Where Will Border Of Europe Pass?

It’s up to us to choose this, and we need to do it now.

Can we call Belarus a European country?

I think we not just can, but must do it. Of course, if we want to live in a European way, and cultivate on our land the traditions, values and achievements of our great civilization.

Geographically, we are the center of Europe, mentally - we remain at its Eastern border line. Not Western, Northern or Southern, where this part of the world is washed by the seas and oceans, which divide it from other civilizations. It’s the east, where there is no clear, visible border. The most dangerous and non-peaceful place. Throughout our history, we have been an outpost of Europe, took the blows of the Huns, Mongols, and then their heirs - Moscow tsars and Bolsheviks. The way of life there, in the endless steppes, is different. The minimum value of human life and vast spaces formed a specific mentality that is different from ours. The constant expansion of the controlled territory remains its essence.

The last European state, of which our lands were a part, was the Rzeczpospolita. The name is “Republic”, if translated from Latin. This country, uniting the fraternal peoples - Lithuanians, Latvians, Belarusians, Ukrainians, Poles - for several centuries defended Europe from the invasion of hordes of nomads from the East, from the Russian and Ottoman empires that expanded their borders. In return, it received advanced technologies, scientific thought and humanistic values.

At the end of the 18th century, this citadel fell. Belarus was occupied by Russia, and already other European countries came into direct contact with the Steppe. Every 30 years our ancestors rebelled and fought for freedom with arms in their hands. They declared independence in 1918 and restored it at the time of the collapse of the Soviet Union. They tried to return Belarus to where it is located geographically - to Europe. Today we continue what they started.

For centuries, Europe has created the wellness and prosperity in which it now lives. This became possible when a society was built that was free from dictatorship and placed human life and personality above the interests of the state. Belarus cannot boast of this now. We receive beggarly salaries and pensions, we cannot find a decent job. A privileged class of government officials has formed in the country, using the state’s budgetary resources at their own discretion and exploiting the rest of the population.

Freedom of speech was destroyed, the legitimate parliament was dispersed and replaced by a bunch of “nodding dummies”. The usurper and his entourage are doing what Turkish Janissaries and Khan Baskaks did. That is, robbing and ravaging the occupied country and its population.

History shows that they themselves will not stop until the seized territory turns into a desert. It shows that they can and should be stopped. That it depends only on us where the Eastern border of Europe will pass - near Brest or near Smolensk.

It’s up to us to choose this, and we need to do it now.

Dzmitry Savich, activist of the European Belarus civil campaign, BNC press-center