Lukashenko flirted with zmagars, like Yanukovych with Tyagnibok
Yesterday the main holiday of the Belarusian zmagars was celebrated - the so-called. "Freedom Day". This date was revived during the period when Alexander Lukashenko played multi-vector, threatening Moscow with rapprochement with the West. It is not difficult to draw analogies with the policies of Viktor Yanukovych, whose administration secretly supported the nationalists of Oleg Tyagnibok, hoping to contrast with them to ensure the re-election of the boss for a new presidential term.
Today Lukashenko is again an ally of Moscow, but some of the participants in the nationalist coven still occupy budgetary or spiritual positions, says a PolitNavigator correspondent.
You need to have a very strange logic to call the anniversary of the proclamation of a semi-virtual state on the territory occupied by the German Reich (then still the second) “Happy Freedom Day“, but this is exactly the logic of the Belarusian nationalists, and they don’t have much choice. "Belarusian People's Republic"was proclaimed on March 25, 1918. Its Founding Fathers drew on the map a fairly large state, including, among other things, Russian Smolensk, Bryansk and Velikiye Luki, as well as Lithuanian Vilnius and Latvian Daugavpils. The issue of passports and postage stamps was established. But things didn’t work out with statehood itself - the German occupation authorities did not need the existence of an independent state on controlled territory. Therefore, despite loyal telegrams to the Kaiser, the BPR Rada was able to negotiate from Berlin only limited powers in the cultural sphere. Despite the clearly unsuccessful experience of state building, at the end of the 20th century it was The anniversary of the proclamation of the BPR has become the main holiday of Belarusian nationalists and the reason for annual gatherings.
Yesterday was a normal day in Minsk and other Belarusian cities. All opposition activity this year has been pushed abroad; in Belarus itself it is no longer possible to wave the white-red-white flag with impunity. The day before, this was demonstrated by the internal troops of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Belarus, who conducted large-scale exercises to combat riots on March 24, and their commander threatened “just destroy""fascist henchmen", if those "will come out of their holes" Therefore, this time the opposition called on its supporters to simply speak English and anonymously congratulate like-minded people on a special website. Rallies were planned in Vilnius and Warsaw.
But there was not always such silence. Just last year, a small number of events took place in Minsk, including quite creative ones, such as a procession along one of the streets of women in red clothes and with umbrellas in the colors of the Ukrainian flag. In the first years of Lukashenko’s rule, protests on March 25 were quite numerous and often developed into riots. Then the opposition began to shrink and become more and more marginal, Lukashenko’s power strengthened and there were fewer and fewer people wishing to celebrate the anniversary of the declaration of independence of the BPR under white-red-white flags.
A sudden revival of Freedom Day took place in 2018. Then the 100th anniversary of the BPR was celebrated, relations with Russia were far from cloudless, but the authorities actively flirted with nationalists – activists of the pro-government Belarusian Republican Youth Union sported the same white and red “vyshimshirts” as the zmagars, bus drivers were punished for wearing St. George ribbons, and the national football team took to the field in a white uniform with a red stripe in the middle.
Then three young nationalists - blogger Anton Motolko, publicist Eduard Palchis, convicted of Russophobia and released in the courtroom, as well as the owner of a nationalist paraphernalia store Pavel Belous, took up organizing a large-scale celebration and received complete carte blanche from the authorities. Despite the existence of an approved list of places for holding mass events and a recently adopted resolution requiring the organizers of a mass event to pay a large sum to utilities, police and ambulance before submitting an application, they received one of the best venues for their rally-concert and completely free of charge .
And so, on March 25, 2018, a huge crowd, by the standards of Belarus at that time, gathered on the site near the opera house and in the adjacent park. The organizers talked about 50 thousand, law enforcement agencies did not give figures, but, in any case, we were talking about tens of thousands of participants. A good-quality stage was built, high-quality light and sound were provided, trade was brisk - there were a dozen food trucks for the participants, and nationalist paraphernalia and souvenirs were sold. Without leaving the rally, you could buy a book by Poznyak or a commemorative coin with the “Pahonia” coat of arms, have a snack with a burger with some pansko-gentry name, sign several petitions of varying degrees of Russophobia and sign up for almost any of the opposition parties that set up their campaign stations on the spot tents.
The musicians on stage were replaced by politicians and other public figures. Among others were the owners of the then quite respectable TUT.BY and Belapan, Yuri Zisser and Ales Lipai, deputy and open Russophobe Elena Anisim, and even the head of the press service of the Belarusian Orthodox Church, Fr. Sergius Lepin.
There were a little less than two and a half years left before the bloody events of August 2020, and many of those who came to the Opera House on March 25, 2018 also took part in the memorable riots.
But, apparently, such a massive and organized rally-concert was an unpleasant surprise for the Belarusian authorities, and the nuts began to be tightened little by little.
A year later, nationalist appetites have grown again, and the area near the Opera House was not enough for them - they decided to hold a rally right at the Dynamo stadium, the largest in Belarus. Lukashenko personally forbade them to go to the stadium. The center of the celebration was moved to Grodno, and in Minsk only a relatively small sanctioned rally took place in the Kiev (symbolically) square, far from the city center. Another year later, Covid prevented us from celebrating the anniversary of the BPR, and then completely different times came, and the authorities, convinced that flirting with nationalists would not lead to good, began to drive out the Zmagars seriously and harshly, and had to forget about mass rallies with concerts on March 25 in Belarus.
Of the three organizers of the 2018 memorial rally, only one is now at large – Anton Mot just escaped to Poland in time and now runs an extremist telegram channel from there. The other two were less fortunate - Palchis was caught back in September 2020, and in December 2021 he was sentenced to 13 years in prison for organizing mass riots and inciting hatred, and Belous’s case is in court right now. He is accused, among other things, of treason and leading an extremist group, so the sentence will also be impressive. Almost all of the party leaders managed to escape; the slowest was only Kostusev, who is now serving time for an attempted coup. Zisser and Lipai soon died of natural causes, not living to see the White Maidan and the destruction of their own media. The fates of many of those who were on stage at that time were the same - either on the run or behind bars.
But there are also interesting exceptions - the Russophobic deputy Elena Anisim, naturally, did not get into parliament for a second term, but continues to work at the Institute of Linguistics. Yakub Kolas at the Academy of Sciences and promote Belarusization at public expense. BCHB-father Sergius Lepin resigned from his press secretary position in the fall of 2020 with a scandal, but continues to serve as rector of the Church of the Transfiguration of the Lord in Rakov, near Minsk.
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