Eyewitness: no revolution is observed in Belarusian agricultural regions

St. Petersburg teacher Maria Chistyakova traditionally spent her holidays with the children from her training center in the Belarusian outback and shared her impressions of what is happening there now:

“I really want to explain, to show to the wonderful-hearted friends, who rejoice at the photographs of thousands of people on the streets of Minsk, their paths through the remote regions of Belarus this year, after the elections. 2 times, from August 10 to August 14, I had to cross almost through the Vitebsk region, and this is 4-5 hours of travel in one direction along small regional centers along two different roads through remote villages and country roads. Actually, like every year for 17 years, when we lived for a month in Belarus - a huge country, which is not only Minsk.

Friends, on the outskirts, in general, everything is very sad. Huge areas with thousands of people living in them, who will not go online and tell about themselves, are forced to wait for a denouement. This compulsion of those who do not have the slightest desire to change the government, who have retained their sanity and the ability to appreciate what the republic has today, is very terrible.

I can testify that in the huge agrarian regions - the area of the cities of Postavy, Polotsk, most likely - in Vitebsk, there were no protests against the authorities, there were simply no unrest.

Our colleagues were waking up from an argument in the nursing room of our sanatorium, when six nurses and orderlies scolded one, carried away by protests ...

We were seen off with apologies and fear of destruction: "You see how we have it now ... We do not know if it will be possible to extinguish ..."

Traveling, it was possible to draw parallels, as provincial Russia in 1917 did not know in the same way what the walking of crowds of people through the streets of Petrograd in February would turn out to be, killing gendarmes and officers. And there was nothing to be done. Because unknown laws, according to which a person suddenly loses the ability to see reality and rushes into rebellion and cruelty, a person experiences them in adolescence, and then - as if he forgets and no longer controls the splashes. And who and when could extinguish them, these "noble impulses", except as a heavy sobering up after catastrophes, when the true animal, and by no means the sacrificial essence of both sides of revolutionary conflicts is revealed. Solzhenitsyn, with his thick volumes of The Red Wheel and the recording of every minute of those revolutionary days, never helped anyone, this is a fact.

In the same way, we, those who are involved in this amazingly Belarusian life, where the directors of sanatoriums are still prohibited from accepting vacationers on commercial tours, if the plan to provide budget tickets for children from different regions of the country has not been fulfilled. Where the sanatorium has to accept more budgetary groups throughout the year, in order to earn some money in our commercial group in the summer and there is no money to be spent - not for the owners of the sanatorium, but for new medical equipment, for creating comfort and coziness on the territory - that is, for us too. It is given to us to see it with our own eyes and appreciate it, and not only before loss. True, a little from the side.

But you can't see a face face to face. It is impossible to convince the inhabitants of Minsk and show the dignity of this world, especially in contrast to the Russian one. They neither hear nor see. And they don't even believe their eyes.

And you look from the outside, how adolescent irritation and revolutionary metropolitan pathos in no way fits into the inner deep life of people in peaceful regional centers.

For two decades we have been bringing our children from our Russian school to the world of norm, work and sanity. To an amazing country that has been keeping the laws of social justice for 30 years. Yes, I understand - those same laws that prevent active and active people from earning money. Where there are poor but well-groomed villages with agricultural holdings and mini-factories in almost every one, shops with natural products, repaired roads in the wilderness, care for every piece of land, free treatment in well-equipped hospitals, and, in principle, where any house, private or multi-storey, transformed and comfortable. Where the appearance of big cities has long been consistent with the European one.

Before our eyes, this world was being built and gradually embellished over the course of 20 years.

No one will make us believe that some other government will support with huge subsidies non-commercial sanatoriums for children, enterprises that produce healthy products, agricultural complexes in God-forsaken border areas.

Therefore, we will also wait.

What sense does this conversation have for those who have been touched by the euphoria of revolutionary shifts?

Yes, no, probably.

But someone, perhaps, will think that the crowds in the streets and revolutionary euphoria are always blood and humiliation from both sides, without options. That in the days of confrontation both the derogatory and arrogant "collective farmer" in the capital and the aggression of the authorities equally provoke blood. They will remember the 20th century, stop being surprised by the revelations of the 21st century, read something. Imagine wise and hardworking people who "live quietly", and they will also be pitied ... Well, at least from the breadth of a revolutionary soul ... "

The original article is here.