In the Vortex of History – an Individual Against the Backdrop of Groundbreaking Events. The Image of Protests in 2020 in Contemporary Belarusian Literature on the Example of Selected Stories from the Volume „Ператрус у музэі” (“A Police Search in the Museum”) by Alhierd Bakharevich

Abstract

The article is devoted to the protests after the falsified presidential elections in Belarus in 2020 on the example of a collection of stories by Alhierd Bakharevich “A Police Search in the Museum”. Particular attention is paid to the creation of heroes, as well as the entanglement of the individual in history. The characters are divided into two groups: ordinary people who, despite their fear, decided to participate in demonstrations, and people struggling with the hardships of everyday existence, who, despite their lack of political involvement, become the subject of interest of representatives of the authoritarian power. The collection of stories, published in 2023, introduces a new direction in contemporary Belarusian prose related to protests. The analyzed work has not yet been the subject of in-depth reflection in literary studies. A traditional comparative analysis was used, where the decisive criterion was the positioning in relation to the role of executioner – victim. The aim of the article is to point out that the heroes of social protests were ordinary people who were pushed into action by their disagreement over the open violation of freedom of choice and the inability to decide on their fate, or the brutality of the representatives of the authorities. In the stories, there are characters expressing both individual and collective experience. The created characters and their adventures are therefore a literary record of events related to the post-election protests and everyday existence. The analysis proved that in the image of the protests, special attention was paid to a man and the role of history in his life. The characters created are ordinary people, representatives of various professions and social classes. These are not individuals whose character traits would make them stand out from society. These are average people who are unable to accept the actions of the authorities any longer. The past is largely absent, as it is only marginally remembered. Such an approach allows us to emphasize the role of ongoing events and indicates that they determine a person’s life.