Absurdity as deliverance from dictatorship

Everybody finds pursuits after one’s own heart and devotes oneself to it with all one’s oppositional zeal.

I do not understand at all for what reason Lithuanian minister Azubalis started to talk about being tired, not of the opposition in general, as he hurried to clarify, but of all the plans for supporting the opposition in Belarus, and besides of its disunity, and its absence of a common position on the issue of the “parliamentary” election. In general, “they are tired” – that’s the text of a tattoo Soviet-time convicts made on their legs. And everything becomes clear about this prisoner, about the opinion of Azubalis, and about many Western leaders who are probably tired as well, though they have not expressed that publicly.

But for me their tiredness is absolutely incomprehensible. Look how pleasingly, merrily, creatively one can live, act and assist in our country and sometimes even abroad! It’s such a heavy action! Everybody finds pursuits after one’s own heart and devotes oneself to it with all one’s oppositional zeal.

Uss is fighting for making amendments to the Electoral Code, either being unwilling or incapable to understand that in today’s Belarus even the First Amendment to the US Constitution might be adopted officially, and all laws changed totally, but they do not work anyway. So it is senseless to change laws under the dictatorship, the system should be changed, but who cares? After all, any toy is O.K. that keeps the baby at play…

Baradach, who communicates exclusively with a mirror, creates a government in exile himself, and besides, he explains his reflection in the mirror that his actions are extremely important and undoubtedly effective, and his style and logics are so dazzling, that remind an old army joke: “the advance signal is three green whistles.”

The Conservative Christian Party Belarusian Popular Front offers Zyanon Paznyak to take part in the presidential election, and he solemnly promises to consider this proposal, while their activist Kavalenka is being killed in prison. Well, let them kill him, people should think of the future. Long-term planning is a hallmark of real mature politicians. “Tell the truth” fights with Chinese, as there is no greater evil in nature; and besides, they are for the great honour of hosting “Dazhynki” festival in Rahachou. And it is certainly strategically right. And “For Freedom” movement is fighting for a place for a picnic to mark their anniversary, which is extremely important indeed.

A great number of smart, intellectual, educated people can spend hours and days wearing out the seat of their trousers, to proudly call themselves “the Six”, forgetting about absolutely negative connotations of this word (“a stooge” in Russian slang). A normal person would never become a stooge, but then again, who cares? They are spending their lives on finding out whether they should participate in the “parliamentary election”, as if anything could depend on that. My honest gentleman Syarhei Kalyakin makes a comparison with the Republic of South Africa in the times of apartheid, when Nelson Mandela spent 27 years in prison, and his supporters were taking part in the parliamentary elections all this time. Well what of it that Mandela’s comrades were not allowed to come near ballot boxes, let alone participation in the elections? The metaphor is beautiful!

When you look from the outside, it’s absurdity, farce, Guignol. But who says that it should be a different way? Who says that the opposition should march n lines and speak in chorus? “Long live Belarus!” is enough to say in chorus, and the rest should be individual. Who says that the chaos should be fought against by anything else except the chaos itself? Who says that the absurdity should be pitted against with a common strategy approved by Europe? As a rebel from Camus’s Caligula, Cherea, said: “Anyone can fight against tyranny; it's vital to use cunning against disinterested malice. We must push it forward in its own direction, in expectation that this logic must become insanity.” December 19 has demonstrated that we are no longer facing a tyranny, but disinterested malice, when blood is not a warning for others, but a goal in itself. And the logic of this malice has reached the level of absurdity. So why should we oppose it with neat schemes? Maybe absurdity is the only thing to win this dictatorship? After December 19 everyone understood that popular discontentment and even people’s anger do not detonate. So is it possible that something crazy would detonate in our situation? For instance, some eccentric man would appear who will announce that Belarus would be delivered from the dictatorship only by painting all benches in city parks Persian indigo. This odd fish will collect several hundred freaks in social networks, and they will start painting benches. And this would work. In one hundred years a Persian indigo monument would be raised in his honour in the main square of Minsk. And d all of us would be crossed out from history by audacious archivists, after their desperate attempts to reconstruct reasons of our actions. They would probably add: “They were so strange. It is not clear what their goal was?”

And the most absurd thing is that all of us want one thing. But we have different degrees of self-love, and different degrees of hate to the dictatorship.

Iryna Khalip for charter97.org