Maksim Zhbankou: Life, just life — traumatically beautiful

This inter­view is part of the col­lec­tion “Voice of the Free­dom Gen­er­a­tion”, a liv­ing tes­ti­mo­ny to the cre­ative and civic pres­ence of those who have not lost their voice even in exile.

Mak­sim Zhbank­ou. Pho­to: from the Face­book

The col­lec­tion tells the sto­ry of the lau­re­ates of the “Voice of the Free­dom Gen­er­a­tion” award, found­ed by the Belaru­sian PEN in part­ner­ship with the Human Rights Cen­ter “Vias­na”, the Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists, Press Club Belarus and Free Press for East­ern Europe endow­ment fund. The col­lec­tion will be pre­sent­ed on Novem­ber 15, 2025 at 5:00 PM dur­ing a dis­cus­sion with the lau­re­ates of the “Voice of the Free­dom Gen­er­a­tion” award at the Euro­pean Sol­i­dar­i­ty Cen­ter (Europe­jskie Cen­trum Sol­i­darnoś­ci, Gdańsk, pl. Sol­i­darnoś­ci 1).

Belarus in the 1990s: From the Soviet wreckage fair to the aesthetic revolution

When we look back at the 1990s in Belarus, we are tempt­ed to view this peri­od as either a gen­uine nation­al renais­sance or a chaot­ic fair­ground on the ruins of an empire, where under­ground post­mod­ernism and Face­book folk­lore have become the defin­ing sym­bols of the era. But what were the ‘90s to you?

It was more a per­son­al trans­for­ma­tion than a glob­al turn­ing point. Every­thing that hap­pened to the coun­try affect­ed me per­son­al­ly.  I was born in 1958, which makes me part of the late Sovi­et gen­er­a­tion. We were pre­pared for the Empire’s col­lapse. We had wit­nessed its decline and expe­ri­enced life under a total­i­tar­i­an regime, strip­ping us of all free­doms, where cul­ture was the only refuge. West­ern rock ‘n’ roll, club cin­e­ma, samiz­dat, and trans­lat­ed lit­er­a­ture all con­tributed to shap­ing an iden­ti­ty. It was my own dis­si­dent project, and I did every­thing alone, out­side head­line com­mu­ni­ties.

How­ev­er, alter­na­tive music, intel­lec­tu­al cir­cles and street demon­stra­tions were already a thing in Belarus at that time. What was your per­cep­tion of them?

I saw peo­ple march­ing under white, red and white flags. I scru­ti­nised the men­ac­ing armoured vehi­cles at the inter­sec­tions. To me, how­ev­er, it looked more like a per­for­mance than a per­son­al strug­gle. I lived in autonomous dis­si­dence, guid­ed by intu­ition and emo­tion. It was only through my friend­ly rela­tions with the Belaru­sian-speak­ing intel­lec­tu­al com­mu­ni­ty that I start­ed to feel like, “Hey, this is about you too!”

Who did you find par­tic­u­lar­ly impor­tant in that com­mu­ni­ty?

Valiantsin Aku­dovich, Ihar Babkou and Ales Antsipen­ka, of course, as well as col­leagues from Radio Free Europe/Radio Lib­er­ty and the inde­pen­dent press. One day, I unex­pect­ed­ly realised that all my best friends were Belaru­sian-speak­ing. All of them were obsessed with the idea of a new nation­al design.  I was pri­mar­i­ly attract­ed to it as an art project and an aes­thet­ic rev­o­lu­tion. Nar­o­d­ny Albom (People’s Album), which I first heard back then, cap­ti­vat­ed me with its beau­ti­ful sin­cer­i­ty and touch­ing aes­thet­ic, rather than its sound qual­i­ty.

Mak­sim Zhbank­ou. Pho­to: from the Face­book

So it was aes­thet­ics rather than pol­i­tics or phi­los­o­phy that defined your Belaru­sian iden­ti­ty?

Absolute­ly. I did not become involved because of Abdziralovich’s[1] ideas or polit­i­cal slo­gans. For me, all of this was revealed through artis­tic har­mo­ny, per­son­al con­tacts and a par­tic­u­lar way of think­ing. In the absence of both offi­cial free­dom and a robust state ide­ol­o­gy, a unique zone of open­ness emerged — a realm of lib­er­ty, dis­tinct and unpar­al­leled. And so began my per­son­al Belaru­si­sa­tion.

New sky: Above flags, across the soul’s horizon

To under­stand your per­son­al trans­for­ma­tion, let’s take a brief look at what you were doing before the nineties.

I was an ordi­nary Sovi­et phi­los­o­phy teacher. I grad­u­at­ed from the Phi­los­o­phy Depart­ment at Belaru­sian State Uni­ver­si­ty and went on to com­plete a post­grad­u­ate degree and defend my the­sis. The uni­ver­si­ty func­tioned as a fac­to­ry churn­ing out ide­o­log­i­cal­ly dri­ven pro­gram­mers and as a train­ing ground for bureau­crat­ic think­ing. How­ev­er, I opt­ed for a dif­fer­ent pop­u­lar choice at the time: I delved into the method­ol­o­gy of sci­en­tif­ic knowl­edge. My research focused on the ear­ly mod­ern peri­od, specif­i­cal­ly the trans­for­ma­tion of mass con­scious­ness dur­ing the 16^th and 17^th cen­turies. It was my inner reserve, a space for autonomous think­ing where I didn’t have to refer to some Par­ty Con­gress on every occa­sion.

So, you were essen­tial­ly liv­ing with­in the Sovi­et sys­tem but seek­ing ways to exer­cise sub­ver­sive auton­o­my?

Exact­ly. When I got intro­duced to the Belaru­sian intel­lec­tu­al com­mu­ni­ty in the 1990s through my work at the Soros Foun­da­tion and the Belaru­sian Col­legium,[2] as well as through Radio Lib­er­ty, my per­son­al dis­si­dence was reflect­ed in their mod­els of autonomous exis­tence. It was indeed a minor­i­ty and niche cul­ture. But it seemed incred­i­bly beau­ti­ful and attrac­tive. Despite not speak­ing per­fect Belaru­sian, I felt like I belonged there. I was an insid­er. After all, a new sky sud­den­ly opened up, not through the colours of nation­al flags, but through a dif­fer­ent dimen­sion of exis­ten­tial inde­pen­dence.

You men­tioned the phi­los­o­phy depart­ment as a breed­ing ground for ide­o­log­i­cal cadres. Have you ever encoun­tered any of these “real ide­o­logues” your­self? Those who shaped the rules of the game and con­trolled stu­dent life?

My moth­er worked at the Insti­tute of Phi­los­o­phy; she knew them. I only wit­nessed what hap­pened in our fac­ul­ty. And we knew for sure: there was always some­one from the secret ser­vices near­by. He could be an assis­tant dean — sup­pos­ed­ly just a sex­ton — but every­one knew that this man was keep­ing a close eye on us.

We had inter­na­tion­al stu­dents in our phi­los­o­phy depart­ment: Cubans, Poles, and East Ger­mans. Back in the ear­ly eight­ies, when the Sol­i­dar­i­ty move­ment was in full swing in Poland, a small group of stu­dents got togeth­er and wrote an appeal to the dean’s office, col­lect­ed some sig­na­tures, and asked for a few changes to how stud­ies were organ­ised. But the let­ter was viewed as ide­o­log­i­cal sub­ver­sion. The imme­di­ate response was, “This is Pol­ish inter­fer­ence, for­eign manip­u­la­tion, work of ene­my agents!” They’ve begun a real hunt for the peo­ple who ini­ti­at­ed this. Some were expelled from uni­ver­si­ty, one was urgent­ly draft­ed into the army. He lat­er tried to resume stud­ies, but this was refused. The guy com­mit­ted sui­cide. He jumped from the sixth floor of the main uni­ver­si­ty build­ing. Direct­ly onto Lenin Square.

Mak­sim Zhbank­ou. Pho­to: from the Face­book

What was sti­fling the live­ly atmos­phere among the stu­dents, which should have been brim­ming with life?

It was the steady pres­ence of some­thing dark, hos­tile, and dan­ger­ous — the pres­sure of the offi­cial lifestyle and the con­stant need to demon­strate loy­al­ty.

In the new intel­lec­tu­al envi­ron­ment I encoun­tered after leav­ing BSU in 1994, there was no such hos­til­i­ty or dis­trust. The peo­ple who gath­ered were, of course, very dif­fer­ent from one anoth­er. There were adven­tur­ers, talk­ers, thinkers, swindlers, wise men and crooks, all with their own ambi­tions and prej­u­dices. But it seemed to be a nor­mal, live­ly com­mu­ni­ty. In con­trast to the gen­er­al decline in offi­cial cir­cles and the hope­less­ness of being held hostage by a defunct empire, the Belaru­sian com­mu­ni­ty was a real haven: cosy and com­fort­able. Although I realised it couldn’t sig­nif­i­cant­ly alter the big­ger pic­ture, for me it marked a per­son­al step for­ward, open­ing up an entire­ly new dimen­sion of move­ment and growth.

Collegium: A factory of new meanings

How­ev­er, there were indi­vid­u­als with­in your cir­cle who were active­ly engaged in prac­ti­cal oppo­si­tion activ­i­ties. Antsipen­ka, for exam­ple, who worked with you at the Soros Foun­da­tion. Or Ali­ak­san­dr Susha, who sup­port­ed the Nar­o­d­ny Albom project, among oth­ers. Have you dis­cussed these con­nec­tions and felt their impact?

Susha is con­nect­ed not only to Nar­o­d­ny Albom but also to Svi­aty Vechar (Holy Evening) and Ya Naradz­iu­sia Tut (I Was Born Here). Every­thing here mat­tered, but pol­i­tics remained unin­ter­est­ing to me. I couldn’t see myself fit­ting in. So I began explor­ing unusu­al states of con­scious­ness. My pol­i­tics was an elec­tron­ic music craze.

The Belaru­sian Col­legium is a unique phe­nom­e­non in our his­to­ry. What was its role? Can it real­ly be con­sid­ered apo­lit­i­cal?

It emerged fol­low­ing the dis­so­lu­tion of the Soros Foun­da­tion. The com­mu­ni­ty sur­round­ing Antsipen­ka, Aku­dovich and Babkou came togeth­er in a new for­mat. The Collegium’s mis­sion was no longer to resist pol­i­tics open­ly — that was impos­si­ble. The aim was to cre­ate new mech­a­nisms of con­scious­ness. This edu­ca­tion­al project pro­duced new mean­ings, terms and intel­lec­tu­al con­cepts. In fact, the small organ­i­sa­tion oper­at­ed as a nation­al acad­e­my, as each pro­gram track had a sig­nif­i­cant cul­tur­al tra­di­tion and strong alliances.

Can this be con­sid­ered as a form of the “inven­tion of Belaru­sian­ness”?

Absolute­ly. The death of the Com­mu­nist ide­ol­o­gy left a total void. We stepped into this void, cre­at­ing Belaru­sian thought and phi­los­o­phy anew. We have demon­strat­ed that crit­i­cal and excit­ing think­ing is pos­si­ble in Belaru­sian. You can trans­late French post­mod­ernists, and their works will not lose any mean­ing in the process — quite the con­trary, they will acquire new ones. It was a place where every­thing — from music to phi­los­o­phy — was being cre­at­ed anew. The lack of a cen­tral focus made the process explo­sive: the rock music, the mag­a­zine Frah­men­ty, the Col­legium, the film screen­ings and the pub­lish­ing projects all worked in par­al­lel and in dif­fer­ent dimen­sions. The post-Sovi­et nation’s matrix of mean­ings was emerg­ing.

Mak­sim Zhbank­ou. Pho­to: Artem Lobach

To give us a sense of the scale, would you share some num­bers? How many peo­ple attend­ed the Collegium’s lec­tures and debates? Which grad­u­ates went on to become well-known fig­ures?

It’s eas­i­er to name those who didn’t pass through us. For instance, almost every­one involved in the mod­ern school of West­ern lit­er­a­ture trans­la­tion in Belarus comes from Andrei Khadanovich’s sem­i­nar at the Col­legium. And this is just one exam­ple.

Amaz­ing! Could you name a few more names to give us an idea of the scale?

The Col­legium was designed to be a liv­ing community—an entwine­ment of indi­vid­u­als. Aku­dovich worked in the fields of lit­er­a­ture and phi­los­o­phy, while Antsipen­ka and I devel­oped the media pro­gram track. Khadanovich, mean­while, organ­ised the trans­la­tion work­shop. Around each per­son, a dis­tinct cir­cle of like-mind­ed peo­ple would form. Every­one brought their own mod­els and visions. And out of this inter­twin­ing of indi­vid­u­als, a new intel­lec­tu­al real­i­ty emerged — a new cul­tur­al sit­u­a­tion.

Groovy Belarusianness and new territories

You argue that the Col­legium did more than just pro­vide knowl­edge; it actu­al­ly con­veyed a fun­da­men­tal­ly dif­fer­ent atti­tude towards nation­al cul­ture. What was this atti­tude?

Our role was to broad­cast a non-aca­d­e­m­ic, non-Sovi­et and non-com­mu­nist approach to nation­al thought, tra­di­tion and cul­ture. It was the birth­place of a new coun­try and cul­ture. That ener­gy was infec­tious: we were inspir­ing young peo­ple to embrace groovy Belaru­sian cul­ture. In fact, they joined in them­selves. Peo­ple entered the com­mu­ni­ty and quick­ly start­ed writ­ing their own texts and work­ing on projects.

Can you name the peo­ple who began their jour­ney in this envi­ron­ment?

Sure. The late Ali­ak­sei Strel­nikau, an excep­tion­al the­atre crit­ic; Pavel Sviard­lou, head of Euro­ra­dio; and Siarhei Bud­kin, head of the Belaru­sian Coun­cil for Cul­ture, all stud­ied with me at the Fac­ul­ty of Jour­nal­ism. These are just a few of the notable fig­ures. Some oth­ers joined as audit­ing stu­dents. These were small groups of around twen­ty peo­ple. But they were the best and most engaged — those who need­ed more than what pub­lic edu­ca­tion could offer. We have put for­ward alter­na­tive mod­els of exis­tence, ana­lyt­i­cal approach­es and cre­ative view­points. They went beyond the Col­legium, but it was with us that they got their first impulse.

Did you work open­ly, or did you keep to the shad­ows?

It was safer to stay incon­spic­u­ous. The author­i­ties might have seen every­thing we did as dan­ger­ous. Back when I was work­ing at the Soros Foun­da­tion, I was well aware that our com­mu­ni­ca­tions were being mon­i­tored. You’re on the phone, and just two sec­onds lat­er, a sharp click­ing noise comes through. The con­nec­tion is inter­rupt­ed and then restored. One day, a col­league reached the break­ing point and shout­ed into the phone: “Com­rade Major, let me fin­ish!” It was an obvi­ous fact of life that every­one under­stood: you were being watched and could be crushed. That’s why we adopt­ed a guer­ril­la approach. That’s what saved us. Such small philo­soph­i­cal com­mu­ni­ties were beyond the government’s reach. There was a chance, and we took it.

Mak­sim Zhbank­ou. Pho­to: from the Face­book

Which pro­gram tracks have become the most impor­tant?

There were depart­ments for phi­los­o­phy, lit­er­a­ture, mod­ern his­to­ry and jour­nal­ism. And we didn’t just voice themes — we shaped them.

No philo­soph­i­cal dic­tio­nary exist­ed before we cre­at­ed one.  There were no trans­la­tions of the lat­est rel­e­vant lit­er­a­ture; they emerged as a result of our work.

The field of new jour­nal­ism didn’t exist before us — it took shape after­wards.

In fact, we laid the foun­da­tions for almost all of Belaru­sian culture’s sig­nif­i­cant projects.

So, thanks to the work of the Col­legium, a whole gen­er­a­tion was raised that soon began doing its own thing.

Exact­ly. This occurred in a con­text where the pre­vail­ing offi­cial cul­ture had died out. We brought new words, forms, and mean­ings into the space where empti­ness was begin­ning to take hold.

BelGazeta, BDG and the school: Disputes over cultural dialogue

How did you per­son­al­ly come to analyse the cul­tur­al field?

This hap­pened after I start­ed writ­ing ana­lyt­i­cal texts. Before that, I was a music and film enthu­si­ast. My col­leagues and I organ­ised screen­ings of for­eign films at the Palace of Trade Unions, with sup­port from the rel­e­vant embassies. I had to pro­mote them in the inde­pen­dent press, so I start­ed writ­ing. First, about cin­e­ma; then, music and lit­er­a­ture. And sud­den­ly, I realised that sig­nif­i­cant changes were tak­ing place and great things were hap­pen­ing. A fresh gen­er­a­tion of cre­ators had arrived, yet almost no one was say­ing any­thing mean­ing­ful about them. That was my chal­lenge: to make the new cul­ture vis­i­ble.

Did you have any ref­er­ence points, exam­ples?

The texts of Ihar Babkou and Valiantsin Aku­dovich had a strong influ­ence on me. The kind of think­ing in action was beau­ti­ful and apho­ris­tic, with a hint of rock ‘n’ roll. I realised that I would nev­er write philo­soph­i­cal trea­tis­es or poet­ry. But I can reach some highs in ana­lyt­i­cal essays.

What was your debut?

It was an arti­cle called “The Cul­ture of Garbage and the Garbage of Cul­ture” for the mag­a­zine Frah­men­ty. I want­ed to fig­ure out why the offi­cial cul­ture doesn’t work, and how an alter­na­tive cul­ture could be dif­fer­ent. Babkou trans­lat­ed the text into Belaru­sian, adding a few apt terms. That’s how my Odyssey as a cul­tur­al ana­lyst began. For a long time, I was on my own because no oth­er authors could ful­ly com­pre­hend the sit­u­a­tion. It was the true lone­li­ness of a samu­rai — a task that had to be car­ried out because nobody else was will­ing or able to do it.

Has your feel­ing of lone­li­ness grown stronger since you took charge of the cul­tur­al side of things at BDG[3]?

I start­ed my career in jour­nal­ism a lit­tle ear­li­er. At first, I worked at Bel­gaze­ta. Ali­ak­san­dr Mikhalchuk was the deputy chief edi­tor there. We would have get-togeth­ers with our mutu­al friend Andrei Fiador­chanka in the café of the famous Kar­a­vai store on Vic­to­ry Square. We chat­ted and swapped films. One day, Mikhalchuk said, “Let’s pub­lish your con­ver­sa­tions about cin­e­ma on the last page of the news­pa­per!” That’s how Andrei and I began work­ing on con­tro­ver­sial film-relat­ed dia­logues. It was beau­ti­ful and inspir­ing. We start­ed to be recog­nised on the streets.

Mak­sim Zhbank­ou. Pho­to: from the Face­book

But you left the news­pa­per.

That’s right. Fiador­chanka got mar­ried and left the coun­try, and I had a dis­agree­ment with edi­tor Vysot­s­ki. That’s how I found myself with BDG. Leg­endary edi­tor Piotr Mart­sau gave me com­plete free­dom. His trust was absolute and inspir­ing. I began to devel­op the cul­ture sec­tion in my own way. I recruit­ed Bud­kin, Strel­nikau and Sviard­lou. Vik­tar Paz­ni­ak­ou cov­ered music. Daria Sit­nika­va and Tat­siana Chu­dak reviewed books. Our team was pow­er­ful and out­stand­ing.

What did you ulti­mate­ly achieve? What are you proud of?

In fact, we were cre­at­ing an entire­ly new type of cul­tur­al project. We tried to lev­el up the cul­tur­al theme and devel­op a new style at new speeds. It was cre­ative, con­tro­ver­sial and explo­sive — and it’s still a plea­sure to look back on.

What exact­ly did you write about? What fas­ci­nat­ed you, and what caused a wry smile? What were the colours of that time?

Would you like some gen­er­al­i­sa­tions? Read­i­ly! Here are a few points. First­ly, the sit­u­a­tion was absolute­ly unpre­dictable. Sec­ond­ly, there was a world of pos­si­bil­i­ties open to you. Third­ly, there was the com­plex inter­play of var­i­ous cul­tur­al trends.

One thing was clear: we were grad­u­al­ly dis­tanc­ing our­selves from the Empire and cre­at­ing our own unique world. You may recall the metaphor from Kusturica’s Under­ground: the char­ac­ters drink, dance and sing with­out notic­ing that the land beneath their feet has already bro­ken off and is float­ing down­stream. That’s how Belaru­sian cul­ture worked. We lived life and had dreams. We were busy with our lit­tle projects, unaware that they all togeth­er con­sti­tut­ed an attempt to break free from Moscow-cen­tric depen­dence.

This farewell to the Empire was both vivid­ly emo­tion­al and dis­turb­ing. Because, along­side our project Dream Belarus, there were projects run by the author­i­ties, by Moscow, and by the Euro­pean bureau­cra­cy. There­fore, along­side the bliss, a new sense of inse­cu­ri­ty emerged. An unpre­dictable mul­ti-vec­tor approach emerged in place of the Sovi­et firm­ness. A con­cep­tu­al cul­ture war. At the same time, attempts were being made to cre­ate a new aes­thet­ic, a new world­view and a new form of cul­tur­al diplo­ma­cy. And all this with­out a cen­tral con­trol cen­tre!

Personalities and events that shaped the era

Can you name the peo­ple and works that came to sym­bol­ise that era?

Valiantsin Aku­dovich is, with­out ques­tion, the God­fa­ther of Belaru­sian intel­lec­tu­al­ism. In a nor­mal coun­try, mon­u­ments would be erect­ed in his life­time for books such as I Don’t Exist and The Code of Absence. And how could we for­get The King­dom of Belarus: Inter­pre­ta­tion of the Ru(I)ns/Runes and Adam Klakot­s­ki and His Shad­ows by Ihar Babkou?  Andrei Khadanovich’s debut books are an explo­sion of auda­cious emo­tions and ver­bal buf­foon­ery.

In the realm of cin­e­ma, Occu­pa­tion: Mys­ter­ies by Andrei Kudzi­nen­ka is an epochal depar­ture from the banal Par­ti­san­film[4] mod­el.

Mak­sim Zhbank­ou. Pho­to: from the Face­book

In the world of music, it’s the rough sin­cer­i­ty of Belaru­sian rock: Lavon Vol­sky, Mikhal Anem­padys­tau, and the whole Nar­o­d­ny Albom team.

At the same time, though, an aston­ish­ing num­ber of things were done imper­fect­ly. We were all ama­teurs, and nobody taught us what it meant to be Belaru­sian. We cre­at­ed new Belaru­sian­ness our­selves. Although the error rate was very high, it was pre­cise­ly this chaos that prompt­ed a fur­ther search for solu­tions and led to mir­a­cles.

As Valiantsin Aku­dovich apt­ly remarked, per­haps the most sig­nif­i­cant event in the country’s his­to­ry is the emer­gence of a peo­ple like us. A com­mu­ni­ty of inde­pen­dent thinkers and cul­tur­al activists. Cre­ators of new maps of the world and design­ers of the drafts of exis­tence.

EHU: The experience of freedom and authoritarianism

You describe your time at the Euro­pean Human­i­ties Uni­ver­si­ty as one of the key episodes of your life. What hap­pened there?

Con­cep­tu­al­ly, the EHU aligned with the Belaru­sian Collegium’s vision of non-gov­ern­men­tal Euro­pean high­er edu­ca­tion. Strate­gi­cal­ly, how­ev­er, it remained under the influ­ence of author­i­tar­i­an mod­els — Sovi­et in form and kolkhoz[5]-like in essence. The Vil­nius-based EHU has posi­tioned itself as either a Belaru­sian uni­ver­si­ty in exile or a Lithuan­ian pri­vate insti­tu­tion. This dual­i­ty also shaped my atti­tude. On the one hand, there were excel­lent stu­dents and com­plete free­dom in the class­room. On the oth­er hand, there was the strange and often hos­tile atti­tude of the iner­tial admin­is­tra­tion.

Hon­est activist teach­ers like Vol­ha Shpara­ha and Andrei Lau­rukhin con­stant­ly faced these bar­ri­ers, as did I. In 2014, the demo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly elect­ed EHU Sen­ate, of which we were mem­bers, attempt­ed to safe­guard aca­d­e­m­ic free­doms and employ­ees’ rights. Con­se­quent­ly, the admin­is­tra­tion sim­ply dis­missed it and got rid of the incon­ve­nient intel­lec­tu­als. Instead of show­ing sol­i­dar­i­ty, the elite fac­ul­ty chose to remain loy­al to the lead­er­ship. In minia­ture, it was the same scheme that Ali­ak­san­dr Lukashen­ka had car­ried out across the coun­try in 2020. That’s why I have mixed feel­ings about EHU. The stu­dents have great pro­fes­sion­al poten­tial, but the insti­tu­tion is rife with typ­i­cal Belaru­sian hypocrisy.

Mak­sim Zhbank­ou. Pho­to: from the Face­book

What did you gain from your close encounter with young peo­ple? What are your impres­sions?

I have always worked with young peo­ple, and I found that EHU stu­dents were not fun­da­men­tal­ly dif­fer­ent from those at Col­legium. One could see how their per­son­al free­dom was devel­op­ing. Insti­tu­tions don’t grant free­dom — it can only be claimed. And they claimed it. These young peo­ple pos­sess incred­i­ble inner beau­ty, ener­gy and orig­i­nal think­ing. Many have expe­ri­enced polit­i­cal resis­tance, which is prob­a­bly also the result of our edu­ca­tion­al work.

But teach­ing is always unpre­dictable. You give it your all, and the results only come back twen­ty years lat­er. Still, it’s worth it. We, cre­ative minori­ties, are rais­ing the next gen­er­a­tion of cre­ative minori­ties. There is no oth­er way.

Belarus as an unfinished project

You have said on more than one occa­sion that Belarus requires thought and com­ple­tion. Why? Should we blame an excep­tion­al­ly famous char­ac­ter, who is the only one who “read Bykau’s poems”[6]?

Although it’s easy to blame one per­son for every­thing, it won’t be true. Lead­ers act only with­in the lim­its soci­ety per­mits.

Belarus is incom­plete because the sources of devel­op­ment have been blocked. In the ear­ly 1990s, the coun­try had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to become a ful­ly fledged Euro­pean nation. How­ev­er, with the con­sol­i­da­tion of the author­i­tar­i­an regime, all options have now been shut down.

The inde­pen­dent media has been wiped out.

The edu­ca­tion sys­tem remains Sovi­et, pro­duc­ing gen­er­a­tions who have no expe­ri­ence of intel­lec­tu­al free­dom.

An inde­pen­dent busi­ness has been clamped down on.

The mul­ti­par­ty sys­tem has become a mere sign­board for an unchang­ing pow­er struc­ture.

The regime focus­es on build­ing loy­al­ty schemes rather than cre­ative search mech­a­nisms.

There are no resources avail­able for deal­ing with con­flict, dis­cus­sion or ambi­gu­i­ty.

As a result, Belarus has been in stand­by mode for a long time, wait­ing for the next sig­nal and unable to cre­ate them inde­pen­dent­ly.

This indi­cates that the project has not been com­plet­ed.

Mak­sim Zhbank­ou. Pho­to: from the Face­book

You say that Belarus is a nation with untapped poten­tial. What do you mean by this?

As Mikhal Anem­padys­tau used to say, it is “an uncer­tain state, an incom­plete sys­tem”. Exiled, under­e­d­u­cat­ed intel­lec­tu­als. Smart peo­ple who have no real lever­age. How­ev­er, it may be for the best that they don’t have it, since it’s not clear what they would have messed up. In gen­er­al, how­ev­er, the out­come is the same: cul­tur­al life is weak, think­ing is frag­ile, and man­age­ment is imma­ture. Zero prospects, sta­tion­ary jump­ing.

Two temporal layers: 1996 and 2018

At best, we are liv­ing in 2018; at worst, we are back in 1996.

Can you make out what lies beyond these bound­ary signs?

2018 marks the moment just before the dis­as­ter. It was a rel­a­tive­ly com­fort­able era for the cre­ative class, with small busi­ness­es, edu­ca­tion­al projects, low-cost air­lines, civic activism, lit­er­ary awards, fan­cy cof­fee shops and embroi­dered-shirt patri­o­tism flour­ish­ing. The author­i­ties gave a sig­nal: stay out of pol­i­tics, and you’ll be left alone. This is how the cul­tur­al minor­i­ty lived until the piv­otal year 2020.

The peri­od from 1996 to 1998 saw the rise of vision­ary projects and the roman­tic revival of nation­al design. That was pre­cise­ly the “Inde­pen­dent Dream Repub­lic”. A self-suf­fi­cient thought process. These were areas of shared hal­lu­ci­na­tion and visions of the impos­si­ble. Aku­dovich, Mikhail Bayaryn, Uladz­imir Matske­vich and Todar Kashkure­vich all worked on their ideas with­out wait­ing for them to be realised in soci­ety.

Aku­dovich was absolute­ly cor­rect in his essay “With­out us”: the coun­try lives out­side our plans, while we live out­side its real­i­ty. This sit­u­a­tion has per­sist­ed today. Our texts are like singing through a win­dow — will they hear us? But we can’t but not sing. We can’t live with­out these songs!

This sus­pen­sion, float­ing in space with­out know­ing where you are going, how can you live with that? Is there a way for­ward?

You have to learn to embrace your own dis­com­fort. To like uncer­tain­ty and ambi­gu­i­ty. They help us see real­i­ty as it is and become more resilient. Not every­thing we plan comes true. Real­i­ty always cor­rects our dreams and trans­lates desire into pos­si­bil­i­ty.

Intel­lec­tu­al work is an end­less jour­ney, the bliss of Sisy­phus. You won’t be able to stop at some point. It’s a job for­ev­er. Such is fate. We must think, feel uncom­fort­able and be con­tro­ver­sial. This cre­ates the poten­tial for move­ment.

Per­haps the crux of the mat­ter is that our gen­er­a­tion lost its sense of pur­pose after 1996? We’ve been push­ing a rock for thir­ty years, yet noth­ing has changed.

Once again, I see the urge to reduce every­thing to a polit­i­cal joke. But it’s not that sim­ple. Har­mo­ny is not guar­an­teed, even if we wait long enough for the first per­son to change. No. An all-encom­pass­ing fes­ti­val of new wars will take place, involv­ing the redis­tri­b­u­tion of prop­er­ty, strug­gles for pow­er, seizures of finan­cial sources, cul­tur­al dis­putes, the unpre­dictable tor­rent of mud and debris, and the explo­sion of the unpre­dictable. Fore­casts are lying. All projects are a lie.

There­fore, the val­ue of intel­lec­tu­al work lies not in the results, but in the abil­i­ty to gen­er­ate incon­ve­nience, con­tro­ver­sy and nov­el­ty. This is what Uladz­imir Matske­vich does, for instance. I often find myself in dis­agree­ment with him, but I am grate­ful to him for hav­ing the courage to speak his mind. After all, this pro­vides a rea­son to think.

Mak­sim Zhbank­ou. Pho­to: from the Face­book

So, the impor­tant thing is to keep going and push the stone fur­ther?

That’s right. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try. Thanks to our efforts, we have man­aged to pre­serve our sta­tus as an intel­lec­tu­al minor­i­ty and a role mod­el for a new gen­er­a­tion. There is also a pri­vate thrill in it: it’s beau­ti­ful to be uncom­fort­able, essen­tial to be wrong and excit­ing to be con­tro­ver­sial.

We’ve been liv­ing with this palette of pos­si­bil­i­ties since the nineties. We still can afford to think and to be sig­nif­i­cant. It is nat­ur­al to have doubts about our appres­sion. After all, the val­ue lies in becom­ing the foun­da­tion. And if there is a foun­da­tion, any­thing can grow.

Belarus, transit, dance in the void

In your out­stand­ing vocab­u­lary, there are many nouns and verbs with the pre­fix “under”: under­thought, under­done, and so on. But per­haps this is a Belaru­sian pecu­liar­i­ty? Maybe we can turn what is under­giv­en into our own aes­thet­ic.

I’ll refer to a song from Nar­o­d­ny Albom again: “I’m on the edge, I’m walk­ing on a blade…”. This is the Belaru­sian tran­si­tiv­i­ty. We are a nation liv­ing at road forks and cross­roads, sur­round­ed by con­tro­ver­sial influ­ences and exter­nal trends, cul­tur­al syn­the­ses. And this is a strong posi­tion.

We shouldn’t build an iso­lat­ed fortress. On the con­trary, we need to be more open, embrace influ­ences and devel­op a patch­work iden­ti­ty. Like Amer­i­cans, they draw their strength from a com­bi­na­tion of resources and influ­ences that enhance rather than destroy their essence. The prospect of an open, dis­put­ing and con­tro­ver­sial com­mu­ni­ty in Belarus is also a pos­si­bil­i­ty. That’s why I say that the dias­po­ra is not a sign of a loss, but an expan­sion.

Emi­gra­tion may be trau­mat­ic, yet it also pro­vides an oppor­tu­ni­ty for a new begin­ning.

We are back to the sit­u­a­tion of the ear­ly nineties: danc­ing into the void and fly­ing with­out a para­chute, but with room to manoeu­vre. It’s dan­ger­ous and won­der­ful at the same time.

The project “Voice of the Free­dom Gen­er­a­tion” is co-financed by the Pol­ish Coop­er­a­tion for Devel­op­ment Pro­gram of the Min­istry of For­eign Affairs of the Repub­lic of Poland. The pub­li­ca­tion reflects exclu­sive­ly the author’s views and can­not be equat­ed with the offi­cial posi­tion of the Min­istry of For­eign Affairs of the Repub­lic of Poland.

[1]  Ihnat Kancheus­ki (pen name: Ihnat Abdzi­ralovich) was a Belaru­sian poet, philoso­pher and pub­li­cist who is regard­ed as a lead­ing thinker with­in the Belaru­sian inde­pen­dence move­ment of the ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry.

[2]  The Belaru­sian Col­legium is an edu­ca­tion­al and cul­tur­al project found­ed in 1997 in Min­sk by Belaru­sian non-gov­ern­men­tal organ­i­sa­tions and pri­vate indi­vid­u­als. Its aim was to cre­ate a space for intel­lec­tu­al inquiry, crit­i­cal think­ing, and the devel­op­ment of new direc­tions in the human­i­ties and social thought. Until 2015, it oper­at­ed through three depart­ments — philosophy/literature, mod­ern his­to­ry, and journalism/media stud­ies (lat­er joined by Euro­pean stud­ies). Since 2019, the project has tak­en on an inter­na­tion­al dimen­sion.

[3]  Belorusskaya Delo­vaya Gaze­ta — a Belaru­sian socio-polit­i­cal news­pa­per found­ed in 1992. Since 2006 exists in online form.

[4]  An infor­mal nick­name for Belarus­film, the main film stu­dio of Belarus, known for pro­duc­ing numer­ous World War II films that por­tray Sovi­et sol­diers as hero­ic and moral­ly flaw­less fig­ures.

[5]  Col­lec­tive farm in Sovi­et Union that was sup­posed to be vol­un­tary in nature but force­ful­ly removed land and cat­tle from peas­ants who were then sup­posed to work at kolkhoz to receive pay in kind — typ­i­cal­ly grain, pro­duce, or oth­er goods rather than mon­ey.

[6]  A ref­er­ence to Ali­ak­san­dr Lukashen­ka, who in a 2002 talk show inter­view, said he “grew up on the poems of Bykau”. Vasil Bykau was a promi­nent Belaru­sian dis­si­dent and author of nov­els and novel­las about World War II. He nev­er wrote poems.