. As soon as he saw the car of Ferdinand, he fired from a Browning. In general, as a modern poet Dmitry Bykov wrote, "the destiny of Europe for other hundred years and even longer, no matter how sorry we are, was decided by the Belgian pistol".

This is not even a butterfly effect, it is the cat's-head which is inexorable and inevitable, when it seems that nothing extraordinary will not happen. The small number of recent actions does not mean anything. As well as apparent apathy in the society. Even more apparent stability of the regime - oh, do not blow smoke.

The regime does not learn lessons of history (as any other, by the way). These in Drazdy sincerely believe that everything will be fine for other twenty years as soon as Statkevich, Afnahel, Vinyarski are jailed. They do not suspect that the cat's-head is already moving, and Annushka generously pours oil around Drazdy.

They would better visit the museum of the first congress.

Iryna Khalip specially for Charter97.org