Belarusians Are Looking for Their Own Revolutionary Path

A political, civil nation is being born in the country.

Here is an important post for me personally and an important link. Together with Elena Borovskaya we went to Svetov on air. We discussed Belarus, of course. Misha is very cool. I love him very much and consider him my good friend and one of the most interesting people in Russian politics. But damn, how hard it was with him this time.

I had to explain that it was impossible to view other countries through distorted Moscow optics. We had to explain that our traumatic experience of December 2011, our post-Bolotnaya psychosis and neurosis are our problems, our troubles, and it is extremely foolish to be guided by these intimate pains when assessing the situation in other countries.

But, as you know, the main feature of Russian political culture is that nothing can be explained to a person whose position has already been formed over the years. Conviction tends to turn to stone. It can rarely change; it can only be destroyed along with the personality.

Therefore, I didn't convince Mikhail of anything, and, therefore, I didn't convince the fan core of his young audience.

But for my audience (as I understand it, more adult and not at all fanatical), I want to say once again important things about Belarus, which Svetov and I discussed.

1. Did the Belarusian protest miss any opportunities in mid-August, when the maximum number of protesters took to the streets at a time, and the security forces almost disappeared from these streets? Probably, yes. You just need to understand that that crowd of thousands on August 16 did not come out to fight at all but to manifest their values and demands. It didn't prepare for a fight; this crowd was with baby carriages, there were girls in skirts. I was among this crowd; I know what I'm talking about. People who wanted "decisive action" from the Belarusians, as a rule, watch the Minsk crowds from Moscow studios.

2. In any case, a decisive street offensive against the regime would have cost several hundred corpses. That is, Lukashenka will kill hundreds of people. For some reason, when I talk about several hundred corpses, all critics of Belarusians begin to whisper: "Oh, don't talk about this, now Comrade Major will hear." No, guys, that won't work. If you are for decisive action in Belarus - get used to the phrase "hundreds of corpses." Live with this phrase. Learn to use it; speak it out loud. Then your position will acquire integrity, consistency, and internal logic. I am aware that sometimes sacrifices in the fight against antihuman tyranny are necessary - without a fight, there are often even more victims in the end. Just learn to represent your position in its true form and weight. Otherwise, everything looks a little simplistic: "You had to go forward and win, and everything would be fine."

3. Belarusians are alien to all this Moscow neurasthenia and publicist speculations - and thank God. They just keep on fighting hard. What is happening in Belarus is a much larger-scale process than just a fight against an authoritarian regime. A political, civil nation is born there, born in pain. It so happened that on the way of this newborn nation, on the way of its maturation and formation, there is a specific person - Aliaksandr Ryhoravich Lukashenka.

4. Belarusians are looking for their own revolutionary path. The infantile Moscow public wants everything to go according to books and scripts: a few weeks / months of songs in the squares, then one decisive onslaught - and the regime falls. No, guys, this format of "revolutions" is a historical anomaly. Revolutions can last for months or years, spilling over into hot and cold civil wars. Revolution (as a rule) is an exhausting path full of defeats and trials, and not a "window of opportunity" into which one can climb through at once without wrinkling his trousers. The revolution continues in Belarus. Cold civil war continues in Belarus. Forgive me, Muscovites, that it was not possible to overthrow the cruel regime that existed for a quarter of a century in three months.

Roman Popkov, Telegram