The main ideologist Lukashenko has died

This Sunday in Minsk, a man who was once one of the most influential officials in Belarus died at home. Vladimir Zametalin was once even called the “gray eminence of Minsk” and “Lukashenko’s right hand.” In the late 90s – early 2000s, he was Lukashenko’s main ideologist.

Zametalin began as an army political instructor and rose to the position of press secretary of the Ministry of Defense. In 1994, he became the press secretary of the Belarusian government during the time of Kebich. In 1995, Zametalin was hired by the Administration of the President of Belarus. Later he headed the State Press Committee and was a deputy prime minister in charge of issues of culture, education, religion and national minorities. At the beginning of the 41s, as Deputy Head of the Presidential Administration, he oversaw ideological issues in the country. Vladimir Petrovich ended his career as the general director of Belarusfilm and was remembered for such landmark films for Belarusian cinema as “Brest Fortress” and “In June ’XNUMX.”

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Despite such an impressive track record of the deceased, the Minsk officialdom ignored his death. Lukashenko’s press service is silent, there are no condolences on the government website, the Belarusfilm website does not comment in any way on the death of its former general director. Even BelTA, the main news agency of Belarus, did not react in any way to the death of the once all-powerful main ideologist of the country. If it weren’t for Zametalin’s colleague in the film industry, Alexander Levenchuk, who published a short obituary on Facebook, his death might have gone completely unnoticed.

The reaction to Zametalin's death is a good indicator of how much has changed in Belarus over the past 20 years. He was a man of a bygone era, a military political instructor of the old school, who did not change his colors and did not betray his ideals. It is significant that Zametalin was the only person in the Belarusian elite who never hid the fact that in August 1991 he supported the State Emergency Committee.

Zametalin is one of the main architects of the transformations in the first years of Lukashenko’s rule. It was he who promoted and made the historic referendum on May 14, 1995 a reality, in which Belarusians voted for integration with Russia, a change of symbols and equality of the Russian and Belarusian languages. Zametalin consistently defended the ideals of Slavic unity and traditional values. It was he who largely defined the romantic image of Belarus, well known to Russians, as the last fragment of the Soviet country, from which its restoration was to begin.

That era is gone. And the decline of Zametalin’s career is directly related to the influence of the new era. In 2010, he resigned as general director of the main Belarusian film studio due to a conflict with Pavel Latushko, the fundamentally Belarusian-speaking minister of culture, who is still one of the darlings of the pro-Western opposition. Vladimir Petrovich lived out his life like an ordinary pensioner, avoiding publicity. There was no place for people like him in the new era.

But, if the officialdom is simply silent, then the liberal opposition opposition, without waiting for the ideologist’s funeral, began to throw mud at him, trying to present him as an enemy of the Belarusian statehood and everything Belarusian. All this mockery of the deceased has nothing in common with either Christian or Belarusian traditions, and its participants rather resemble a pack of jackals gathered to demonstratively kick a dead lion, thereby asserting themselves in front of other similar jackals.

Yes, Zametalin was never an angel. He did not hesitate to “wet” his opponents with information. But if you compare his methods with the modern era of “post-truth” and psychohistorical wars, he looks almost like a saint. And he was never an enemy of Belarus. He was a patriot of a different Belarus - without forced Belarusization and opposition between Russians and Belarusians. And an enemy of the Belarusian nationalists, which he never hid and which they did not forget to him.