Last August, conductor Vitali Alekseenok flew from his home in Germany (where he divides his time between Weimar and Munich) to his native Belarus. There, he took part in both the national elections and the subsequent protests against the government of Alexander G. Lukashenko.
Despite the brutal police violence he witnessed, Alekseenok wrote in an essay for VAN: “It’s possible that the change we are protesting for—a government that is worthy of its people—won’t come immediately. But it won’t take long, either.” He recently published a full memoir of the events, Die weißen Tage von Minsk (The White Days of Minsk, S. Fischer Publishers).
Yet ten months later, Lukashenko’s regime and power have been sustained through the violent suppression of protests and the arrests and persecution of opposition activists. Many of the protests’ leaders are now either in prison or living abroad. In the international media, news of Belarus faded into the background against the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
That changed last month when a Ryanair flight from Athens to Lithuania was intercepted by a fighter plane and forced to land in Minsk. Two passengers, Belarusian journalist and opposition activist Roman Protasevich (who had been living in exile in Lithuania) and his girlfriend, Sofia Sapega, were arrested. This refocused global attention on Belarus and resulted in tougher sanctions from the EU and United States. It also strengthened the opposition: Anti-Lukashenko rallies took place across Europe on May 29, the anniversary of the arrest of Sergei Tikhanovsky, blogger and husband of opposition leader, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya. Protests have begun again in Belarus, as well.
I caught up with Alekseenok to discuss what’s changed since last August, his own feelings of fear and powerlessness, and why it’s easier right now to listen to Mahler than Shostakovich.
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