Eighteen-year-old Vadzim lives with his girlfriend Julia and their son Vaclav, aged five months, in a bedsitter in Minsk. They used to live with Vadzim’s mother. The parents help out with the rent when necessary, and Julia earns some extra money as a babysitter. Vadzim is studying sociology at a private school. He receives no study grant, so he has to get summer jobs. Then when the autumn term begins, it is almost like a holiday for him.
“When I graduate from college I’d like to work with teenagers, and teach them to think for themselves. People here are used to working with their hands, but not with their heads. The technical know-how exists. But most people don’t know what democracy is or what dialogue and nationality mean. Having your own opinions has been prohibited. After the fall of the Soviet Union, there was a wave of enthusiasm about independence. But it cooled off when people realized that progress in changing society wasn’t fast enough. The top leaders were replaced, but the same old administration is still in place. It’s still the foreman who makes all the decisions in the kolkhoz, as if the farmers were serfs. And anyone who joins an organization knows he’s under surveillance.”
The President wants Belarus to reunite with Russia. Vadzim is one of the young Belarussians who have been severely penalized for wanting Belarus to remain an independent country. In summer 1997, he and some friends from the Young People’s Front went out into the countryside for a few days. They took spray cans, and the red-and-white flag that was introduced when Belarus declared its independence in 1991, but which the President has since replaced with the red-and-green flag from the Soviet period.
“There was only one official building in Stolbtsy with the red-and-green flag. One night we took it down and replaced it with the old flag. We sprayed slogans on buildings and statues of Lenin and Dzerzhinsky, against the regime and for an independent Belarus. I knew I might get fined or have to spend ten days in prison. I never imagined that I’d be locked up for six months!”
After a long investigation and a visit from the KGB, Vadzim and his friend Alexei, two years his senior, were arrested. They were charged with “hooliganism”, “insulting national symbols” and “destroying historical monuments”. After the trial Vadzim and Alexei were taken to the Zhodina prison near Minsk.
“You’re completely cut off from the outside world. For the first two months, I wasn’t allowed any visitors and I didn’t know if I’d be set free the next day or kept behind bars for another ten years. But one day I heard one of the guards say ‘That’s the guy they’re demonstrating for.’ That encouraged me. And then they gave me permission to see my mother for 40 minutes a month.”
Vadzim spent his time in prison studying. His teachers sent him books, and Vadzim managed to graduate together with good grades at the same time as the rest of his class. After six months he was released on parole, but his friend Alexei had to stay in prison for another year.
“I felt bad that he didn’t get released, too. But he didn’t let prison get to him.”
Vadzim and Julia got married in September 1999. Their parents were not invited, and they were told only two days after the event. The purpose was to stop them from trying to talk the couple into changing their minds.
These days, Vadzim is less active in the Young People’s Front. He feels his old friends have taken their nationalism a step too far. He too wants a revival of the old Belarusian culture as it was in the Middle Ages, before it was suffocated by Russian influence. But he has no wish to falsify historiography.
“The Young People’s Front leader went a bit crazy after spending two months in jail. These days, when he talks about ‘the national reawakening of Belarus’ it almost sounds like a new religion.”
Vadzim’s main commitment nowadays is in “The Old Earth”, an organization he co-founded a year ago.
“We study the history of Belarus, and often invite historians from Poland, Lithuania and Russia since we have a joint history. At school, the Russian version of events is all you ever get. My great, huge dream is to help bring about a new mentality in Belarus, to make Belarus a stable, independent European country. One way of achieving that is to re-establish what was good about Belarus in the old days. We also need to work more, in several areas. In the spring, more people than ever protested against the regime. But just replacing the President isn’t enough. There were problems in Belarus before he came to power. Many people resort to drugs or crime as a way out. In Saligorsk everyone under 20 has tried drugs.”
Vadzim is an optimist who believes that, in ten years’ time, he will have helped bring about a better situation for his son. Vadzim’s “medium-sized” dream is to have two more children.
And his “little” dream? “To have a flat of our own containing everything we need.”
LINDA ISAKSSON
Translated by Clare James, Språkverkstan AB
