“Basta!”: Belarusian Forest Gump Should Stop

We need to think about the future now.

Often you have to communicate with civil servants, officials at various levels - from housing and communal services to security officials. I believe I have certain communication skills to interact with different people. My life experience and areas of activity, as a rule, involved close communication.

It’s widely known that people who have had at least minimal power in Belarus, for a short period of time, acquire a severe form of a “doorman syndrome”. Officials look at you as if you were mentally retarded from the start of the conversation, trying with all their might to show superiority over you. This happens not only in their habitat, but also in the street, in public transport, and even in your own home. Many spoke about this for a long time, but in the last year the disease worsened.

It can be difficult, sometimes almost impossible, to prove the wrong of a “doorman”. The stereotype of behavior is laid down by the archaic kolkhoz regime built on the patterns of the middle of the last century. Bootlickers behave exactly like their leader does. They are pursuing one goal - to get some “bourgundy-coloured pants” and an opportunity to remove the bell from own nostrils.

This unspoken template is spread across the power vertical. It is to make everyone guilty except yourself, consider yourself smarter, more cunning, more obtrusive and more sneaky than everyone. He is the boss, the king and the god, we are the servants and the mob.

One feels like a Belarusian Forrest Gump. Not only because any representative of the government makes a fool of you, but because sometimes you really want to run away from this panopticon.

We do that. We are running away from Lukashenka’s reality in the kitchen, into the social networks, into our inner world. We are trying to leave Minsk for the time of the next dictatorial sabbat. Those who are lucky run abroad. But this is not an option. To run means to finally acknowledge their victory and rightness. Yes, and where the majority will run to?

Lukashenka’s time is running out. But even after his departure, many nomenklatura managers who dream of a halo and golden toilets will remain.

We need to now think about the future, take responsibility for the country ourselves, make sure that the “doormen” recover from their illness and become normal citizens. Then, not a dozen activists will come to defend Kurapaty, but hundreds and thousands, chemical plants will stop releasing smoke in the air, and the government will begin to understand who should serve whom. Then dictatorship will become impossible.

It's time for Forest Gump to stop.

Andrus Voynich, Telegram channel “Basta!”

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