Vasia Was Here

That's all the current law enforcers can say to posterity.

The construction of a new building for the Main Directorate of Internal Affairs has begun in Minsk. It began symbolically, on the first day of spring, so that the national police could blossom and flourish, like the first leaves. It is a necessary and timely undertaking, since there are so many police officers in Minsk (and elsewhere in Belarus) that it is impossible to accommodate them in the tiny premises scattered around the city. Besides, it is important to provide modern conveniences - spacious halls and corridors, lavatories and assembly halls, double-glazed windows and waiting rooms, torture rooms and serveries.

Every construction project here, from a cowshed to a palace in Drazdy, is usually started sumptuously, with cutting of the ribbon, pronouncement of pathos speeches about love for the country and obligatory presence of generals, chairmen of executive committees and clergymen. The laying of the first brick for the new building of the Main Department of Internal Affairs turned into a big national holiday: Kubrakou, Barsukou, the chairman of the City Executive Committee, teenagers from the military-patriotic club of "Eaglets" and the MIA Lyceum (the children were just lucky - they were relieved from classes) and the prior of St. Luka of Simferopol Church. For greater effect, the police officers decided to plant a capsule with a message for posterity in the future building. The descendants must take the capsule out on March 4, 2067, the day of celebration of the 150th anniversary of the Belarusian police.

The message was placed in the tin can by a boy in police uniform; he had also pushed the capsule into a hole cut into a cardboard structure. Then Minister of Internal Affairs Kubrakou and the head of the Minsk Department of Internal Affairs Kukharau concentrated on spreading mortar with trowels over the surface of the structure, imitating the beginning of construction, after which Kubrakou impulsively took off his wristwatch and gave it to the boy, wishing him to become a general.

I don't know if the boy will become a general - anything is possible. But why do the police authorities so naively believe that in 2067 Belarusians will celebrate the day of police? Most likely, there won't even be such a word in the vocabulary of the Belarusians, not to mention the Lukashenka-era dates, which the human memory is not going to store: sifting out unnecessary things and getting rid of them without any reflexion is in its nature. So on March 4, 2067, the Belarusians will celebrate spring, a sunny day, somebody's birthday or the end of the working week: it will be Friday. There will be plenty of reasons to rejoice, I have no doubt. It will probably be the last day of campaigning before the parliamentary elections, or maybe a new state holiday - the day of liberation from the dictatorship, for example - but certainly no one will celebrate the day of the Soviet-Lukashenka police on March 4, 2067, let alone pluck some rusty thingamabob out of the wall. Thus, employees of the Minsk Department of Internal Affairs simply buried the message to their descendants - to a fanfare, applause of the riot police, and a blessing of the priest.

And it was right to bury it. In fact, think about it: what can a Belarusian policeman of today write to descendants? Not from the nineties or even from the beginning of our century, but today - the one who worked in the police in 2020 and now; the one who has not resigned, or the one who has come; the one who is involved in everything that is going on today. I try to imagine possible variants of the message to descendants from the Minsk police of the year 2023. "Beat the opposition, descendant, as we are beating it, not sparing your baton". "Go, grandson, serve in the police - they will give you a gun and the right to kill, and then a flat, too". "You should know, people living many years from now, how frightened we were when crowds of scumbags with flowers and lanterns were wandering up and down the streets singing songs, but we held out, we took them down with all their flowers - for you, for the sake of the future!"

On the other hand, I think that if one day, after many years, a fitter or a bricklayer from the maintenance crew reaches into the hole in the wall, takes out the rusty tin, shakes off the dust, opens it and pulls out the yellowed piece of paper, he will be very surprised. For it will probably be written "Vasia was here" on that piece of paper. Concise and to the point. For the modern law enforcers have nothing else to say to their descendants.

Iryna Khalip, specially for Charter97.org

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