It has been 4.5 years since the days when we stood side by side in the streets of cities, built barricades, threw stones at police and formed grassroots ties in our local neighborhoods. During these years, our lives have all changed dramatically: some have been forced to leave home for good, others survive in prisons, some in the trenches, and some are no longer with us. The 2020 revolution was lost tactically, but strategically it was necessary for Belarusan society to draw certain conclusions. In recent years, many Belarusians have reflected on their mistakes, learned certain lessons, it’s a pity only that they have learned from their own mistakes. All our lessons are useful, but every time we learn from our own mistakes, we are thrown back and, sometimes, so much that all the lessons we have learned cannot fix the situation. But that’s no reason to give up.

We will have to gather all our strength and experience if we want to free Belarus from dictatorship. The situation may seem hopeless and insurmountable to us, but it is when things are very bad that there is a chance for a last desperate fight, as world history has shown many times. When the screws are tightened, the thread will eventually come off, and the regime will make a fatal mistake, which we will have to take advantage of. The situation in the region is more unstable than ever before in recent history: Russia’s imperial expansion in Ukraine, the reluctance of the Belarusan regime to fully surrender power to the kremlin, the imperial interests of Trump and the United States in the region – all this brings chaos and confusion to life in the region, but it is in chaos that windows of opportunity for oppressed populations appear.

A case in point is Syria – a totalitarian dictatorship until 2011 – where, amidst the chaos of the Arab Spring, formations such as the Autonomous Administration of Northern and Eastern Syria and the Local Coordination Committees of Syria (an anarchist project of a grassroots network of councils in the Damascus area) became possible. Now, in the next round of escalation of the Syrian revolution, after the overthrow of the Assad dictatorship, it remains to be seen whether the pro-Turkish jihadist forces with their fundamentalism and new dictatorship will be able to hold on to power, or whether the sprouts of freedom will make their way through another wave of terror and repression.

We should learn to learn from the experience of other peoples and adopt it to level the odds with the regime. We cannot afford to step on the same rake that many people have stepped on before us. We will need a certain level of openness and empathy in order to reflect the experience of other peoples; for this purpose, Belarusans need to get rid of prejudices and arrogance, which we still observe in the context of the humanitarian crisis on the Polish-Belarusian border. We need to realize that a Kurd, a Syrian, an Afghan or a Palestinian has a lot in common with us and we have a lot to learn from them. International solidarity will help us reclaim our land and free people from prisons. It was precisely the sense of uniqueness that prevented Belarusians from winning the 2020 revolution, because many people thought that non-violence tactics were our Belarusan thing that would destroy the dictatorship. The experience of many revolutions was not of interest to the Belarusians, but rather was not known to them. Once again we should take the fight, being more prepared. Establish international relations, learn, gain experience from those who have it – we have a hard struggle ahead of us and we must win.