Lydia Savik is a Stalinist repressions researcher. At the beginning of the 1990s, Lydia and a group of Belarusian literary scholars and historians got access to the KGB archives. Thanks to Lydia and colleagues people started to learn about the scale of the Great Terror in Belarus.
Mihas’ Skobla, a journalist from “Narodnaya Volya” talked to Lydia about the parallels between the 30s and nowadays repressions.
“It feels like we’re back to the terrible 30s. The government was encouraging denunciations. Now we see the same on Belarusian TV. They say “We ask you to inform us about the unregistered symbols?” What denunciations could be there between the neighbors? You can see white and red ribbons by our house very often. They destroy everything the next day, but people return it.
Lukashenka’s regime becomes unacceptable even for those not interested in politics. Falsified elections on August 9th showed that we can’t tolerate that anymore. Young people are being thrown into cells that look like torture chambers.
There was at least an illusion of legitimacy. But here, we have one person, Lukashenka, who is making the rules, tells us how to live and control us. According to the investigation committee, there are more than 3000 criminal cases against political dissidents in Belarus. And there are 0 cases against those who beat and kill peaceful civilians.
The terror in Belarus has started because people are being killed. The only hope is our youth. They don’t accept dictatorship. If they want to live in a normal country – the dictatorship will fail and we will remember these evil times like we remember the bloody 1937.”