Leave People Alone

An epitaph that must be earned.

Have you ever been to Dolbizno? I haven’t either. According to the latest census, only 272 people live there. But I first heard about this agricultural town in the Kamenets District of the Brest Region two years ago, when its soccer club, “Niva,” became a sensation in Belarusian soccer and nearly made it to the top league. It looks like they’ll make it after all—and very soon.

The club’s story is simple: twenty years ago, local boys approached the director of “Agroniva,” the “town-defining” agricultural enterprise in Dolbizno Vitaly Bobru: “We want to play soccer; could you build us a field?” “No problem,” replied the director, “let’s do it together.” They organized a community work day—not the government-mandated April one, but a voluntary one—and in two sessions managed to prepare a perfectly decent field.
At first, they just kicked the ball around; then they decided to compete in the Kamenets District championship. And then came the Brest Region Championship, the Second League, and the First League. They opened a soccer academy and plan to build a new stadium once they reach the top league, because they want to train at home rather than in Brest. And one of the best Belarusian soccer players of his generation, Mikhail Gordeychuk, plays for “Niva.” It’s as if Robert Lewandowski had come to play out his career for a rural club near Biała Podlaska in Poland.

And the secret is very simple: no one bothered Vitaly Bobru. No district or regional officials came with orders; the phones weren’t ringing off the hook from the ministry or the federation; and he wasn’t tormented by directives or ideology. Because where is the ministry, and where is Dolbizno? It’s a remote village, a few kilometers from the border—not even a district center, where the authorities actually reside. So, in the absence of the all-seeing eye and the greedy hands of the state, the soccer players from Dolbizno—whose sponsor is that very agricultural enterprise—were able to make a leap forward that is perhaps unparalleled in Belarusian soccer.

And this applies not only to soccer—in fact, to any field. Let’s consider the Belarusian IT industry. When it was still in its infancy, there were no officials in the country who understood even the basics of this field. So they gave the IT folks a little space in the form of the HTP and said: "Go ahead and have some fun for now, and we’ll see." And Belarusian programmers, whom no one bothered, quickly became a global brand.

And now they’re filling the treasuries of Ukraine, Kazakhstan, India, Poland, Hungary, and other countries with their taxes. Wargaming, in turn, has become one of the largest taxpayers in Lithuania, Cyprus, and Serbia (in Serbia, the company is also a major employer). Tens and hundreds of millions of euros are fueling the economies of many countries—but not Belarus. And if it weren’t for the ideologues and security forces who, in 2020, were kicking down doors in nearly every Belarusian home and office, all those millions could have stayed in Belarus—along with the programmers and other professionals.

And that’s how it’s always been. Back in the 1990s, when Belarus had only just appeared on the modern world map and was struggling to survive as best it could, it was the “shuttle traders” who saved the country from starvation. All those engineers and teachers, university professors and nurses rushed across the suddenly open border with their checkered bags. They started small businesses without understanding a thing about them—or even knowing the term. No one helped them, but no one stood in their way either (customs officials taking bribes don’t count—that’s a natural phenomenon). The state survived on its own; the people, on their own. Perhaps it was thanks to this separation that they survived.

Only later, when not only bribe-taking customs officials but also Lukashenko appeared on the scene, did he begin to be terribly annoyed by people who survived on their own and asked for nothing. He waged war on entrepreneurs, calling them “lousy fleas” and creating so many obstacles that overcoming them seemed impossible. But they overcame them. Right up until 2020, after which they left to open their own coffee shops, flower shops, and schools anywhere but at home. And they didn’t get lost—even if they didn’t know the language of their new country or the ins and outs of its bureaucracy—they had such survival experience that they could take it all the way to Mars.

The ideologues who missed the point of the film *Kupala* and failed to stop the director in time inadvertently became complicit in the creation of a world-class film. True, they intervened retroactively and deprived the film of theatrical release and festival screenings. But the film has already been shot. You can’t rewind the film reel. And this film is further proof that Belarusians create top-notch work in every field—as long as they aren’t hindered.

Leave people alone; give them the opportunity to create, act, sew, and film without your interference. They will grow their own bread, make their own movies, build their own soccer fields, and develop technologies that the whole world will use. “He didn’t get in the way of people’s work”—that’s an epitaph one has to earn.
Irina Khalip, exclusively for Charter97.org

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