Valeria Novodvorskaya: “You Can Hope For a Better Future” :: Charter'97 :: News

Joining the oppositional movement “Zubr” by 120 members of the Belarusian Republican Youth Union, students of V. Chernyshow state college of light industry in Baranavichy, has become an event of a national scale. We know that young oppositionist from Baranavichy are pressured now: the head of the BRYU branch in the college, Nikita Sasim, was dismissed by order of the BRYU head Mikhail Orda (more specific information to be obtained later). In the interview to the Charter’97 press-center the action of the students of the light industry college is commented by the leader of the Russian party “Democratic Union of Russia”, Valeria Novodvorskaya, who is Baranavichy born.

- The incident in Baranavichy proves that Belarus is not hopeless, that it has more chances for national revival, for freedom, for becoming a part of Europe. Far more chances than Russia has. Here we have Putin’s absolute rule. Lukashenka, unlike him, is ‘simple as a shovel’. He is some kind of a Belarusian Mussolini. He speaks his mind. He wears his heart on his sleeve. Though he is apparently not a man of great intellect. And Putin represents a kind of a Jesuit – smiling in public, with declaration of human rights in his hands, he knows how to worm himself into others’ favour, how to please people. Belarus, unlike Russia, has no oil, gas and nuclear war-heads, because of which everybody is terrified of this weird goblin Putin who has run amok.

We have different situation, but we also have different people. Fro instance, we do not have a Zubr movement, which is ready to overthrow Lukashenka. We do not have Young Front and Charter’97. All parties and organizations, except the Democratic Union and the Transnational Radical Party, are dependent and not ready to fight till the end. We do not have such a partisan movement as you have. One can really feel that Belarus was a part of the Grand Duchy of Litva once.

Until you have people who say ‘no’, you have hope. You can hope for the better future.

If Zakharanka and Hanchar were abducted in your country, Putin publicly and openly poisoned one hundred and fifty people in “Nord-Ost” by a neuroparalytic gas. And nobody made him answer for that. Imagine this large scale in Belarus. The situation in Russia is worse, and to integrate with Russia is the same thing as to integrate with Iraq or Cuba. Stay away from Russia.

And it must be said, if Zubrs would invite me in Baranavichy in summer, I’ll come with pleasure.