Bed of Cesler and Mauser of Dzerzhinsky

The state troublemakers are very fond of stealing from other people's houses.

The regime is bloody, but the point is different. It's based on troublemaking. His attitude to Belarusians is to steal and humiliate. Its officials fart around backstreets waiting for a victim to take away a purse for the subsequent purchase of port wine and say: "What, are you wearing a scarf? You think you're the smartest here, don't you? Scarf and your pants off!"

Aside from the attacks in the backstreets, the state's troublemakers enjoy stealing from other people's houses. Now they've rushed to artists' and designers' studios, public organizations' offices to steal from them. The scheme is as simple as the troublemaker's world view: to break out, like a raid by Soviet vigilantes into a student dormitory, and say: "It's a mess here, ante up or get out". Cesler's bed was his mess: one can lie on it, sit twiddling one's thumbs and have fun with a model. And the real artist should work standing up, as the movies show: stand still at the easel with a brush, then step back, take a long sharp look, and then be back to brushwork. This is how an artist must act. The bed is not an only mess, but also an excuse to make him pay through the nose for rent. Or to recalculate the rent for all previous years, as it happened with the designer Maxim Karas. His sewing machine turned out to be a mess in the workshop. Modern troublemakers have learned how to use social networks, looked for Maxim there and saw that he gives master classes on leather.

Thus, he is an entrepreneur. Retroactively, he was charged with 98.000 rubles.

Cesler's bed soon will become the meme as it happened to Mauser of Dzerzhinsky. I suppose that having set it for auction ("Lot number one, the very bed of Cesler!"), he could raise money to rent all the city workshops. And he could certainly pay troublemakers. But money takes the backseat in this story.

A brilliant musician Andrey Gavrilov lives on our planet. Perhaps he is the number one pianist in the world. Gavrilov is a citizen of four countries: Russia (by birth), Britain, Germany and Switzerland. Why does this man need so many passports? He never asked for them, that's the thing. England, Germany and Switzerland offered them. Outstanding citizens contribute to the glory of any state. Hence the dispute of seven ancient cities for the right to be called the homeland of Homer. A normal state respects its outstanding citizens. It also helps and makes their lives easier, whether they need help or not. Vladimir Tsesler belongs to the very list of outstanding Belarusians. In Britain, he would already be Sir Cesler. In our country, troublemakers come and charge him for a bed in the corner. If there had been no bed, they would have charged him for wearing a hat. Or not wearing a hat.

One should give up thoughts that if the troublemakers' chief Anfimov - Chairman of the State Control Committee - came to Cesler's workshop and promised to "solve the problem", it is a good sign. First, the gang discusses only the money issue, but it cannot come up with an idea to apologize for their caddish behaviour. Second, Cesler has already paid them 1500 dollars for the next month instead of 400. Third, he began working in that studio even under the Bolsheviks, and over the years, the state - given all the merits of the artist, all his works, which became famous throughout the world - could have given him a workshop. Or rent it out for a token fee. And to say: let us be a poor country in an economic dead-end, but we have Alexievich, Сesler and the World of Tanks.

I understand, of course: they need money so bad that there is no one in the backstreet to steal from, and the only way out is to go door to door. Troublemakers tested the new tactics in the workshops. But soon they'll come to you. They'll say a window leaf's open ten centimetres wider than allowed. Or that the painting is hanging on the southeast wall, which is forbidden in paragraph three. So it's time for us to barricade. I don't mean the barricades in the apartment at all.

Iryna Khalip, especially for Charter97.org

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