Got Onslaught Ahead Of Us

The mummers are preparing to celebrate the Victory.

They are preparing in due order and on a large scale.

Pictures of pink-cheeked babies in caps with the inscription "I want to be a hero, like my great-grandfather" appear in the windows of Sayuzpechat stalls. Sausages "Biarlinki" are sold in a Brest grocery store with an advertising poster "All to Biarlinki!" with arrows, like on a military map. The traffic is blocked in the center of Minsk, so that the citizens do not interfere with rehearsing the holiday. Stands are hammered together on the Victory Square for trustworthy pensioners, who will play veterans, rattling with false "iconostases". Schoolchildren, who will stand in the guard of honor at the Eternal Flame, are removed from the lessons for training the square-bashing, because standing is more important than learning. The campaign "Pioneer Salute To Veterans" is held in the Palace of Youth. The swimming championship "Grandfather's Victory Is My Victory" is announced in the capital. The authorities call for an international tournament on power extreme directly on May 9. They talk with enthusiasm about the 3D show, which will be shown on the two buildings behind the Victory Monument for the first time. In general, Victory Day here is almost a day of the paratrooper, only without fountains. But it gives occasion for dancing and tanking up. It’s a real public holiday.

And exactly one week ago Ion Degen, a topnotch tankman of that war and one of its best poets, died in Israel. He’s the author of those famous lines written in the forty-fourth, which many people rightfully consider the most terrible and finest poem about the war:

My friend, in deadly agony
Do not call friends in vain.
Let me warm my palms
Over your steaming blood.
Don’t you cry, do not groan, you're not small,
You're not hurt, you're just killed.
Let me take off your felt boots.
We’ve got onslaught ahead of us.

These eight lines are the most precise definition of war: heroism becomes a habit, death – a mundane, and someone's sacrifice – a way to survive for others. A simple and terrible formula. And it’s even more frightening that it is modern and relevant.

And while mummers are mounting stands and decorating sausages for the holiday, Uladzimir Niakliaeu comes to the May Day action after he has had a hypertensive crisis. Maxim Viniarski again goes on a hunger strike in Akrestsin prison, where, in my opinion, he spends more time than at home. They seize Viachaslau Siuchyk and Paval Seviarynets in a street. They hold a secret trial of Yauhen Afnahel. Mikalai Statkevish leaves the prison once again just to get behind the bars before next action. Leanid Kulakou, a taxi driver and activist, is deprived of his driver's license and, accordingly, of a piece of bread due to unpaid fines. And 18 innocent young men have been sitting in the KGB jail and in Valadarka jail for two months already. Almost all of them have children. Wives of some of them are on a maternity leave and there's no one (except us) to help them. Their wives will not tell the children that their fathers are at war. Though they could have said so. Because this is the war – the war between good and evil, the war of warriors of light against the black hundred, the war of patriots against fascists. It's a war, only without lice and trenches, anti-aircraft guns and "Junkers".

The heroism of our compatriots has also become habitual for us. Well, yes, they risk, go to prisons, are fired from their jobs and bet blacklisted, they lose their property, are tortured and threatened in prisons. We perceive this as a normal information background. This is exactly what power wants to achieve - that we consider everything to be the norm, not the war; those who sacrifice themselves - freaks, not heroes; arrests - news, not repressions. They do it to prevent us from going to war instead of those who are sitting in prisons, to make us post in social networks something like "they have neither clear program nor correct tactics".

Ion Degen, by the way, once wrote: "They will declare our commander a genius for our accidental furious battle." This is also the reality of our war - occasional furious battles. And occasional crazy heroes. Without them we can not win. And without us, victory will remain in the distant future.

On May 9 mummers will dance in the disco, blow up bubbles and fireworks and do their best to pretend that this is their holiday. It's not true. Fascists have no right to celebrate the Victory Day. This is our holiday. Our and of those who will be in prison on this day.

And we, of course, will celebrate it. Quietly and with dignity. We will recall the poems of Ion Degen. We will drink to the past victory and the future victory, for the heroes of the past and the heroes of the present. But we will drink just a little bit. We still have to make an onslaught.

Iryna Khalip for Charter97.org