Yes, we can

Receive Nobel, change life, change the regime.

On the day when it was announced that Svetlana Alexievich won the Nobel Prize for Literature, I, as a Belarusian, received calls and greeting messages from all over the world. But most of all I remember the words of the Polish diplomat, who said that for today's Belarus, the Nobel Prize of Alexievich is the same as what it was for Poland, when this award was given to the poet Czeslaw Milosz in 1980.

"It was also so difficult for us in Poland then, that it seemed hopeless. But the Nobel Prize awarded to the Pole gave people hope that they can, are capable of, and are obliged to change everything, if their countryman won the most prestigious award in the world," said my friend.

And, indeed, in the autumn of 1980 in Poland was established the trade union called Solidarity -- a mass working-class movement against the Communist dictatorship, which brought together all -- from Catholic conservatives and right-wing liberals to ultra-left socialists and anarchists. Members of the rebellious union became 10 million Poles who believed that they were the people that could choose for themselves how to live in their country.

Yes, in addition to the Nobel, the Poles had a church and Pope John Paul II. But in the history of the Belarusians there are also heroes - both past and present.

The Nobel Prize laureate Svetlana Alexievich is just one of those normal and fair people, that the Belarusian regime does not need. Her works are not on the school curriculum, her books are not published in state publishing houses, she is not interviewed by the state media, she did not receive a single Belarusian state literary prize.

Therefore the Nobel prize of Alexievich is the award to all Belarusians who refuse to be cogs in a cruel, stupid machine, launched 20 years ago by Lukashenka. It is a reward for those who found the courage to remain a true person and be true to themselves.

But the dictatorial machine is decrepit and falling apart. For the first time, it cannot even drag Belarusians to vote early at the so-called "presidential elections". These days, to the polling stations are being driven public sector employees: teachers, workers, soldiers, people serving sentences in the penal colony settlements and other dependent people -- it's easier, without observers, to falsify votes. But this time crooks had to rig even the early voting -- people refuse to participate in a bad performance.

Today, many reported that they had received on mobile phones text messages from the Lukashenka CEC with the insistent invitation to turn up at the "election". Even the foreign ambassadors did. "Belarusians are not enough for them," said the German politician I know, when I told him about the curious case with the UK Ambassador Bruce Bucknell.

But, really, there not enough Belarusians for them. People began to respect themselves, and with self-respect begins the path to freedom.

Natallia Radzina, editor in chief of charter97.org