Belarus - by Olga V Solovieva (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Belarus-Faces of Resistance preserves the memory of the Belarusian protests of 2020 by documenting a series of transnational collaborative events which took place on Chicago's South Side in 2019-2023. The book contains material from roundtables, exhibits, interviews, seminars, and commentaries, dedicated to the situation in Belarus before, during, and after the protests which erupted in response to the contested presidential elections in August, 2020. This collection should help the international community understand the 2020 Belarusian protests: their history, context, dynamics, global interconnectedness, as well as their aftermath and impact. The volume assembles a range of perspectives coming from the participants on the ground, expert observers, artists, cultural critics, students, politicians, and scholars of the region, reflecting on the events in a variety of forms and media.

Review Quotes

"We are witnesses. We are participants. We are all protagonists of this book.

Musicians, actors, factory workers, teachers-we stood side by side in the protests, united by a shared dream of a better future, driven by a hunger for change and a deep sense that something new was coming.

We were not victors, but neither were we defeated. We are a people still writing our own history. We may not always speak about it, but we will remember--and carry every moment of what we lived through deep inside.

And life goes on--with those who remain behind bars. With the pain of waiting, and a life not yet whole until every political prisoner is free.

I was part of that cultural uprising in 2020. I remember how the Belarusian song rang out -- in the streets, in supermarkets, in courtyards. That voice could not be silenced."

--Siarhei Douhushau, Belarusian musician, founder of the Spieuny Shod initiative and co-founder of the Volny Chor

"Belarus: Faces of Resistance is both a record of events and an act of memory and defiance. Against censorship and disinformation that erase, distort, and remove from the narrative the voices of those who refused to live in fear and silence, this book restores their presence.

Through texts, photographs, art, and conversations, we encounter living Belarus-a country striving to reclaim its dignity, freedom, and hope.

These are the stories of those whom the regime tried to make disappear. And yet they testify: Belarus lives in resistance to violence and repression.

And once we listen to them, we can no longer live as if we hadn't heard.

This book speaks to all who believe in the power of the human voice in the face of evil. It is not only about Belarus-it is about dignity as a form of politics, and solidarity as an act of love.

In reading it, we become part of this testimony."

--Taciana Niadbaj, poet and human rights defender, PEN Belarus

"At the heart of this book, are people of Belarus, captured through the empathetic lens of their compatriots--photographers who witnessed and recorded a historical moment that was as exhilarating as it was precarious. Humanism of photography as art and witness lies in a photographer's ability to direct the technology, almost prophetically, toward a moment to come, to anticipate a revelation of life that is not yet there. This process's outcome, never completely controllable neither by a camera nor by a photographer's hand, is always a matter of awe and mystery. This book's haunting photography is overwhelming in its receptiveness to those elusive moments when the camera's light and freedom of the human spirit met as allies to face up to unimaginable adversity of the unhuman."

--Gudrun Stockinger, Austrian photographer

"Resistance can take many forms, from boycotts to marches, sit-ins, and strikes. But archival scholarship, the preservation of the past, and the prevention of the erasure of history is equally important. Belarus: Faces of Resistance directly counters the efforts of totalitarian regimes to erase the evidence of their crimes in Eastern Europe. It is crucial reading, both for its contents and methods. Highly recommended."

--W. J. T. Mitchell, University of Chicago

"Belarus: Faces of Resistance brings together an invaluable range of perspectives on, and responses to, the protests of 2020. As well as documenting the events and securing their memory for future generations, this carefully assembled collection contextualises them masterfully: the 2019 interview with human rights activist Ales Bialiatski, for example, brings out the enduring struggle of Belarusians. The insights of emigrants, artists, and scholars give us a rich picture of the 2020 protests, their causes an

About the Author

Olga V. Solovieva is Researcher in Comparative and Slavonic Literatures at the Center of Excellence IMSErt at the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń. She is the author of Christ's Subversive Body: Practices of Religious Rhetoric in Culture and Politics (2018) and The Russian Kurosawa: Transnational Cinema, or the Art of Speaking Differently (2023), and co-editor of Japan's Russia: Challenging the East-West Paradigm (2021).

David R. Marples is Distinguished Professor, Department of History & Classics, University of Alberta. His recent books include Joseph Stalin (2022), The War in Ukraine's Donbas (edited, 2022), Understanding Ukraine and Belarus (2020), Ukraine in Conflict (2017), 'Our Glorious Past: Lukashenka's Belarus and the Great Patriotic War (2014).

Andrei Kureichik is a Belarusian playwright, film and stage director, publicist, and civil activist, who gained international recognition as a political playwright following the contested presidential elections and subsequent events in Belarus in August 2020. He is a member of the Coordination Council, representing the democratic opposition in Belarus which was awarded the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought by the European Parliament in 2020. In Fall of 2022, Kureichik participated in the Maurice R. Greenberg World Fellows Program at Yale's Jackson School of Global Affairs. Currently, he is Fortunoff Archive Fellow and Playwright-in-Residence at Yale University.