Svyatlana Aleksievich: We Are On the Eve of Miracle :: Charter'97 :: News

“I am in Belarus for about two month already. I have visited some villages, small towns, visited Mahilyou. Just imagine: we are sitting in an assembly hall in Mahilyou, about a hundred of us, and a portrait of Milinkevich is hanging on the wall. And I am looking at those decent faces (people with very nice faces came, the faces that have not been for a long time: teachers, local intellectuals), and on the portrait on the wall. And I had a feeling that I was somewhere in Poland or the Czech Republic. I see that a decent, normal face has appeared. It corresponds to the time and dramatic events, which are inevitable for our country, regardless of the change of regime or its staying. There is a certain hope for me in his mentality, in his intelligence, which is almost forgotten in our country,” a well-known Belarusian writer Svyatlana Aleksievich told in an interview to the Radio Svaboda after a visit to Mahilyou, where she had a discussion with intellectuals.

As said by Aleksievich, people in Belarus have changed visibly over the last time. They are more using their native language, are more interested in the history of their country. In general, it is obvious that the society desires changes.

“I heard what the people were saying, and saw that a Belarusian community is developing. Young people told me how they were searching the traces of Kalinouski uprising. They all are speaking in Belarusian. It is noticeable that the number of such people is growing. And this face is emerging, on which the hopes of the best part of the society are focused. Te society had been waiting for Lukashenka and they got Lukashenka. And now the society is full of different aspirations, which are not formulated, concealed. However when I spoke to Ukrainian intellectuals a month before the revolution, they told that they did not believed in its possibility. But all of a sudden some new chemical element emerges…” the writer told.