Fyaduta: Because books and manuscripts are burned not publicly, as in Nazi Germany, but secretly, regimes do not become less fascist

Every morning and every evening in the colony, the same thing happened: convicts lined up for inspection. We stood on white snow, when the snow was trampled and had not yet melted, dressed in black uniform clothing.

From above, this picture must have resembled a printed page: a white strip of paper, a bustle of black letters.

Life like spots on an old canvas
Black spots on the birch skin
We are like letters on a white sheet.
God writes new prose with us.
The author is nervous, gnaws at his pen:
The image is good, but is it appropriate here?
Something new, something old…
The main thing is just to find a publisher.

Our life is like a book written by God. The life of each individual person is just another page in the book of universal existence of that collection of living beings called humanity. Why was this page written? Probably to convey something important to future generations. From the point of view of Eternity, and therefore Destiny, we are merely carriers of information. What kind of information exactly – that is another question. But any information accumulated by us must be passed on to subsequent generations, because it is unique, just as human life is unique.

You can tear out one page. You cannot destroy the book entirely. "Manuscripts do not burn," said the representative of Eternity — that force which eternally wills evil and eternally works good.

From this point of view, we truly live in the Gutenberg era and in the Gutenberg galaxy. This is what Canadian culturologist Marshall McLuhan called his book — one of the most important books of the twentieth century. I am afraid this is the most famous book by a Canadian author in the world, no matter what genre he worked in. And another one is unlikely to appear anytime soon.

Johann Gutenberg, whose monument stands in the now French city of Strasbourg, was just an inventor. He invented the printing press. Thanks to this, the production of books as information carriers became much cheaper, as the manufacturing process itself became faster.

Printers transformed knowledge from a luxury and the lot of a few into the possession of a much larger number of people. It is clear that at first, the talk was about eternal truths — primarily religious ones.

The Holy Scripture, previously copied by hand, was no longer circulated in single copies, but in hundreds, then in thousands. Even those who could read did not always understand the subtleties of religious symbolism.

Thus began the printing of works by theologians, philosophers, philologists (after all, in the beginning was the Word), from which believers had to learn how exactly divine Truth should be understood. Then other scientific works began to be printed. Then — poems. The sequence did not necessarily have to be exactly this, but the transition from what was urgent to what was considered a luxury was inevitable.

Now one can argue about what the main carrier of information is. The Internet? Listen to how it is criticized by those who want to single-handedly shape public opinion, dictate how to live and, much more importantly, why to live. More and more information channels are being cut off.

Lists of extremists are compiled by people who, like a character from an old Soviet film, are going to conduct not even an experiment, but an excrement: they started with those who, as they thought, were preparing terrorist acts, continued with "couch armies" operating with "likes" and comments, and then continued with lists of undesirable books and arrests of those who wrote, published, or distributed books.

Heretics are not yet burned at stakes and in furnaces at the place of punishment, but this does not make the picture any less reminiscent of Ray Bradbury's brilliant dystopian prophecy "Fahrenheit 451".

Because books and manuscripts are burned not publicly, as in Nazi Germany, but secretly, regimes do not become less fascist. The Inquisition does not become less dangerous because books are banned that threaten not sacred religion, but (for some reason) — secular power.

You can arrest a publisher == you cannot arrest a thought. You can even arrest Gutenberg himself, but it is impossible to nullify his Universe, his Galaxy.

Gutenberg will inevitably be succeeded by Skaryna, Mstislavets, Budny, Tsyapinski, the Mamonich brothers, Marcin Kuchta. The Statute of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania will be printed. Dunin-Martsinkevich will publish a translation of "Pan Tadeusz" into Belarusian.

"Nasha Niva" will be published. Bogdanovich's "Vyanok" will appear. People will read the poems of Yanka Kupala and Yakub Kolas. Decades later, the books of Maksim Haretski, Uladzimir Dubouka, Larysa Hienijush will return to Belarusians — no matter how much they were banned. Karatkevich's "The Boat of Despair", Melezh's "People in the Swamp", Karpyuk's "Danuta" and Adamchyk's "Alien Homeland", and the immortal novellas of Vasil Bykau will appear.

The complete memoirs of Paulina Myadzolka, letters of Zoska Veras, scientific works of Henadz Kisyalyou, Vital Skalaban, Adam Maldzis will be published. And "Faust" will speak in the lines of Vasil Syomukha, and "The Song of the Bison" will sound with the melody of Yazep Semizhon, and Adam Mickiewicz will return to his homeland together with Andrei Khadanovich...

This can be delayed, prohibited, readers intimidated, publishers arrested — but any ban is meaningless. The Vatican is a witness. Everything will return to people's consciousness as soon as those who are unable to create anything but lists of banned literature stop deceiving themselves for a moment.

In my childhood, I courted a girl whom, fortunately for both of us, I did not marry. Her father was the best surgeon in the city.

On his table, among the newspapers, I once saw an issue of "Roman-Gazeta" with a novella by some bearded man — "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich."

I was in the eighth grade then and remembered the surname of the author, whom, when I was in the third grade, it was customary to scold during our political information classes. And I asked Uncle Zhenya to let me read this novella.

Uncle Zhenya glanced at the publication, then at me, and threw over his shoulder to his daughter:

— Katya, wrap it in newspaper so he doesn't dirty it.

Already after university, I reminded Yevgeny Alexandrovich about this incident and asked if he was afraid to keep the banned Solzhenitsyn among his books.

— What is there to be afraid of? — asked Grodno's best surgeon with a cold smile. — They all have to go under my knife anyway.

What is there to be afraid of? They all have to ask for a pension from those who read Belarusian books today.

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