Ihar Alinevich: Spirit of people is the only important thing

A political prisoner compares the events in Ukraine and uprisings in Stalin's GULAG camps.

Ihar Alinevich wrote it in a letter to his mother Valiantsina Alinevich, who gave it to charter97.org.

“Geopolitics is a mean thing,” he writes. “The only really important thing is the spirit of people. To show such a courage, super-firmness, to do the impossible... I've read it only in Solzhenitsyn's books about the Kengir uprising in GULAG camps. Desperate people, with Ukrainians as key figures, started a counter attack against tanks and men armed with assault rifles. Sixty years passed and details changed, but weapons, desperation and the uncompromising stand remain the same.

The sides haven't changed either: people vs neo-Soviet hydra.

I have to admit that Ukrainians were not the only active participants of the Kengir uprising, though they were the majority. Other participants were Lithuanians, Russians, Belarusians, Latvians, even Germans, Chinese and Americans. There were many priests as well...

It's good that the space history of the mankind hasn't begun yet. What could we show to other worlds, our skeletons in the closet?”

Valiantsina Alinevich says her son was released from a punishment cell some days ago.

“The news becomes old in one day. I received a letter last week (March 3). He hinted the situation was escalating and wrote he was ready for any surprises. He writes about Ukraine in this letter. Yesterday I received a postcard dated March 17. He writes he's just left a punishment cell. He says he didn't send many congratulations on Women's Day, because he was thrown into the cell before March 8. He sends his best wishes to everyone he didn't congratulate,” she says.

Activists of the anarchist movement were detained in September 2010 for protest actions, which a court called attacks on administrative buildings. The young people got long prison sentences on accusations of carrying out political actions, including an attack on the Russian embassy in Minsk in August 2010.

Ihar Alinevich was sentenced to 8 years of imprisonment. He is in a correctional facility in Navapolatsk now.

The book “Going to Magadan” based on his diary in the KGB jail was published in 2013.