TWO PLAYS AGAINST TYRANNY

John Freedman

THE BACKSTORY

The plays published here roughly bookend a period of 12 months. Insulted. Belarus appeared in September 2020, and was a timely, hard-hitting snapshot of a revolution in Belarus that was beginning to stall. Voices of the New Belarus appeared in August 2021, and was an equally hard-hitting requiem for what the eventual failure of that revolution doomed so many people to suffer.

Andrei Kureichik, the author of both texts, made his professional debut as a dramatist and a director in 2002 at the age of 22. His first international success was The Piedmont Beast, a play set in medieval times which Kureichik himself described as “a story about the humanization of animals and the brutalization of people.” It entered the repertoire at the prestigious Moscow Art Theatre in 2003. Writing exclusively in Russian, this former law student and fledgling lawyer soon became one of the most successful Belarusian playwrights and screenwriters of the next two decades. For good measure he also emerged as a prominent film director and producer. He was not just one of the most popular creators of comedies in his homeland; his successes spilled over into the Russian market, where his films Lovey-Dovey and Lovey-Dovey 2 were box office hits.

Kureichik’s life and career in his homeland had done well by him. He was head of his own thriving production company, and his plays and screenplays were in demand. From time to time he taught at the prestigious Russian Academy of Theatre Arts (aka GITIS). It would have been easy to do like so many others — claim lofty allegiance to his art, craft, and career, and declare that politics were beneath him, or, in some way, did not concern him at all. But that is not how it worked out for this writer. Life laid out another path before him.

Having spent the last 15 years as the most successful writer-producer in Belarus, Kureichik in the spring of 2020 was drawn into the presidential campaign of candidate Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, one of many candidates opposing sitting president Alexander Lukashenko. Kureichik scripted some of Tikhanovskaya’s biggest public rallies and openly supported her on his popular YouTube vlogs and other social media. He admitted that the year 2020 was a turning point for him. He had been successful, he had money, fame, even power within his chosen professional sphere. What he came to realize is that he did not have the freedom to live his life with dignity.

The writing of the two plays in this collection was the culmination of a series of events that both the writer and his home country experienced over a period of decades. Belarus, like many other former Soviet republics, proclaimed sovereignty in 1990 and officially achieved independence in 1991. It cast off the old Soviet-era name of Belorussia, taking on the sleeker, modernized name of Belarus. The first presidential elections were held in 1994 and Alexander Lukashenko, the previously unknown chairman of a kolkhoz — that is, a collective farm — was elected president in 1994.

By 1997, the international community was seeking to isolate Lukashenko due to corruption and repeated irregular election practices. It had not taken long for many to understand that Lukashenko had every intention of being a typical “strong man.” He was labeled “Europe’s last dictator,” and Belarus “Europe’s last dictatorship.” Virtually every subsequent election was accompanied by fraud and dirty tricks at the least, more often by arrests and violence against candidates and protesters in the streets.

It surprised no one when Lukashenko began rounding up and incarcerating presidential candidates in the run-up to the 2020 election. This was common practice by then. What no one expected, however — Lukashenko most of all — was that the wife of one of the imprisoned candidates would step up to replace her husband and carry the torch of his candidacy through to election day on 9 August. Thus arose the phenomenon of Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, who was thrust into the international spotlight instead of her candidate husband Sergei Tikhanovsky.

Lukashenko perceived no political competition in this housewife’s actions, grossly underestimating not only Tikhanovskaya, but the people of Belarus as a whole, stating glibly in July that, “Our constitution is not meant for women. Our society is not ready to vote for a woman” (Talmazan). As such, he allowed Tikhanovskaya’s candidacy to be registered by the authorities, perhaps even chuckling to himself how “tolerant” this must have made him look. By August, Tikhanovskaya and her coalition, which she led in tandem with two other women who had worked for candidates now in jail cells or on the run, had become the equivalent of political rock stars in Belarus. These three women, Tikhanovskaya, Maria Kolesnikova, and Veronika Tsepkalo, traveled the country, drawing enormous, enthusiastic crowds wherever they went.

Election day came, 9 August 2020, and confirmed that Tikhanovskaya was now Lukashenko’s worst nightmare. Estimates of the actual figures vary, but no independent source doubted that Tikhanovskaya had won the election outright, and quite easily at that. A poll by Chatham House indicated that Lukashenko probably received 20% of the vote, while Tikhanovskaya most likely received 52% (Astapenia). This, of course, did not stop Lukashenko from claiming victory and publishing the official vote count as 80% for the incumbent and 10% for his main challenger. The Belarusian people knew this was a lie and they poured out onto the streets, mounting around-the-clock demonstrations in the capital city of Minsk and elsewhere.

So massive were the demonstrations that many compared them to the Maidan revolution or protests in Kyiv which brought down a corrupt Ukrainian government in early 2014. Lukashenko, however, had ruled out the possibility of any such events as early as 2015, when he declared, “Belarus will never have ‘Maidan’” (TASS). He was true to his word in 2020. After grudgingly tolerating the growing protests for three days, the President threw all the weight of his security forces behind a reign of violence and terror in order to stamp out dissent. Kureichik estimated that 7,000 Belarusians were arrested in these three days alone, adding that “Many were snatched off the street for no apparent reason. The police followed no rules or regulations. Almost all detainees were subjected to inconceivable torture and suffering” (Kureichik). At least six protesters were killed in August.

Tikhanovskaya herself was “invited” to a private nocturnal talk by the authorities and was spirited out of the country on 11 August. Veronika Tsepkalo found her way to Poland on or around 19 August. Finally, the Belarus security forces abducted Maria Kolesnikova on 7 September and forcibly attempted to deport her the next day. However, in a move well worthy of a spy thriller, she ripped up her passport, leapt out of the moving car as it approached the Lithuanian border, and ran back into Belarusian territory. She was arrested immediately, handed an 11-year sentence on 6 September 2021, and, as of this writing, is still in prison over 1,000 days later.

After the arrest of Kolesnikova (also spelled Kalesnikava, depending on the transliteration system), the active protests against the stolen election mostly went underground. Horror stories told by those who spent even a few days and nights in any of the prison holding centers — especially the notorious Okrestina pre-trial detention center in Minsk — had a chilling effect on the populace at large. Stories of brutal beatings, starvation, psychological violence, sexual abuse, and other unspeakable tortures were rampant. Tikhanovskaya set up her presidency-in-exile in order to lay the groundwork for a future return to Minsk, but that had little or no immediate effects on the lives of common citizens remaining in Belarus. Those inside prison and out had no choice but to find quiet, mostly anonymous, ways to maintain their dignity and personal safety. 

Kureichik, who is a member of the outlawed opposition Coordination Council, slipped out of Belarus into Ukraine under the threat of arrest in mid-September 2020. He spent the next six to nine months living out of a suitcase. His wanderings took him from Ukraine, Sweden, and Tanzania to Slovakia, where he finally received a Schengen visa for Europe, then on to Finland where he was given shelter for a year by an organization called Artists at Risk. In the spring of 2022, he spent two months at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign as the George A. Miller Visiting Artist, and in the fall he completed a semester tenure in the Maurice R. Greenberg World Fellows Program at Yale University, before accepting a position as lecturer at Yale in January 2023.

Several of the individuals mentioned above, as well as the events they experienced, found their way into Kureichik’s two plays. The dramas form something of a diptych, although each is quite different from the other in substance and form.  

INSULTED. BELARUS

Kureichik began writing Insulted. Belarus as demonstrators were spilling out into the streets on 9 August 2020, and he put the final period to the work simultaneously to Kolesnikova’s arrest. As such, it is the rare case of a major work of dramatic art being created in real time about a topic that is self-destructing and transforming furiously even as each word is being tapped out on a computer keyboard.

Kureichik crafted a play that is inspired by, and sometimes based on, actual statements made by Lukashenko (Oldster), Tikhanovskaya (Novice), and Kolesnikova (Cheerful), even as he interweaves them with four imagined characters who speak the language and thoughts that were coming to Kureichik fast and furiously by way of internet, television, personal conversations, and speech overheard on the street. Of these three characters, Kolesnikova/Cheerful is the most freely imagined. Neither their ages nor their place in society match in any way. Kolesnikova is a well-known musician; Cheerful is a wide-eyed, inexperienced young woman whose harsh introduction to life is on the verge of happening in the here and now.

The four primarily imagined characters present something of an overview of Belarusian society, while also bearing certain links to real individuals.

Mentor, an aging teacher who believes in “law and order,” is one of an entire army of submissive civil servants that help guarantee Lukashenko’s reelections every four years by routinely falsifying results. This character in the play is a conglomerate portrait bearing obvious resemblance to numerous real-life individuals who will be referred to in many of the narratives in Voices of the New Belarus.

The character identified as Corpse is a young, enthusiastic soccer fan who is sick of living under the same president his entire life. Kureichik has said often times that, as he wrote the play, he was thinking of Alexander Taraikovsky, the first protester to be killed by riot troopers on 10 August, although aside from their sad fates, the two share no other apparent similarities.

Raptor is a storm trooper who honed his violent skills during the Maidan revolution in Ukraine and is now charged with quashing rebellion in Belarus. He is not tied to any specific historical figure and does not need to be. These state-sanctioned thugs are faceless, ruthless, and seemingly numberless no matter where they ply their trade, in Belarus, Ukraine, Russia, or in all three countries.

The character of Youth represents Lukashenko’s actual teenage son Kolya. He is being groomed for the presidency but doesn’t seem to be especially interested in this position. He would rather gossip and play internet games. One suspects that Kureichik here strayed especially far afield from the real-life model.

The lives of all these characters — with the possible exception of Kolya, for his debt to destiny is yet to be paid — will be impacted tragically by Lukashenko’s decision to crush the revolution with violence and torture. And yet, the resulting play, hard-hitting as it is, is filled with humor, hope, and dignity.

Promoted by The Insulted. Belarus Worldwide Readings Project, which Andrei and I curated, Insulted. Belarus enjoyed extraordinary international exposure. This included not only numerous significant productions, but also an extensive array of readings, installations, art videos, films, publications, presentations, and discussions at conferences and in university classrooms. Well over 250 events were held in 30 countries and 22 languages. 

The world premiere, directed by Serhiy Pavliuk, took place in the play’s original Russian-language text on 12 September 2020 at the Kulish Academic Musical and Drama Theatre in Kherson, Ukraine. Five nights later the premiere reading in the United States took place, in Russian, directed by Igor Golyak at Arlekin Players Theatre in Needham, MA. The world English-language premiere directed by Guillermo Cienfuegos followed the next night at Rogue Machine Theater in Los Angeles. The UK premiere followed the very next night directed by Bryan Brown and Olya Petrakova at Maketank in Exeter. From there the readings and productions spread throughout Europe and into Africa and Hong Kong.

Although many people around the world knew virtually nothing about Belarus and its predicament before encountering Kureichik’s play, the nature of the play, its accessible characters, the dramatic quality of its events, and its deeply affecting commentary on the notions of tyranny, freedom, and democracy struck a chord with people of vastly different backgrounds and experiences.

Jerry Adesewo, a Nigerian writer and director, wrote on Facebook, “Remove the setting and substitute the characters [and] that play is 100% talking to Nigeria as well.”

Tim Crouch, a writer and performer based in the UK, joked darkly on his Facebook timeline that Insulted. Belarus was “Andrei Kureichik’s extraordinary response to the situation in the USA Belarus.”

In a comprehensive article about Insulted. Belarus and the project surrounding it, Bryan Brown called the play “a profound story not solely confined to one country’s plight but emblematic of endeavors to divert the road to unfreedom globally” (Brown).  

Time after time, as I engaged in post-performance Zooms with actors and audiences all over the world, I heard people speak about how deeply the play had moved them precisely because it establishes a specific, national picture of political mayhem in a way that allows anyone anywhere to see in it the problems, dangers, and crimes of their own societies.

The play’s form — a seeming string of monologues — is simple on the surface, but quite elaborate in the way it plays out. Characters who appear to be holding court with personal monologues are, in fact, anticipating or interacting with what other characters have already said, or will say in the near future. As differing viewpoints on the same topic accumulate, they create a more detailed picture of what is actually happening, eventually bringing us to a profound vision of what the central characters have endured, suffered, and sacrificed. Characters that have nothing to do with one another — or that we assume to have nothing to do with each other — are revealed later to have intricately intertwined biographies.

Valentina Golovchiner, a professor of literature at Tomsk Pedagogical University in Russia, wrote to me, “A stunning play! I can’t get it out of my head not only because of what he depicts, but also because of how he does it . . . He creates a dialogue of broad utterances made at a distance, creates a dialogue among characters that never meet!” (Golovchiner).

“The text is not publicistic,” wrote Romana Štorková Maliti, who organized many readings and productions in Slovakia and the Czech Republic, “but is a first-rate provocation. It is a highly artistic text . . .” (Štorková Maliti).  

VOICES OF THE NEW BELARUS

By the turn of the calendar to the year 2021, the revolution in Belarus had hit a brick wall. Small, clandestine demonstrations still took place from time to time, but they were virtually always cloaked in mystery. A handful of women might wrap themselves in the white-red-white colors of the Belarusian flag of independence, covering their faces, and filming themselves as they marched boldly down a nondescript street or lane for a few seconds. Others traveled out into the woods to film brief acts of anonymous protest before uploading the videos to pseudonymous YouTube accounts. For awhile, someone might open their window at midnight on the 20th floor of a beehive apartment house in a heavily populated urban neighborhood and shout, “Žyvie Belarus!” or “Long live Belarus!” Others might come to their windows and brave shouting back an answer or two, ultimately creating a ghostly echo of protesting voices that might last a minute or two before dying out in the night air.

By the spring and early summer of 2021, Belarusian protesters had lost virtually every method of making their voices heard. Which is precisely when Kureichik resolved that the time had come to write a sequel or companion to Insulted. Belarus. This one would be even more blunt and forthright than his first because it went directly to the source for its material. There wasn’t a word of “creative writing” in it. Kureichik pored over hundreds of published texts, and he chose 15 — that is, 14 monologues and one dialogue between a mother and daughter. (He added two more in mid-2023, about which more later.) When placed together as a whole in the proper order, they gave voice to the pain, the humiliation, the anguish, the despair, and — this is not to be overlooked — the hope that the people of Belarus usually continued to cling to, no matter what was happening in their country politically. Appropriately, he called this new play Voices of the New Belarus.  

Voices is a classic verbatim, or documentary, text. It consists of letters, interviews, memoirs, newspaper articles, and court documents of people who fell victim to the repressive machine in Belarus between May 2020 and September 2021. As such, it covers a large swath of time — from the early days of the election campaign, to a time when the first anniversary of the failed revolution was about to be marked. Kureichik described it himself in his foreword to the play: “This is the first time I have written a play in which I totally rejected both authorial text and any attempt to stylize or interpret facts . . . This text is a collective confession of a nation that has been beaten, raped, and insulted. These are the voices of victims of violence, people who have suffered terribly . . . All names and surnames are genuine. Their stories form a document. A document of historical significance.”

The version of Voices offered here is one that took shape two years after it was originally written. For an installation created specially for a 15 June 2023 showing at the Belarus Art Exhibit at the 2023 Oslo Freedom Forum, Kureichik added two new monologues, one by Nobel Peace Prize winner Ales Bialiatski, and another by the civic activist Polina Sharendo-Panasiuk. For clarity, precision, and continuity of style, I translated Bialiatski’s speech from the original Belarusian. Kureichik’s video art work, a complete reading of the text over creatively edited video clips, featured the renowned historian Timothy Snyder reading for Bialiatski, and is freely accessible online (Installation).

The texts plumbed by Kureichik represent the views and experiences of a vast array of people. These co-authors, if you will, are, in order of appearance: Ales Bialiatski; Vitaly Marokko, a logistics specialist; Pyotr Kirik, a furniture maker; Maria Kolesnikova, a musician and activist; Marina Karabanova, a professional in the information technology industry; Sergei Melyanets, a sales manager and election volunteer; Polina Sharendo-Panasiuk; Nikolai Statkevich, a prominent politician; Alexei Berezinsky, an entrepreneur; Roman Zorich, an engineer; Igor Losik, a blogger; Anatoly Kudlasevich, a poet, prose writer, and bard; Andrei Proskurin, an employee in the sphere of information technology; Zhanna Lagutina, a typography worker, and her daughter Polina Zvezdova, who was unemployed at the time; Marina Zolotova, chief editor of the influential TUT.By internet portal; Stepan Latypov, an arboriculturist; and Vitold Ashurok, a social and ecological activist.

Maria Kolesnikova is the only individual to appear as a character in both Insulted. Belarus and Voices of the New Belarus. She has become something of a Joan of Arc of contemporary Belarusian politics and culture, and every word she utters commands rapt attention throughout the society. It is no coincidence that Kureichik again gave her a prominent place in his second play, granting her the opportunity to tell the story of her abduction by the authorities in her own words, as well as to offer several pungent words of moral encouragement.

“I have not lost heart,” her character declares, “and I will not do so in the future! Everyone has will and strength! Each of us can change everything. It is very important to understand this and not give up. Do not give up.”

As he had done in Insulted. Belarus, Kureichik was careful to include contrasting, sometimes mutually exclusive opinions, emotional moods, or points of view. As such, after detailing the torture he endured from the authorities, Sergei Melyanets, an actively faithful Christian, declares, “I have chosen not to bear a grudge against them in my heart. You might say I have forgiven them. I do not wish to take revenge on them.” Not long after that, we encounter the young Polina Zvezdova, who concludes a dialogue with her mother in no uncertain terms: “I will never forgive them ever!”

Two of the most famous characters, aside from Kolesnikova, were contenders for martyrdom. Curiously — and this is a sign of Kureichik’s exquisite understanding of balance and paradox — both Vitold Ashurok and Stepan Latypov met ends they did not expect or plan for.

Vitold Ashurok, the most tragic of the victims comprising this play, was a high-minded, loving, perhaps even naive, optimistic individual. He is represented by a letter filled with excitement, pride, optimism, and hope that he wrote to his mother from his prison cell. What he did not know, and what we know now, is that shortly after he sent this letter home, the authorities would murder him in prison. It is almost unbearable to read or hear what most likely were among the last words he uttered in his life: “I will come home! Be strong, mom! Have faith! I will not spend five years in prison! Change is coming. It will bring freedom to me, and it will bring me home to you! Remember, mother! I will come home without fail.” Indeed, he did not spend five years in prison, and he did come home soon after this. Only he did so in a pine box.

Stepan Latypov might be said to be Ashurok’s opposite. He is represented here by a speech he delivered in court as he explained in detail how he fully expected to be dead by this particular moment. He carefully and meticulously plotted suicide over a period of months, taking advice from hardened criminals that he encountered in prison, and eventually acted upon his scheme in the middle of a courtroom session. At that fateful instant he succeeded in plunging a pen into his neck and deep into his throat, but he failed in his intention to sever a carotid artery, which would have killed him. Now, several months later, still alive but once again in a courtroom, he extraordinarily reveals that his greatest goal is not to hate the individual who will judge him, but to see her as “a person who, perhaps, is trapped in a difficult situation.”

Two other antipodes are Alexei Berezinsky and Igor Losik, the former finding an opportunity to explore humor and affection in an article he wrote from prison for a newspaper, the latter succumbing to numbing depression in a letter he sent home.

Berezinsky: “I know that very soon the time will come when there will be lots and lots of smiles all over Belarus!”

Losik: “When it seems it can’t possibly get any worse, it gets even worse still . . . It would be better if they just shot me quick so I wouldn’t have to see any of this!”

One rather suspects that reconciling these vastly disparate attitudes and experiences is part of the work that must now be done in Belarus in order to bring healing to an ailing society. It is a process, as was mentioned earlier, that many societies on Planet Earth are currently experiencing. It is a process that Kureichik both dissects and encourages with his choices of texts.

One of the most purely uplifting voices in the play belongs to Marina Zolotova, a prominent journalist. Her contribution consists of just three short sentences that amount to an emotional invocation, a rousing cheer. “We will never again agree to be slaves!” she exclaims.

The text belonging to Vitaly Marokko is most likely self-referential for Kureichik. “I was relatively apolitical,” Marokko says. “I never took part in demonstrations and never actively expressed my civic position. But things boiled over. The entire 2020 presidential campaign unfolded in such a way that it was impossible to remain on the sidelines.” This was both a way for Kureichik to place himself inside this political coming-of-age story, as well as a way to reach out to those potential readers and spectators who might still be standing on the sidelines, avoiding involvement, giving in to the fears of taking a stand when history teeters precariously at a turning point.

Voices of the New Belarus first appeared publicly in July 2021 in YouTube readings by Rachel Vigour in Charlottesville, VA, and in a live reading of excerpts streamed on Vimeo from Sands Films Studio in London. But its proper stage premiere, as with Insulted. Belarus, took place under the direction of Serhiy Pavliuk at the Kulish Academic Musical and Drama Theatre in Kherson, Ukraine, on 9 September 2021. It was subsequently translated into eight languages and, as of this writing, has been performed in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, the UK, Finland, Germany, Hong Kong, Poland, Ukraine, and the United States. 

LOOSE ENDS

It is my distinct pleasure to express my gratitude to Nina Kamberos, the founder of Laertes Press. This is the second project on which we have collaborated, and I couldn’t be happier. Nina is the most detailed, most responsive, most intelligent, most sensitive publisher I have encountered in many years of working with publishers. She has surrounded herself with true professionals, an impressive team of editors and proofreaders in the persons of Valerie Price and Margaretta Yarborough. Maxine Mills does wonders on graphic design. I am deeply indebted to all of them.

Both of Andrei Kureichik’s plays contain references to names, places, organizations, and cultural allusions, many of which will be unfamiliar to an English-language audience. By no means does any reader, director, actor, or spectator require a grounded understanding of them all. For the curious, however, the following glossary provides some quick answers to possible questions.  

INSULTED. BELARUS

• 2014 – see Maidan below.

• Banderites is the term used to describe Ukrainians who followed, or currently revere, the Ukrainian nationalist Stepan Bandera (1909–1959). He was a controversial figure, hailed as a hero by many in Ukraine, and labeled a terrorist by the Soviet state. His legacy is still used today in Russia and Belarus as a “metaphor” for fascist nationalists.

• BATÉ, based in the city of Borisov, is Belarus’s winningest soccer team. Its chief rival is Dynamo, based in Minsk.

• Dota, Counter-Strike, Minecraft, and Tanks are popular online video games.

• Dmitry (Dima) Gordon is a popular Ukrainian journalist who frequently interviews prominent guests.

• Heart sign, which Cheerful makes by placing the fingers of both hands in the shape of a heart, visually quotes a sign of affection made often by many in the Tikhanovskaya camp, especially Maria Kolesnikova.

• Kemerovo and Vladikavkaz — the former is a city in western Siberia that became a safe haven for many of the storm troopers who took part in the crushing of the Maidan revolution in Ukraine; the latter is the capital of the Republic of North Ossetia, in southern Russia. It was the site of much political violence in the early 2000s.

• Luhansk is a city and region in eastern Ukraine that was illegally annexed by Russia in 2014 — one of Russia’s political moves that set off a war that is still unresolved as of this writing.

• Maidan is a central square in Kyiv which has given its name to the Maidan revolution, sometimes known as Euromaidan, which was mounted by Ukrainians from November 2013 to February 2014, at which time government forces, backed by Russian storm troopers, drove out protesters with brutal violence.

• NEXTA (pronounced “nEkhta”) is a Belarusian media outlet that is accessed on the internet. It was one of the few places Belarusians could go to for trustworthy news but was dealt a serious blow when its founder Roman Protasevich was kidnapped via a commercial jet hijacking by Belarusian authorities in 2021. NEXTA will recur in Voices of the New Belarus.

• Saparmurat Niyazov was the dictator-president of Turkmenistan from 1990 to 2006. Officially he died of a heart attack, while there were rumors that his heavy drinking caused death by kidney failure. Kolya’s suggestion that Niyazov was poisoned is drawn from probably spurious reports in Russian newspapers after his death.

• Petro Poroshenko was the president of Ukraine from 2014 to 2019. 

• Sergei refers to Sergei Tikhanovsky, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya’s husband, a popular blogger and an imprisoned presidential candidate.

• Slavyansky Bazaar is a popular arts festival that has been based in the Belarusian city of Vitebsk since 1992. Stas Mikhailov, Maxim Galkin, Irina Allegrova, and Taisia Povaly are popular entertainers that one might expect to see perform there.

• Spring on River Street, or, more precisely, Spring on the Street Beyond the River, tells the tale of a young woman sent to teach workers in a night school. It was a popular film in the Soviet Union in the 1950s. 

• Telega is a popular way of referring to the Telegram internet messenger app. It is considered a relatively secure manner of communication. Telega will recur in Voices of the New Belarus.

• White bracelets were worn as a way to signal support for the revolution. They will reappear as white ribbons in Voices of the New Belarus.

• White-red-white are the colors of the flag recognized by protesters as the legitimate national banner.

• Viktor Yanukovych was president of Ukraine from 2010 to 2014, when he violently put down the Maidan revolution. Shortly thereafter, he was ousted from power. 

• Young Communist League, known popularly in the Soviet years as the Komsomol, was a political organization open to individuals from approximately 14 to 28 years of age. 

VOICES OF THE NEW BELARUS

• Viktor Babariko is a Belarusian banker, philanthropist, presidential candidate, and, since 18 June 2020, a political prisoner. There were reports in April 2023 that he had been beaten and tortured in prison.

• Belsat (Belarus satellite) is a Polish-based internet television channel that focuses on Belarusian issues, and is available in the Belarusian, Ukrainian, and Russian languages.

• Coordination Council consists of a group of individuals who have taken upon themselves the responsibility of leading Belarus to a post-Lukashenko era. Its main members include Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, the Nobel prize-winning writer Svetlana Alexievich, Maria Kolesnikova, and former diplomat and theater manager Pavel Latushko. Andrei Kureichik was elected a founding member of the first core group on 19 August 2020.

• A Country for Life was the name of the blog curated by Sergei Tikhanovsky, imprisoned candidate for President of Belarus, husband of Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, and subsequent actual winner of the Belarus presidential election.

• Okrestina, also known as Akrestsina, is the main criminal detention center in Minsk. During the revolution it quickly gained the reputation of a brutal torture center.

• Steven Seagal is an American martial artist and film personality. He is a friend of Russian president Vladimir Putin, and his popularity in Russian-speaking countries is greater than in most western countries.

• Varlam Shalamov (1907–1982) was a major Russian writer, a meticulous, dry-eyed chronicler of life in the Stalinist prison camps, where he toiled for 17 years. His powerful vignettes and short stories were collected in six volumes under the title of Kolyma Tales. Kolyma was the prison in the far eastern Russian region where he spent most of his time in the camps.

• Stela Obelisk, officially the Minsk Hero City Obelisk, is located in central Minsk, and was the location for many of the protest gatherings during the revolution.

• TUT.By was a popular independent news, media, and service internet portal founded in 2000 and closed by the Belarusian government in 2022. It played an important role in informing citizens of events during the 2020 revolution.  

A NOTE ON TRANSLITERATION AND SPELLINGS

The transliteration of Belarusian names, places, and words is complex. Few in the West employ strict linguistic rules to render Belarusian names in English, in part because so many Belarusians (like Andrei Kureichik) write and speak in Russian rather than in Belarusian, and in part because the results can look quite alien in English. For example, strict transliteration of the name Sergei Tikhanovsky is Siarhiej Cichanoŭski. The strict rendering of the notorious Okrestina detention center in Minsk is Akrestsina or Akrescina. Svetlana Tikhanovskaya’s name is properly rendered as Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya (or Cichanoŭskaya). The proper rendition of Alexander Lukashenko’s name is Alyaksandr Lukashenka. Strictly speaking, it would be Maria Kalesnikava, not Maria Kolesnikova.

I believe that any attempt to cling too closely to strict rules of Belarusian transliteration would be a pointless distraction in these texts. Therefore, following the lead of the New York Times, and with Andrei Kureichik’s permission, I usually employ the basic rules of transliteration from Russian, the language in which these plays were written. I do, however, employ the proper Belarusian transliteration for the name of Ales Bialiatski whose fame as a Nobel Peace Prize winner has made that spelling commmon in the West. I humbly apologize to purists, but I come down on the side of comfortable usage in the context of plays intended to be performed publicly.

I wish to close with a short text that Andrei Kureichik wrote at my request. It is a succinct explanation of why and how these two plays came into being. These thoughts are embedded, encoded, hidden, retooled, and revealed in the plays themselves, of course. That is what makes them works of art. But it is also valuable to see them expressed simply and directly as well. Here is the territory where life and art come together.

“My life has always been about ‘choice.’ I have made many choices in my life, but the most global, the most fateful probably happened in 2020. Because it was not merely my personal choice, but the choice of a whole country, all of Belarus. What was that choice? Would I continue to build a personal career in cinema and theater, hiding behind the high fence around my home, not noticing that Belarusians wanted another country, democracy, and renewal? Or would I join the general wave of a national struggle for freedom and independence, feel like a real Belarusian, and become a voice that could make a difference throughout my country? I chose to support a brave woman whose husband was thrown into prison. Svetlana Tikhanovskaya never had a political career, but at the same time she became the only person capable of blocking the election of the Belarusian tyrant and his repressive machine, while simultaneously uniting millions of people. The choice turned out to be truly historic. I lost my old career. My former life. My life has become much more difficult. There has been pain. But it was worth it to change myself, to help change society, to write new plays, to discover the solidarity of hundreds of amazing people, theaters, and universities. The world for me has expanded. The experience that I gained in this struggle for the freedom of Belarusians is invaluable. And the creative possibilities are endless.”

Chania, Crete

August 2023