We Remember :: Charter'97 :: News

Death is our power, our labor and sweat
Death is our veins, our soul and flesh.
We won’t go to the hills anymore – the lights are on in our houses.
It is not us who don’t see them – it is them, who can’t see us.
Iosif Brodsky, “Hills”

On this day they usually commemorate the dead. Our memory recalls the sad past and mourns over the irreversible demise of the late. We clean up the tombs, trying to figure out what would those inside them tell us today, if they were alive. We recollect their eyes, wiping the dust from their graves and at times one gets an impression that reality is gone and that we returned to the past days, when they had all been among the living.

It happened yesterday – in April 1999. It was drizzling outdoors. A chain of people walked slowly along the square and vanished in the massive doors of the huge building, cloaked in mourning silence. The time came to a halt. It seemed as though it would never start ticking again and we would never again get on a crammed metro train nor lose patience in the car jams. We just went on, our heads bowed down, to the place where we would farewell with the one, who used to be a living dream of ours.

His demise came first in the series of monstrous and illogical deaths. He was a great man of great ideas, whose destiny proved that life is a great fun. When elected a mayor of Molodechno he determined to build a “City of Sun” but soon realized that it cannot be based in one tiny town. And he dreamed of making the whole country the “City of Sun”.

The hall scared us with the mourning colors and contradicted the life-loving nature of Karpenko. Yuri Zakharenko was standing on guard at his coffin, dressed in an official suit. His eyes looked exhausted and embarrassed, which the general tried not to give out to the visitors. What did he think about at that moment? About a loss he suffered? About the frightening uncertainty in the future or may be the Union of Officers, on which he rested great hope? One thing is clear though: he longed to change the anomalous flow of life, which became a norm for all. It is with this goal in mind that he wanted to unite the officers, to whom the very word Officer was synonymous to Honor, Courage and Dignity.

A month later Yuri Zakharenko was no more. He was slain by those, whom the newspapers refer to today as “deaths quads”, thus giving some romantic traits to the band of bustards. The general’s death was in no wise the last of its kind – four months later there vanished Viktor Gonchar and Anatoly Krasovsky. The criminal regime stole them away from us, believing in its own impunity.

Viktor Gonchar in spring 1999 when answering a question whether he wants to become president, replied “Not yet. I only want to get rid of the regime, which makes my life pointless and senseless”. Viktor was never to carry out his plans – they got him killed too. They assassinated him simply because someone felt like it. Someone simply determined that two young, talented and good-looking men shouldn’t come home one night. That someone also decided that young women should mourn over their husbands and children – over their dads till the rest of their lives. One man simply decided…

Successful businessman Anatoly Krasovsky, having once visited in Europe a supermarket “Aldi”, trading in cheap but good-quality stuff, decided to launch a chain of such stores in Belarus too. He thought of the ordinary people, who deserve better life. He helped arts groups, realizing how tough it is for them to survive under the existing circumstances. He saw Belarus as a European state, trying hard to speed up our entry into civilization.

The fall’99 rocked the country with the Freedom March, attracting a 25thsd strong crowd, which later turned into a 40thsd procession in spring 2000… But we were still few back then… In summer 2000 they killed Dima Zavadsky. Dima didn’t accompany his little Yurik to the first grade in school. A young journalist, great cameraman, brave and handsome man… What did he dream of? Most likely, about the serious work at the Belarusian television… Another Belarusian television. A good one, not this.

Human death is always upsetting, no matter whether a person lived for fifty or phenomenal hundred years, whether he died tragically or from a hard disease, whether he was a bright genius or an ordinary quiet person. We come to visit the tombs of our loved ones and talk to those, who left us. And, wiping the dust off their portraits we recall that the dead ones are somewhere close to us… That they hear us and know that we love and remember them.

And others have nowhere to go or lay flowers to… And they don’t have a place to feel this closeness with the dead ones… Their relatives were killed and buried somewhere in an unknown place. They hid them as if they feared them dead too.

We should remember for eternity the names of those who killed our relatives, friends and companions. Till our last breath they must know – We remember!

Nor should we forget those ones, who are left without husbands and dads, brothers and grandpas. They must feel our compassion and know – We remember!

We must not keep in oblivion those, who perished, trying to change our lives for the better. Even in their current place of dwelling they must be certain – We remember!

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