ANDREI KUREICHIK’S POLITICAL TETRALOGY: BELARUS, RUSSIA, UKRAINE, AND BEYOND
By John Freedman
THE BACKSTORY
This collection bears witness to the phenomenon of change — of personal change, of sociopolitical change, of historical change, the success of change, the difficulty of change, and its failure. As Andrei Kureichik developed his increasingly successful career as a writer, director, and producer in Belarus and neighboring Russia throughout the first two decades of the 21st century, he could not have suspected that one day he would find himself at the heart of one of the age’s most complex and dangerous geopolitical disturbances. Educated as a lawyer, he worked a couple of years in the profession (2000–2002) but also exercised, with almost immediate success, his inclination to write. His first produced play, Pilate’s Confession, enjoyed a modest debut at the Theater-Studio of Belarusian State University in 2000. But by 2001, at the age of 21, Kureichik was produced at the most famous playhouses in Belarus and Russia. His play The Piedmont Beast opened that year at both the Janka Kupala National Theater in Minsk and at the Moscow Art Theater. His next play, Paradise Lost, was staged at those same venues, in Minsk in 2002 and in Moscow in 2003.
By 2007, he had been recruited to write scripts for the Russian film industry, and his first two efforts, the romantic comedies Lovey Dovey (2007) and Lovey Dovey 2 (2008) were bonafide box office smashes. Five years later, in 2012, he and a group of colleagues founded their own Belarus-based production company, Bez Buslou Arts. Kureichik was 32 years old.
None of this, however, was taking place in a vacuum.
Even as Kureichik was embarking on his professional career, Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko had long since been dubbed Europe’s “last dictator.” The populist politician and former head of a state farm won the nation’s first presidential election in 1994. By 1996 he had pushed through numerous measures making his power near absolute. As of this writing in 2024, he is in his sixth consecutive term as president, with each subsequent campaign being increasingly opaque, corrupt, and violent. Opposition candidates are routinely arrested or confined to house arrest to nullify any competition.
In the years following Belarus’s official declaration of independence on August 25, 1991, the nation developed from a rather obscure, even seemingly inconsequential, East European polity into an increasingly visible land of significant strategic position. Its capital, Minsk, stands due west of Moscow at a distance of just 420 miles, 270 miles north of Ukraine’s capital of Kyiv, 290 miles east of Warsaw, Poland, 110 miles south of Vilnius, Lithuania, and 250 miles south of Riga, Latvia. In short, it stands at the epicenter of the former Eastern European lands of the Soviet bloc. One of its two official languages is Belarusian, but the other is Russian, and virtually every Belarusian speaks or writes Russian, although not necessarily Belarusian. Many writers, Kureichik included, choose to write in Russian not only because they were raised with it, but also because it almost exponentially expands a writer’s access to an audience. Approximately 6.5 million people speak Belarusian in the world. Two hundred fifty-eight million speak Russian.
Throughout Lukashenko’s three decades in power, he has cultivated a convoluted relationship with Russian president Vladimir Putin. In fact, when Putin came to power in 2000, he was a blank slate to many despite his well-known KGB background, while Lukashenko was already a pariah. While Putin was still making cosmetic attempts to solidify his reputation as a legitimate democratic leader as late as 2010 by handing over the Russian presidency to his close friend Dmitry Medvedev, Lukashenko was, in fact, running amok. Two presidential candidates, Vladimir Neklyayev and Nikolai Statkevich, were severely beaten on election day, December 10, 2010, while five candidates, one candidate’s wife, and one party leader were arrested and imprisoned, some for shorter periods, some for longer. Lukashenko’s police force beat back angry protesters with unchecked force.
Over the years there were persistent rumors about Lukashenko’s and Putin’s dislike and distrust for one another, although they clearly saw in each other — to borrow a phrase that has been abused terribly over the decades — someone they each could work with. Most likely, their corrupt, authoritarian instincts made blood brothers of them, whether they liked it or not. Wagging tongues loved to mock Lukashenko after every meeting he had with Putin, for it was all too apparent that the Belarus president was willing to turn himself inside out, stand on his head, or even turn chartreuse should that please his Russian counterpart. And yet, for all the rumors and projections that Russia would one day subsume Belarus in an expanded Russian Federation, Lukashenko somehow managed to maintain his nation as his own personal playground.
Through the prism of Belarus one group of Russian theater artists saw danger lurking in Russia’s future. The famed Teatr.doc in Moscow mounted a production of a verbatim piece called Two in Your House in 2012, spoofing the real-life situation in 2010 wherein two KGB agents were stationed in the home of former Belarusian presidential candidate Vladimir Neklyayev to keep a constant eye on him and his wife. The production felt very much like a warning of things to come in Russia, and, indeed, it turned out to be prescient. We now see in retrospect that just two years later, Vladimir Putin would return to the Russian presidency with a vengeance, beginning his slow march against Ukraine by illegally annexing the Crimean peninsula in 2014, sending mercenary troops into Ukraine’s eastern lands, stepping up draconian maneuvers against the popular opposition leader Alexei Navalny, most likely overseeing the murder of opposition leader Boris Nemtsov in February 2015, and, in 2020 and 2021, pushing through legal maneuvers like those Lukashenko had employed that would allow him to remain in power in the Kremlin until at least 2036.
Putin, for all his dislike of Lukashenko, often seemed to watch what his neighbor was doing and getting away with, before emulating his actions.
There was, then, no surprise when Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 from Belarusian territory. Further cementing the relationship — and the inter- entanglement — of the two leaders and countries, Putin sent a number of tactical nuclear weapons to Belarus in late 2023.
All of this stands as a general backdrop to the plays collected in this volume. Whereas a Moscow theater looked to Belarus in 2012 to see potential reflections of a Russian future, Andrei Kureichik began training his focus on political developments around him. According to one commentator who knows Kureichik well, “His work after 2010 increasingly, though far from exclusively, became focused on questions of Belarusian, Russian, and Ukrainian identity, drawing heavily from history and occasionally touching on politics” (Edison). Kureichik had previously written plays on contemporary themes, historical themes, and philosophical themes, but Insulted. Russia was a sign of change. This, however, was the first time that he took on contemporary social and political themes in such a direct, unadorned way. It was a major change in the way he engaged his public.
INSULTED. RUSSIA (2017)
First questions first. Why “Insulted?” To begin answering that question, let’s jump ahead for a moment. When Andrei Kureichik unleashed Insulted. Belarus on the public in the fall of 2020, there were occasional readers or spectators who, if I may put it so, took offense. The title apparently did not fit their heroic vision of the massive opposition to Lukashenko and his political machine. In fact, no one paying attention would have doubted the heroism of the Belarusian opposition, least of all Kureichik, who watched at close range as the revolution gained strength, flourished, took major hits from the authorities, and then was smothered. His descriptions of this process in Insulted. Belarus and Voices of the New Belarus, and of the people who took part in it, make that starkly clear. Kureichik did not intend to apply the term to the state or status of Belarusians themselves who stood against tyranny, but he rather appeared to refer to something inherent in the attitude of Lukashenko and his henchmen to the Belarusian people. By their corruption, lies, and violence, the powers that be in Belarus were an insult to Belarusians, who deserved far better. Lukashenko’s treatment of the populace was, indeed, insulting, as well as criminal.
However, as we see in Insulted. Russia, Kureichik had already hit upon this basic title three years before he had any inkling that he would ever write anything titled Insulted. Belarus. And here, perhaps, it is easier to see the cultural and literary lineage, although it may not be quite as direct as it would appear in English. Still, there is more than a nod in Kureichik’s title to The Insulted and Injured, one of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s earliest novels, and one of the works that set up the complex array of themes that Dostoevsky would apply to Russian life over the next 20 years in his great novels. Dostoevsky’s “insulted” is “unizhennye” in Russian, which contains shades of “to lower,” “degrade,” or “demean.” Kureichik’s “insulted” — “obizhennye” — would include such notions as “offend,” “aggrieve,” “slight,” “do wrong,” or “insult” in a Venn diagram of the two words’ lexical shades. One sees there are many nuances in the various shadings of insult and injury in Russian, even without throwing “injured” into the mix. Kureichik may have chosen a different word than Dostoevsky, but there is little doubt that he intended to riff on topics plumbed by Dostoevsky before him. Separated from the great Russian writer by more than 150 years, Kureichik found nuances in this expanded notion that were still of value to him as a writer well into the 21st century. There is little doubt that both the Belarusian and Russian states have seriously tested their citizens’ fortitude over the last few decades.
By 2017, Russia was increasingly emerging as an unhinged authoritarian state in which the political longevity and personal safety of the leadership very much resembled the way business was done in Belarus. Furthermore, as Russia generally wielded dominance over all those in its proximity — what Ukrainians today would call Russia’s empirical presence — it would have been natural for a writer in Belarus to seek reflections, origins, and echoes of local woes in those being experienced in Russia.
The characters of Insulted. Russia essentially identify, in the author’s own words, prominent grievances tearing at the social fabric of Russia at that time.
Orthodox Believer represents the age-old interweaving of Russia’s spiritual and patriotic beliefs. “Our church is the Russian Orthodox Church,” he states at the outset. “It is our Mother. What more can you say? Were it not for our church, we would not be here. Our country would not be here. Our people would not be here. Russians would not be here.”
The unity of spiritual and earthly power in what we now call Russia has existed from the 10th century when ancient Rus accepted Christianity as a state religion. That decision to join Christendom coincided with a major military victory (in Crimea, of all places), and the conflation of faith and force continues into 2024 as Russian Orthodox priests not only bless soldiers going to war against Ukrainians, but they actually bless the bombs, missiles, rockets, and bullets that will be sent careening into Ukrainian apartment buildings and public works stations.
Of course, the paradoxes that Christianity — and religion in general — have visited upon the world are complex everywhere and in all nations. They have kept philosophers, theologians, and laypersons busy for millennia. But Russia’s sense of identity consists of an especially finely woven fabric of divinity and might. It is entirely fitting that Kureichik would put the first words of his play into the mouth of a patriotic Orthodox believer.
It is equally fitting that he would immediately pass the dramatic narrative to a character known only as the Liberal. The battleground of conservative vs. liberal, or, if you will, traditional vs. progressive (the Russian novelist-scholar Yury Tynyanov called them “archaists and innovators” in 1929) is an especially fraught and bloody territory in Russia. Catherine the Great (a German by birth and upbringing) is a fair standard bearer for this dichotomy, for she was, at least early on, a dabbler in liberalism, and a correspondent of Voltaire, while, when she experienced threat to her power by way of rebellions, her reign quickly took on authoritarian tones. Writers such as Alexander Radishchev (1749–1802) and Pyotr Chaadayev (1794–1856) were among the nation’s first to be persecuted for the progressive views they expressed in their works. The aforementioned Dostoevsky was arrested as the member of a so-called radical group (that read banned books) in 1849 and returned from four years in prison and six years in exile a deeply convinced religious patriot.
My point here is not at all to provide an overview of Russian liberalism, but merely to point out its existence, and, usually, its place in opposition to the needs of the state. The individual known as the Liberal in Kureichik’s play is a member of the mainstream political opposition, progressive and well meaning, though not radical in any way. Like many Russians of the time, he believes that the famous Pussy Riot protest on the altar of a Moscow cathedral (five women singing an impromptu protest song in Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Savior) went too far, but he also believes that the young women had the right to protest, which is a decent example of the middle-of-the-road leanings in his liberalism. One wonders if, when creating this character, Kureichik occasionally had in mind the Russian politician Grigory Yavlinsky, founder of the prominent Yabloko (Apple) political party who has spoken many admirable words for over three decades, while almost invariably taking actions that undermine any hope that liberalism might finally influence the running of the Russian state.
Kureichik neatly sums up the essentials of the interconnection between the Believer and the Liberal in short phrases uttered by each in various circumstances.
“Put a wall around these liberal scums!” declares the Believer.
“There is no God,” says the Liberal.
And, one is tempted to conclude, never the twain shall meet.
Gender Outlaw is a member of the LGBTQ community, specifically a young gay man struggling with himself and his place in the world. He lives with the memory of having two fingers broken by a homophobe, while he contemplates the beauty that could prevail in the world if only it were given a chance. Speaking of the good people who surround him, he concludes his first monologue with a refrain of a phrase that Kureichik gives to almost every character in the first part of the play: “And these people in Russia are in danger.”
By mid-play, when the Woman from the Caucasus declares, “We fear no danger! Let our enemies fear us!”, the conclusion that Russia is a place filled with all kinds of danger is irrefutable. Those whom Gender Outlaw represented when Insulted. Russia appeared in 2017 were already in distinct danger. The Russian government in 2013 passed a law known officially as “For the Purpose of Protecting Children from Information Advocating for a Denial of Traditional Family Values.” The press dubbed it the “gay propaganda law” for short. But, as this play suggests, this character had reason to fear the future. In late 2023, Russia’s Supreme Court ruled that the “international LGBT movement” was an “extremist organization,” thus giving law enforcement the right and powers to hand down prison sentences of 12 years or more to anyone involved in anything that could be described as supporting gay rights or living a gay lifestyle.
As it is, the position of Gender Outlaw in Insulted. Russia is anything but enviable. Overcome by society’s branding of him as a “sick monster,” he decides to try playing by society’s and his mother’s rules and initiate a heterosexual relationship. To do so he goes to a dating app and invites a young woman from Donbas to Moscow for possible marriage. But disaster is in the waiting. Before meeting the woman at the train station in Moscow, he arranges for a quick sexual hook-up with a man he also found on the internet. A catastrophic collision of three worlds occurs in separate but apparently simultaneous instances, as he is shot, his lover is arrested, and a terrorist’s bomb maims or kills the young Girl from Afar as she taps out a message on her phone to her mother.
This is as good a place as any to point out a subtle dramatic strategy that Kureichik employs in Insulted. Russia and will refine in Insulted. Belarus.
Both plays begin with a string of monologues that seem to be unconnected, each speaker taking on their own topics. But as dramatic time passes, we see signs of interconnection emerge among the characters, and the events that touch them. Later, a young man (Man from the Sticks) will accept money to set a movie theater on fire, thus putting him — or at least his actions — on a collision course with the Liberal, who will be in attendance at that screening. In the case of Gender Outlaw, his invitation bringing Girl from Afar from Ukraine to Moscow puts her in the way of a terrorist attack (a relatively common occurrence in Moscow in the 2010s), while Gender Outlaw and his momentary lover, who happens to be the youngest son of Woman from the Caucasus, will be attacked by the woman’s oldest son, the young son’s brother.
Ultimately, all of the play’s characters are bound together in misery, their lack of freedom, fear, hatred, suspicion, violence, and the dangers that they all face.
The character of Head Honcho reveals his nature immediately and remains true to himself to the end. Vladimir Putin by any name Kureichik may have chosen, Head Honcho absolves himself and his state of any possible crimes committed in the name of furthering the glory of the state. “I hear accusations that we are curtailing democracy and freedom of speech,” he asserts. “Who makes these accusations? Foreigners? Liberals? Those who supported the destruction of Russia for decades? Those who advocated turning the country into a Western colony?”
Liberals, again. Russia’s favorite punching bag. Although look at all the other problematic citizens it has as well!
Man from the Sticks is the salt of the Russian earth, if you will, a common young man struggling to keep afloat economically. He is not anyone a head honcho or even a liberal would be inclined to fear, although he himself knows the sensations of fear well. “Your ass is the first place that feels danger coming,” he says. And it is the fear he senses that pushes him to accept a dicey offer from an eccentric neighbor woman who, as he puts it, is “psychotic about Orthodoxy.” In short, cross her belief in God, country, and traditional values, and she’ll be willing to pay someone to kill.
So, Man from the Sticks — buffeted by the reality of international commerce working against him, a shrinking paycheck, and a nasty vodka habit that interferes with his ability to find work — takes up his twisted neighbor’s cause for a small fee (the 300,000 rubles he is paid equaled approximately $5,000 at the time), and unthinkingly joins the ranks of terrorists himself.
Girl from Afar represents two separate kinds of characters in one — the provincial girl ready to sell herself to the highest bidder for what she thinks or hopes is a better life, and a resident of Donbas, one of the Russian-occupied regions in eastern Ukraine.
By 2017, three years after Russia’s illegal annexation of territories in Donbas, Luhansk, and Crimea, playwrights in Ukraine were writing reams of plays about the hell into which eastern Ukraine had plummeted. Most famous among them was Natalia Vorozhbyt’s Bad Roads, which, as a film, was Ukraine’s nomination for the Oscars in 2022. For the most part, Russian writers were not taking on the topic. And yet, we have Kureichik, from his point of view in Belarus, looking east to Russia and south to Ukraine, and picking up on the dangers and alienation that were brewing in eastern Ukraine. He doesn’t make it a focus of Insulted. Russia, but he touches on it pointedly enough and makes it clear that these lands occupied primarily by Russian-backed mercenaries were already a hazardous source of unrest and discontent.
Aside from the political circumstances surrounding Girl from Afar, she is also a representative of an enormous number of young women trapped in meaningless, tedious lives in dusty, dead-end towns flung far and wide across Russia, east to west, north to south. These migrants, if women, were and are very likely to end up as prostitutes, either in Moscow or in a foreign country if they were “lucky” enough to make that leap. Girl from Afar is not trafficked in Insulted. Russia, but what is equally devastating, she willingly traffics herself. She admits she will immediately sexually gratify the man who has kindly paid to bring her to the Russian capital, even as she continues to dream of building a family. It is the textbook definition of cognitive dissonance.
Finally, in the Woman from the Caucasus, Kureichik finds a focal point for one of the most painful and bloody rifts in relatively recent Russian history (until the war against Ukraine) — the constant friction between the Russian and Chechen cultures.
Russia fought two devastating wars in the rebellious republic of Chechnya, from 1994 to 1996, and then again from 1999 to 2006. Running even deeper in the Russian psyche is a historical fear of Chechens who are known as fearless warriors and unwavering patriots of their own small nation. As far back as 1838, in a poem titled “The Cossack Lullaby,” the great Russian poet Mikhail Lermontov memorably wrote about an “evil Chechen who crawls onshore and sharpens his knife.” Russians who remember nothing about the poem most likely know that single line by heart.
But the fear and animosity binding Russians and Chechens is a two-way street, of course. Chechen migrants in Moscow — such as Woman from the Caucasus — are often treated with disdain, if not open hostility. Kureichik may have had any number of events in mind when creating this character and the events she speaks about. She references the Eid al-Adha, Feast of the Sacrifice, which in 2015 was celebrated as never before in Moscow with the opening of a new mosque. She also references an event 15 years earlier, which leads us to the infamous Chechen terrorist attack on a Moscow theater hosting a performance of the musical Nord-Ost. Additionally, in late 2013 a massive attack by Russians on migrants was followed the next day by massive arrests of migrants themselves, who were snatched up and deported extralegally. A 2013 account of the riots indicated that this was not an uncommon occurrence:
“In December 2010, the killing of an ethnic Russian soccer fan by a North Caucasian man ignited riots at the foot of the Kremlin walls. Last July, in the small town of Pugacheva southeast of Moscow, the killing of a local resident by an ethnic Chechen fueled xenophobic rioting.
“Animosity toward migrants has risen as migration, both internal — from, for instance, the North Caucasus — and external, from Central Asia and the South Caucasus, has increased. There are over 11 million foreigners registered in Russia officially, but the real figure is estimated to be higher. Many Russian citizens from the North Caucasus also face hostility” (Balmforth).
That this problem only continued to worsen over the years was demonstrated not only by a terrorist attack on a popular concert hall in northern Moscow on March 22, 2024, but every bit as much by the heavy-handed response from the authorities.
“After the main suspects in the Crocus City Hall attack were identified as citizens of Tajikistan, Russia set about a familiar ‘hunt’ for migrants. We’ve seen this before after high-profile crimes committed by Tajik and other Central Asian citizens. In Moscow, police carried out mass raids on migrant hostels, while with the help of the National Guard they conducted a notorious workplace ‘inspection’ at the warehouse of one of Russia’s leading online retailers in the Moscow region. In Saint Petersburg, traffic police and riot squads stopped cars for a mass search for illegal migrants among drivers in the city. Holding cells were full of Central Asian detainees, and Russian courts have been considering a surge in cases relating to migration violations” (Bell).
Kureichik does more than hint at who is actually behind the organization of some, if not many, of these terrorist attacks. “Well, colleagues, you sometimes have to give difficult orders,” Head Honcho says enigmatically. “If it’s necessary, it’s necessary. Top secret.”
The Woman signals her animosity for pretty much anything Russian in the first words she speaks: “I don’t like to speak Russian. It sounds bad. It’s a barky language, dirty, ugly. Like a stray dog, a mongrel.” She is deeply proud of her people, her upbringing, her language, her religion, and her sons, whose great success she may well exaggerate. In fact, her belief in the greatness of traditional Chechen society — perhaps as is the case with that woman who is “psychotic about Orthodoxy” — sets her up for disaster. She is utterly unprepared to accept the news that her beloved youngest son was caught in a public gay liaison. “He was raped!” she insists, proudly declaring that her oldest son killed the “pervert rapist.”
Insulted. Russia unpacks an enormous number of ailments, antipathies, fears, and dangers coursing through Russia’s social construct. It begins as each of the characters reveals what is sacred to them and ends in an abridged litany of accusations and rants. It is the picture of a society coming unraveled.
INSULTED. BELARUS (2020)
Insulted. Belarus is similar in structure — monologues revealing unexpected connections among the characters as events follow often surprising turns — but is, in essence, a very different beast. Whereas Insulted. Russia is a far-ranging compendium of beliefs and human types, a large group portrait taken at some distance, its follow-up play is immediate, up close, and personal. It takes place over just a few days’ time and describes closely related events of the kind that the playwright witnessed as they happened.
Written in the heat of the moment as the Belarus Revolution, or Uprising, was in full swing in August 2020, it still bears evidence of the scars and burns that its characters suffered. You can still smell the acrid smoke in the play’s most dramatic scenes.
This is an unfinished portrait of a nation struggling to stand tall, to find its voice, its dignity, and its destiny. Unfinished, because, ultimately, the rebellion failed, or, more precisely, was crushed. All tragedies end in failure, with the death of at least one protagonist. Insulted. Belarus follows the basic model carefully, although this is a modern tragedy, so it is also written with humor, tenderness, and nuance, as well as with anguish. It is peopled by individuals caught up in a bruising battle, with some on one side, some on another, and some trapped in between.
The groundwork for the explosion that took place in the hours and days following the presidential election on August 9, 2020, was laid during the campaign period of the previous six months. Per custom, Lukashenko rounded up and incarcerated presidential candidates, including a popular blogger by the name of Sergei Tikhanovsky. Confounding everyone, however, the candidate’s wife Svetlana Tikhanovskaya stepped out of the quiet safety of her home life to replace her husband and carry the torch of his candidacy through to election day.
Tikhanovskaya shrewdly put together a coalition with two other charismatic women who had worked for candidates now in jail or on the run. Together, the trio of Tikhanovskaya, Maria Kolesnikova, and Veronika Tsepkalo traveled the country, drawing enormous, enthusiastic crowds wherever they went. Lukashenko saw no discernible competition in the housewife’s actions, grossly underestimating not only Tikhanovskaya, but the people of Belarus, joking lamely in July that, “Our constitution is not meant for women. Our society is not ready to vote for a woman” (Talmazan). As such, he ordered the proper authorities to register Tikhanovskaya’s candidacy. By August, what he had seen as a joke had become his worst nightmare.
Estimates of the actual figures vary, but no independent source doubted that Tikhanovskaya won the election. 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. These figures are still published widely even today, although the Belarusian people knew a lie when they saw one, and they poured onto the streets, mounting round-the-clock demonstrations in the capital city of Minsk and elsewhere. Czech scholar Martina Pálušová described the situation as consisting of “peaceful protests” met by “brutal violence, leading to arrests, injuries, and even deaths. […] Footage of clashes with the police was shocking, capturing bloodied people on the ground, omnipresent smoke, and images of police brutally beating protesters” (Pálušová).
Lukashenko grudgingly tolerated the protests for three days, then threw the weight of his security forces behind a reign of violence and terror. 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 was “invited” to a private nocturnal talk by the authorities and was deported to Lithuania on August 11. Veronika Tsepkalo fled to Poland eight days later, and, finally, the Belarus security forces abducted Maria Kolesnikova on September 7 and attempted to deport her forcibly the next day. In a move worthy of a spy thriller, she ripped up her passport, leaped out of the moving car as it approached the Lithuanian border, and ran back into Belarusian territory. She was arrested immediately, and, one year later, on September 6, 2021, was handed an 11-year sentence. As this text was being edited, Maria Kolesnikova made her first public appearance in some two years. In remarkably good condition, she was photographed with her father in a prison hospital in November 2024.
After Kolesnikova’s arrest, the protests 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. 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.
Insulted. Belarus is not a documentary play, although it does incorporate or rework actual phrases that Kureichik heard around him as he was writing. Still, the vast majority of the text and the events that it narrates is invented or greatly enhanced. The early scenes certainly play with the documentary form as they present several talking heads in succession. This lends a sense of reality and immediacy to the monologues and, when they appear, the dialogues. We are essentially tricked by the form into accepting everything that is said or done “as real.”
The focal point around which everything is structured in Insulted. Belarus is the immediate aftermath of the rigged presidential election. But everything that had led up to it was fresh in everyone’s mind. Everything is in spin as the play commences. Lukashenko is furious. A protestor writhes in pain. A storm trooper jacked up on drugs and the smell of blood gives vent to his inner fury. Tikhanovskaya is subdued but firm.
Characters on the side of the powers that be are Oldster (Lukashenko), Raptor (a storm trooper), and Mentor (a long-serving school teacher who has helped Lukashenko’s regime falsify election numbers for years, and she does it again here). Representing the protestors are Novice (Tikhanovskaya), Cheerful (an effervescent young woman who was inspired by, but not modeled after, Maria Kolesnikova), and Corpse (a rambunctious but good-hearted soccer fan who is murdered by the police).
Straddling somewhere awkwardly between these two groups is a character identified as Youth, Lukashenko’s teenaged son about whom his father ruefully though not so seriously says, “He’s the leader of the opposition in my house.”
As in any strong drama, every character has his or her own developmental arc. But it is possible that the most intriguing of them all here is Mentor, the veteran schoolteacher who bullies her underlings as she prepares them to “count” the votes — “Okay, here’s what we memorize: Tikhanovskaya — 206. Don’t write it down — just memorize it! 206. President Alexander Lukashenko — 1,361!” But as the violence of the official response grows worse, she begins having doubts about her own role in the dirty business of a corrupt regime. In fact, she does an about-face when she (rightly) begins to suspect that her only daughter and her nephew have been caught up in the officially sanctioned meat grinder. “Take it all back!” Mentor yells. “Just give me my daughter . . . Give them back! Give back our children!” But that is wisdom come much too late — at least to be of any help to Mentor’s daughter and nephew Nikita (known to us as Corpse).
The psychological knot binding Cheerful, Corpse, and Raptor creates some of the play’s most compelling dramatic moments. Cheerful’s journey unfolds in the presence of two men who, if we were to oversimplify, might be described as representatives of good and evil. Through all of her interactions with these two men, these two forces, Cheerful proves herself to be the unblemished picture of innocence and sincerity. But her initial happy frame of mind is quickly attacked by circumstances, as she watches Corpse undergo torture, while Raptor’s interest in her increasingly threatens to cross the line from lascivious leering to aggravated abuse. Kureichik twists the disturbing connection between Cheerful and Raptor even tighter when he slowly reveals via a series of the characters’ confessions and memories that the two not only know each other, but they are soon to become sister-in-law and brother-in-law. Raptor stands out as further proof of Lord Acton’s observation that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Kureichik completed Insulted. Belarus around September 11 , 2020, and, shortly thereafter, he slipped out of the country when he was informed that his arrest was imminent. He spent the next six to nine months living out of a suitcase in Ukraine, Sweden, Bulgaria, Tanzania, and Slovakia, where he finally received a Schengen visa for Europe. After that he relocated 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 later that fall he was named a Maurice R. Greenberg World Fellow at Yale University. He has been Henry Hart Rice Associate Research Scholar and Lecturer at Yale since January 2023.
Through the Insulted. Belarus Worldwide Readings Project, which Kureichik and I curated, the play was presented in various forms over 230 times in 35 countries and 25 languages.
VOICES OF THE NEW BELARUS (2021)
Voices of the New Belarus is a companion piece to Insulted. Belarus. “The two plays are quite distinctive dramaturgically,” writes Valleri J. Robinson, “both in terms of structure, subject, and style, yet both strategically employ authentic accounts and foreground documentation to build supportive communities, sustain hope, and to collectively mourn” (Robinson). Voices was completed 11 months after Insulted, and the author added two more scenes in 2023. The play grew out of the same environment and expressed many of the same emotions and experiences as its predecessor, but this time it was a strict documentary, even verbatim work. Kureichik culled through over 100 texts in search of the few that would best express the hope and horror, as well as the trauma of failure, that the Belarus Revolution had visited upon the people of his homeland.
The text places major political players alongside prominent journalists, innocent bystanders, and common citizens who took the struggle for freedom to heart and risked their lives for making that decision. Furthermore, it has lost none of its timeliness. As of January 2024, according to the human rights organization Viasna, no fewer than 1,430 political prisoners are still incarcerated in Belarus today (Viasna).
The play now exists as it has since mid-2023, when Kureichik added two new monologues to the original script to be a part of a traveling installation that had its official English-language premiere on June 15, 2023, at the Oslo Freedom Forum. It has also been shown in Žilina, Slovakia, Helsinki, Finland, and at Yale University, and Tulane University in the United States. It presents the thoughts and experiences of 18 individuals. There is no authorial attempt to create a unified or interconnected dramatic plot by interweaving the texts of the characters, as happens in the other plays in this collection. There is no development of action or events, but there is a powerful ebb and flow of emotion and human experience. Kureichik limits his interaction with the material by determining the order in which each speaker is heard, and editing each speech to express precisely those topics, events, moods, or emotions that are necessary to create a deeply dramatic narrative, even if it is not constructed according to the common rules of dramatic literature.
Perhaps the shrewdest of all Kureichik’s choices occurred when he placed words belonging to the journalist Marina Zolotova in the slot preceding the powerful, sensational, and tragic final two monologues of Stepan Latypov telling how he attempted — and failed — to commit suicide right in the courtroom, and of Vitold Ashurok being struck dead by the authorities in his moment of personal glory.
With those two heavy tales yet to weigh upon us, Kureichik inserts Zolotova into the narrative flow with just three brief, but very pithy, phrases. Here is her speech in its entirety: “I’ve never doubted that our country has a wonderful future ahead of it, because Belarusians remain Belarusians among Belarusians. Throughout this year so much good has been revealed to us about ourselves. We will never again agree to be slaves!”
Each line a declaration of historical importance. Each line an emotional shot of adrenaline. Each line a bold observation that can be read as an exhortation, a celebration, or even a warning. These are words about which one could rightly say: Had Zolotova not spoken them, someone would have had to invent them.
Standing nestled between the powerful declarations about Belarusians never again being slaves, and undoubtedly having a bright future ahead of them, is one of the most intriguing, beautiful, and revealing phrases I have encountered in some time: “Belarusians remain Belarusians among Belarusians.” One could write an entire essay, perhaps even a book, on this topic, on what Zolotova is actually saying, and on what Kureichik was after when zeroing in on this phrase. We are fortunate to have it here as an enigmatic utterance that hints at the gentle, loving, honorable, and respectful national character that defines Belarusians for themselves, and now, since the revolution of 2020, for members of other cultures, as well. These three lines form the nucleus of the Belarusian national atom. It is a poetic reference to the brotherhood and kindness that characterize Belarusians, a people utterly lacking in the kind of aggressive, nationalistic self-love that can be so dangerous and damaging. If you are looking for
the soul of Belarus in Kureichik’s two plays about his homeland, it is right there to be found in Molotova’s observations.
The first voice we hear in the play’s final iteration is that of Ales Bialiatski, the founder of the Viasna human rights organization and the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize winner. Kureichik includes segments of Bialiatski’s speech delivered by his wife to the Nobel committee since the author himself was in prison and could not attend. It justifiably places Bialiatski front and center in the Belarusian struggles for freedom, stretching out over the years in a way that the other speeches referring to the events of August 2020 cannot do. Steeped in the battles of several decades and having been written after all the events in the play had occurred, it stands up front as a well-considered introduction might, calling in important references and tying up loose ends.
Perhaps the most important moment in Bialiatski’s monologue occurs when he quotes a conversation he was involved in.
“When will you be free,” I was asked.
“I already am free, in my soul,” was my reply.
Next up is Vitaly Morokko, one of the non-journalists, non-politicians, non- professional human rights activists in the play. In short, he is one of the “regular” people who, like millions, was drawn into joining a political protest movement that he never would have given second thought to in previous years. This, of course, is precisely what makes Morokko’s short tale so important and compelling. “How long can you continue to be an armchair critic?” he asks. “My entire family came to the conclusion that the time had come — it was up to us to take our fate into our own hands . . .”
In these brief lines, Morokko speaks for millions, including Pyotr Kirik, a teenage furniture maker who is the next in Kureichik’s line of witnesses to history. The experience of such individuals helps us to understand the shock and anger that followed when people simply expressing the desire the think and act freely were shot, gassed, beaten, tortured, and even killed. The road from innocence to experience in Belarus in the year 2020 was nothing more than the few steps it took to cross the road from the onlookers to the demonstrators.
Maria Kolesnikova’s voice is the fourth that we hear and is something of an historical road marker. The tale of Kolesnikova’s refusal to be deported is as dramatic and as heroic as they come. But the aftermath of that incident was equally dramatic and historical, as Kolesnikova was interrogated overnight and threatened with physical torture and a life in prison sewing shirts for security officers. Kolesnikova was arguably one of the reasons why Svetlana Tikhanovskaya was so successful in her presidential campaign — she was a well-known musician in demand in Europe, outspoken, free thinking, and cosmopolitan. She was everything Lukashenko and his forces were not, and people could identify with her personally and politically. If the Belarusian state was going to crush the rebellion, it would have to crush those like Kolesnikova. She makes it clear in her statement that, if she was in the fight of her life, the authorities were, too.
From there the focus swings back to laypersons, if you will — Marina Karabanova and Sergei Melyanets. Both tell the tales of the heavy-handed, arbitrary violence that Lukashenko’s storm troopers unleashed on common citizens who came out of the safety of their homes in order to help others who might be in need. Melyanets subsequently became a well-known activist who chronicled cat-and-mouse games with the Belarusian KGB on social media as the authorities sought opportunities to arrest him anew. He was able to immigrate to Poland with his wife and seven children in June 2024. His is almost a case of an individual taking on the persona first applied to him by a playwright.
Each new voice adds some detail to the picture of the aftermath to the failed revolution. Human rights activist Polina Sherendo-Panasiuk stands up to a judge, declaring, “I ask the world community not to recognize any of these sentences as legal.” Journalist Nikola Statkevich mocks the court and the legal system. Roman Zorich, an engineer, tells of attempting to be an observer at a polling place, but ending up in the notorious Okrestina Street prison, where so much of the torture was inflicted in the days following the election.
Two diametrically opposed moods are provided by Alexei Berezinsky, a businessman, and Igor Losik, a blogger. Berezinsky, the ninth voice in the play, writes a jocular, optimistic note from prison about his love for making gifts of flowers to the women in his life on March 8, International Woman’s Day, and how the spring of 2021 was “stolen from us and we will remember it for the horror that it was. But I know that very soon the time will come when there will be lots and lots of smiles all over Belarus!” Losik, on the contrary, occupying the position of the 11th voice, succumbs to utter dejection, suggesting he would rather be shot than for his daughter to see him suffer the indignity of a trumped- up trial. It is perhaps the blackest moment of the play. There are other, more terrible outcomes in the experiences of others, but Losik’s brief descent into unadulterated, abject disillusionment and despair is unmatched by any of the other voices.
Kureichik skillfully plays with shifts in mood and attitude, raising tension and lowering it, injecting humor then sucking out all manner of joy and optimism, spotlighting individuals venting anger then advocating for forgiveness. The monologues are drawn from public pronouncements, private or public letters, speeches made in court, or texts published in the press. The language and diction shift noticeably, depending on the speaker and the circumstances, thus providing additional layers of individuality, personality, and point of view.
The poet and singer Anatoly Kudlasevich and the computer programmer Andrei Proskurin, speakers number 12 and 13, emphasize the notion that fear is losing its grip on people. In retrospect, such declarations may strike us now as wishful thinking, since after the reign of terror following the election, the nation did, in fact, quiet down and draw back into the safety of anonymity and silence. But if one thing rings clearly throughout Voices of the New Belarus, it is that the events of 2020 and its aftermath were part of a larger historical movement. Win or lose on a given day, they left an indelible mark on the nation and its psyche. Furthermore, as you read between the lines of all of the texts, you sense distinctly that this movement is far from over. If it is true that, as Marina Zolotova says, “we will never again agree to be slaves,” then the victory of good in the future is still a possibility.
The play’s 14th segment, the only dialogue that Kureichik employs, is a conversation between the mother-daughter team of Zhanna Lagutina and Polina Zvezdova. As might be expected, the mother is the wiser and more reflective of the two, while the daughter — perhaps confronting life’s harsh realities for the first time ever — is angrier and less flexible. Polina’s categorical conclusion — “I will never forgive them ever!” — is a fitting but contrapuntal refrain of the notion of forgiveness first raised by Sergei Melyanets, who declares, “You might say I have forgiven them. I do not wish to take revenge against them.”
Voices of the New Belarus ends in the only way it probably could have – with Stepan Latypov’s story of attempted suicide followed by his declaration of forgiveness for his tormentors, and the murder of Vitold Ashurok after he writes an inspired letter full of pride and hope to his “dearest Mother.” The hard and paradoxically beautiful details of these two tales are clearly stated in the texts themselves. They are testaments to the national tragedy that Belarus and its people endured in 2020 and have continued to endure since. Reciting Ashurok’s moving text in Oksana Mysina’s film of Voices of the New Belarus, the renowned Russian actor Konstantin Raikin understandably lost his composure before the camera. The tears he shed have been shared by millions.
INSULTED. PLANET (2023)
From the relatively narrow, specific points of view offered in the plays about Belarus and Russia, Kureichik draws back to a greater, cosmic perspective of the entire world in Insulted. Planet. It was a bold but natural progression in this tetralogy of plays, and, given the time of the play’s composition, it presented its author the opportunity to register for posterity a new geopolitical catastrophe — the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. As talk of a potential world war grew louder or quieter, depending on whether Vladimir Putin was currently threatening nuclear strikes or not, it became increasingly impossible to see Russia’s war against Ukraine as a local conflict. In fact, it was a threat to the entire world, and Kureichik took up an observation point that allowed him to embrace that issue in a multifaceted way.
That said, Insulted. Planet is much more than a political play. And it is hardly realistic. While taking time to contemplate social, interpersonal, ethical, and philosophical issues, it throws in several impossibilities that we are encouraged to swallow without question. Primary among them is the incongruous presence of the astro-dogs Laika and Chaika, two of the five dozen or so canines that the Soviet space program sent into space in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Most of those dogs survived, but Laika and Chaika (in separate missions) did not, giving Kureichik poetic license to place them, still alive in some capacity, and quite chatty, in free orbit around the earth.
One of the larger questions that recurs in different ways throughout the play is one of distances and how we can and cannot overcome them — whether that be distances among points of views of entire nations, distances in attitudes among individuals, distances between reality and perception, distances in time, or distances in actual space that may or may not offer mankind a safety net should we one day destroy the planet we now occupy. Contingent questions that seem to arise again and again are: Are we going to make it? Can we cross that divide? Can we reach safety? Can we attain peace and knowledge, if not happiness? All of these things seem to be far out of the characters’ reach.
Kureichik first imagined this play, and began writing it, when he was living in Finland. Not surprisingly, the action unfolds around the central figures of two Finns, a husband and a wife, who have been chosen to participate in a grand scientific experiment. Together they will conceive and participate in the first birth of a human child in space. Should the experiment be successful it will mark the first time in history that a member of the human species will be born, not into the world, but into the cosmos that stretches out endlessly beyond the bounds of planet Earth. Or, as Jukka, the future father, puts it, “A Finnish child will be the first true alien.” The parents’ pioneering task will be observed, aided, and studied by an international contingent of scholars, doctors, cosmonauts, and astronauts from Russia, Ukraine, Spain, Brazil, and the United States.
Life in the space capsule will be cramped, but conflicts arise even before the ship is launched while the crew has a bonding experience in a Russian-style bathhouse. Kureichik plays with these clashes broadly and loosely, making generous use of cultural cliches that, in time, make most everyone look more than a bit silly at least once or twice. The brunt of the humor, however, is aimed at Fyodor, the Russian cosmonaut, and John, the American astronaut who is the captain of the mission. Both are quite stereotypical representatives of their nations, much as one might expect a crew of Europeans to see them. The blustery Fyodor is an unwavering mouthpiece for official Russian — read, Putin’s — views on history. The examples are myriad, but one of his frustrated outbursts, “What the hell is Ukraine? How can you attack something that doesn’t exist?” could easily be a line cribbed from a Vladimir Putin speech. Fyodor gets in a good zinger when John asks for permission to enter Fyodor’s cell on the capsule: “When have you Americans ever asked permission to enter someone’s home?” Fyodor retorts.
For all the grand plans to create the foundations for an entirely new future, the mission of the New World International Orbital Station is fraught with problems. The past, although it may be dead and gone, has not lost its grip on people and everything they do or think. This is never more evident than in a handful of flashbacks that take Jukka back to days spent with his beloved grandfather in the Finnish countryside. The older man’s tales of talking to, and then killing, an invading Soviet soldier during the Russo-Finnish War (1939–1940) are a stark reminder of the near permanence of war and killing in the human experience. The soldier he killed was named Vasyl, a young Soviet patriot from what then was called Belorussia. Someone who, had he not been killed, might well have still been alive when the fledgling nation, renamed Belarus, officially declared independence in 1991, and Lukashenko became its first president in 1994.
Russia’s latest invasion, this time of Ukraine, interrupts the space mission after it is well underway. The space travelers hear snippets of contradictory speeches by Putin and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy before radio contact is lost. It immediately exacerbates underlying frailties in the participants’ relationships. Vlada, the specialist from Ukraine, is especially outraged, and she henceforth will have no further opportunity to calm down, as she bristles at Fyodor’s every movement, and communicates tenderly with her husband on earth, who is fighting and will eventually perish during Russia’s infamous destruction of the city of Mariupol in southeast Ukraine.
Kureichik, however, seasons the deep drama with no small amount of comic shenanigans. Even watching the breakup of the marriage and relationship of Jukka and his wife Hannelle might be funnier than it is sad, if only for the fact that in over 30 therapy sessions psychologists had predetermined that the two comprised the ideal couple. They matched each other perfectly in “27 categories” that Kureichik shrewdly fails to define. What everyone had failed to take into account was that Hannelle apparently had already fallen in love with Luna, the Brazilian doctor who was assigned to oversee the birth of the first space child. This, coupled with some rather frank discussions about the physical difficulties of copulating in space, makes the whole situation all the more weirdly and comically uncomfortable. After hearing input from several colleagues, Jukka finally snaps at Luna for suggesting he can use pills as an aid if he isn’t entirely up to the necessary physical act. The reality of the problem, the absurdity of the place in which it is transpiring, the awkwardness of the entourage, and the horror of the world events that are being unleashed on earth simultaneously mark some of the boundaries of this unorthodox play.
Alongside the attempt to conceive a child in orbit, and the simultaneous declaration of war on earth, the third major problem facing everyone involved in the mission arises when it is revealed that the space capsule has sprung an oxygen leak. While plenty of accusations go around as to who might have sabotaged the ship, no one is actually implicated directly. The leak is such that the capsule will no longer sustain life for everyone. The only solution is to sacrifice one of those present — but who? After much bickering about what must be done, the American jettisons himself into space to lower the intake of the remaining oxygen onboard. This rather gloomy outcome is brightened quickly when John takes up position in free orbit around the earth with Laika and Chaika, and they all engage in discussions about what roads are most enjoyable to travel on, who was first in space, and who was first on the moon.
“Just don’t forget that talking to long-dead dogs is not a good sign,” Laika warns the astronaut. Ultimately, the child is born, and, in a blast of hubris perhaps, she is given the name Thea, the ancient Greek word for goddess. Meanwhile, ground control in Russia wants to enlist the capsule in the war against Ukraine, Jukka concludes that “mankind is doomed,” and Hannelle is inspired to see a universe of spectacular opportunities ahead, exclaiming, “Mankind is saved!”
That conundrum is solved almost immediately when ground control contacts the capsule to inform everyone that, “Due to extraordinary events taking place on Earth, we have had to make a difficult decision.” What that decision is precisely is left up to the imagination since, before the communication is completed, the spaceship loses contact with Earth.
For all the talk about new scientific discoveries and plans for a greater, new world, this mission, as Jukka sensed, was doomed from the start. Virtually all attempts to follow new scientific discoveries into the future crash mercilessly against the rocks of tradition and age-old human laws of behavior. After all, a skull that young Jukka found when out foraging one day in the Finnish countryside was most likely the head of the Belorussian soldier that Jukka’s grandfather had killed 30 years hence and tossed into a ravine. The sins of our people do come back to visit us. How else do we understand that solemn moment when young Jukka places the skull that he found in his grandfather’s hands?
In the end, is Insulted. Planet an ironic and entertaining play on the science- fiction genre, or is it a cautionary tale about and for a world gone wrong? Each of us encountering the play will make that determination on our own.
LOOSE ENDS
I am profoundly indebted to Nina Kamberos, the founder of Laertes Press. With her unerring eye for the unusual, the challenging, and the necessary, Nina is a caring, intelligent, and sensitive publisher and editor. 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 provides distinctive graphic design. I am deeply indebted to all of them for the high quality of the book you hold in your hands.
The plays in this collection 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. RUSSIA
• The “fifth paragraph”: The old Soviet domestic passports controversially declared the nationality of the passport bearer in the fifth line, or “fifth paragraph.” It is generally accepted that this policy made it easier for racists and bigots — and an antisemitic government — to identify and subsequently persecute Jews. Russian internal passports, superseding Soviet passports, abandoned the fifth paragraph in the fall of 1997.
• “June the famous clairvoyant”: Scottish psychic June Field became a household name in Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine in 2012 when a televised Ukrainian competition, the International Battle of the Psychics, named her the greatest psychic in the world out of 70,000 contestants worldwide.
• Head Honcho refers to Russia’s “rightful, historical boundaries,” which indicates that in 2017 Kureichik had already picked up on this theme that was becoming obsessive for Vladimir Putin, and would lead directly to the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Head Honcho will expand upon this later in the play when he speaks of “Belorussians, Ukrainians, Moldovans, Crimeans, Abkhazians, the peoples of the Caucasus, Georgians, Armenians, Kazakhs . . . And all other bearers of the Russian civilizational code.”
• Man from the Sticks speaks of an individual from “one of the ‘stans,” meaning migrant workers who travel to Russia from the former southern Soviet republics of Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, or Kazakhstan in hopes of earning money. These migrants are perceived with great suspicion by the locals, and are often treated with violence.
• Little Caucasian marketplaces, as mentioned by Man from the Sticks, are mostly manned by and frequented by Chechens, Georgians, Dagestanis, and migrants from the ‘stans.
• Mamba.ru was and is a Russian dating app.
• Donbas, the home of Girl from Afar, was and still is as of this writing a hotly contested region in eastern Ukraine. It is an abbreviation of the “Donets coal basin.” By the time Insulted. Russia was written, this generally poor region had been annexed illegally by Russia, and hostilities between Russian mercenaries and Ukrainian soldiers were common.
• Gorlovka, a small but important mining town in the Donbas region. Mines in this region were frequently flooded as a result of military hostilities. Of 150 active regional mines, 36 were closed due to flooding.
• Woman from the Caucasus is, most likely, from the one-time breakaway Russian republic of Chechnya. But she also approximately represents the experiences and attitudes of migrants from North or South Ossetia, Ingushetia, or Dagestan.
• Andrei Rublyov, Daniil Cherny, Theophan the Greek, and Dionysius were famed Orthodox Christian icon painters from the Middle Ages.
• Immortal regiment refers to a mass patriotic movement in Russia that began in 2011 and grew quickly in subsequent years. On Victory Day, May 9, people take to the streets carrying photos of their ancestors who died in World War II. The idea behind it was that the number of living veterans was dwindling, and, consequently, the number of deceased was growing all the time.
• Eid al-Adha, or the Feast of the Sacrifice, is one of the most important holy days in the Muslim calendar. It celebrates Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice one of his sons if God requires it.
• Pussy Riot was a Russian protest entity predominantly made of approximately one dozen young women. Known for provocative acts that might pop up anywhere, their most famous one was to enter Moscow’s Christ the Savior cathedral in 2012, set up in the altar area, and briefly play a punkish version of a song they called, “Mother Mary, Banish Putin.”
• Echo Moskvy, Pioneers, and the Young Communist League. Echo Moskvy, literally Echo of Moscow, was a popular opposition-leaning radio station. Founded in 1990, it survived numerous run-ins with the authorities, but finally succumbed to Putin on March 1, 2022, when it was closed down for opposing the war in Ukraine. Pioneers, or Young Pioneers, were a Soviet-era scout organization, similar to the Boy Scouts or Girl Scouts in the U.S. The Youth Communist League, the Komsomol, was a Soviet era organization, into which young people graduated from the Pioneers at age 14 and could remain until the age of 28.
• Banderite country — see below in glossary for Insulted. Belarus.
• Shamil Basayev (1965–2006) was a feared North Caucasian guerrilla leader in the two wars pitting Chechnya against Russia (1994–1996 and 1999–2006).
• When Girl from Afar sputters, “Damn Ukrainians! Everything was fine for 20 years!” she is referring to the fact that in the summer of 2017 (as this play was being written), the European Union lifted travel restrictions to Europe for all Ukrainians not living in Russian-occupied territories. She is upset that, as a resident of Russian-occupied lands, this right is not afforded her.
• Yury Shevchuk is a popular Russian rock band leader. Shevchuk famously confronted Vladimir Putin about dwindling freedoms in Russia on live television in 2010.
• Alexei Navalny was politically active beginning in 2000, but rose to prominence as a leader of the opposition to Putin in 2011. Early on he was a popular political blogger, and Putin often denigrated him by calling him merely “the blogger.” He was subsequently jailed, poisoned, jailed again, and finally murdered in a Russian prison on February 16, 2024.
• Boris Nemtsov (1959–2015) was, until his assassination on a bridge alongside the Kremlin, Putin’s most powerful opponent, a former deputy prime minister under Russian president Boris Yeltsin.
• Professor Alexei Osipov (born 1938) is a prominent — anti-Western Orthodox theologian.
• The Orthodox Believer shouts, “Have more children!” under the influence of Russian state encouragement for ethnic Russian women to give birth more frequently in order to offset a perceived fall in the ethnic Russian populace. This public policy conversation began in earnest with the officially declared Year of the Family in 2008, but continued to at least December 2023, when Putin called for women to have “eight or more” children in order to compensate for Russian deaths in the war against Ukraine.
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, Belarus, and Ukraine 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 Belarus 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. Telegram 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, but shortly thereafter was ousted from power.
• Young Communist League — see definition above in Insulted. Russia glossary.
VOICES OF THE NEW BELARUS
• Viktor Babariko is a Belarusian banker, philanthropist, presidential candidate, and, since June 18, 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 included Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, the Nobel prize-winning writer Svetlana Alexievich, Maria Kolesnnikova, and former diplomat and theater manager Pavel Latushko. Andrei Kureichik was elected a founding member of the first core group on August 19, 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, 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 and 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, the prison in the far eastern Russian region of Kolyma being the location 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 informing citizens of events during the 2020 revolution.
INSULTED. PLANET
• White Sun of the Desert, a classic, beloved film in the Soviet Union, and now, still, in Russia. Made in 1970, it tells the story of a Russian soldier fighting in the Russian Civil War in roughly 1918– 1919. As Kureichik suggests, Soviet and now Russian cosmonauts, indeed, usually watch this film before going into space.
• Yury Gagarin (1934–1968) was the first Soviet cosmonaut, the first man in space.
• Dmitry Rogozin was a politician and the deputy prime minister of Russia for the defense and space industry (2011–2018), and subsequently the director of Roskosmos from 2018 to 2022. (See the Roskosmos reference below.) He was named Russian federation senator from Russia’s occupied territory in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine, in September 2023.
• Tsiolkovsky, Korolyov, and Beria. Konstantin Tsiolkovsky (1857–1935) was the father of Russian aviation and space exploration, the originator of Tsiolkovsky’s rocket equation, which later made space flight possible. Sergei Korolyov (1907–1966) was the Soviet Union’s leading rocket engineer and spacecraft designer during the space race between the U.S.S.R. and the U.S. Lavrenty Beria (1899–1953), was the notorious head of Stalin’s secret police, the NKVD, from 1938 to 1945, and head of the Soviet Ministry of the Interior (the top policeman), from 1946–1953.
• Mariupol, the Azov Steel Plant. Mariupol was a famous and popular seaside resort city in southeastern Ukraine until the Russians literally flattened it with indiscriminate bombing. The Azov Steel Plant was at the center of the Ukrainian resistance to the onslaught. Its thick walls and deep tunnels and basements made it possible for citizens and soldiers to take refuge there. However, they were forced to surrender after three months of bombardment, marking the final fall of the city.
• Ruscist is a neologism that came into being during Russia’s wars against Chechnya (1995), Georgia (2008), and Ukraine (2014). Pronounce it aloud and you will hear that it combines the words “Russian” and “fascist.”
• Laika and Chaika. Two of the better-known dogs that were sent into space as part of the Soviet space program in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Laika went into space on November 7, 1957 and died a
gruesome death, burning up in an overheated capsule. Chaika, also known as Bars, was supposed to go into orbit on July 28, 1960, but the host rocket exploded and disintegrated 28 seconds after launch.
• Roskosmos is the Russian space agency, the equivalent of NASA in the U.S.
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, while Andrei Kureichik would be Andrej Kurejchyk. 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 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 all four of 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 common 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.
Chania, Crete November 2024
SOURCES
This introduction incorporates some segments of “Two Plays Against Tyranny,” my introduction to Insulted. Belarus; Voices of the New Belarus; Two Plays of Revolution by Andrei Kureichik, Laertes 2023.
Astapenia, Ryhor, “What Belarusians Think About Their Country’s Crisis” (21 Oct. 2020), Chatham House. https://www.chathamhouse.org/2020/10/what-belarusians-think-about-their-countrys crisis?fbclid=IwAR1ekShqB4JGZOZP6AN0 so31McbLvstsOb9pB1ABwY9VeK4rOnh033ih4Qs. (Retrieved 12 April 2024.)
Balmforth, Tom, “Nationalist Riots in Moscow Send Fear through Muslim Migrant Communities” (October 14, 2013), Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. https://www. rferl.org/a/moscow migrants-feature-/25136629.html. (Retrieved 12 April 2024.)
Bell newsletter, “Xenophobia Takes Hold After Moscow Terror Attack” (9 April 2024). https://en.thebell.io/xenophobia-takes-hold-after-moscow-terror-attack/. (Retrieved 12 April 2024).
Edison, Daniel, “Andrei Kureichyk’s Stubborn Insistence on Freedom,” New Eastern Europe (Nos. 1-2, 2024): 62. https://neweasterneurope.eu/2024/02/07/andrei-kureichyks-stubborn insistence-on-freedom/. (Retrieved 12 April 2024.)
Kureichik, Andrei, “Theatre in Belarus: We Will Never Be the Same” (24 Aug. 2020), American Theatre. https://www.americantheatre.org/2020/08/24/theatre-in- belarus-we-will-never-be the-same/. (Retrieved 12 April 2024.)
Pálušová, Martina, “The translator as a social activist in the digital age. An autoethnographic study of translating Insulted. Belarus as part of the Worldwide Readings Project,” Translation in Society (12 March 2024). https://www.jbe
platform.com/content/journals/10.1075/tris.23012.pal. (Retrieved 12 April 2024.)
Robinson, Valleri J., Belarusian Theater and the 2020 Pro-democracy Protests: Documenting the Resistance (Anthem Press, 2024): 14.
Talmazan, Yuliya, “They might not win, but 3 women are ‘giving hope’ to Belarus with an unlikely presidential bid” (8 Aug. 2020), NBCnews.com. https://www. nbcnews.com/news/world/they might-not-win-3-women-are-giving-hope- belarus-n1236104. (Retrieved 12 April 2024.)
Viasna. “Political Prisoners of Belarus in 2023. Infographics” (8 January 2024). https://spring96.org/en/news/113854. (Retrieved 12 April 2024.)