IT’S a dreich day in Vilnius as the taxi crosses from the historic Old Town, with its churches, museums, restaurants, and cobbled streets, to the periphery, where we cross a bridge over the river Neris. We’re on a six-lane motorway, and the architecture changes to smart high-rise apartments and office blocks.
At a state-of-the-art, multifunctional office suite, we wait for our meeting with Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, variously addressed by her first name, or as “President-elect” or “The Head of the United Transitional Cabinet of Belarus”.
Tsikhanouskaya was, beyond any reasonable doubt, the winner of the 2020 presidential election, widely regarded by the international community as rigged, with the incumbent, Alexander Lukashenko, allegedly gaining more than 80% of the vote. But Tsikhanouskaya is now recognised as the de facto leader of Belarus in exile.
She was subjected to hours of psychological pressure, forced to record a statement renouncing her fight, and then forcibly expelled to Lithuania. Meanwhile, her husband, Sergei, imprisoned since May 29, 2020, has been held incommunicado since March 9, 2023 – a practice recognised internationally as torture.
In Lithuania, she swiftly formed an office, leading an effective opposition and shaping policy. Her extensive network includes key figures like Ursula von der Leyen and David Lammy. Major international media outlets cover her work.
Anyone meeting Tsikhanouskaya for the first time is immediately put at ease by her quiet, friendly personality. Her success is partly the result of her innate ability to communicate with diverse groups.
I had come to know more fully Tsikhanouskaya’s work through Belarusian artist Xisha Angelova, who recently exhibited in Edinburgh and has painted more than a thousand portraits of political prisoners.
Tsikhanouskaya grew up in the town of Mikashevichy, near Brest, where her family spoke Russian and Belarusian – reflecting her country’s conflicted attitude toward its own language. There are obvious parallels with the status of the Scots language, recalling Edwin Muir’s observation that “Burns thinks in English and feels in Scots”.
“At the time of my childhood, the Belarusian language wasn’t popular,” says Tsikhanouskaya. “It was already after the Soviet Union collapsed, and pro-Russian symbols appeared. The Soviet Union had tried to ruin everything Belarusian.
“We spoke Russian at home. But my grandparents spoke Belarusian. It was like two worlds. Belarusian was the language of peasants.”
Tsikhanouskaya discusses the artist Ales Pushkin, known for dumping manure in front of Lukashenko’s palace, who was sentenced to five years in a high-security prison on March 30, 2022. Pushkin died on July 11, 2023, under suspicious circumstances. He had used his full repertoire of subversive artistic strategies to oppose the Lukashenko regime, including his defiant use of the Belarusian language, which is still effectively prohibited as a vehicle of public and political discourse.
“I have to divide the perception of this event before 2020 and after – before, I considered myself an average Belarusian person who wasn’t involved in politics and in this wonderful opposition,” says Tsikhanouskaya.
“How could we know about this ‘Night of Murdered Poets’? It wasn’t in books or newspapers. There was always a group in Belarus who cherished this and who collected information, but people just didn’t know about it, and it was only after 2020 that it became generally well-known.
“History was hidden from ordinary Belarusian people in school. It’s a huge shift in our understanding.”
Contemporary poets have not escaped the wrath of the regime, and many languish in the country’s infamously brutal penal system, recalling the words of Dmitri Strocev, written in 2020, in the poem Bread: I saw/ a pillow made out of bread/ in the torture room/ in the Okrestina prison/ what else to say/ about monsters/ who kill flesh/ Lord/ come to the tortured/ contorted/ on the concrete bed/ with their heads lying/ on the bread of communion
Books and education were an important part of Tsikhanouskaya’s background, but she stresses that the Belarusian language and other symbols of national identity assumed increasingly greater significance as the years of dictatorship wore on.
“Lukashenko didn’t speak Belarusian,” she comments. “Maybe twice in 30 years, when there were moments of turbulence in society, but it was so ugly, so unnatural.
“In 2020, we started to realise that we were not the Russians Lukashenko presented us as. People said, ‘I’m proud to be Belarusian’ because they saw the same Belarusians who went to the streets to protect our symbols … it was really about Belarusian dignity.”
Tsikhanouskaya is adamant that the seeds of the 2020 protests were neither overtly political nor revolutionary, but rather about justice and human rights.
“It didn’t begin as a pro-Belarusian revolution,” she asserts. “It was an uprising against brutality and murder.”
It was at this point, in the lead-up to the 2020 post-election protests, that she became fully politicised. Her husband, a popular blogger and YouTube personality who stood up for the rights of ordinary people, had been barred from running as a presidential candidate and arrested, tried, and imprisoned.
She says: “When I started to talk more with those who were really pro-Belarusian, they reminded me that we had our symbols. Everything I learned in school was ‘washed’ by the Soviets.
“You take these memories from yourself, and you start to understand why it’s so important to speak the Belarusian language, to show our real historical symbols,” she says, gesturing at the ‘white-red-white’ flag of the democratic opposition and the historic Belarusian coat-of-arms (known as Pahonia) in the otherwise bare room.
I glance at the clock and, to my astonishment, see that nearly a full hour has passed, and our conversation feels like it has barely begun.
Like many others, I have been captivated by Tsikhanouskaya’s quiet authority and understated charisma. We wish her well in her dedicated and determined struggle for democratic freedoms.
The people of Belarus can be proud of her, and the people of Scotland warmly embrace all that she stands for.
