Ihar
2006-03-05 08:15:10 UTC
2 March. The Guardian published an article about Belarus:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,1721135,00.html
Europe's last dictatorship
In Belarus, an authoritarian, often forgotten corner of Europe,
criticising the president can still land you in jail. So it's no
surprise that the forthcoming elections are already rumoured to have
been fixed. Nick Paton Walsh reports from the land where the Soviet
Union never really went away Nick Paton Walsh Thursday March 02 2006
The Guardian
Nikolai Statkievich shares the foul stench of his tiny cell with five
other prisoners. After their 6am wake-up call, the men form a line
along the corridor outside, their backs to the wall. As the commandant
calls out their surnames, each man answers with his first and middle
name and steps forward two paces until his nose touches the wall on the
opposite side of the corridor.
Statkievich has to start his forced labour by 8am. This gives him the
next hour to drop by his 75-year-old father's flat for a shower,
breakfast and to change out of the lavatory grime of his prison
clothes. Then Statkievich, 49, a former lieutenant-colonel in the
Soviet army - who has the equivalent of a PhD in science - reports for
duty at a local shop. He spends his days fixing kettles, irons and
radios, and is paid around £35 a month for it. His crime, under
article 232 of the criminal code, is: "The organisation of mass events
that concern disobedience of the authorities and interference with
public transportation." This means he organised a demonstration and it
briefly stopped the traffic. For this he was sentenced to three years
of forced labour in June last year.
Statkievich's story reads like a footnote to the works of Alexander
Solzhenitsyn, the Nobel-prize-winning chronicler of the Soviet "gulag"
prison camps of the 1950s. His punishment is known as khimiya
(chemistry); it was, he tells me during his lunch break, created "in
Kruschev's times, when the gulag was dismantled, because there was no
one to do the dirty jobs, like work in chemical factories".
But Statkievich is no 50s dissident. He is one of the last political
prisoners in 21st-century Europe, an internal exile in the
authoritarian - and often forgotten - state of Belarus. Here, the
Soviet Union never really went away.
Baranavichy, population 400,000 - the town that Statkievich is not
allowed to leave - is only 150km from Poland, the latest part of the
old Soviet bloc to join the European Union. But life here seems worlds
apart from the democratic west. On October 18 2004, Statkievich led a
protest against a referendum held over plans to change the Belarusian
constitution so that President Alexander Lukashenko, in power since
July 1994, had a right to a third term. The poll's positive result was
as predictable as the raft of allegations of fraud and illegality that
followed from the west. Statkievich's protest, obviously, failed to
overturn the results and so for this he got three years of khimiya.
Belarus's 10 million people live sandwiched between the Baltics and the
Ukraine, with their former imperialist master, Russia, to the east, and
have learned not to expect too much from history, or from their
masters. For centuries Belarus was a bargaining chip between European
empires. It first existed as an independent state in 1918, only to be
swallowed up by the USSR a year later. Stalin's purges in the 1930s led
to at least 100,000 of its citizens being executed and thousands more
sent to labour camps. The Nazi occupation and the second world war led
to the death of three million Belarusians - a third of its population,
a higher proportion of losses during that time than any other country.
The survivors were purged again by a victorious Stalin. Belarus was
then to bear the brunt of the Soviet empire's ungracious collapse: a
fifth of its farmland was rendered unusable by radiation from the
Chernobyl disaster in 1986.
Lukashenko, 51, has played on the country's troubled history. He
frequently extols the "stability" that his regime has created. In 2003,
he told Belarusian radio: "An authoritarian ruling style is
characteristic of me, and I have always admitted it. Why? We could
spend hours talking about this. You need to control the country and the
main thing is not to ruin people's lives." In a fortnight's time, after
months of careful preparation and repression, Lukashenko, the man the
Bush White House has dubbed "Europe's last dictator", will stage a
third presidential election, in an attempt to extend his rule to a
total of 15 years, making him Europe's longest-serving head of state.
There is a stability of sorts here. Pensions are good enough, the
general standard of living is manageable for some. The rest are
isolated enough from the outside world not to know better. Nikolai
Kazaryan, a part-time driver, lives on £40 a month in a squalid
farmhouse outside the capital of Minsk, just down the road from a
lavish ski resort where the president has his own luxury chalet. But
despite the immense gulf between him and his president, Kazaryan has
only this to say about Lukashenko: "Great guy," he grins, raising a
thumb.
After the political upheaval and privatisations of the turbulent 90s,
Russia enjoys an improved standard of living. Belarus has seen no such
changes: 80% of the economy is still controlled by the state, and the
state is Lukashenko.
"He's a former collective farm manager, still running the collective
farm," says a senior western diplomat, who asks not to be named. "I
don't think he's in it for the money, but for the power." The diplomat
describes victory in this month's elections as "Lukashenko's big prize,
this total dictatorship he wants".
The opposition has pledged to hold massive demonstrations at 8pm on
March 19, election day. They say the election has been fixed in advance
and hope that by taking to the streets they will spark a repeat of the
protest-led regime changes that swept neighbouring Ukraine in November
2004. Their hopes have been bolstered by expressions of support from
both America and the European Union, but Moscow - desperate not to see
another part of the former Soviet Union turn irrevocably to the west -
is backing Lukashenko. The lines are drawn for yet another showdown
between east and west.
Lukashenko is said to be nervous about the election, and has more
openly been taking steps to isolate Belarus from the viral contagion of
democracy. Belarusians have long needed a stamp in their passport to
travel abroad; now students need clearance for every foreign study
trip.
It's part of a slow clampdown on Belarusian society, one that ranges
from the Orwellian to the comical. While "slandering the president" has
for years been an offence that carries a prison sentence, in December
Lukashenko felt it necessary to introduce a three-year sentence for
anyone who "passes false information harmful to the state of Belarus to
a foreign state". Meanwhile, fears as to the insidious nature of
foreign rock music have led to a law that means 75% of music on radio
stations must be Belarusian. All models that appear in advertisements
inside Belarus are, according to a new law, supposed to be Belarusian
citizens.
An instinctive reaction to such batty Soviet excess is to snigger. But
in Belarus it is no joke. Underpinning the wackiness is a coarse
current of fear.
When I try to watch the first televised speech of Alexander
Milinkevich, the main opponent to Lukashenko in the presidential vote,
in a popular restaurant in the centre of Minsk, two young women next to
me tell me it is spoiling their conversation. Eighteen minutes into the
30-minute speech, the manager appears and asks me to turn it off.
Despite my arguing that the speech is on state-run television, so
cannot really be the "political agitation" he suggests it is, he
insists I hand him the remote control.
"In his heart, maybe he wanted to watch me," Milinkevich later tells
me, in the back of his campaign minibus. "But business is so tightly
controlled here that he might have feared losing money. Self-censorship
is the strongest weapon."
For the most part excluded from the media, Milinkevich has resorted to
travelling Belarus in a white minivan with his wife Inna and a few of
his 20-strong campaign staff by his side. The day we meet, he is
driving three hours to a campaign meeting in the eastern town of Orsha,
where about 100 supporters and a handful of police await him in the
snow. He has little choice but to campaign at a grassroots level. The
only remaining opposition paper in Belarus, Narodnaya Volya, has been
forced to print in Russia and is now distributed in blank, brown paper
envelopes to prevent it being intercepted.
State TV is prone to depicting the outside western world in outlandish
diatribes. (One recent TV documentary, according to BBC Monitoring,
accused the US of funding Nazi Germany, adding that Coca-Cola had
dreamed up the Fanta recipe to "quench the thirst of German invaders".)
Domestic news is almost as heavily distorted, with Lukashenko seen as
the great benefactor of his people, pushing a land of plenty to new
heights. Yet Milinkevich believes that the electorate, home-schooled in
the Soviet era to trust nothing that state TV offers, can see through
it all.
The streets of the capital, Minsk, are almost unnaturally clean and
conspicuously devoid of advertising. A few token placards flog
international brands, but are matched by government information
adverts. (A typical police poster says, "We are always near you" -
something any former Soviet citizen will read as a veiled threat.)
The price of even mild dissent here can be high. Lubov Kuchinskaya says
she was a veterinary student on a scholarship until February 7. Then
police searched her dormitory, and found opposition posters. She
started failing her exams for the first time and was thrown out of
university. In Baranavichy, where Statkievich is exiled, Alexander
Dolmut tells me he lost his job as deputy director of a sewing factory
because of his politics.
State workers - the vast majority of people - are now employed under
contracts that have to be renewed each year: naturally, this tends to
enhance their political loyalty. "Sack three people and 100,000 are
scared," says Statkievich.
Alexander Svirid is deputy chairman of the parliament's committee on
human rights, and the only official put forward to meet me during my
four-day visit. He says he has received many calls since Milinkevich's
TV speech from angry voters asking why the state allowed such "slander
of the president" to be broadcast.
define democracy, Svirid says: "I learned at school that democracy was
power to the people. In my understanding, democracy means the
authorities must come to power by democratic means, fulfil the will of
the people, and direct society. There is no talk of opposition."
He says the opposition courting foreign support and finance "was
essentially a form of terrorism, interference in the internal affairs
of another country. Today you support the opposition, tomorrow you're
fostering terrorism."
I ask if he means that the jovial, mild-mannered Professor Milinkevich
is in fact a terrorist, and he quickly recants. "No, no. He is not even
a hooligan. He is a good, normal, obedient guy." But, he says,
"constructive criticism" of Lukashenko is the way forward. "If people
are patriots and love their country, they should not support the
opposition, but their president."
So far, so ominous. But there are areas of Minsk where dissent is
thriving. A queue is forming on a Tuesday night outside the city Orange
Club - named after the colour of Ukraine's revolution. Owner Pavel
Kashirin lets people in one by one, checking their surnames off on a
list. Inside, young people drink, smoke and, quite probably, if they
are sure no one is listening in, talk revolution.
Lyavon Volski is usually lead singer of the opposition-minded band NRM,
but tonight is moonlighting with the group Krambambula. Their songs
boast lyrics such as "tanks are on the streets, and [a statue of the
founder of the KGB, Felix] Dzherninsky is in the square", warning of a
backslide into totalitarianism.
There's no official ban on NRM, but it only takes a phone call from the
police for the director of the concert hall to cancel a gig, says
Volski. "This country reminds me of the USSR in miniature. Now is the
time for people who got C-grades at school. Everyone talented has gone
abroad. But if I did not think democratic forces could triumph, I would
have left long ago," he says.
I ask if Lukashenko's crackdown may work against him. "I don't think it
was a genius move, as only in one year this popular culture" - he
gestures around him - "has produced a lot of seeds." He stops himself,
grinning. "Sorry, I am taking a risk here because of a law on the
defamation of the state. I would not want to damage the honour of our
president."
Others have less to lose. Svetlana Zavadskaya's husband Dmitry, a
journalist for the Russian channel ORT, is one of four people known as
Belarus's disappeared. In 2000, he vanished after reporting that the
Belarusian authorities might have been aiding Chechen separatists, and
she has not seen him since. Three other men, a former interior minister
and two politicians, also disappeared at the same time. Now her life is
devoted to their son, Yuri, 14, and to exposing Lukashenko's
authoritarianism to the outside world. "I have one message for Putin,"
she tells me. "Your historic, dangerous support for such a regime is a
shame that compromises Russia internationally."
Her campaign is gathering steam. Last year she met Condoleezza Rice,
the US secretary of state, and the EU foreign policy chief Javier
Solana. On February 27, Zavadskaya and another widow of one of the
disappeared met George Bush at the White House. Spokesman Scott
McClellan said the US president had expressed "his personal support for
their efforts to seek justice for the disappeared and for all those who
seek to return freedom to Belarus". He added that the US had concluded
that the Lukashenko regime had murdered Dmitry Zavadsky.
Zavadskaya has experienced both the government's brutality and
absurdity. At 6pm on July 7 last year, she and dozens of others
gathered in October Square in central Minsk to commemorate the fifth
anniversary of her husband's disappearance. The riot police attacked
the demonstration. One policeman ran into her, another punched her in
the face, she says. Then prosecutors were told that she had attacked
the two riot policemen. The case against her, or the police, was never
pursued, but she is still subjected to regular, silent phone calls.
"My son, Yuri, gets ideological lessons at school," she says. "They
make his class watch films that show Lukashenko as the father of the
people, in the farm fields. But I don't worry. Yuri says the class all
laugh. My son sees everything here with his own eyes so there's not
much need to explain anything to him."
Yet not all the bleak absurdity can be instinctively laughed off. One
day she will have to explain what happened to Yuri. "I think he
understands that his father is not coming back. But we have never
spoken about this, and that conversation will be hard".
Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited
http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,1721135,00.html
Europe's last dictatorship
In Belarus, an authoritarian, often forgotten corner of Europe,
criticising the president can still land you in jail. So it's no
surprise that the forthcoming elections are already rumoured to have
been fixed. Nick Paton Walsh reports from the land where the Soviet
Union never really went away Nick Paton Walsh Thursday March 02 2006
The Guardian
Nikolai Statkievich shares the foul stench of his tiny cell with five
other prisoners. After their 6am wake-up call, the men form a line
along the corridor outside, their backs to the wall. As the commandant
calls out their surnames, each man answers with his first and middle
name and steps forward two paces until his nose touches the wall on the
opposite side of the corridor.
Statkievich has to start his forced labour by 8am. This gives him the
next hour to drop by his 75-year-old father's flat for a shower,
breakfast and to change out of the lavatory grime of his prison
clothes. Then Statkievich, 49, a former lieutenant-colonel in the
Soviet army - who has the equivalent of a PhD in science - reports for
duty at a local shop. He spends his days fixing kettles, irons and
radios, and is paid around £35 a month for it. His crime, under
article 232 of the criminal code, is: "The organisation of mass events
that concern disobedience of the authorities and interference with
public transportation." This means he organised a demonstration and it
briefly stopped the traffic. For this he was sentenced to three years
of forced labour in June last year.
Statkievich's story reads like a footnote to the works of Alexander
Solzhenitsyn, the Nobel-prize-winning chronicler of the Soviet "gulag"
prison camps of the 1950s. His punishment is known as khimiya
(chemistry); it was, he tells me during his lunch break, created "in
Kruschev's times, when the gulag was dismantled, because there was no
one to do the dirty jobs, like work in chemical factories".
But Statkievich is no 50s dissident. He is one of the last political
prisoners in 21st-century Europe, an internal exile in the
authoritarian - and often forgotten - state of Belarus. Here, the
Soviet Union never really went away.
Baranavichy, population 400,000 - the town that Statkievich is not
allowed to leave - is only 150km from Poland, the latest part of the
old Soviet bloc to join the European Union. But life here seems worlds
apart from the democratic west. On October 18 2004, Statkievich led a
protest against a referendum held over plans to change the Belarusian
constitution so that President Alexander Lukashenko, in power since
July 1994, had a right to a third term. The poll's positive result was
as predictable as the raft of allegations of fraud and illegality that
followed from the west. Statkievich's protest, obviously, failed to
overturn the results and so for this he got three years of khimiya.
Belarus's 10 million people live sandwiched between the Baltics and the
Ukraine, with their former imperialist master, Russia, to the east, and
have learned not to expect too much from history, or from their
masters. For centuries Belarus was a bargaining chip between European
empires. It first existed as an independent state in 1918, only to be
swallowed up by the USSR a year later. Stalin's purges in the 1930s led
to at least 100,000 of its citizens being executed and thousands more
sent to labour camps. The Nazi occupation and the second world war led
to the death of three million Belarusians - a third of its population,
a higher proportion of losses during that time than any other country.
The survivors were purged again by a victorious Stalin. Belarus was
then to bear the brunt of the Soviet empire's ungracious collapse: a
fifth of its farmland was rendered unusable by radiation from the
Chernobyl disaster in 1986.
Lukashenko, 51, has played on the country's troubled history. He
frequently extols the "stability" that his regime has created. In 2003,
he told Belarusian radio: "An authoritarian ruling style is
characteristic of me, and I have always admitted it. Why? We could
spend hours talking about this. You need to control the country and the
main thing is not to ruin people's lives." In a fortnight's time, after
months of careful preparation and repression, Lukashenko, the man the
Bush White House has dubbed "Europe's last dictator", will stage a
third presidential election, in an attempt to extend his rule to a
total of 15 years, making him Europe's longest-serving head of state.
There is a stability of sorts here. Pensions are good enough, the
general standard of living is manageable for some. The rest are
isolated enough from the outside world not to know better. Nikolai
Kazaryan, a part-time driver, lives on £40 a month in a squalid
farmhouse outside the capital of Minsk, just down the road from a
lavish ski resort where the president has his own luxury chalet. But
despite the immense gulf between him and his president, Kazaryan has
only this to say about Lukashenko: "Great guy," he grins, raising a
thumb.
After the political upheaval and privatisations of the turbulent 90s,
Russia enjoys an improved standard of living. Belarus has seen no such
changes: 80% of the economy is still controlled by the state, and the
state is Lukashenko.
"He's a former collective farm manager, still running the collective
farm," says a senior western diplomat, who asks not to be named. "I
don't think he's in it for the money, but for the power." The diplomat
describes victory in this month's elections as "Lukashenko's big prize,
this total dictatorship he wants".
The opposition has pledged to hold massive demonstrations at 8pm on
March 19, election day. They say the election has been fixed in advance
and hope that by taking to the streets they will spark a repeat of the
protest-led regime changes that swept neighbouring Ukraine in November
2004. Their hopes have been bolstered by expressions of support from
both America and the European Union, but Moscow - desperate not to see
another part of the former Soviet Union turn irrevocably to the west -
is backing Lukashenko. The lines are drawn for yet another showdown
between east and west.
Lukashenko is said to be nervous about the election, and has more
openly been taking steps to isolate Belarus from the viral contagion of
democracy. Belarusians have long needed a stamp in their passport to
travel abroad; now students need clearance for every foreign study
trip.
It's part of a slow clampdown on Belarusian society, one that ranges
from the Orwellian to the comical. While "slandering the president" has
for years been an offence that carries a prison sentence, in December
Lukashenko felt it necessary to introduce a three-year sentence for
anyone who "passes false information harmful to the state of Belarus to
a foreign state". Meanwhile, fears as to the insidious nature of
foreign rock music have led to a law that means 75% of music on radio
stations must be Belarusian. All models that appear in advertisements
inside Belarus are, according to a new law, supposed to be Belarusian
citizens.
An instinctive reaction to such batty Soviet excess is to snigger. But
in Belarus it is no joke. Underpinning the wackiness is a coarse
current of fear.
When I try to watch the first televised speech of Alexander
Milinkevich, the main opponent to Lukashenko in the presidential vote,
in a popular restaurant in the centre of Minsk, two young women next to
me tell me it is spoiling their conversation. Eighteen minutes into the
30-minute speech, the manager appears and asks me to turn it off.
Despite my arguing that the speech is on state-run television, so
cannot really be the "political agitation" he suggests it is, he
insists I hand him the remote control.
"In his heart, maybe he wanted to watch me," Milinkevich later tells
me, in the back of his campaign minibus. "But business is so tightly
controlled here that he might have feared losing money. Self-censorship
is the strongest weapon."
For the most part excluded from the media, Milinkevich has resorted to
travelling Belarus in a white minivan with his wife Inna and a few of
his 20-strong campaign staff by his side. The day we meet, he is
driving three hours to a campaign meeting in the eastern town of Orsha,
where about 100 supporters and a handful of police await him in the
snow. He has little choice but to campaign at a grassroots level. The
only remaining opposition paper in Belarus, Narodnaya Volya, has been
forced to print in Russia and is now distributed in blank, brown paper
envelopes to prevent it being intercepted.
State TV is prone to depicting the outside western world in outlandish
diatribes. (One recent TV documentary, according to BBC Monitoring,
accused the US of funding Nazi Germany, adding that Coca-Cola had
dreamed up the Fanta recipe to "quench the thirst of German invaders".)
Domestic news is almost as heavily distorted, with Lukashenko seen as
the great benefactor of his people, pushing a land of plenty to new
heights. Yet Milinkevich believes that the electorate, home-schooled in
the Soviet era to trust nothing that state TV offers, can see through
it all.
The streets of the capital, Minsk, are almost unnaturally clean and
conspicuously devoid of advertising. A few token placards flog
international brands, but are matched by government information
adverts. (A typical police poster says, "We are always near you" -
something any former Soviet citizen will read as a veiled threat.)
The price of even mild dissent here can be high. Lubov Kuchinskaya says
she was a veterinary student on a scholarship until February 7. Then
police searched her dormitory, and found opposition posters. She
started failing her exams for the first time and was thrown out of
university. In Baranavichy, where Statkievich is exiled, Alexander
Dolmut tells me he lost his job as deputy director of a sewing factory
because of his politics.
State workers - the vast majority of people - are now employed under
contracts that have to be renewed each year: naturally, this tends to
enhance their political loyalty. "Sack three people and 100,000 are
scared," says Statkievich.
Alexander Svirid is deputy chairman of the parliament's committee on
human rights, and the only official put forward to meet me during my
four-day visit. He says he has received many calls since Milinkevich's
TV speech from angry voters asking why the state allowed such "slander
of the president" to be broadcast.
From inside the hushed and dusty corridors of Minsk's parliament, it is
hard to see what change the ballot box could bring about. Asked todefine democracy, Svirid says: "I learned at school that democracy was
power to the people. In my understanding, democracy means the
authorities must come to power by democratic means, fulfil the will of
the people, and direct society. There is no talk of opposition."
He says the opposition courting foreign support and finance "was
essentially a form of terrorism, interference in the internal affairs
of another country. Today you support the opposition, tomorrow you're
fostering terrorism."
I ask if he means that the jovial, mild-mannered Professor Milinkevich
is in fact a terrorist, and he quickly recants. "No, no. He is not even
a hooligan. He is a good, normal, obedient guy." But, he says,
"constructive criticism" of Lukashenko is the way forward. "If people
are patriots and love their country, they should not support the
opposition, but their president."
So far, so ominous. But there are areas of Minsk where dissent is
thriving. A queue is forming on a Tuesday night outside the city Orange
Club - named after the colour of Ukraine's revolution. Owner Pavel
Kashirin lets people in one by one, checking their surnames off on a
list. Inside, young people drink, smoke and, quite probably, if they
are sure no one is listening in, talk revolution.
Lyavon Volski is usually lead singer of the opposition-minded band NRM,
but tonight is moonlighting with the group Krambambula. Their songs
boast lyrics such as "tanks are on the streets, and [a statue of the
founder of the KGB, Felix] Dzherninsky is in the square", warning of a
backslide into totalitarianism.
There's no official ban on NRM, but it only takes a phone call from the
police for the director of the concert hall to cancel a gig, says
Volski. "This country reminds me of the USSR in miniature. Now is the
time for people who got C-grades at school. Everyone talented has gone
abroad. But if I did not think democratic forces could triumph, I would
have left long ago," he says.
I ask if Lukashenko's crackdown may work against him. "I don't think it
was a genius move, as only in one year this popular culture" - he
gestures around him - "has produced a lot of seeds." He stops himself,
grinning. "Sorry, I am taking a risk here because of a law on the
defamation of the state. I would not want to damage the honour of our
president."
Others have less to lose. Svetlana Zavadskaya's husband Dmitry, a
journalist for the Russian channel ORT, is one of four people known as
Belarus's disappeared. In 2000, he vanished after reporting that the
Belarusian authorities might have been aiding Chechen separatists, and
she has not seen him since. Three other men, a former interior minister
and two politicians, also disappeared at the same time. Now her life is
devoted to their son, Yuri, 14, and to exposing Lukashenko's
authoritarianism to the outside world. "I have one message for Putin,"
she tells me. "Your historic, dangerous support for such a regime is a
shame that compromises Russia internationally."
Her campaign is gathering steam. Last year she met Condoleezza Rice,
the US secretary of state, and the EU foreign policy chief Javier
Solana. On February 27, Zavadskaya and another widow of one of the
disappeared met George Bush at the White House. Spokesman Scott
McClellan said the US president had expressed "his personal support for
their efforts to seek justice for the disappeared and for all those who
seek to return freedom to Belarus". He added that the US had concluded
that the Lukashenko regime had murdered Dmitry Zavadsky.
Zavadskaya has experienced both the government's brutality and
absurdity. At 6pm on July 7 last year, she and dozens of others
gathered in October Square in central Minsk to commemorate the fifth
anniversary of her husband's disappearance. The riot police attacked
the demonstration. One policeman ran into her, another punched her in
the face, she says. Then prosecutors were told that she had attacked
the two riot policemen. The case against her, or the police, was never
pursued, but she is still subjected to regular, silent phone calls.
"My son, Yuri, gets ideological lessons at school," she says. "They
make his class watch films that show Lukashenko as the father of the
people, in the farm fields. But I don't worry. Yuri says the class all
laugh. My son sees everything here with his own eyes so there's not
much need to explain anything to him."
Yet not all the bleak absurdity can be instinctively laughed off. One
day she will have to explain what happened to Yuri. "I think he
understands that his father is not coming back. But we have never
spoken about this, and that conversation will be hard".
Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited