Miron: Apathy Poses Greatest Threat To Belarusian Independence

The contemplations of the BSU Lyceum student about the value of our country’s independence and the threats it is facing.

Former Deputy of the Supreme Council of the 12th convocation Siarhei Navumchyk, and student of the BSU Lyceum Miron Vitushka are speaking about the value of the Belarusian independence and the threats it is facing, in the podcast “Parents and Children” on Radio Svaboda.

“We enter the classroom on a cold morning, and my friend is sitting there crying because his father got arrested”

Miron Vitushka: I didn’t catch the time when independence was supposed to be fought for, when it was likely not to happen at all. However, I am living at a time when independence may appear under a threat. I was born in 2004. In the family photo albums, I couldn’t help noticing the pics of my parents with the white-red-white flags. My mother (Krystsina Vitushka - edit.) chaired the biggest student organization in Belarus - the Belarusian Students Association.

I remember how my mother always struggled so that I would have a kindergarten with Belarusian-speaking staff, a school with Belarusian-speaking teachers. When I was little, I thought it was weird that I speak a language in my family, for which it is needed to struggle in the kindergarten. The first time a protest action concerned me personally was in 2010, the presidential election. It was my first year at school. One cold morning, we entered the classroom, and my friend was sitting there crying, because his father got arrested. It was my close friend Stefan, the son of Zmitser Sauka.

I think that one of the greatest threats for the independence of Belarus, which has existed for a very long time, is the people’s apathy - they just don’t care about what is going on in their country. Such apathy, indifference to petty and major violations, committed by the officials, to weird decisions and the destiny of the country in general. The youth take independence as a value and for granted at the same time.

So, apathy and political nihilism remain the greatest threat, as political nihilism in domestic issues often goes external. It seems to me that, as for the people of my age, we can overcome this, and we will manage to do it, because it is getting impossible to always live here and fail to notice what is happening around you, for none of my friends here. It’;s impossible to live according to a paradygm that everything is good and you should not pay attention to anything. I believe this will change and this apathy will no longer threaten our independence.

Will the statements like “independence just fell from the sky” ever end?

Siarhei Navumchyk: Miron will know it in some 60 years, we will not live to see it, but he will. Hopefully, he will then live in an independent Belarus. Why are such statements voiced? At best, a lack of understanding of certain historical processes, although there may be other options. These theses are very easily refuted by the history of Belarus.

For more than 200 years, the people of Belarus were under the de facto occupation, and during all this time it was not a single decade when no one was fighting for independence, even if it was even just ten people, or a little more (as members of the Union of Belarusian Patriots in Pastavy and Hlybokaye in late 1940s), and sometimes it was dozens of thousands (as at the time of the Kalinouski uprising and the Slutsk rebellion). The struggle was constant. Therefore, to say that “independence fell from the sky” - it's just a spit in the soul of their own nation, to spit in those people, many thousands of people who gave their lives to achieve independence. I'm not talking about the founders of the Belarusian People’s Republic, of those who went to Kurapaty later, or was forced to die in a foreign land. They had different destinies.

But if we are talking about 1991,then of course, the Independence Session was convened on August 24-25 as a result of the failure of the coup which took place in Moscow. Although we demanded to convene it back on August 20, when the coup was in full swing. We set this demand at the meeting of the Presidium of the Supreme Council, by the way, and deputy Lukashenka, by the way, spoke there, condemned the coup. I do not remember whether he demanded the convening of the session that day, but we, the deputies of the Belarusian Popular Front Opposition, demanded it.

Later Lukashenka signed the statement on the convening of an extraordinary session, along with 80 other deputies. Later, at the session, he did not vote for independence, he simply had not registered at the session - this is known fact. But give him his due, among 80 he put his signature under our demand to convene a session.

And when the session began, there were thousands of people in the square in just two days. I always say that it is wrong to claim that only 30 deputies of the Belarusian Popular Front, headed by Pazniak, achieved independence. Yes, of course, we have achieved that, but not alone, and not only the 265 MPs who voted, but also the thousands of people who stood in the square, probably, Miron's parents were there in those days, there were a lot of young people. And none of these people will agree with the words that “independence fell from the sky”. This was the result of very hard effort.

Miron mentioned that his mother Krystsina headed the Association of Belarusian students in 1999. So in the late '90s, when Belarus already was independent, it was the apogee of integration initiatives of Lukashenka and Yeltsin. And it was them, the student activists, who also continued the struggle for independence. No one fights so eagerly for something that just “fell from the sky”.