Book Burning Temperature

After the publishers come after the readers?

It seems that the extremists in the country were also left for three days. Protesters have been jailed, journalists and bloggers have been jailed, commenters and likers have been jailed, the bearers of white and red have also been jailed. Does that seem to be it? Clear? Not a cloud, not a speck of dust, not a click?

And indeed: who is in prison, who is in exile, who is hidden among the prose of everyday life, as if nothing had ever happened. Silence, dumbness, night. It seems the regime should be satisfied - the mop-up has taken place, as in an Afghan village many years ago. And yet last week they came to arrest publishers.

When I heard about the arrest of the director of the publishing house "Technologia" Vatslav Bogdanovich, I couldn't believe it: "Why Vadik?" Vatslav is my classmate. Intelligent, intelligent, educated man, one of those whose presence in the audience guaranteed a great mood in our group during lectures. Now they say "positive" about such people. At that time such a word was not in use, and they simply said: he was cool.

After graduation we did not communicate, and I did not know that Vatslav became the director of "Technologiya". However, I was not surprised - publishing is a good look for him. But I knew before that the first editor-in-chief of this publishing house, when it was first established, was Dmitry Sanko - a man who, back in the seventies, spoke only Belarusian. Working in the academic publishing house "Science and Technology", where everyone spoke Russian, Sanko communicated only in his native language. Long before perestroika, the BPF, and the march to Kuropaty, when it was becoming mainstream. And the publishing house "Technologia" was initially created as a popular science publishing house. And then enthusiasts began to publish Belarusian literature, philosophical and historical books - everything we would like to read about Belarus. By the way, Technologiya also published translations of children's literature into Belarusian - for example, Carlo Collodi and Cornei Chukovsky.

After the law enforcers raided publishers and booksellers and detained the director, a message appeared on the page of Technologiya: "For certain reasons the publishing house does not work". By the way, I saw this news from the propagandists as well. They wrote with sorrow worthy of a crocodile that the oldest independent publishing house in Belarus had stopped its work, and boldly put forward a version that the termination of work was connected with financial problems and a drop in sales. This is so that nobody would think that the Belarusian authorities don't like books: here, we sympathize from the bottom of our hearts, we pour tears with all our friendly propaganda.

And two days after the message of "Technology" it became known that the KGB declared Gutenberg Publisher an extremist formation. "Gutenberg" published Belarusian books in Krakow and delivered them all over the world, including Belarus. Books that you couldn't buy in the Central Bookstore or in "Svetoch", you could simply order them from the publishing house, wait for the parcel and enjoy.

Now you can go to jail for a book from "Gutenberg". And I guess that this was the deep meaning of the new repressions: to start "mowing down" just the smart ones. Educated. Readers. Because they are the thinking ones. Thought crime is a thing invented by Orwell, but quite realized by arrests for reposts. So thinking should be banned. How? The easiest way, from the point of view of an uneducated punisher or official, is to make people stop reading. If there are no books, there will be no thinking. Or rather, there will be right books like Cherginets - and thoughts will go in the right direction and become simple and clear: how everything is good and stable in our country, and we don't need anything else, a cup and a shkvarka - a brilliant state concept of an outstanding ruler.

This has all existed since the times of the Bolsheviks: class hatred of the stupid evil herd, who got power, against those who think and think. To those who speak without mat, to those who speak foreign languages, to those who put the accent correctly, to those who read books. To destroy knowledge, thinking, talent, curiosity - this is the regime's super-objective. Now they have come to those who publish books. Next are those who read. And the books themselves, logically, should be burned on the square right in front of the Palace of the Republic.

Let's try it, shall we? And don't forget that the temperature of burning books is 451 degrees Fahrenheit. However, how can you know who Bradbury is?

Irina Khalip, specially for Charter97.org.

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