ZMITSER DASHKEVICH

Translated from Belarusian and published with the author’s permission, the following are extracts from three of Dashkevich’s commentaries circulated on social media between August 2020 and October 2021. They illustrate the central role played by Dashkevich’s Christian faith in his pro-democracy activism

Metanoia Saturday, 22 August 2020  

The Council for Religious Affairs telephoned church leaders a few days ago and tried to intimidate them into not taking part in the Chain of Repentance from Kurapaty to Akrestsina: Never Again. I do not know if they succeeded in intimidating anyone, but I do know about a telephone call to one Protestant pastor.

 “Do you know what will happen on Friday?” 

The religious-affairs observers were outraged. 

“I do!” confirmed the bishop. 

“So, do you agree with it?” 

“I do—we are not summoning people to any barricades, but to repent for the crimes of Communism. Or do you think that we have nothing to repent of ?” The preacher subtly got to work and carried on preaching about repentance for five minutes.

 “We understand your position,” echoed the voice from the offices on Communist Street. “So, you give this event your blessing?”

“I give this event my blessing, and I am taking part!”

 Later on, people with loudspeakers came and tried to intimidate everyone, but the faithful withstood this test. The Chain of Repentance for the crimes of Communism and lukashism [colloquial term for the authoritarian regime of Aleksandr Lukashenko] arose thanks to thousands of patriots who felt responsibility in their hearts for our people and their history. There were many Protestants with their pastors, many Catholics with their priests, and thanks are also due to those Orthodox believers who stood holding icons. Above all, thanks to the four Protestant pastors who came to Akrestsina pre-trial detention center on Monday evening and said to me: “Let’s do something.” Without this support and inspiration I would not have undertaken such a daring act—to call upon people to join in a prayer stretching almost nine miles. 

I know that many atheists also took part in the event, including one who carried a box containing the New Testament to our Golgotha of Kurapaty and said, “This is my cross.” For it is a spiritual act—to come out and bear witness not with your lips, but with your feet; to bear witness to repentance for the crimes of Communism, from which all today’s crimes stem. Here, we should not understand the word “repentance” in an atheistic way, as if we had to kneel and beat our heads against the ground. Repentance—from  the Greek metanoia—means “rethinking” or “a change of heart.” And this change in thinking took place yesterday, both among atheists who came to a realization of the crimes of the Communist and Lukashenko eras, and the many believers who stood beneath the flag of their nation for the first time in their lives. 

Only do not say that there is nothing for which we must repent! The Germans are still repenting for the crimes of Nazism, although in 2020 all of them can say that they did not participate in Nazism. Yet instead of that, the Germans say: “Forgive us, we are repenting for our people and for the crimes of our history.” For the most part, we think that we lived good and blameless lives until the Father of Lies descended upon us in 2020. But the Father of Lies did not descend upon us in 2020, nor even in 1994 [the year of Lukashenko’s initial election to the presidency]. The Father of Lies is the natural consequence of the unexamined crimes of Communism. For 26 years, millions of people falsified 20 election campaigns, jailed thousands of political prisoners, restored monuments to Lenin and Stalin—and millions looked upon all of this unperturbed. And now we say that we have nothing to repent of before Heaven and earth! Friends, are we in our right minds?

This is why I understand only now why Jesus Christ explained everything in parables—because people do not want to understand plain language. So, I will tell you a parable. A certain man cheated on his wife for 26 years. Family and friends knew about and facilitated this, while the neighbors said it was none of their business. Then, when he had had enough of the other woman, he appeared under his wife’s window with a bouquet of white flowers saying, “Come outside, let’s forget about everything that has happened!” If we are all so intelligent, then tell me—is this okay? Why, even if he had cheated on her once, common sense tells us that he would need to weep tears of repentance before Heaven and his wife. But we were complicit in criminality for 26 years: some were perpetrators, while for others it was none of their business. You cannot change this by clicking your fingers, bringing flowers, or parading through the streets. We do need to take to the streets, but we must also do very difficult work upon ourselves; we must rethink ourselves and our history; we must change our minds—repent of crimes so that we never go back to the next “other woman.” Only metanoia will give us the chance to secure real change that will last, not just for a couple of years as in the 1990s, but for centuries. 

Victory Plan Friday, 5 March 2021

1. What is happening? After seeing the terrible news about arrests, trials, and reprisals, almost everyone is now asking what is happening, and what will happen next. I think it was clear from the start: a clean-up operation would begin as soon as people left the streets, even though common sense prevented us from believing until the last minute that a reign of terror could appear in the center of Europe in 2021. But this is happening before our very eyes: torture in Akrestsina pretrial detention center and prison terms handed down for journalism. Even our national flag, under which independence was proclaimed in 1918 and 1991, is subject to ridiculous persecution: broken windows, confiscated cars, and arrests, arrests, arrests. The sole aim of these awful repressions is to intimidate us, to fill us with horror as we read the news each day. 

I am afraid myself: I go to Kurapaty, I write my will, I prepare some things for prison. Unfortunately, it has to be this way. We must grasp this: millions of people were raised by the Beast; hundreds of thousands of followers of the Father of Lies falsified, bore false witness, beat people up for a quarter  of a century. This needs to be repeated out loud: “QUARTER OF A CENTURY” and “MILLIONS OF PEOPLE.” So how did we imagine that we could part with all this in a day or a week? If we had parted with it quickly, then only the name of the leader of the occupation would change. All those who have propped up this terror—from the “liberal” foreigner to those who built its concentration camps; from the 26-year-old propagandist to the 22-year-old public prosecutor who sends journalists to prison—would remain in their places. 

If changes occur quickly then we—as a newly born nation—cannot withstand them. He who has ears to hear will hear: I am talking about the nation as one organism in which each person bears responsibility for all. So it is a long road— and this works in our favor, it is for our own sake. This has happened before in our history. In 1988, when the truth about Kurapaty shocked Belarus and even the Soviet Union, all who followed Truth understood quite well that the prison of nations was finished, but the Evil Empire ended in convulsions that spanned several more years. So we need to understand clearly that what is happening to us now is happening in the best way possible— it could not be better! Belarus is being cleansed from an army of maniacs and people’s consciousness is being cleansed.

2. What is to be done? 

There is a joyful message hiding here that will inspire anyone who poses the next question: “And so what is to be done?” While with us in the flesh, God spoke of two commandments upon which the whole universe rests: love God and love your neighbor as yourself. He repeatedly explained the second commandment to those fighting for Truth in those days: do to others what you would have done to you; whoever wishes to be the first among you is to go last and be a servant to all. This is still a matter of great importance for us today: do not think about them, think about us; don’t think about hell, think about ourselves and be a servant to anyone fighting for Truth. We can donate to the families of political prisoners, we can support those who have been beaten, we can pray for suffering bodies and souls. If we learn to love all those who struggle like ourselves, we are halfway to victory. 

The second part of our victory is a gift granted to our people at birth, for if our Heavenly Father is one of us, then we have the same language. We have long neglected it, we have long said [in Russian], “later,” “what difference does it make?” and “it does not matter.” But everything in this world matters, including language, especially when your native language is under occupation in times of terror. If we could walk the streets without repression, we would not think about this. If we could raise the flag without prison as a consequence, we would leave our native language for later. Now, when you are detained for the flag, arrested for a demonstration, jailed for journalism, now we are remembering that we have forgotten about our main weapon—our language. It is our everyday, individual protest. If it is the last remaining thing that you can do today, do it—because the last thing is the first. Just imagine if millions of patriots said dziakui [Belarusian: thank you] when out shopping, how the atmosphere would change, how Belarus would change in one moment, with just one word! 

So now, when our path to victory is longer than we thought and harder than we wanted, hold fast to the One Who said about Himself: I am the Way, the Truth and the Life; love all who strive for Truth as yourself; hold onto the sword of language—Belarus rests upon these commandments, these commandments are our plan that guarantees Victory. 

I Will Awaken Saturday, 30 October 2021 

After defending Kurapaty from destruction in 2017 we were inspired to come and spend 29 October there and commemorate the Night of Executed Poets. Around 100 people gathered with a modest torch and a crackling speaker—and even then it was profoundly touching and mysterious. Some activists laughed: “Who needs that? Fewer people turned up than were originally shot that night.” But in the subsequent years we continued to fight for Kurapaty and commemorated the Night of Executed Poets despite such insults, whose cause is a lack of understanding of the meaning of Kurapaty for Belarus. And today the Night of Executed Poets commemorations are happening around the world—Belarus is awakening. 

For until recently many people thought that history was made up of coincidences: Kurapaty happened by chance and later people were tortured in Akrestsina by chance. But nothing happens by chance and nothing comes out of nowhere—every action under Heaven has its own cause and precondition. The reason for what is happening to us today is lack of appreciation for Kurapaty in the 1990s. The reason for what happened at Kurapaty in the 1920s and 1930s is rejection of God as the Creator of human life. Finally, brothers and sisters, we must agree: the reason for the horrors of the 1920s and the 2020s was the same. 

Sometimes I argue with my dear friend Hanna Seviarynets [sister of leading fellow Christian pro-democracy activist Pavel Seviarynets]: She maintains that salvation from repeating the mistakes of history is found in education. I insist that salvation is found in Him, Who is the source of Life and Truth. I even dare say that this is self-evident. The proofs are Nazism and Communism, which were supported by intelligent people in their day, [including] great thinkers and Nobel Prize winners. And today? Look how many of the most educated lawyers write pseudo-laws and imprison innocent people; how many of the most educated teachers help to falsify elections and expel students from college! For without Him, Who gave the standard of Truth, everything is relative—everyone has his own “truth.” For without Him, Who gave human beings life, you can torture, beat, and destroy whomever gets in your way—after all, they are only units of biology. 

My beloved warrior atheists, in these conditions of awful occupation which grow stronger day by day, on these ice-cold iron bunks inside black prisons, we should turn to our Father, Who created human beings in His image and likeness, gave freedom to and sacrificed His Only Begotten Son for the sake of these creatures, so that everyone who believes in Him may not perish, but have eternal Life. 

If our people realize this and turn to Heaven, the terror of 1937 and 2020 will never happen again in our exhausted land. If we do not appreciate this, and we do not turn to Heaven, the same thing will happen in Belarus time after time in different forms. Today we are in a life or death situation—and with each passing day it becomes harder to understand this as a metaphor. So let us choose life, so that Belarus can hear Christ say, “She is not dead, but asleep! Little girl, I say to you, get up!” [Mark 5:39-41], so that Belarus, like that girl, wakes up. 

Zmitser Dashkevich is a prominent Belarusian Christian prodemocracy activist. He lives in Minsk.