Fyaduta on Ihar Alinevich: It was pointless to argue. But we kept doing it, with breaks for interrogations and searches

Ihar Alinevich

One of the most important messages for me last December was the news about Ihar Alinevich's month-long hunger strike.

I met Ihar in a cell of the "Amerikanka" — the KGB pre-trial detention center — in December 2010. I ended up there after "Ploshcha" (Square), to which presidential candidate Uladzimir Nyaklyayew, whose election headquarters I was a member of, was not allowed by unknown Belarusian special service officers. He was beaten at a time when people were still voting for him across the country, at about seven in the evening. I was arrested at my home: I was preparing to go to the Supreme Court in the morning to file a complaint as a proxy for my candidate, who was in an emergency hospital.

I remember how then, in the morning, I entered the cell and greeted, "Good day."

They looked at me as if I were mad. A person arrested, placed in the KGB pre-trial detention center, and he calls this day good. Is he alright in the head? I didn't stay long in that cell. And in the second one, Alinevich was already there.

When I was rereading Yevgenia Ginzburg's "Journey into the Whirlwind" now, in Mogilev penal colony No. 15, I again paid attention to the arguments that took place in transit prisons and Stalinist camps between Marxists: should one accept help from Trotskyites and other deviationists, violators of party discipline, or not? Now, even in the conditions in which I was rereading Yevgenia Semyonovna's memoirs, it seemed almost like an anecdote: prisoners engaging in ideological discussions.

But in 2010, a similar situation did not seem anecdotal to me: the cell contained an almost orthodox Marxist Fyaduta and a convinced anarchist Alinevich. And, as the classic wrote, "everything between them gave rise to arguments."

It was easier for me. I was older and had managed to read not only some works of Marx, Engels, Plekhanov, and even, God forbid, Ulyanov-Lenin, but also the classics of anarchism, Bakunin and Kropotkin. This was not my merit; I simply was born and grew up at a time and in a country where the founders of Marxism-Leninism had to be studied if you wanted to get a higher education. And Bakunin and Kropotkin had to be read independently to at least somewhat understand the peripeties of the turbulent nineteenth century.

Ihar belonged to a different generation. He was not a "man of words" — he was, as they say, a "man of action." And what led him to anarchist circles was not an understanding of the correctness of Bakuninist-Kropotkinist ideas, but a spontaneous feeling that the state, in full accordance with Lenin's doctrine, still remains an instrument of suppressing the individual.

And it was precisely with this that Alinevich could not reconcile. He found it difficult to bear the very thought that someone was suppressing him. And all his actions, for which he ended up in the "Amerikanka," were a spontaneous rebellion, a protest against this very suppression.

We argued until we were hoarse. To all my arguments, reinforced with quotes from the classics, Ihar responded with his own arguments, and he did so very unreservedly. He didn't care who he argued with.

If Kropotkin himself had been with us in our "green submarine" (the cell walls were painted green), Ihar would have periodically sent him into an intellectual knockout. It was pointless to argue. But we kept doing it, with breaks for interrogations and searches.

And in the evenings, we talked about literature. About "The Count of Monte Cristo." About Dostoevsky. About my favorite "anti-anarchist" novel by Chesterton, "The Man Who Was Thursday."

Then I was transferred to a solitary cell — for a whole 55 days, as it turned out. Back then, in slightly less cannibalistic times, this was almost an eternity. But after these 55 days, I was released on a recognizance bond not to leave the country.

And then, unexpectedly for myself, I became an expert on Belarusian anarchists. Our human rights defenders stubbornly refused to recognize them as political prisoners, although there were all grounds for it: Belarusian television justified the necessity of their trial exclusively on ideological grounds. They tried to intimidate viewers with them in much the same way as later, in 2021-2022, they frightened with terrible phrases like "Plan Silence" or a little later – "Black Nightingales." In fact, the cogs and screws of the propaganda machine were deeply indifferent whether Bakuninists, Kropotkinites, Makhnovists, or just football fans sat in the dock. Uncontrolled means dangerous.

And the human rights defenders then could not come to terms with the fact that Alinevich at some point had Molotov cocktails in his hands. How could that be? How can one be a political prisoner if you don't fit into the Procrustean bed of the first line of the Belarusian anthem: "We, Belarusians, are peaceful people." But I talked to Nyaklyayew about Alinevich, and Uladzimir Prakofyevich believed.

Nyaklyayew's entire authority at the time was needed to convince human rights defenders of the necessity to acknowledge the obvious.

Now there is no need to convince anyone anymore.

Everyone wrote about Alinevich's month-long hunger strike, including some human rights websites.

And reading the scant information about this hunger strike, I recalled his high forehead, stubborn gaze, harsh logic. I recalled his book "I'm Going to Magadan," where he also wrote about our "American" arguments.

I also remembered the anarchist Sasha Frantskevich, who, at "Valadarka" (pre-trial detention center), guided me, helpless, up and down the stairs, helping to carry bags during the transfer to another court hearing.

I remembered the vivid journalistic texts of Koli Dzyadok.

I remembered letters with words of support that Masha Rabkova, who received her insane fourteen years, sent me to the cell in the same "Valadarka."

I remembered the extraordinarily bright Lyosha Halauko, with whom we discussed the latest news every time he returned from the punishment cell (SHIZA), and then — the additional term he received "on the shoulders" and being sent from our "fifteen" to the "stricter regime prison."

I remembered Akihiro Hanada-Hayewski — a young man with the face and name of a Japanese, who spoke to me in the prison "glasses" (small isolated cells) like a true Belarusian and patriot of Belarus.

I remembered all of them — those who passed through my life by chance, fleetingly, barely touching. And I had no desire to argue with them. Only a feeling of deep pain arose from the fact that I could not help them now in any way. I can only remember them.

Let's remember. Let's think about them. Let's do the little that is in our power to support and free them. And we'll argue, perhaps, later — when they are also free.

I wanted to write: "when they are free," and corrected myself. Because they are freer than all those who remain on the other side of prison bars in Belarus today. They are free in spirit, although they probably haven't read Kropotkin.

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