– Viktor Afanasyevich, you are not deprived of any prizes – you have both the State Prize of Belarus and the Gedroits Prize. With what feeling did you receive the “Golden Apostrophe”? Did he get to you too late?
– So everything comes to us late, we are a late people (laughs). Now I rarely leave the house: misfortune with my wife, I injured my spine, and my legs can hardly walk. Thanks to the occasion, he went out into the world, looked at the young faces, sat down and talked. And I remembered Nil Gilevich, when he received the Order of Friendship of Peoples back in Soviet times. I congratulate him, and he (apparently, he was expecting something more) said: “This order will also come in handy.” Aleksey Dudarev, who recently died, spoke in a similar way after receiving the award of the so-called Union State: they say that any award is not superfluous.
— Well, the “Golden Apostrophe” can be seen as recognition from the younger generation in literature. Isn’t that nice?
– Nice. On the other hand, feeling big and recognized by everyone is a normal phenomenon until the age of thirty. And then it looks more like some kind of madhouse … Especially in our time, when Belarusian literature itself is being destroyed. I sometimes have the feeling that she is no longer there, that she ended with Bykov, with Bryl.
Now we all live without a sense of the future, we try to live as soon as it comes. Life passes by, we remain outside of it. Do you remember, in Melezhev’s “Breath of a Thunderstorm” there is such a Polissian dialogue “Are there people behind Gomel?” – “Yes, ale, fractional ones.” And now these “fragmented”, but with great ambitions people, today decide who will live and who will be strangled.
Putin is destroying Ukraine with missiles, but he is also destroying Russia, its intellect, trampling on a Russian person in the same way that a Belarusian has almost been trampled on in Belarus. It was a big mistake if they did not make a trial of the Communist Party and Lubyanka. And they had to be judged – for the Gulag, for the deliberate destruction of millions of people, for organized famines, for everything.
– If such a trial took place, Putin’s arrival in the Kremlin would be impossible.
– That’s what I’m talking about. And so we have what we have. The Kremlin dreams of one-sixth of the earth’s land, of the restoration of the empire. And this restoration is impossible without Kazakhstan, Ukraine and Belarus. We started with the “return” of Ukraine, and then it may come to us. Yes, Europe and the US are helping Ukrainians. But somehow with caution, limiting the supply of certain types of weapons, they are dragging this out. And this indecisive fuss can end badly. Help is needed most effectively and immediately. And yet, I am convinced that Ukraine will win, it will liberate its territories. In a sense, she has already won, showing the whole world the unbending Ukrainian spirit, putting the Ukrainian people on a pedestal of world respect. As for Russia, it alone, without a coalition, has not won a single war – remember the war with Japan in 1905 or the war in Afghanistan …
– So Belarus itself climbs into this coalition, although Article 18 of the Constitution says unequivocally: “The Republic of Belarus excludes military aggression from its territory against other states.”
– I no longer believe in any constitutions, any words that are heard from high tribunes. Because there is no truth behind them! Besides, we don’t have time for laws. And so the government does what it wants. He swears by sovereignty, and at the same time, rockets flew from Belarusian soil to Ukraine, Russian military aircraft are based at Belarusian airfields, Russian military personnel are trained at our training grounds …
– Are those in power to blame, or the whole people? How do you feel about collective responsibility?
– If there are Russian bases here, then aren’t we to blame?
Yes, it is a collective responsibility. And in front of the whole world. Responsibility and helplessness. What can I do today? Just spit. I don’t have the strength to protest. I only have the opportunity to sacrifice my life. And if you need it – what can you do …
As never before, I feel spiritual affinity with the Ukrainians, and this is to the end.
— I know that you were in China at one time. What could be his role in the Russian-Ukrainian war?
The Chinese are a very cunning nation. I think China will benefit the most from this war. No, the Chinese will not go and take over the Russian Far East. There will be a quiet expansion, millions of Chinese already live and work there. And they are hardworking like ants. While in China, I saw how Beijing was being built, how the Chinese carried bricks in baskets to the twentieth floor. An ordinary Chinese has a piece of land, but he also has a shrimp pond and a garden. It’s just us, Belarusians, who want to get rich right away. They hung billions of Russian debt for the Ostrovets nuclear power plant around their necks, and to this day it has not earned its full capacity …
– Our neighbors are fenced off from Belarus with reinforced concrete fences, Ukraine – with a two-kilometer minefield. Previously, such a nightmare could not dream.
What are our neighbors to do? Everyone remembers how shamelessly Belarus helped migrants for money, who, like lice, crawled across the border to Poland. Here we have the results. Russia and Belarus are outcasts in the entire civilized world today. And what about the Ukrainians or the same Poles are they talking about on Belarusian television? Is it possible to calmly listen to Azarenka? I just can’t, I just turn it off. One stink…
– Here they are blowing the same tune – both Belarusian and Russian television. Sometimes it seems that they are broadcasting from a common television center.
– The other day I watched a Russian woman thanking for a new car that her son dreamed of. She gives thanks as she drives that car… to the grave of her son who died in Ukraine. Thousands of Ukrainian children have already been taken from the occupied territories to Russia. They make mankurts out of them, forcing them to thank for the “liberation”. Propaganda programs show how grateful a seven-year-old girl is to those who accepted her in Russia, to those who killed her parents, who orphaned her … It doesn’t fit in my head – there simply can’t be more cynicism!
— For the third year in Belarus, repressions have not stopped, fleeing from which, people went abroad en masse. Including good specialists. But this is a big economic loss for the state. Why doesn’t she want to understand this?
– The state pushes out the most active. Don’t give a damn about losses – if only there were no protests. All authoritarian rulers do not keep smart people around them. A smart person begins to think, but he can think up the devil knows what. So let him think somewhere in Poland. Those who do not leave are intimidated. They want to drive us all through Akrestsin, all the people. Dismissed from work, do not renew contracts, they came up with such a definition – alternative political views. My friend was written down in the characteristic and fired.
– The authorities have created a commission on the return, calling to return …
– Of those who decided to return, if I am not mistaken, about fifty people have already been detained and convicted. It would seem, why are you going? The homesickness is overwhelming. Nostalgia is our national disease. The native land does not let a Belarusian go so easily. I understand this well, since I lived for many years in Russia, in the Kuzbass. And I was constantly drawn to Belarus – simply irresistible! My friend from the orphanage and I were ready to go on foot to Belarus… The Motherland attracts people. And today the authorities are playing cynically on this.
– You remembered your life in Russia. You wrote in Russian then. The first two books had print runs of 100,000 each. But they came out in Minsk and were distributed primarily in Belarus. Do you have a feeling in this regard that you then contributed to Russification to some extent?
“Then I didn’t think about it. We, twenty people from the Khoiniki orphanage, were thrown into the mines of Kuzbass. And I had to live somehow. And there was only one language – Russian. And they spoke it and wrote it. Viktor Astafiev even said that Kazko is not a Belarusian, but a Siberian writer. Well, since he writes about the taiga … Books came out in really fantastic circulation for our time. In the library of the Friendship of Peoples magazine, my book was published with a circulation of 360,000 copies. Which of the Belarusians had such circulations? Unless Bykov… What can I say about it today. Here lies the magazine “Polymya” on my table – a notebook, newsprint, 630 copies. Is it possible to talk here about literature, about its influence…
– You were published in Russian both in Novy Mir and in Druzhba Narodov. Always no problem?
– If! I remember once Literaturnaya Gazeta asked for a story. I wrote. About the case in the mine – when two miners were filled up with coal. The harvester is peddling, the lamps are out, they are sitting in complete darkness. And one blames the other: you, locksmith, you have everything on chips. And he replies: today the whole USSR is on chips … That story, I was later told, one employee of Literaturka threw it into a corner and trampled, saying: I will not miss the anti-Soviet! ..
Why did you switch to the Belarusian language in adulthood?
– What drew me, I myself really do not know. Apparently, language and land, a grandmother who lived to be 112 years old, a mother who died at 25, a village… I remember my literary teacher Yuriy Barabash, deputy editor-in-chief of the same Literaturnaya Gazeta (Ukrainian by nationality), when I sent him his first Belarusian book, wrote to me: “How I envy this step of yours!”
– After the literary publications were seized by the pro-government Union of Writers in 2006, you did not publish there. For sixteen years. And here you are again – the author of “Polym”. Explain your position.
I understand that there is some kind of betrayal here. I’ll be honest – they bought me. Bought by promising to publish a book. And I have a hundred sheets of unprinted paper under it. It can be said that today I am cleaning the Augean stables and I myself am surprised at how much I have written! I would like to print this. And where? The circulation of “Dzeyaslov” is only three hundred copies. And he does not go to the Belsayuzdruk network, libraries or schools. But “Polymya” still goes on.
– Did you go there yourself?
— No, I got a call from the editor-in-chief of Polym Viktor Shnip (who is also the editor-in-chief of the Mastatskaya Litaratura publishing house) and asked me to give something for the magazine. They pulled me before, I hesitated for a very long time. But they promise a book… I translated my early story Leap Year into Belarusian and gave it to the Polym. Although this is not a mechanical translation, much has been changed there. Let what I wrote in my youth remain in my native language, at least for my son. But I would like to continue cooperation with Dzeyaslovam.
– So that’s why they gave you the “Golden Apostrophe” – so as not to lose such an author.
– When all literature is lost, the loss of some author does not matter much. In addition, for so many years flashing on the pages of magazines and occupying the space of the only independent publication is also inconvenient for me. All last autumn and winter I have been cleaning my Augean stables, and where I will print… Be that as it may, Belarusian literature is one whole.
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