Feduta on Autukhovich: In the courtyard of "Amerikanka," he persistently exercised, trying to keep himself in shape

Alexander Feduta, Belsat photo

Mark Semenovich Gutkin taught me astronomy at school. Thank God, he was still very young then, so today we can talk to him online and from time to time discuss the movement of, if not celestial, then at least political and cultural luminaries. It was from him that I first learned the difference between stars and planets, what nebulae are, what constellations exist — and so on. I still regret that he didn't teach me physics: perhaps I would have understood at least a little about that science, which managed to make the queen of all sciences — mathematics — serve itself.

And so — astronomy. But even now, I sometimes gaze at the starry sky above my head and, reading the images of world classics related to celestial bodies, I think about how accurate — or, conversely, inaccurate — the parallels they drew are.

And now I recall one of the most vivid images, read long ago in the works of the not-so-fashionable political emigrant Alexander Herzen.

This "good Russian" once wrote about another Russian political emigrant, Mikhail Bakunin: each of us is born under a star, but he was born under a comet.

This is a very apt characteristic that describes the trajectory of the political figure named Bakunin. Stars are what we see the light of, but we don't know how alive the body itself still is. The light of a distant star can reach us for centuries, perhaps millennia. The star is gone, but the light travels on.

A comet moves before our eyes. It can be a celestial long-liver, appearing once, say, per century, then disappearing, and only an astronomer will be able to calculate if it still exists or not, and if so, when it will reappear on our horizon.

Comets, as a rule, are associated by humanity with harbingers of catastrophes. For example, in Russia, the comet of 1812 was perceived precisely that way. And Napoleon's invasion of Russia was supposedly linked precisely to this comet. I don't know if there was any comet over Kyiv in 2014 or 2022, but in this case, it simply had to appear — if only in the half-inflamed consciousness of astronomers. To appear — and then move somewhere into the breathless and soulless space over Moscow and there predict, in the words of Viktor Shenderovich, that the village of Gadyukino would be washed away.

But people born under a comet do not become less bright and tragic because of it.

Павялічыць

I don't know under what star Mikola Statkevich might have been born, but it certainly wasn't without a comet. Or Ihar Alinevich.

Their star can by no means stand still in the place assigned to it by the almighty creator of the Universe. It must move. It must push the politician born under it to self-sacrifice in the name of a high, bright — and sometimes admittedly unattainable — ideal.

Lev Gumilyov called such people "passionaries". Thomas Carlyle — heroes. Someone else great (I remember these words from a quote by Svetlana Alexievich, though I heard them earlier) said: "Woe to the nation that needs heroes." I'll add: and even greater woe to the nation that kills those who could become its heroes.

I look at the heavy gray sky outside the window. The rain has just stopped, and the freshness hasn't yet had time to dissipate.

I recall how, together with Mikola Autukhovich, we walked in the concrete courtyard of Minsk's Amerikanka. How Autukhovich stubbornly exercised, trying to keep himself in shape — and he was already a little over sixty years old.

Павялічыць

Mikola Autukhovich sentenced to 25 years

And I think, what persistence, what willpower this man must possess, who for the third time ends up behind bars for years, to continue not to give in to circumstances — not only political, but also purely biological. Age? There is no age. There is willpower, the strength of spirit of a true man who does not give up, who withstands the blow.

Someday his comet will stop, cool down, turn into a planet where air will appear. Life will be possible on it. I want to believe in this.

Just as it will be possible to live on the comets, quieted in their flight, under which Statkevich and Alinevich were born. They were not allowed to become creators — but they did not become destroyers either. They did not even become destroyers of their own lives and their own destinies.

Павялічыць

Ihar Alinevich sentenced to 20 years

They continue to inspire admiration — with that power that sweeps over our planet once every hundred, or perhaps a thousand years, and imparts a particle of itself to these wondrous people.

God grant that they do not cool down. Then, perhaps, we, who are not entirely worthy of their strength and spiritual self-sacrifice, will have a chance.

• 9
• 0
• 0
• 0
• 0
• 1
• 0
• 3