Talking or acting: it’s up to every person to decide

Presidential elections took place in Belarus in March 2006. Pretty interesting elections should I say, quite tasteful. Belarus has never had such elections (if considering them together with events which happened shortly after). The whole body of progressive democratic youth took part in civil struggle: flash mobs, samizdat (clandestine copying and distribution of government-suppressed information or other media, made generally by typing), cultural and charitable tours, political statements and new initiatives. Everything was spinning and whirling, everybody felt obligated to make something for the New Belarus, which seemed to be so close.

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Everything was spinning and whirling, everybody felt obligated to make something for the New Belarus

And then there was a slump. Political parties found themselves incapable of leading and supporting the movement towards democratic changes, of giving stimulus and impulse to a further development of self-organization tendency. That was the tendency that everyone expected of happen to political parties, though no thoughts were expressed aloud. And then there were first disillusionments. Over time, constant blames of political leaders for small and considerable offences became quite habitual. Then everyone started to blame youth leaders and later all people who tried to exercise any initiative. They started to blame all activists and optimists, just in order to look normal at their background. Disillusionment reached its climax.

Nevertheless, this spring civil activity reached a crucial point: lots of enterprising youth groups showed up and these young people were really able to change something. However, the global disillusionment influenced them as well and decreased the scale of their activity. Did the situation really get worse than this spring? Let’s try to look into it.

The major problem is not in authoritarian regime’s repressions or “watchdogs of dictatorship”. The major problem is in us. It is in our unwillingness to overstep the bounds of our normal everyday life and to make something more important.

This spring young people organized and took part in political and social flash mobs, developed a whole new street movement. And though the majority had neither experience nor confidence in that this would end up with something positive and concrete, everybody was doing it and everybody was happy. The number of participants increased as well as their experience did. And then political parties made some mistakes (quite peculiar to them) and we, for some strange reason, lost confidence not in them but in ourselves. At first we started to participate not in all actions, then started to offer some ideas instead of trying to make them real, and then just started criticizing everything and our critic more and more often turned into idle talking and blether: “the dictatorship is almighty,” “OMON’s (special military forces usually used to disperse democratic demonstrations) baton will crash any creative head,” “our actions are pointless” and so on.

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Do elections change something in alignment of forces or are they just a catalyst of activity?

But was there any really insurmountable obstacle which prevented us from adjusting to new methods of peaceful actions and flash mobs dispersal? There are methods which can minimize the risk of contact with riot police and further detentions. So in fact the main problem of this spring actions—the increasing rate of detentions—turns out to be solved.
But almost nobody cares about it. New arguments appear, like ephemeral exclamations “where are the creative ideas? Everything we have now is a complete stupidity if compared to what we had earlier!” or “there is no nerve-strain anymore—there were elections and now there are none!”

Do elections change something in alignment of forces or are they just a catalyst of activity? If they are nothing but a catalyst, then what prevents you from becoming a catalyst of activity yourself? OMON (Otryad Militsii Osobogo Naznacheniya, "Special Purpose Detachment of Police". These units are utilized in emergencies such as high-risk arrests, hostage crises and riots, as well as in response to acts of terrorism. OMON are often accused of rash actions and excessive and indiscriminate use of force.) or just prosaic laziness and common indolence? It’s time to either determine our position or continue staring at dull grey houses and crying about oppression of everything Belarusian. It’s not we who are oppressed—we oppress our self-consciousness by ourselves.

We need to become aware of the most important thing: there is no “you know, what youth (people, government, police) we have in our country, we can do nothing about it.” When one talks to hundreds of people everyday and everybody repeats the same, a reasonable question arises: people, maybe if instead of blaming each other you just learn more about each other and start doing something, won’t it be beginning of end of the dictatorship our homeland has?

Talking or acting: it’s up to every person to decide. And then the subtle spirit of success we enjoyed this spring will come again.