Three Stand-up Stars from Belarus Supported the Protest and Roasted Lukashenka

Civil position and sports stories of Slava Kamisaranka, Vania Usovich, and Idrak Mirzalizade.

For more than six months, Belarusians have been trying to fight for changes in the country in various ways. In this, they are actively supported by the diasporas of our compatriots around the world. For example, the activity of the Belarusians in Switzerland influenced the decision of the IOC to take a bath for the executive committee of the Belarusian NOC headed by Lukashenka, SKODA refused to sponsor the hockey World Cup 2021 in Minsk, including because of the pickets of our fellow countrymen near the company's headquarters in the Czech Republic, and the St. Petersburg community goes to solidarity rallies every day starting from August 9. Not only ordinary people but also many well-known people from Belarus who have achieved success outside the country criticize the current regime and support the protesters. These include three star stand-up comedians - Slava Kamisaranka, Vania Usovich, and Idrak Mirzalizade. And they are united not only by the humorous genre and position on what is happening in Belarus, but also by the rather curious connections with sports in the biography of each of them, Tribuna reports.

Slava Kamisaranka: joked about "agricultural Rambo" and took to the floor with the NBA champion

Who is he?

Slava Kamisaranka was born and raised in Minsk and began his humorous career in his student days: while studying at the BSEU as a marketer, he organized stand-up performances in the Belarusian capital, and in a duet with his classmate, tried to conquer comedy projects in Russia. In 2008, they managed to become the second in the next season of Laughter Without Rules. Then there was Slaughter League, Comedy Battle, but gradually Kamisaranka began performing solo and made the right decision: in 2012, he became a resident of the exponentially gaining popularity show "Stand Up on TNT."

In his monologues, Slava often joked about his homeland in general and about Lukashenka in particular: for example, he assured that all Belarusians know how to parody a politician and told what would happen if he ordered pizza in his voice, and after the 2015 presidential election, he was ironic about the numbers that were always going off the scale in the voting and other standard aspects of the event. But even though those jokes cannot be called extremely harsh, according to Kamisaranka, they were cut from the air of BelTV.

How did he react to the events around the elections?

At the beginning of 2020, the Belarusian parted with TNT without conflict (because he wanted to create content without rigid deadlines and pressure) and created his own YouTube channel. In such a free status, Kamisaranka met the beginning of the presidential campaign in Belarus. He did not publicly talk about how closely he followed its course, but the horrific events in the first days after the vote did not pass by Slava. On August 12, on his Instagram, he posted a bloody cartoon of Lukashenka with a call to stop the violence, and, a week later, he became a guest of the podcast of comedian Danila Poperechny, where he spoke in great detail about his position, supported the protesters, and condemned the atrocities of the security forces and falsifications. The two-hour video, a third of which was devoted to the discussion of Belarusian events, received just over three million views.

These are quite solid numbers, but the much more capacious passage by Kamisaranka about Lukashenka and the protests, which he published when he came to the super-popular YouTube show "What Happened Next?" in November, became an absolute hit. There he called Lukashenka "chyk-chyryk, whose flask whistles," ridiculed his entrance to the AMAP with a machine gun and walked over the politician's words that only "stoned" go to protests in Minsk. That issue of the WHN entirely collected 17 million views, but a separate 4-minute piece with Kamisaranka's jokes also notably went viral - only in the comedian's Instagram, it was watched by almost 500 thousand people.

Probably, the employees of the department of culture of the Minsk city executive committee also saw the monologue of Kamisaranka. After "studying the materials of the comedian's performances posted on the global Internet," they canceled his touring certificate. Having lost the opportunity to perform in Minsk, Slava also lost his last reasons to be careful - in December, he went on stage with the words: "Now I see no reason to hold back - catch a fresh update about "chyk-chyryk."

And he gave out ten minutes of dense humor - with jokes about the "drawn" elections, negotiations between Nick and Mike, "agrarian Rambo," AMAP officer who does not know how to open the door in the car, so he immediately hits it with a truncheon and the villain Lukashenka, who arrested Santa Claus, and now, apparently, going to steal spring. The video went great again: 5 million views on YouTube alone and a confident first place in trends. At the same time, Slava's video surpassed the figures of Lukashenka's New Year address three hours after its release.

What about sports?

As you may have noticed, Kamisaranka recorded the "new about chyk-chyryk" in a T-shirt of the Air Jordan brand. And this is not without reason: the tall (two meters tall) Belarusian played basketball in his youth. As Slava said, he could become "a mediocre player," but this was prevented by a serious injury received on the site - a severe fracture did not heal properly, and he had to go to the operation, insert the needles, and end a sports career. But after that, the basketball did not leave Kamisaranka's life - he continued to follow it as a spectator.

If you rewind a little the feed of his Vkontakte account, then there you can find many posts related to the NBA, which Slava accompanied with the hashtag "The best ball game." In 2017, the comedian still returned to the floor: he trained in a team of show business stars (with him there were, for example, rappers L'One, Yanix, and Karandash), put on those practices "from above," scored in the style of Karim Abdul-Jabbar, and even played in a match against Russian basketball journalists (the Belarusian's team lost due to an accurate throw of opponents in the last second).

The following year, Kamisaranka attended the match of Minsk Tsmoki, and, in 2020, he became the co-host of Scryptonite (another popular rap artist) in the YouTube project Evening 3x3, which was supposed to become a basketball show accessible to a wide audience and not just hardcore fans of the game. It turned out so-so: only three episodes were filmed, but the audience saw only the first. Nevertheless, thanks to this, the Belarusian comedian crossed paths with the NBA champion who plays for Cleveland, Timofey Mozgov, who was the guest of the debut video.

In general, Kamisaranka has a long history of relations with basketball. But, sometimes, he doesn't mind changing his favorite game, putting on skates, and going out on the ice. The main thing is that without "chyk-chyryk"!

Vania Usovich: talked about "AMAP who sold their souls to the devil" and rooted for Milan

Who is he?

The future comedian was born in the 7,000-town of Miadzel, located 150 km from Minsk. After graduating from school, Usovich entered the capital BSEU at the Faculty of Marketing and Logistics. In the same place, but already in the last years, Slava Kamisaranka studied. Despite the age difference, the guys agreed in interest in stand-up and began to organize performances together. And when Kamisaranka made his way to TNT, he recommended his friend to the Open Microphone site, through which young comedians could get on TV. There Usovich immediately showed himself brightly and quickly managed to get into the number of residents of the "Stand Up on TNT" show, becoming the youngest among all the participants there.

At first, the Belarusian, who left the university for a comedy career, had a difficult time and even thought about returning to Minsk. Gradually, Usovich gained experience and began to feel more confident, but he still did not always cope with the tight deadlines for passing monologues. Therefore, after a while, Vania left for free swimming, sometimes appearing on TV already as a freelance comedian. The decision turned out to be correct: by 2020, Usovich had become a superstar of the Russian-language comedy, whose concerts (and almost any appearance in general) on YouTube collect millions of views.

How did he react to the events around the elections?

The history of Usovich's relationship with politics is typical for millions of Belarusians: for many years, he did not delve deeply into this topic (including not touching on it in his monologues and jokes), but in 2020, everything changed. The comedian living in Russia closely followed the presidential campaign in his native country - for example, he supported Siarhei Tsikhanouski and Viktar Babaryka after they were arrested. In early July, the Belarusian very specifically spoke about his position in the video of blogger Ilya Varlamov: he did not count on fair elections ("Lukashenka will give himself about 75 percent"), assumed that after the elections, there would be provocations to untie the hands of the security forces ("They will break the windows, blow up the government building like in 2010 or a bomb in the metro like in 2011"), and those, in turn, will struggle with all their might for the current system ("they sold all their souls to the devil - all these AMAP, KGB - will hold on to their places, no one will ####ing give you power there"). However, Usovich still hoped for a positive outcome if, after the vote, the Belarusians really came out to protest en masse - and urged everyone to do so.

Less than a month later, Yuri Dud published a big interview with the comedian - one of the main topics of conversation was also Belarusian protests. Then Usovich signed under the words spoken by Varlamov, and very succinctly formulated one of the main claims of many residents of our country to Lukashenka: "What's not to like? The fact that people are beaten with sticks on faces - what can you like about that? One dude has been in power for 600 years. The only reason he drowns, calling himself cool, is that there is no war in the country. This war has nowhere to come from in Belarus. There are no disagreements over language, over religion - none of that. And he [Lukashenka] was like, "We don't have a war!" So why does it even have to be? Will Brest fight Mahileu? "

After the elections, Usovich continued to support the Belarusians: together with Kamisaranka, he actively donated to solidarity funds and organized charity stand-up concerts in Russia, the proceeds from which went to help strikers and victims of atrocities security officials. The latter also affected the comedian's family - on August 10, his brother ended up on Akrestsina Street, stayed there for four days, and personally faced all the horrors of this place. At the same time, after the interview with Dud, the wives and sisters of the AMAP officers actively wrote to Usovich in social networks and called him "an idiot who does not know the truth." Vania told about this in the podcast of the same Kamisaranka - and in the same place, he very specifically formulated another idea that is obvious to millions of Belarusians.

"What I'm mostly surprised by how obvious a fight against evil is. I have never and nowhere seen such a clear distribution, where there would be one hundred percent good and one hundred percent evil. How can anyone be on the side of evil, knowing that there are only bad people... It's very strange."

Usovich also demonstrated his position on several TV programs: in the show "Evening Urgant," he expressed the hope that everything will work out in his "native country, there will be peace and good will win, and came to the "Slaboye Zveno" program with a white-red-white bracelet on his wrist and made a reference to the meme about three percent in one of the dialogues with the presenter.

What about sports?

Nothing is known about the personal athletic success of the comedian, but nevertheless, he has connections at least with football - Usovich is not averse to playing it with friends and has also been rooting for Milan for many years (though, in the end, he came to the conclusion that this was quite strange).

"Recently I have been cooling down to football as a sport: I mean watching, playing is normal. What is the reason? I thought it was strange to root for some club. Since 2003, I have been rooting for Milan and recently thought that over the past year and a half, the entire squad has changed (once again), the coaches have changed, the owners have changed... And I thought: who am I really rooting for? For some kind of red and black emblem, for the name? In general, I concluded that rooting for someone is a strange topic," Usovich reasoned in 2017.

However, in those years, supporting Milan without any additional reasoning was a history bordering on sadomasochism. Now the Rossoneri is doing much better, so we do not exclude that Usovich could return to his hobby. Moreover, he still retained his knowledge of Italian football - which was proved by a funny episode on the very same broadcast of The "Slaboye Zveno." The presenter asked the Belarusian in which country championship of "Inter" and "Napoli" is played. He decided to show off his terminology and answered "Serie A," and formally, it turned out to be a mistake - after all, the correct answer was "in the Italian championship" :)

Idrak Mirzalizade: he was at the protests even on August 9, and his father's mini-football team rocked Belarus at the turn of the millennium (coached by Kandratsyeu!)

Who is he?

It is easy to guess that this guy is not Belarusian by nationality: Idrak was born in Azerbaijan into a Talysh family (the number of this people of Iranian origin is several hundred thousand people), but when he was two years old, he moved to Minsk with his family - in our country, his father studied at the university. Mirzalizade made his first steps in humor in Belarus - even at school, he tried himself in KVN. Having entered the BSU as an international journalist, Idrak continued to improve in the game for the "cheerful and resourceful" - thanks to this, he met and became friends with Vania Usovich, who also was in the gang.

They performed in the same team for some time, but Usovich soon left KVN and concentrated on stand-up. Gradually, his Talysh friend also came to this genre: Idrak was not delighted with his first performances with monologues, but in the end, he got involved. In 2013, he appeared in "Open Microphone," and the next year, he got into "Stand Up on TNT." But if the two previous comedians in this project stayed for a long time, Mirzalizade performed in it literally several times and left, wanting to build a career outside of TV. Everything worked out: the Belarusian Talysh became a resident (and later a creative producer) of the Stand Up Club # 1 association - in particular, one of the hosts of the flagship show "Poraraz Birazza." His solo performances have also garnered millions of views on YouTube.

How did you react to the events around the elections?

Idrak, who has the citizenship of our country, was in Minsk on August 9 - like many other Belarusians that day, he took to the streets and witnessed with his own eyes the military operations unleashed by the security forces against peaceful protesters. A few days after that, Mirzalizade left for Moscow for work, but for a month, he returned to Belarus's capital every Sunday and participated in various actions. At the same time, as the comedian later said, he "did not want to shout on every corner" about his position, and therefore only sometimes uploaded videos from Minsk streets to his story.

In his speeches, a bloc appeared on the Belarusian events and the war in Nagorno-Karabakh, in which Azerbaijan, the country in which Idrak was born, participated. However, this monologue has so far been seen only by viewers at live performances (it is not on the Internet), and Mirzalizade spoke about it only a few times: in the Newsakh podcast, he said that "protests in Belarus are cleaner than in Russia, there is no PR and such for a person to make money on this topic - people just sincerely take to the streets."

In a video on the Vpiska channel, Idrak said that he refused to perform in Minsk, which was to occur on August 16, after he saw a fresh post from the concert venue owner that "everything is fine and calm in Belarus." There, the comedian succinctly formulated the reasons for protesting: "Why to go out [on the street]. I want something to change. I want to feel free."

And the Belarusian Talysh made the latest symbolic gesture of support to his fellow citizens at the already mentioned issue of "Slaboye Zveno" - Idrak was also among its participants and, like his friend Vania Usovich, came on the air with a white-red-white ribbon.

What about sports?

The main work of the life of the comedian's father Kakhin Abilov, who died in May 2020 (hospitalized with pneumnonia; tests for covid showed negative results, and the cause of death was called heart failure), was the national Talysh movement: for many years he was engaged in the protection of his people, studying its culture, acted as a philanthropist and even, together with the national poet of Belarus Rygor Baradulin, translated the poems of Talysh poets into the Belarusian language. But in the biography of Idrak's father, there was also a bright sports page - the mini-football team "Simurg," which he founded in Minsk in 1998.

Then, Kakhin Abilov was engaged in the construction business (his company bore the same name and participated in many projects - for example, it produced roofing and facade works in Raubichy). And when an acquaintance of the entrepreneur offered him to sponsor a mini-football team, he refused and instead created his own club. "Simurg" started off brightly - in the very first season, it won silver on the white-red-white. It would seem a stunning result - but Abilov had his own thoughts on this matter. "At the end of the debut season, when the team became the second and celebrated this unprecedented success - the newcomer team that immediately got the second place in the Republican championship - dad gathered everyone and said that he was firing the head coach. He did not fulfill the task - to become champions," Idrak recalled his father.

Kakhin Abilov set the task of taking the championship to Georgy Kondratyev - the USSR-1982 champion as part of the Minsk Dynama in the last years of his career combined mini-football with big football. And even having played the last time in 11-on-11 format in Slavia Mozyr in 1998, the player stayed on the floor for a season - he was one of those who brought Simurg the second place in the debut season. After that, Kondratyev ended his playing career and immediately began coaching in Abilov's team.

Yes, the future creator of the Belarusian "bronze" at the youth European Championship, which gave the national team a ticket to the Olympics, began his career as a coach in mini-football! And everything turned out great: under the leadership of Kondratyev, "Simurg" took both the championship and the country's Cup. After that, the coach moved to Dinamo Minsk, but his first club still succeeded: all the trophies were won again domestically, a debut in the Champions League took place, and the backbone of the Belarusian national team was made up of the players of the team belonging to Abilov. Unfortunately, the fairy tale ended there: the business of Idrak's father started doing worse, and, after their fourth season, "Simurg," which took "bronze" in the championship, sank into oblivion. But his story definitely came out bright!

The comedian himself is practically not connected with sports, but we still managed to find one curious detail: in 2014, when Mirzalizade was already graduating from journalism, he played for the first and last time at faculty football competitions - then the team of his course had problems with the composition. And Idrak was brought in to patch the gap. It all ended with the team that had taken three championships in a row before losing in the Cup semifinals and took only 3rd place. But the comedian crossed paths on the field with many journalists who showed themselves very worthily in 2020 - with Aliaksandr Yarmash, who left BelTV after the elections, who parted with Pressball after the change of course by Siarhei Mardasevich and Aliaksandr "ChestnOK" Ivulin, who does not need any introduction.