Write, Shura, Write!

• 28.11.2025, 14:53

An island of African stability

You know, it's a good thing that the Lukashists rewrite textbooks after all the mass protests of the people. The news that the new textbook will contain horror stories about coup attempts is presented by independent media as a mockery of the people in general and schoolchildren in particular. But it's quite the opposite.

Where have you seen a high school student whose speech apparatus is able to reproduce something like "an attempted coup d'état has been foiled in Belarus"? In the best case, in 2020, as a fifth-grader, he himself waited for his parents from the protests and hung a flag in the window, and he won't even read the textbook. At worst, he will just laugh and go smoking behind the garages. Propaganda will whistle past schoolchildren like a gust of wind and disappear into space.

But for future researchers, for future prosecutors, for future judges, this is a very valuable thing. Without realizing it themselves, ideologists and gabists do everything to make historical events in Belarus under the conditions of censorship still remain tangible, important, fateful, preserved on the pages of textbooks. Here you have Thermopylae, here is the opening of the second front, and here are the mass protests of Belarusians. Thank you, dear Lukashists, for the good memory and the desire to preserve everything that is dear to us, Belarusians, for history.

I remember how after the protests in 2010 ideologists immediately began to revise the textbook on pre-conscription training for high school students and to insert the history of December 19 there. The new textbook read: "Having suffered a crushing defeat in the presidential election of December 19, 2010, some former presidential candidates tried to seize power by force. The conspiracy was prepared in advance with the help of foreign special services and with the support of some Western structures. As soon as the polling stations closed, the Internet site "Charter-97" hastened to inform its users about the amazing news that one of the presidential candidates declared the fall of "Lukashenko's regime" and announced the establishment of a "government of people's salvation". And at the same time "militants" were smashing the doors and windows of the Government House."

There was no worse beast than the Charter. We knew it long ago, but by rewriting the textbook, the Lukashists only confirmed it. And now you can't even cut it down with an axe - it's written in the textbook. "Storming the government house", "plot to overthrow the government", "money from European funds" - all this creates a picture that is completely opposite to the usual propaganda stories about a few dozen scumbags who have no public support and came out to rally for ten dollars. European funds, a planned conspiracy, and the storming of the government house is a different story about a serious and crushing force opposing the regime. You wanted to write about a dozen thugs? It won't work anymore - they've burned themselves, set themselves up. But nobody pulled their tongue.

And here I am reading a new history textbook, which was published for high school students this year, and it says the same thing, only about 2020: "In 2020, the Belarusian people faced an attempted coup d'état to seize power by unconstitutional means and realized how easy it is to lose peace and security. Well, first of all, what kind of state is this if peace and security in it are conditional, phantom concepts, easily lost without any external aggression? There is no iron armor, no close ranks of people chanting "the enemy will not pass!" - only complete helplessness of the state with the army, internal troops and other power structures before the conspirators who have none of the above. And secondly, what kind of stability can they even talk about now, if it is written in black and white in their textbooks that there was a conspiracy in 2010, and ten years later - also a conspiracy? Even in the militant 19th century, at the peak of the national movement, uprisings in Belarus broke out once every 30 years, when a new generation was growing up. And here - every ten years a coup d'état, and even with mass demonstrations, assaults and other attributes. An island of stability, you say? Such stability is observed only in Africa, where conspiracies and coups are a familiar part of the landscape along with palm trees.

I remember the prosecutor at the trial of Evgeny Afnagel, Pavel Seviarynets and other Belarusian heroes. He said that the defendants had committed a serious crime - and there were hundreds of thousands in the streets, and the strike was total, and the damage was colossal. Yevgeny then told me how they were all proud of themselves after the prosecutor's speeches: "And we did all this?! We are really cool revolutionaries!"

So the ideologists who rewrite textbooks are doing the right and important thing. They fix what they themselves, sobered up, try to deny. They say there was nothing - just a dozen thugs gathered and broke windows. Deny it, don't be shy. Everything has already been written and read. Believe what has been corrected.

Irina Khalip, especially for Charter97.org.