Santa Claus Hurries to the Barricades

• Uladzimir Khalip
• 21.12.2020, 17:03

He has the very gift that the country has been waiting for.

A few more days, and this year will go down in history. And if you look from the outside, everything seems to be as usual - Christmas trees and gifts. Habitual household chores. A festive table is being prepared. The only concern is the foggy haze outside the window. A taxi driver sighs, passing by a deserted children's park: it's a pity, there is no snow - I wish it was there to please the kids! In short, it's the same fuss as always before the New Year.

All the same, only life is completely different. As if it starts anew, with a clean slate. This is just such an unusual year - 2020. As if the last six months of the most terrible pandemic were not enough for us, so even in hot August, there were suddenly dodgers who, in addition to all the sudden joys, also tried to steal the main elections elegantly. Simply and primitively, like a wallet being stolen in a crowded tram.

And when the trick did not work and was caught by the hand, the losing government went berserk. It tried to start an ordinary war with the people as it was back in 2010. But this time, it threw all its punitive power against the citizens outraged by its impudence. And it released such a beast from the underworld, which has not been seen here since the days of Stalin's purges and the last world war.

Nothing helped, neither total round-ups, nor shooting to kill, nor monstrous torture in the regime's dungeons. Three worst days have passed. The world shuddered with horror and disgust. But the number of protesters did not decrease. Hundreds of thousands took to the streets and squares. The whole country has risen. The citizens came out. And no barriers could stop them. August has passed. Autumn has flown by. December has come. But the uprising was not suppressed. No matter how hard the punishers, judges, and jailers tried, the citizens did not leave the squares and streets.

What color revolution are you talking about, who came up with it? Everything here is Belarusian, it's own. And even the barricades invisible to outsiders, which can neither be breached nor taken by storm, are not at all the same as in the old films about the French and other revolutions. Such barriers are not built from lampposts, overturned carriages, and all kinds of barrels. They are based on a special material. And extremely durable. Pride. Dignity. Courage. It suddenly turned out that there was everything in abundance.

And now this incomprehensible and difficult year ends. Another Sunday has passed - the penultimate one. Before the darkness had cleared, the first columns had already entered the streets. Deep into the night, the polyphonic echo does not stop: "This is our city! Go away!"

Again, troops and armored vehicles are pulled to the pompous palace, which the unelected once tried to defend with a machine gun without a magazine. Then everything worked out somehow; only relic fears, even on the most cloudless days, still do not leave the nimble militia. And every clot of darkness and occasional rustle causes sudden alarm. And then New Year's Eve was already on the horizon. And how can the former dictator survive in such conditions?

It seems that all security measures have been met, and everything is under the strictest control. And even the traditional regime fireworks from the usual site near the Sports Palace were moved to Panikouka. Just in case. In order not to disturb an already intimidated person with gunfire and roar. And then, after midnight, firecrackers and amateur fireworks will start popping up on the occasion of the New Year. And how not to be alarmed by such a noise? Dig deeper into your personal bunker? Or hide somewhere under a paddy wagon, pretending to be old and bald rubber? But is there a guarantee that the omnipresent Santa Claus will not look there too with his eternal question: "Who else is there without a present?"

Rulers come and go, as a rule, dimly and ingloriously. And hardly anyone would then dare to remember them with a kind word. Dull people. Extremely unsympathetic audience. Remembering their strange legends about inevitable communism or about "500 to everyone" in the next five years, even in the most tolerant company, has long been considered bad form.

And the local regime is no exception in this row. And its odious founder is far from the first and not the last among those who tried to cling to the treacherously elusive chair with their pants. The pose as a result of this maneuver, contrary to the plan, turned out to be extremely awkward and somewhat embarrassing. There is hardly a sculptor even among his supporters who would later decide to capture this historical moment in marble and bronze. And even in the thistle thickets, descendants will hardly ever find the outlines of the concentration camp that he tried to build here.

The regime is strange, after all. With whom didn't it come into conflict? And at the end of the year, the entire system suddenly took up arms against all kinds of Santa Clauses and other representatives of this seemingly harmless tribe. "Tsikhary" reported: they are already in columns on Sunday marches. Moreover, in the vestments of illegal colors. That is why, in Baranavichy, a green paddy wagon took a confident position near the city tree these days. The ensemble turned out to be great.

The holidays match the government. In Navapolatsk, the city of oil workers, the authorities did not sleep either. Santa Claus at the tree - is this not a reason to declare universal readiness? Then, this character from seditious books with children leads round dances and gives out modest gifts. He listens to rhymes, no one knows whose. How can you not bring a suspicious person to your own GUVD? Brought. Interrogated. All the indignant questions of the detainee were answered clearly: "You know what kind of state we live in." Who doesn't know?

And not far away, somewhere near Polatsk, the long-awaited snow has already fallen. It covered the dark ice with thin white fluff. And on this untouched ice, the usual local Santa Claus raced on skates and with a white-red-white flag. It was as if someone's light pen had left a precise, quick stroke on a blank page. Just two words: "Long live Belarus!"

He was in a hurry. He was in a hurry because he had the very gift that the country had been waiting for for a long time - a seemingly ordinary calendar sheet. The most long-awaited day of the coming year was marked on that sheet. Only not to confuse it with any other. Not to miss. Not to fly by in pursuit of ghostly success and empty hopes.

Otherwise, what's the point in the fact that Santa Claus is already hurrying to our barricades?

Uladzimir Khalip, specially for Charter97.org