#title Belarussian Anarchist Federation
#author Belarussian Anarchist Federation
#LISTtitle Belarussian Anarchist Federation
#SORTauthors International of Anarchist Federations, Belarussian Anarchist Federation
#SORTtopics IAF, Belarus
#date 2006
#source Retrieved on 2020-04-02 from [[http://www.i-f-a.org.gridhosted.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/anarkiista_debato.pdf][www.i-f-a.org]]
#lang en
#pubdate 2020-04-03T07:02:30


Two comrades, Pauluk and Maryna, from the Belarusian Anarchist
Federation, an organisation then applying to join the International,
attended the meeting and made a presentation on the situation in
their country at the London Anarchist Bookfair.

----

The collapse of the Soviet Union has
resulted in yet another repressive
regime taking power, making it
extremely difficult for ana rchists and
others to operate politic ally. This
interview focuses on the history of
anarchism in Belarus, as se en through
the personal experiences of these two
comrades. It provides insig hts into the
situation for anarchists in the ex-Soviet
influenced countries and shows how
anarchist ideas and practices emerge in
places where there has not been a strong
anarchist tradition in recent years. The
works of our comr ades also illustrates
how people in diffe rent situations take
the ideas and mak e them their own,
through creative and imaginative
initiatives.

*** How did you get involved in anarchism? How did you first hear about it?

Pauluk: I have been in the anarchist
movement since 1994. All Soviet
people, sooner or later, hear about
anarchism . During our childhood, we
watched f ilms about the Civil War and
there wer e always anarchists in them.
The pro paganda portrayed them
negatively . But it had the opposite
effect. The anarchists were shown as
people w ho, in between fighting the
Reds and Whites, were drinking and
dancing. So from childhood we had the
impression that anarchists were fun
loving! I was impressed with the critical
position towards the changes in the
political system. Lukashenko, the
current President, used the democratic
movement to get elected and then the
repression started. So I got the
impression that the problem didn’t lie
just with the democratic movement but
was somewhere deeper. So I started to
try and find out where the root of the
problem was. I read about anarchism
and by the end of 1994 I sympathised
with anarchist ideas.

*** How did you learn about anarchism in Belarus? What did you read?

Pauluk: I read about anarchism in the
library; there were books by people like
Kropotkin. But not much was available.
We didn’t have contact with other
anarchists either in the west or in other
eastern European countries. There
wasn’t even much communication with
other anarchists in Belarus.

*** So there was a federation of anarchists at that time?

Pauluk: Yes, already in 1992, founded
by 8 people. There are still 6 of the
original members involved. In 1994,
there were about 20 people, but
scattered around the country in just two
cities so I didn’t hear about anarchism
from them, but from books.

*** So how did things develop from there?

Pauluk: In October 1994 students
organised some actions against the rise
in prices on bread and milk. It was a
street performance action, with the
slogan ‘Thank you President for bread
and milk’. It was the first big action
organised against the President who had
been in office for two months. The
organisation of this action was
influenced by anarchists and so because
of this I met other anarchists and by the
end of the year I was a confident
anarchist.

*** Who were these other anarchists? Were they from the federation?

Pauluk: Yes, they
were
from
the
Minsk group.

*** What attracted you to anarchist ideas?

Pauluk: Taking into
account that I was
coming
to
the
anarchist movement
from the democratic
side, I was attracted
by the idea that
anarchism seemed the only real
democracy. Democracy that the
democrats were talking about was just a
lie, an illusion of democracy. I was
reading about other left ideas in general,
including
Trotskyism,
Maoism,
everything possible. Amongst these
ideas, anarchism was the only thing I
could imagine.

*** Maryna, when did you start becoming an anarchist?

Maryna: It is difficult to say because I
was very young when the Soviet Union
crashed. I was interested in the punk
movement. It seemed natural that we
shouldn’t have what we had in the
country. Then I met Pauluk and he just
gave a name to what I was thinking
about. It was what I wanted, what I was
thinking about. That was in 1998 when I
first got involved in
student demonstrations.

----

[*The following questions are mostly answered by both Maryna and Pauluk after discussion between them.*]

*** How many anarchists are there in
Belarus?

It is difficult to say
because we don’t
have
membership
like
you
do.
Participation in the
federation is only
possible when you
act.
About
200
maybe.

*** After you had the
student
actions,
what did you do?
Were you more
involved in the
federation?

The
federation
consists of a number
of
different
initiatives.

*** Is it like in Poland?

Yes, it is like that but in Poland they
have more local groups. This is because
of the history of Poland — there is
anarchist intercity relations. The
Belarusian federation also has local
sections, but the work is
done around initiatives. One initiative
was the anti-Party initiative. The
purpose was of this initiative was to
stop young people get entangled with
the work of political parties because
they use the youth as a cheap
workforce. So we organised different
humorous actions, ‘happenings’ on the
street, which made fun of all political
parties, both the government and the
opposition.

*** Why do you think humour is such a
good weapon?

We took a risk because had never done
it before, we didn’t know where it
would lead us, but it led to the fact that
the movement began to grow. But of
course we didn’t invent it ourselves; we
were attracted by a Polish initiative that
was used under the dictatorship where
they organised many street parties and
happenings.

*** Were you at all influenced by the
street parties in the west, like Reclaim
the Streets?

No, just from Poland. We read about
what was happening in Poland in
newspapers. In the 1990s, there was a
drought of information, it was difficult
to get. But now it is possible to get
information from the internet. So the
things we did attracted many people,
mostly young people. There was a lot of
publicity in the press, saying how
anarchists organised another funny
action. So people became interested,
thinking that anarchists must be very
amusing people.

Maryna: I remember that I was involved
in the nationalist opposition movement
for some months and in one of the
meetings the leader told the audience
about how they conducted an action and
anarchists were in a separate block.
They were hungry and the anarchists
said we have some sandwiches and
offered them around. The leader was
trying to laugh at this but it showed how
anarchists were being noticed by
people, even inside other political
movements.

*** After you did these initial actions,
what happened next?

One thing was a counter-cultural group
that influenced the movement that
organised actions against the military.
They were formed in 1995 and by the
end of 1995 they were already in touch
with and participated in actions of the
Anarchist Federation. At that time, it
was the three main cities, Minsk, Hroda
and Homel that were the basis of the
Federation. There were many actions
carried out by different initiatives in the
federation so it is difficult to talk about
all of them.

One is the syndicalist group. They
organised strikes in places like the
trolley bus depot, they published a lot of
propaganda and they had a day of
solidarity with the unemployed. These
days of action always ended with arrests
of the participants. The result of this
was that many activists lost their jobs. It
is difficult to continue to be a
syndicalist without a syndicate. They
didn’t work anymore and the
government began to put pressure on all
unions so they couldn’t practice
syndicalism anymore. One of the people
became a local councillor!

*** What about your paper?

There were several papers before our
paper. We got the idea of doing a
newspaper from our anti-Party actions.
It is a continuation of our work to make
fun of all authority — the government etc.

*** Did you do this along with the street
parties and ‘happenings’?

By the end of 1998 it became more
difficult to do actions because the
President issued a decree, which made it
likely that you could be arrested for
participating in these actions. We
continued to organise them but not as
frequently as before. So we had to
replace them with something.

*** Where did you get the idea of this
newspaper?

It was always in our heads because we
had published some newspapers, so the
idea was born quite naturally. And
when the first issue was published we
realised we had done the right thing
because it was extremely popular.

*** And was it mainly popular amongst
young people?

No it was popular amongst everyone
who was interested in politics. With the
newspaper, all politicians knew about
us. First it was a little newspaper, but
after a year we registered it officially.
We celebrated our first year with an
action under the slogan ‘Legalise It’.
The name of the newspaper, Navinki, is
the name of a mental hospital and it also
means ‘small news’. The main
newspaper is called just ‘news’ so
we are making fun in two ways.
Our request to register the
newspaper
officially was refused because the
authorities said that it had the name
of the mental hospital. We made a
scandal in the newspaper, so they
became afraid and accepted our
registration.


*** What is your circulation? Do you sell
it?

It is difficult to say, about 10,000
copies. First it was a monthly and then a
weekly. But the circulation reduced
because some outlets for circulation
were closed. Also, we had a problem
that the official distributors only took
our newspaper in small quantities. The
private distribution networks were often
afraid to take the paper because of
repression.

*** What happened to the paper?

Maryna: We were closed by the
authorities. We wrote about the
President and ‘insulted people’s
morality’. Pauluk was called to court
and fined 700 Euros. This was
impossible to pay. They came to his
parents’ house and confiscated things
from his parents.

*** What do you now?

We publish an illegal magazine,
because illegally you can publish what
you want.

*** How big is the movement now?

The thing is, we don’t have
membership, so it is difficult to say.
When people aren’t satisfied with the
work of one group they may join
another group or start their own
initiative and work independently.

*** Have you been able to maintain an
interest
amongst
young
people as
they have
become
older and
because of
the
repression?

Everyone
who comes to the movement
understands that there can be repression.
So they don’t discover that; they know
it already. There is one main way that
we lose comrades: they emigrate for
different reasons such as problems with
the authorities. But they keep in contact.
Maryna: My personal opinion is that
they do not do much anymore. They are
too busy with making ends meet. We
are at the stage where we only have
young people and they are still active,
but there are some people who are just
at home, raising children.

*** What do you think is the most
important activity to do now?

Right now the movement and the
initiatives are all growing. When
someone comes to anarchism we want
to give him or her all opportunities to
participate in the way they want. We are
trying to build more of a network so we
have organised social forums that can
involve everyone. We want people to
see that they are not alone and that the
movement is very wide, one united
front of struggle against the system.
And, a person can find his or her place
in this. It is difficult to find ways of
doing something because the State tries
to monopolise all possible activities.
They try to get people to communicate
only through state organisations.

*** What do you think about the other
organisations that you have come in
contact with when you have been
abroad?

Our first contacts were with Russian
Anarchists. It is a funny fact that
anarchists from Minsk and from Hroda
were put in contact with each other by
Russian anarchists. From our western
contacts we got a lot of information
about anarchism in the modern world.
Our anarchism was based on historical
anarchism, Kropotkin, Bakunin, and no
one really knew what was going on in
the west. We knew about the Spanish
Revolution but not about what
happened after the war, like 1968. And
when the Iron Curtain fell, it was a
discovery to know what was really
happening, your ideas and what
discussions were going on.

But the western countries didn’t seem to
be familiar at all with what was
happening in the post-Soviet countries.
We also noticed that there are long
theoretical discussions, often about
small points, while we
discuss more concrete issues. We want
to discuss issues that we could talk
about to ‘the man in the pub’.

In Russia we find that they are often
having debates about who is the better
anarchist. To conclude, this interview
shows how anarchist ideas and action
emerge in a variety of contexts. For
Maryna anarchism is the name given to
what she was thinking anyway.
Disillusions with the so-called new
democracy propelled Pauluk into the
library, where he found the ideas that
helped him make sense of what was
going on. Though they had no initial
contact with anarchists outside their
country, their movement benefited from
hearing about what was going on in
other countries.

Similarly, the comrades in the
International have been inspired by the
courage, imagination and commitment
of the Belarusian Federation. Their
experiences show how important it is to
spread anarchist ideas as widely as
possible. There are millions of people
who are looking for alternative
perspectives, fed up with the current
political and religious ideologies. We
need to make sure that they come into
contact with both anarchist ideas and
anarchism in action in order to
strengthen and enrich the global
struggle
for
a
new
society.


*** FAB Congress 2005

On the 2<sup>nd</sup> of October while at the Congress of Democratic Forces the
Belarusian opposition was arguing, electing its united candidate for the
forthcoming presidential election campaign of 2006, Belarusian anarchists
held their Congress to discuss questions which are really important for the
Belarusian society as a whole.

More than 50 delegates from Minsk, Homel, Lida, Vitebsk, Ivatsevitchi and
other Belarusian regions
took part in the 12<sup>th</sup> Congress of FAB
(Belaruusian Anarchist Federation). The Congress discussed pressing issues
of Belarusian society, determined tasks of Belarusian anarchists in the
current social and political situation in the country, as well as planned some
concrete steps for development of the anarchist movement in Belarus.

One of the most important results of the Congress was the decision about
FAB’s joining IAF (the International of Anarchist Federations)approved by
consensus of all participants. Representation of Belarusian anarchists in the
International will attract more attention to Belarusian problems. Moreover it
will strengthen international solidarity and support from foreign comrades
that is very important for Belarusian anarchists, especially after recent
repressions against activists of the antifascist movement.

The Belarusian Anarchist Federation can be contacted via email at anarchy@tut.by