The Puppet Theater

I started out for October Square, where the unauthorized meeting was being held, at 8:00 p.m. I went down Engels St. past the Puppet Theater. Like all the other theaters in downtown Minsk and the circus, the Puppet Theater was closed that evening. Anyone who was curious enough to glance inside the darkened building would see that the lobby was full of troops waiting for their orders.

There were 3000-4000 people on the square. The Metro station for the square was closed. Busses running from the outskirts of the city to the center were cancelled. Pople said that several busses full of people were being detained at the city limits. But people came on foot ad the crowd on the square grew.

“Freedom, freedom,” the crowd shouted, waving Belarusian flags, the flag of the Zubr youth movement and the flag of the European Union.

Traffic was not topped on Independence Prospekt. Passing cars honked as long and loudly as they could, and it was noisy. Busses drove slowly along the prospect for fear of hitting the overflowing crowd. A young man was able to climb onto the roof of a bus and unfurl the national flag. He rode about 20 meters, to the delight of the crowd, then jumped down when the bus stopped at a traffic light. Police cars drove along the gutter, forcing people back onto the sidewalk. Policemen spoke politely into their loudspeakers, “Respected citizens, for your safety, please stay off the street.”

The crowd grew. On the next day, President Aleander Lukashenko would say that there were 4000 people. The opposition would say that there were 50,000. I estimate 20,000 people.

People were telling each other that the Levada Center polling service conducted independent exit polls and found that Lukashenko received 47 percent of the vote and Milinkevich 16 percent, so there should be a second round. They also said that specially appointed police chief Leonid Farmagei stated that there could not be any Levada Center poll because the police had taken many of the pollsters into custody. Farmagei really did say that.

The crowd was concentrated on the left side of the square near a huge television screen. Lukashenko was on the screen and the crowd whistled and jeered. There was a grassy area roped off for the press near the screen. The authorities promised journalists' safety within the roped-off area, but not outside it. The area was empty.

At around 9:00, a short man climbed onto a step ladder and addressed the crowd without a microphone.

“I am Alexander Milinkevich's press secretary Sergey Voznyak. Milinkevich has arrived at the Palace of the Labor Unions. Move toward the Palace of Labor Unions.”

The Palace of Labor Unions was on the opposite side of the square. The crowd, which barely filed half the square, complied. For the ten minutes it took everyone to cross the square, it looked full.

“How many people do you think are here?” I asked a policeman.

“We don't think anyone is here,” he answered. “The square is empty.”

The Voice of the Opposition

Alexander Milinkevich stood on the steps of the Palace with his wife and advisers. The crowd gathered around and began to chant “Milinkevich, Milinkevich.”

“Say something,” Milinkevich's wife whispered to him and pulled him by the elbow.

“Okay,” he said, but only waved a bouquet of flowers to the crowd. He seemed to be overcome by the support of 20,000 people.

The wind whipped up. Milinkevich took a loudspeaker but the wind was so strong that even I, standing two meters away from him, could only make out isolated phrases. The crowd seemed unable to hear anything and cried out “Milinkevich,” “Freedom” and “Long live Belarus” at random.

Milinkevich said, “We have won. Today we are a people. We are Belarusians.”

He said that the elections were double illegitimate, first because Lukashenko had no right to become president a third time, and the referendum last year that gave him that right was also legitimate. Second, the results of the election were tampered with, opposition members arrested, the state media are a propaganda machine for Lukashenko and the opposition media were closed down.

He spoke some more, but nobody heard him. The weather got worse, turning into a real blizzard. The wind blew away flags and made it hard even to stay on one's feet. There was so much snow on the square that his audience could barely see Milinkevich standing on the steps of the Palace of Labor Unions. Five minutes later, the storm was over. In the audience, they began to say that it had been Lukashenko's secret meteorological weapon. The crowd had shrunk nearly by half during the storm.

Now an amplifier was set up and Russian Union of Right Forces leader Nikita Belykh mounted the steps of the Palace to express his support for Milinkevich. The new amplifier and speakers were set up, but no one seemed to know how to turn them on.

“Does anyone know how this thing works?” asked a Milinkevich adviser.

The best sound technician among them proved to be Union of Right Forces press secretary Denis Terekhov. He managed to get everything hooked up, but then the stand for one of the speakers was missing. Belykh, a very strong person, held the speaker himself for some time.

The crowd continued to thin out. At 11:00, the second opposition candidate, Alexander Kozulin, came out. He had promised to come with his family but, instead, showed up with a small delegation of religious led by a banner-carrying priest. It turns out that Kozulin was praying somewhere when the crowd was still large. He urged the crowd not to give in to provocation, calling on the police not to use force and said that the snowstorm was not just a snowstorm, but a sign to pray. The priest began to lead a prayer, which, for some reason, did not hearten those remaining at the meeting. The crowd thinned out still more.

Here were about 1000 people left at midnight. They were well organized and went together, staying on the sidewalks, to Victory Square, where, standing near the eternal flame, they declare the election results illegitimate again, decided to meet again on Monday at 6:30 and dispersed.

That night, 130 people were arrested. Milinkevich received a warning. Criminal charges were pressed against Kozulin for hooliganism.

Victory

On the next day, Monday, newly reelected President Alexander Lukashenko held a big press conference. The CIS observers group, led by Vladimir Rushailo, had already held a press conference to declare the results honest. Milinkevich held a press conference in the small auditorium of the Belarusian People's Front headquarters. He called on is fellow citizens to old another meeting. His chief of staff Sergey Kalyakin said that they needed ten times more people on the square to talk tough and demand new elections.

Lukashenko celebrated his victory. He said at his press conference that the virus of “color revolutions” only strikes weakened countries, but Belarus has strong immunity.

When asked why opposition candidates were not given equal access to the mass media, the president answered, “I do not understand the term equal access.' I did not use propaganda and gave my own time to the opposition candidates. We gave them a chance to show themselves. You saw our opposition, it's not worth anything.”

When asked why it was necessary to imprison opposition activists, the president answered that the opposition politicians themselves asked to be put in prison before the elections so as not to shame themselves before their Western sponsors. When asked why, if 86 percent of Belarusians voted for the president, tens of thousands went to the square to protest, the president answered that fewer people went to the square than voted for the opposition. Those who voted for the opposition went out to the square. And that was a clear demonstration of the democracy of the Republic of Belarus.

While the president was still talking with journalists and his press conference was being broadcast on all Belarusian television channels, the OSCE observers began their press conference at the Hotel Belarus. Coordinator of the OSCE mission Elsie Hastings said, “The presidential elections in Belarus on March 19 did not meet the necessary standards of freedom and fairness.” That announcement was not reported on Belarusian television.

Member of the Russian State Duma Vladimir Ryzhkov joined the meeting on the steps of the Palace of Labor Unions on Monday. He told the audience gathered there, “Do not believe that the Russian observers did not see improprieties. We observed the elections and saw everything. We know that hundreds of people were arrested and hundreds of students were expelled from universities for supporting the opposition. We know that Lukashenko did not receive 82 percent [of the vote] and could not have. And we will tell the Russian people that.”

People continued gathering n October Square, but there was not ten times more people than the day before, but 50 percent less. They sang La Marseille in Belarusian, expressed their disagreement with the results of the election and shouted “Shame” about President Lukashenko and the central elections commission. They passed a resolution declaring the elections illegitimate. They even scheduled new elections for July 16 and demanded that the repression of the opposition mass media and opposition politicians stop in the meantime.

Milinkevich and Kozulin appeared. Together. People in the audience told me that they were sure the arrests would continue that night.