Toast to Victory

• Iryna Khalip
• 4.01.2010, 19:36

We have held out. This fact seems astonishing not only for the regime but to many of us.

It is all clear with the regime: they have used all means with the exception of insect powder. But we ourselves met the previous year as a hard trial. And we even parted with the previous leap year without relief. Nobody expected it would be better. And the New Year devaluation that started as a thunder, hadn’t surprised anyone or caused indignation. Everybody understood that it was just a beginning, and it would be good if the future problems would be confined to Belarusian ruble only. Finally, it is not money in the proper sense of the word.

And it was true, after that the situation became even harder. It was so difficult that even those who had fear previously, stopped fearing and discovered natural scientist’s curiosity in themselves: it is interesting what would come next. And the fantasy of the authorities worked as a dynamo. They called swine flu “running nose”, Autukhovich and Asipenka terrorists, Young Front activists – kidnappers of children, deceit – pragmatism and lick-spittling patriotism.

But we knew that this year of trials was finish. And it was the last year when we could simply live and wait out like a sudden rain. We knew that the next year would be decisive. On December 16, in the end of the year, I felt that especially deeply. We were standing on the square with portraits. There were not many of us, maybe 70. The temperature was -18 C, and icy wind was blowing. We were standing clasping our hands and were legs were numb of chill. We didn’t move. Policemen and men in mufti tried to overcome cold by dancing, clapping, shouting in a megaphone. And we didn’t move for 30 minutes. And in this half an hour I understood that everything is to change soon, and that we are really to win, and even return the people who had lost hope and admitted defeat, their previous personalities – fearless and able to resist and be happy, and not to survive depending on currency exchange rate.

Let’s drink to victory this night, like they do in the war. It’s enough soothing ourselves by phantasm of a hope for a bright tomorrow future which would come without our efforts.

Or for a bright day after tomorrow, or “when two Sundays come together”. The bright tomorrow won’t come itself. If we wait for it sitting at home, it may lose its way. What then, should we wait 40 years for the last slave to die? And if he would be a long-liver?

It’s true it’s hard to be an optimist. And especially in winter. And especially after 15 years. And moreover, after all the losses and disappointments. But I understand perfectly well that the situation cannot be more difficult for me than to my grandfather, a brilliant jazz pianist Yury Belzatski. By the way, it is his 100th birthday today. Unfortunately, he lived only half of hundred years, the second half was destroyed by lung cancer. But his shot life included Warsaw conservatory, jazz, voyage from free Poland to the US to listen to Armstrong, German occupation, escape to the East in order not to be slaughtered in the ghetto, a position of the musical director of the famous Rosner band, orchestras of opera and operetta, cinema music. He lives in a strange country, in the USSR, but he had a piano and he could play jazz, the freest music in the world. He lost his motherland, his name (he was called Jerzy Belzatski in Warsaw, but he was called Jochanaan in the Soviet passport for some reason, and called simply Yury), his family was burnt down in the ghetto, but he has the piano with notes of joy he could play on it. Even at the war, under the occupation, even in the strange country, even in Stalin time. Yury Belzatski, my grandfather, I have never met you, but I love you and miss you al my life. You wouldn’t believe that your Poland would become not a Nazi or Soviet territory, but a free country at last, that the USSR would collapse as an intoxicated bully in the street, and wouldn’t stand up, and that the city you lived in the end of your life would become a capital of an independent state. But this all has happened. And if someone does not believe now that everything can change in Belarus, recall your relatives who didn’t live to see freedom or never knew it. They had no chance to give us a free country. But we have a chance. But we simply haven’t used it. If we miss this chance, then we would be able only tell a fairytale to our grandchildren some day: “Once upon a time freedom lived. But it disappeared. Somebody stole it, geese or Koschei the deathless. Sleep, as you have to sing tomorrow at a children's matinee!” And if we won’t let it pass, many years after grandchildren would feel sorry for our death only. And never for our life.

In autumn in the US I received a prize with my colleagues from Cameroon Agnes Taile. Agnes told that when she received the press release with our names, she tried to understand where Belarus is and what kind of country it is. She couldn’t find it on the world map. She asked her 9-year-old son Stefan, maybe he knew where Belarus is. He paused and told: “Mom, maybe you are looking I a wrong place? Maybe it is not a country, but a continent for instance?”

The African boy Stefan was right, even though out of ignorance. Belarus is really a continent for us. And we are obliged to free it, not waiting for some ships with liberators to arrive. As Belarus is just a spot on the map for them, where oil pipelines cross. And it is a continent for us, even an entire world. So let us make this world free!

It seems to be a toast already. It’s time to celebrate. Happy New Year then! And let us raise glasses to freedom. I know it is round the corner.