The Process Is Underway

A turbulent start to the year is a sign of change.

Nothing cheers up the beginning of the year like a series of tumultuous, world-changing events. The "Resurrection" of RDK commander Denis Kapustin along with the half-million dollars the Kremlin transferred to Ukraine for his murder (the money will now go to the AFU), the arrest of Maduro by the U.S. Maduro's arrest by the Americans, increasing protests in Iran - with a start like this, it's definitely not going to be an ordinary year.

The world has been going nowhere for a long time, we've all realized that. But the immutability of evil, which is gradually becoming the norm and addictive, against the backdrop of such events is once again in great doubt, and changes are no longer just desirable, but tangible, real, weighty. And even if it is now not in our country, but in other countries and even on other continents - the Universe is organized in such a way that any event important for the world order causes a chain reaction. It does not always lead to changes for the better. But it certainly always leads to changes.

In the winter of 2011, when we, the participants of Square 2010, were sitting in the KGB detention center, stupid KGB officers tried to demoralize us with stories about the Arab Spring. They said: "Everyone has long forgotten about you, you are yesterday's news, there is such a thing going on in the world - revolution in Tunisia, revolution in Egypt, revolution in Yemen!" They didn't realize how much it lifted the spirits of us revolutionaries and strengthened our spirits. There are revolutions in the world, so dictators are getting what they deserve after all. It warmed us on cold prison nights better than tea in an iron mug. Starting in Tunisia, a series of revolutions spread to other Arab countries. Already out of prison, we were able to see with our own eyes on big screens the humiliation and death of the most disgusting Gaddafi. The revolution does not come alone, what can I say?

A few years before that, we had seen how regimes in Ukraine, then in Georgia, then in Kyrgyzstan changed one after another by the will of the people who came to the square. The next were us - the Square-2006, the tent city, the arguments of journalists of the world media about how to call the Belarusian revolution: cornflower or white? Our protests were suppressed, but even before that we had time to see with delight and slight envy how brave people refused to accept the future that fraudsters were trying to impose on them and defended their right to decide how to live. We pronounced like the titles of books or favorite songs - "orange revolution, tulip revolution, rose revolution." We wore orange in solidarity with Ukrainians, bought tulips and roses. We realized that such a chain of events could take us too. And it did, though not in the way we had dreamed: from those revolutions we eventually inherited Kurmanbek Bakiyev, entrenched somewhere either in Nalibokskaya Pushcha or in Drozdy. He was mercilessly swept away by the next Kyrgyz revolution - by the way, in 2010. So our Square was also a part of the big revolutionary process. And the year 2020, when Belarus was hit by the most massive protests, was not only a pandemic of cowardice. Armenia and Iran, Khabarovsk Krai of Russia and Peru, Hong Kong and Lebanon protested that year. And in Kyrgyzstan a revolution began in the fall, which led to the resignation of the next president.

You can remember the velvet revolutions in Eastern Europe at the end of the Soviet Union, when communist dictatorships crumbled like autumn trees after thousands of protesters took to the streets. We can remember 1968 - the mass anti-war protests in the United States, the Prague Spring, student protests in Europe, and even the eight daredevils who took to Red Square in Moscow. We can recall the fall of four empires at the end of World War I and decolonization after World War II.

And we can go even further back in history, and this will only confirm the inevitability of the chain reaction. "The Spring of Nations", the Reformation, the Great Migration of Peoples, or even the Bronze Age catastrophe... All these events of world history received common short names in the end, combined in it for easy understanding by descendants. But each of them is a huge number of upheavals, rebellions, revolts that happened in different countries and regions. "The Spring of Nations" seized France, Denmark, Sweden, Switzerland, Germany, Poland, the Romanian principalities. The Reformation was a huge number of anti-church revolts, which ended with the Thirty Years' War, the religious redivision of Europe and the foundations of religious freedom.

So, if it has begun - wait for the continuation. Or don't wait, but join in. In any case, the beginning of 2026 indicates that new upheavals and changes await us all. Whether they will lead to what we are all waiting for and for which we have already sacrificed a lot is unknown. But there will definitely be no boredom in the new year, with which I congratulate us all.

Irina Khalip, especially for Charter97.org.

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