Autumn 2020: The only 29-year-old conductor Vitali Alekseenok and the Nobel Prize laureate Svetlana Alexievich are sitting at a table in Alexievich’s Berlin apartment. They talk about literature and their common homeland. Belarus is considered the last dictatorship in Europe; the autocrat Alexander Lukashenko has ruled there since 1994. It was only in August that he expanded his power with the help of allegedly fraudulent elections. But this time things went differently than usual: Hundreds of thousands took to the streets to protest peacefully. The regime brutally suppressed the protests. The European Union did not recognize the election and imposed sanctions on the Belarusian regime.
Days that changed his life
The Nobel Prize for Literature, Swetlana Alexijewitsch from Belarus
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When Alexievich left Minsk in September 2020, she was one of the last representatives from the opposition leadership who had not yet been arrested in Belarus. Vitali Alekseenok is not so well known in opposition circles. In the summer, the musical director of the Abaco Orchestra at the University of Munich in Germany organized protests against Lukashenko, and in August he went to his homeland. The 1.5 months that Alekseenok spent in Belarus should change his life. He wrote a book about it.
Like thousands of his compatriots, Vitali had returned home to prevent election rigging and to support the protest movement. His book, which arose from this trip, reads like a travelogue. It is peppered with sober impressions of the war. It combines background information about the country and its people into a kind of Belarus ABC.
Journey to Europe’s last dictatorship
Musicians demonstrate in Belarus for freedom and justice
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The young conductor Vitali Alekseenok comes from the small town Vilejka northwest of the capital Minsk. He grew up in a semi-criminal environment, but thanks to his charismatic music teacher, he did not end up in prison, but came to Minsk to study music. He later completed his training in Saint Petersburg before the young talent received an invitation to Germany.
“Whenever I see a mini bus in Germany, I flinch and first have to see whether the license plates are not covered,” says Alekseenok. Masked police officers often sit in such mini-buses during mass arrests – a common practice in Belarus: Brutal, lightning-fast and demonstratively deterrent actions on the fringes of the demonstrations, reports the conductor.
Longing for justice
Many Belarusians would not see it without bitterness that the West could hardly do anything against the situation in Belarus, says Alekseenok. “Still, it’s important that the world knows about us.” He shares his compatriots’ longing for justice and acceptance, says the conductor, and for not having to be alone. “This is what the Belarusians need from the West – more than economic help.”
An image with symbolic power: soldiers form a barrier against the protests of the opposition
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The book that is entitled “The white days of Minsk”published by S. Fischer-Verlag, the conductor sent it to the Nobel Prize winner, eager to hear her verdict. At the kitchen table in Berlin, Swetlana Alexijewitsch now recognizes the publication as an “important contemporary document” and praises the author’s sense of language. Vitali is relieved. However, when they talk about the future of Belarus, both are concerned. They don’t believe that the biggest political and humanitarian crisis in the country’s history will soon have a happy ending.
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