Mass Sabotage Against Lukashenka

• Iryna Khalip
• 31.01.2025, 12:00

The national flag to the joy of woodpeckers.

Residents of Krychau on Monday hit the off-road and sloppiness with a motor rally. More precisely, they marked Lukashenka's seventh term with a rally with red and green flags on Monday. It was their general congratulation – first a motor rally, then a rally with joyful tearing of hats.

In Pastavy on the same day, the whole city recorded a congratulatory video. Everything is coordinated, from various institutions to street decorations: policemen by the UAZ van, a forestry worker on the porch near the office, women from an unknown organization in matching synthetic vests against the backdrop of reproductions – in short, as it should be, and the whole city took part. The entire Mogilevliftmash team, clad in oiled overalls for effect, stood beneath the red-green flags, wholeheartedly waving away an uninvited tear as they congratulated their "winner." For some reason, Homel railway workers' overalls looked cleaner than those of Mahiliou elevator builders, which raises some questions about the working conditions at the plant. Manufacturers of the Mahiliou elevator in the world do not walk on sleepers in the dark, they work in workshops, and overalls – as if from a coal mine. Or maybe they were artificially aged all night and dumped in the mud to show the labor enthusiasm of the proletariat, ready to build Mahiliou elevators in the most difficult natural conditions.

Minsk Automobile Plant (MAZ) was kinder to its employees than Mogilevliftmash, because no one took the workers out into the cold and slush – they were gathered in the assembly hall for waving flags and recording a congratulatory video. For some reason, the young teachers of the Beshenkovichy school dressed in black on this significant day, and the congratulation looked like a requiem. Employees of OJSC Polesie dressed in warm jackets and went to the porch with flags with the logo of the enterprise, not the state symbols. Firefighters launched helicopters with a red-green banner and happily circled over the forests. The banner fluttered over the trees to the delight of the woodpeckers.

All the teams of SDPPs and TPPs, research institutes and other state bodies and enterprises – all congratulated, waved, welcomed and wished him many years. Only Dokshytsa did not so well – the district executive committee did not say a word about the victory on its website, did not remove any collective congratulations and did not even write about a convincing victory. Of all the news about the unprecedented triumph, the Dokshytsa administration posted only one: "The leaders of the UAE congratulated Lukashenka on his victory in the elections."

Throughout the day, state channels twisted these videos — with dances, screams, applause and flags flashing in the hands of the working people. It seemed that there were many of them – people who congratulate and greet. Really, I thought, these are the same Belarusians, our compatriots who just four and a half years ago left the shops on the square under completely different flags? You can't say about these people that Putin sent them to help and put them to the machines to portray the jubilant masses of the people.

Then I recalled what my son had said about the main advantage of the state school, and everything clicked into place. Imagine, he said, you go to school in the morning, and in front of you are physics, chemistry, biology, a math test, a dictation in Belarusian, a test in social studies. How to survive it is unclear. And suddenly, after the first lesson, the head teacher enters the classroom and says: "Who wants to go to the MAZ Palace of Culture right now to the festival of military men of the Partyzansky district?" And no test. Who would refuse such an offer?

Sure. All this trash was recorded on Monday, in the middle of the working day. Either keep forging blanks for a five-year plan at the hated machine, or step out on the porch, wave a flag, have a smoke with friends, mess up a few drafts to stretch it out, and soon the workday will be over. Naturally, it's better to go out, wave the flag, and have a good laugh afterwards, than to toil away for the state. So the "people's flash mob", as it was called by the propagandists, is actually just mass sabotage. A kind of protest action.

I remember when the Secretary General Andropov died, my classmate and I were taken from the lessons, given black armbands and put in a guard of honor under the portrait of the deceased. The whole class writes a test – and we stand by ourselves, grieve, enjoy. There was joy – I still remember.

Iryna Khalip, especially for Charter97.org