A Fair King

I was very per­sis­tent in try­ing to obtain this inter­view because every­one whom I probed about the “hid­den birth­marks” of edi­tor Karol¹  first and fore­most stat­ed: “The King is fair!”

Mel­nichuk: It is known that jour­nal­ists are talk­a­tive and quick wit­ted, and when it comes to gos­sip­ing about chief edi­tor boss­es they would rarely hold back. But jour­nal­ists of your news­pa­per are eas­i­ly and nat­u­ral­ly giv­ing you unforced com­pli­ments, with­out quo­ta­tion marks. I don’t want to pro­voke you into a self com­pli­ment, but what are you doing to them to earn such a favourable feed­back?

Karol: I doubt I can answer this with any clar­i­ty because I nev­er thought about this… Some time ago, in the ear­ly 1990’s, we had a goal – to form a news­pa­per. Every­thing else was done and worked out on the job, with the flow. It was a nor­mal thing: a con­cept is born, dis­cussed, adopt­ed, and into this con­cept authors write mate­ri­als.

If the con­cept proves bad, one needs to change it, dis­cuss it again. If this is done open­ly and col­lec­tive­ly, there is no ground for argu­ments and offense.

The sec­ond prin­ci­ple that I am con­scious­ly adher­ing to I would define this way: a per­son does those things best, and writes on those sub­jects best, to which he or she is nat­u­ral­ly attract­ed. So the author choos­es, and I choose what the author does best, and so the prin­ci­ple of our part­ner­ship is formed.

In addi­tion – and every­one in our team under­stands this – the pay depends on the input into the com­mon work. And when the chief edi­tor and oth­er edi­tors are no rich­er than staff writ­ers that is also val­ued and pos­i­tive­ly impacts the cli­mate in the team. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, in our inde­pen­dent papers one can­not count on high prof­its, but it is a duty of the edi­tor to pro­vide for at least a “non-hun­gry” lev­el of pay to authors and also to pro­vide trans­paren­cy on the newspaper’s bud­get.

Ali­ak­sei, over­all, are you con­trol­ling your writ­ers?

Karol:  I don’t par­tic­u­lar­ly need to: we agree who does what, and it gets done. Some things of course I mon­i­tor, some things we dis­cuss, some things I argue with, but that is nor­mal.

I wouldn’t call myself a par­tic­u­lar­ly demo­c­ra­t­ic man­ag­er, but I am also not an author­i­tar­i­an one, to such an extent as to force a change in posi­tion or opin­ion of the writer. We have a nor­mal atmos­phere in the paper, and I am sur­round­ed by clever peo­ple.

Thank you for relat­ing to me the feeed­back on myself from our “smok­ing room”- in our team we are not used to water­falls of com­pli­ments. Jokes, mutu­al teas­ing are our nor­mal behav­iour. Even when we con­grat­u­late one anoth­er, we do so with­out much pathet­ic, more like with friend­ly teas­es.

How to Reach Concord in New Times

You men­tioned cre­at­ing a news­pa­per in the ear­ly 1990’s. Did you mean Zgo­da²?

Karol: Yes. The for­ma­tion of the Novy Chas³ was a forced act, because Zgo­da was shut down by a court deci­sion in 2006, on the eve of the pres­i­den­tial elec­tions. At that time, one of the can­di­dates to the post of the pres­i­dent was Alexan­der Kazulin. In his speech to the All Belaru­sian Con­gress, Lukashen­ka threat­ened that “the lit­tle paper” that sup­ports Kazulin would be shut down and its jour­nal­ists, if they would be found guilty, would be put in prison.

The shut­down of Zgo­da was per­haps the first instance of clos­ing down of a news­pa­per by a court order in his­to­ry of Belaru­sian jour­nal­ism, but at least, thank God, the jour­nal­ists were not impris­oned. One year lat­er (also like­ly a unique instance) we man­aged to cre­ate anoth­er news­pa­per. That was very dif­fi­cult.

With the help of BAJ we care­ful­ly stud­ied laws and reg­u­la­tions and found some dis­con­nects and gaps. We also care­ful­ly avoid­ed men­tion­ing my name in that attempt. It first appeared only in the sec­ond issue of the Novy Chas.

For the Novy Chas, I owe the debt of grat­i­tude to the Belaru­sian Lan­guage Soci­ety, Aliona Anisim and Aleh Trusau. They are the ones who start­ed the news­pa­per and passed on to us the nam­ing rights and reg­is­tra­tion. Until we start­ed our coop­er­a­tion, the Novy Chas pub­lished 48 issues, but it was com­ing out irreg­u­lar­ly. By now, the Novy Chas has run close to 450 issues.

So the Novy Chas is a glar­ing exam­ple of what can be accom­plished through coop­er­a­tion of pro-demo­c­ra­t­ic groups, orga­ni­za­tions and indi­vid­u­als. We will always remem­ber the Belaru­sian Lan­guage Society’s deed, hon­our and respect be on them.

At the end of 2007, already the Novy Chas, we were again under threat of shut­down. But we man­aged to defend the paper, in large part thanks to the sol­i­dar­i­ty and sup­port of all inde­pen­dent media in Belarus that start­ed a mas­sive cam­paign in our defence. Inter­na­tion­al reac­tion, espe­cial­ly that of the high lev­el EU lead­er­ship, also helped.

To the Novy Chas you brought with you the Zgo­da team?

Karol: The core of the team was pre­served. That is first of all Aksana Kolb, deputy chief edi­tor, and Svi­at­lana Piarouskaya, style edi­tor. Both clever and beau­ti­ful ladies, orga­niz­ers, jour­nal­ists. The abil­i­ty to do every­thing is anoth­er chal­lenge in fight­ing for democ­ra­cy in the severe con­di­tions of author­i­tar­i­an half-under­ground. The moment we under­stood that we might have a chance to renew under a new name, every­one gath­ered togeth­er, and Aleh Novikau (also known under his pen name Lyolik Ushkin) even returned from Ukraine. Then new peo­ple came too, and they merged into the team and they rec­og­nized the Novy Chas as part of their iden­ti­ty. This is a team, not a bunch or mer­ce­nar­ies, or dai­ly labour­ers. Maybe that’s why we man­age to work on the prin­ci­ples of fair­ness and sol­i­dar­i­ty.

The Novy Chas (the New Times) – is it just a name or tru­ly new times for a group of like mind­ed col­leagues that came over with you? When I am recall­ing Zgo­da, as it was then, the first thing that comes to mind is that it was a par­ty news­pa­per.

Yes, Zgo­da was cre­at­ed as par­ty news­pa­per, by the Par­ty of People’s Con­cord, which sub­se­quent­ly became the Belaru­sian Social Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty (Hra­ma­da).  Zgo­da was formed on the basis of the mag­a­zine Polit­i­cal Inter­locu­tor (for­mer­ly, an offi­cial mag­a­zine of the Cen­tral Com­mit­tee of the Com­mu­nist Par­ty of the Belaru­sian Sovi­et Social­ist Repub­lic). The mag­a­zine by then lost all via­bil­i­ty and could not com­pete – that was the time of the free­dom of press and democ­ra­cy, the ear­ly 1990s! Henadz Karpen­ka, the head of the Par­ty of People’s Con­cord, was offered to buy out the mag­a­zine, pay its debts, and then take over every­thing. I lat­er regret­ted that we did not do this, did not pre­serve the mag­a­zine, even under the old name, but chang­ing its con­tent.

But we made a news­pa­per instead, hav­ing decid­ed that we need­ed a more oper­a­tional­ly mobile medi­um than a mag­a­zine. By the way at that time Zgo­da count­ed 47,000 sub­scribers – a con­se­quence of the ele­vat­ed read­er engage­ment amid the thirst for infor­ma­tion of those times.

As for the par­ti­san­ship, in Zgo­da, even in those days, in my opin­ion there was not a lot of it. But the myth of Zgo­da as a par­ty paper, the cliché, got stuck. It took us many years to wash them off. We even ordered an inde­pen­dent expert review, and it con­firmed that we devot­ed less space to the social demo­c­ra­t­ic par­ty and its lead­ers than news­pa­pers unaf­fil­i­at­ed with polit­i­cal par­ties.

And Zgo­da was a tru­ly “par­ty media organ” in the prop­er sense for maybe three months max­i­mum. I real­ized soon enough that the par­ty paper route was a dead end, the world was free of par­ti­san media, and we had to rid our­selves of the par­ty affil­i­a­tion. We dis­cussed this with the par­ty fel­lows, with Chair­man Karpen­ka and decid­ed: let us not repeat the Sovi­et era mis­takes with its par­ty cen­sor­ship of press. A par­ty can have leaflets, newslet­ters, and so on, but a mass news­pa­per can­not be a par­ty organ. And so we became inde­pen­dent.

But  I remem­bered that whole sto­ry very well, and there­fore when we cre­at­ed the Novy Chas we decid­ed clear­ly: no par­ty affil­i­a­tions, no depen­den­cy on any par­ty.

The choice of lan­guage played an impor­tant part in our con­cept of the Novy Chas. In Zgo­da we ran cov­er­age in both Russ­ian and Belaru­sian. And it always so hap­pened that the Russ­ian lan­guage exceed­ed its quo­tas: some­times a writer found it eas­i­er to write in Russ­ian, or we did not have the time to trans­late, or some­thing else – and, ok, fine, let it go!

Aleh Trusau, the founder the Novy Chas who was pass­ing it to us, had a prin­ci­pled posi­tion:  you want the title, only in Belaru­sian! And I agreed: the Belaru­sian lan­guage for Belarus is indeed a mat­ter of prin­ci­ple!

And the lan­guage in essence already begins to dri­ve the con­cept. The Belaru­sian idea, formed back in the begin­ning of the 19^th cen­tu­ry, was based on the val­ue of the lan­guage, the cul­ture, as foun­da­tion­al for build­ing the state­hood and inde­pen­dence.

And those became the main pil­lars of our con­cept. Plus we added three full pages to for­eign cov­er­age – not just reprint from oth­er sources, but whol­ly orig­i­nal con­tent, an attempt to cre­ate con­text for mak­ing sense of our own, Belaru­sian, sit­u­a­tion against the back­drop of glob­al devel­op­ments.

Our anoth­er impor­tant prin­ci­ple – to write about seri­ous things, but with­out the arti­fi­cial intel­lec­tu­al­ism.

Ali­ak­sey, as the chief edi­tor, do you pre­fer to work with younger jour­nal­ists, or more mature ones? Or per­haps the “aces” that came with you from Zgo­da are like “sacred cows” in the Novy Chas, while the young ones are work­ing their butts off to make a name for them­selves?

We have nev­er had the prob­lem of “aces” and the young ones. Like all inde­pen­dent news­pa­pers, we do not have the resources to keep a large team. The paper is made by nine full time per­sons;  over twen­ty more write for us free lance. And even the so called “aces” are only around forty now. We do not dif­fer­en­ti­ate by age or past achieve­ments: if a 20 year old writer pro­duced a wor­thy arti­cle, both myself and the edi­to­r­i­al team will pay him prop­er dues just as they would to an old­er vet­er­an.

A year ago Vika Chap­l­e­va, a sec­ond year uni­ver­si­ty stu­dent, came to us with a good sto­ry. Now two more stu­dent jour­nal­ists came, and their mate­ri­als run in both print and online.

I am remem­ber­ing your own team, Belaruskaya Mal­adzezh­naya. Siarhei Pul­sha, who worked there, now works with us. Before he came to us he worked at BelA­PAN, was pro­duc­ing short infor­ma­tion­al pieces. When he came to us and we were dis­cussing top­ics for him I said: “Write the way you feel.” And he opened up, he is won­der­ful in ana­lyt­ics – polit­i­cal analy­sis, por­traits, rec­og­niz­able by his sub­tle irony, own style, with­out exag­ger­a­tions, fac­tu­al­ly cor­rect.

The task of a media leader is to help the writer to find and demon­strate his tal­ents.

And those who start­ed the paper, they used to be young, and now they are mature… Our team’s aver­age age is around 40. But this aver­age num­ber is so high only thanks to me, my 70 years.

On the Harm of the Revolutionary Romanticism

Ali­ak­sey, where does your last name, Karol (Belaru­sian: King) come from? Do you real­ly have roy­al roots? Or is it from the West­ern Belaru­sian word karol that means a soft furred  domes­tic rab­bit?

In Belarus, by the way, there are many peo­ple with the fam­i­ly name Karol. I got curi­ous about it – there are plen­ty of Karols in Uzda and Byarez­i­na dis­tricts. My father came from Byarez­i­na. The researchers I talked with about this believe that in Belarus that name comes not from roy­al palaces but from excel­lence at work: a king of his craft, so to speak. And so here and there tal­ent­ed crafts­men became “kings.”

You come from the coun­try side?

More like from small town, a dis­trict cen­tre. On my mother’s side, great grand­moth­er was an inden­tured peas­ant. So I am not from nobil­i­ty (and am under­ly­ing it to those who are now active­ly look­ing for blue blood in their veins), I am a peas­ant, I don’t have the noble pride. But my grand­fa­ther was a forester, it was a fair­ly high local posi­tion at that time.

My father was an orphan. When his father kicked him out of the house at the age of twelve, he was home­less for a while, and when he was caught, he became an appren­tice at a smith shop, then a fac­to­ry work­er, and final­ly went to voca­tion­al school. The World War II found him as a local youth affairs offi­cial in Bia­lystok, at the very West of Belarus then. He did not even man­age to enlist prop­er­ly – joined a spon­ta­neous mil­i­tary for­ma­tion and retreat­ed with it, amid con­stant com­bats, to Moscow, broke away from encir­clement. He fought the entire war, with infantry, at the front, made it to Konigs­berg, East­ern Prus­sia. My father’s penul­ti­mate job was the Dis­trict Exec­u­tive in Smarhon. As a con­se­quence of the war wounds he had his leg ampu­tat­ed, and after that was trans­ferred to Mal­adzech­na, where he head­ed the beer fac­to­ry for a while, then retired.

So Smarhon and Mal­adzech­na are my native towns. Until the sev­enth grade I stud­ied in Smarhon; fin­ished sec­ondary school in Mal­adzech­na, from there entered the Min­sk Ped­a­gog­i­cal Insti­tute, his­to­ry depart­ment, hav­ing worked a year first – the first attempt to enter col­lege was unsuc­cess­ful. Then served in the army, came back, fin­ished the his­to­ry depart­ment, with dis­tinc­tion.  Then I was direct­ed to work to the Acad­e­my of Sci­ence, Insti­tute of His­to­ry.

I know you have a PhD in his­to­ry. What was your dis­ser­ta­tion top­ic?

Post war Ger­many, 1945–47. The Sovi­et occu­pa­tion­al admin­is­tra­tion in East Ger­many. Poli­cies of the allies in Ger­many after 1945.

Wow! A high risk top­ic even now!

As well as very inter­est­ing. I chose it myself, I was for­tu­nate that my advi­sor in the Insti­tute was Dr Illar­i­on Ihnat­sen­ka. He had a prin­ci­ple, which I took up for my own work with peo­ple: free search, work on what appeals to you.

I was assigned to the depart­ment of his­to­ry of social­ist coun­tries, head­ed by Alexan­der Matsko. He too did not stran­gle free thought in his depart­ment.

I would not say that my PhD the­sis was writ­ten then as I would write it now. But it is from that top­ic, I think, where came my crit­i­cal assess­ment of every­thing that was hap­pen­ing in the Sovi­et Union. Because I had that top­ic, I gained access to secret archives in Moscow, archives that required spe­cial autho­riza­tion. In the archive, I had to hand copy what I need­ed from the doc­u­ments into my own note­books, which were num­bered, col­lat­ed and stamped by the librar­i­ans. The note­books were sent to the First Depart­ment of the USSR Acad­e­my of Sci­ences, there, I had to again hand copy from them. I was allowed to use the find­ings in my research but not make ref­er­ences to the source. I man­aged to obtain allowance to mark “Archives of the Sovi­et Mil­i­tary Admin­is­tra­tion” as the source. Noth­ing more spe­cif­ic than that.

In the archives I came across spe­cial briefs by TASS (Tele­graph Agency of the Sovi­et Union – the offi­cial news agency of the USSR). They were marked NFP – not for print­ing. Among them were trans­la­tions of for­eign com­par­a­tive his­tor­i­cal research of the Stal­in and Hitler regimes. Those were mas­sive type writ­ten vol­umes, made in one copy only, for the high offi­cials. For­get­ting my own research, I was con­sumed by read­ing them.

So it actu­al­ly makes sense that total­i­tar­i­an regimes lim­it access to archives – his­tor­i­cal doc­u­ments pro­voke the mind, awak­en doubts, crit­i­cal think­ing, and in the secret closed off archives free thought is born.

The first move­ment in my mind was under­stand­ing of the need to cleanse the social­ist idea of Stal­in­ist stains, return to the orig­i­nal – moral – brand of social­ist “with human face.” After that came the under­stand­ing of the very con­cept of social­ism and bol­she­vism in their true real­i­ty. And the shock of real­iza­tion that it was from that very con­cept that the total­i­tar­i­an regime began.

It so hap­pened that when the free­dom of speech start­ed to emerge I was the first to tell about the Belaru­siza­tion pol­i­cy of the 1920’s (a pol­i­cy with­in the Sovi­et Union that allowed, and even encour­aged, for­ma­tion of the nation­al cul­ture and insti­tu­tions in Belarus as part of the USRR). I even wrote two arti­cles, and they were pub­lished by the Sovet­skaya Belorus­siya, still an organ of the Com­mu­nist Par­ty. The jour­nal­ists who worked there lat­er told me that when my arti­cle arrived, marked “urgent” to boot, every­one was sure that the Cen­tral Com­mit­tee sent anoth­er pro­pa­gan­da piece. When they opened it and start­ed to read their hair stood up – under the Cen­tral Com­mit­tee stamp, a total­ly sub­ver­sive arti­cle arrived!

The per­e­stroi­ka opened the flood­gate. At the Cen­tral Com­mit­tee order I pre­pared volu­mi­nous reports, case for reha­bil­i­ta­tion of Use­val­ad Ihna­tous­ki and Zmitser Zhy­lunovich (Belaru­sian nation­al activists, gov­ern­ment offi­cials and authors exe­cut­ed by the Stal­in regime in the 1930’s) and all oth­er repressed Belaru­sians. Lat­er they did not even have to be reha­bil­i­tat­ed, life itself reha­bil­i­tat­ed them. I wrote a book about Ihna­tous­ki – the archi­tect of the Belaru­siza­tion of the 1920s.

Today I would re-write my works from the ear­ly times – the study of the 1905 rev­o­lu­tion in Belarus, and sev­er­al arti­cles. Back then I did not have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to receive unbi­ased infor­ma­tion. I real­ize it now how hard it is to be an objec­tive researcher when you are sub­merged under an avalanche of ide­o­log­i­cal brain­storm­ing, pre­fab­ri­cat­ed infor­ma­tion, when not just sin­gle bricks – entire walls – are tak­en out from the his­tor­i­cal truth, lit­er­a­ture is fil­tered, and you just can­not break through all that. You feel that some­thing is not right, but you lack the proof, and the tiles refuse to make a mosa­ic!

The total­i­tar­i­an regime always counts itself above the moral norms, but makes every­one else sub­ject to a moral stan­dard, and forces down on every­body a brand of rev­o­lu­tion­ary roman­ti­cism. Through that roman­ti­cism we per­ceived Bol­she­vism and the Sovi­et rule as some­thing just.

Unfinished Business

Ali­ak­sei, do you have many friends?

Nor­mal­ly not too many friends. The clos­est, Lyavon Loy­ka, sad­ly passed away. He was six­ty years old. He was a friend in life and in cause, he and I were imple­ment­ing the par­ty project togeth­er, our first news­pa­per. I miss him very much.

I have friends in the paper, in the par­ty, but I feel Lyavon’s absence.

And have you been lucky with women?

Yes, I have: from child­hood I was sur­round­ed by clever and beau­ti­ful girls and women. In my life there is one woman, the moth­er of my chil­dren. When we mar­ried, I was just a third year stu­dent, and a youth orga­ni­za­tion leader. The joy of my life, and my best prod­uct are my chil­dren. They are, by the way, my friends too. We have com­plete mutu­al under­stand­ing, respect. They chose their des­tinies them­selves, and quite suc­cess­ful­ly. That is pleas­ing.

Do you retain per­son­al con­nec­tions with the “par­ty dias­po­ra?”

I am not a par­ty per­son any more. It is health­i­er for a jour­nal­ist, espe­cial­ly in our sit­u­a­tion, under an author­i­tar­i­an dom­i­nance.

I left the Social-Demo­c­ra­t­ic par­ty after the upper hand in it was gained by the group of mem­bers who vot­ed in favour of remov­ing Kazulin from the post of the Chair­man while he was in prison. Lyaukovich became the Chair­man at that time. This kind of deci­sion tak­en against Kazulin, who was behind bars, I con­sid­ered amoral. Of course elect­ing a new par­ty leader is a nor­mal thing, but not when that leader is in prison and on top of that is hold­ing a hunger strike.

These inter­nal squab­bles only play to the hand of the author­i­tar­i­an regime. Such regimes always use per­son­al ambi­tions and weak insti­tu­tions in order to speed up mar­gin­al­iz­ing their oppo­nents. This is also nor­mal under repres­sions. The Belaru­sian Social-Democ­rats may have been the first ones to trav­el that road but today we are see­ing some­thing along the same lines in oth­er oppo­si­tion­al insti­tu­tions – their activ­i­ties are lim­it­ed and con­tro­ver­sial and the lev­el of author­i­ty in the soci­ety is quite low.

It seems that in the com­mu­ni­ty of inde­pen­dent media things alto­geth­er look a lot more coor­di­nat­ed, there is more sol­i­dar­i­ty, even though there too var­i­ous things can hap­pen. How do you, a man with a well known polit­i­cal biog­ra­phy, feel in the shoes of a news­pa­per man? Do the old par­ty con­flicts get in the way of inter­view­ing men of pol­i­tics? And did the media broth­er­hood accept you as one of their own?

My rela­tion­ship with men of pol­i­tics is nor­mal. One reporter’s prin­ci­ple is not to quar­rel with those you are going to inter­view. That’s one thing.

Sec­ond, in my own past polit­i­cal life I man­aged to not cross the line between a prin­ci­pled debate and a per­son­al hatred. For exam­ple, with­in the Social-Demo­c­ra­t­ic move­ment I had a fair­ly com­pli­cat­ed rela­tion­ship with Miko­la Statke­vich. But, short­ly before those elec­tions after which he was thrown behind bars, we had a won­der­ful meet­ing and talk. We not­ed – both he and I – that with all our past argu­ments we nev­er made pub­lic neg­a­tive state­ments about one anoth­er. And so there were no obsta­cles for us to meet lat­er and for me to inter­view him about his activ­i­ties and his par­ty.

At the Novy Chas we host­ed a series of round tables with polit­i­cal fig­ures of var­i­ous direc­tions. Even those who are in argu­ment with each oth­er we brought togeth­er and pre­sent­ed all views in our reports. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, nei­ther our­selves nor oth­er jour­nal­ists were able to influ­ence our opposition’s abil­i­ty to reach these past pres­i­den­tial elec­tions with a sin­gle can­di­date. The uni­ty has evad­ed us.

As for the jour­nal­ist com­mu­ni­ty, yes, I agree that this real­ly is a com­mu­ni­ty with high­er sol­i­dar­i­ty. I see two rea­sons for this. First, we under­stood that when there is pres­sure we can hold up a bridge­head of free speech only by mutu­al­ly sup­port­ing each oth­er. Our own exam­ples – of Zho­da and Novy Chas – sup­port this asser­tion.

Sec­ond, every medi­um is fair­ly autonomous. We are not com­peti­tors to each oth­er, we do not have to elect a sin­gle can­di­date. We have sol­i­dar­i­ty in our acts and our words but we do not have to agree on each pro­fes­sion­al move, as this is nec­es­sary in a polit­i­cal par­ty. Every news­pa­per walks its own way, but in the com­mon direc­tion, based on objec­tiv­i­ty, democ­ra­cy and free­dom of speech.

Yes, we must have each other’s back and not allow them to suf­fo­cate us. This is pos­si­ble. A total­i­tar­i­an ide­al is a state of no inde­pen­dent media, no free out­let. So far the author­i­ties have not man­aged to reach this “ide­al” – in the media space, the oppo­si­tion man­aged to keep that bridge­head of free­dom. This is our com­mon cred­it.

Do you regret leav­ing behind the polit­i­cal life?

In my 70 years, look­ing back at the life I lived, I only regret that we did not man­age to estab­lish and real­ize vic­to­ri­ous­ly the idea of a demo­c­ra­t­ic Belarus. That idea was fair­ly wide­ly spread out in the soci­ety after Belarus gained sov­er­eign­ty.  The debate as to why that idea did not come to fruition con­tin­ues to this day: why we didn’t man­age, or was there a real chance?

I think that there was a real chance but we lost it. We did not under­stand how to mobi­lize all the resources that alter­na­tive had. By the way, all this time to this day, all these twen­ty years after the fail­ure, this sit­u­a­tion has not been prop­er­ly analysed. Nei­ther by the polit­i­cal oppo­si­tion nor by ana­lysts.

And what we did not man­age to do, we left to our chil­dren – they will have to fin­ish it. And for this, I feel a sense of guilt. My daugh­ter is com­fort­ing me though: “Your gen­er­a­tion did all it could, with all the faults, you cre­at­ed a foun­da­tion for a new, and this time vic­to­ri­ous, attempt for a demo­c­ra­t­ic reform.”

What Awards are Given For

I am very impressed by your report­ed, Zmitser Halko, who wan­dered around Ukraine and wrote a series of excel­lent mate­ri­als. Were you wor­ried about him?

I was wor­ried, and we con­tin­ue to be wor­ried. That was his choice, his deci­sion – I have no right to send a reporter to a front­line of a war, take that kind of risk. We helped him as much as we could. First it was Maid­an. And after that, the hot path­ways of war. His reports and fea­ture sto­ries are very tal­ent­ed and sin­cere. I would com­pare them with the war reports by Hem­ing­way or Saint-Exu­pery. It is that lev­el of mak­ing sense, that same anti-war inten­si­ty – not a the­atri­cal pathos, but lived through, shown through the suf­fer­ing of the sto­ries’ pro­tag­o­nists.

That is our luck that we have such a reporter. But I would pre­fer that there were few­er such oppor­tu­ni­ties to dis­cov­er tal­ents.

You gave Zmitser a very high mark, and so did the read­ers. Did he suc­cumb to a star dis­ease? Was the team shak­en that one of its mem­bers reach so much high­er than oth­ers?

No, nei­ther star dis­ease nor jeal­ousy were observed. He returned, and went back to Ukraine, today he is at Mar­i­upol. I admit that it is not easy for a chief edi­tor to man­age a reporter like that: the paper may have one need, and the reporter — anoth­er. You have to adjust. You can­not stop such impuls­es, he will do it any­way, as he thinks of it, so it is bet­ter to find a com­pro­mise.

Our team has many var­i­ous types but all cor­rect­ly under­stand Zmitser’s “spe­cial sched­ule.” He chose the sub­ject of Ukraine, oth­ers chose oth­er sub­jects, and in their themes they are not any less tal­ent­ed.

You speak so high­ly of every mem­ber of your team – every­one is tal­ent­ed, and every­one is wor­thy of respect. In your life, did you expe­ri­ence much praise?

I can­not recall that I have been rep­ri­mand­ed for much. Praise, I sup­pose yes, I got. At school I got praise for his­to­ry and lit­er­a­ture, but not for maths. Mil­i­tary ser­vice I took as a neces­si­ty. Offi­cers were per­suad­ing me to join a pro­fes­sion­al mil­i­tary school but I knew firm­ly that orders and me in uni­form – that could not go togeth­er.

You fin­ished the army ser­vice in the rank of sergeant?

Actu­al­ly, lieu­tenant.  I served in the Sovi­et con­tin­gent in East­ern Ger­many , from 1964 till 1967, three years. There was that tra­di­tion in that con­tin­gent that men with 10 years of school­ing dur­ing their third year of ser­vice received two months of spe­cial train­ing and were dis­charged with a lieu­tenant rank.

I served in the tank corps, on the then very advanced T‑62 tanks. After Ger­many was reunit­ed, I watched on TV how those tanks were being trans­port­ed back to USSR, for scrap met­al – such enor­mous quan­ti­ty of them was there in the for­mer social­ist block.

I do admit, I am guilty of being a “storm troop­er” when it comes to dead­lines. I fin­ished my PhD the­sis at the last moment, and always, at the last moment before the dead­line, I fin­ish my arti­cles. I often got blamed for that, but the prod­uct seems to have always turned out well enough.

Do you have jour­nal­is­tic awards?

Yes. In 2008 I received the Knight Inter­na­tion­al award, named after an Amer­i­can jour­nal­ist by that name. This is a per­son­al award. And our news­pa­per received the Zeit Award in 2009. Such is the unique­ness of the Belaru­sian inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ism – we receive inter­na­tion­al awards for resis­tance to author­i­tar­i­an­ism, to repres­sions, so to speak, for jour­nal­ism under harsh con­di­tions. I would wish that the sit­u­a­tion changed and we had a com­pe­ti­tion of tal­ents and received awards for qual­i­ty jour­nal­ism in nor­mal con­di­tions.

The most amaz­ing, the bright­est thing that hap­pened in my life is this free­dom of self real­iza­tion and an attempt to a polit­i­cal trans­for­ma­tion of Belarus. I con­sid­er that a great hap­pi­ness that his­to­ry threw me that chance to break away from a total­i­tar­i­an regime. This  sweet feel­ing of stretch­ing your wings, speak and write what you think. Until 1994 it was in gen­er­al free, and after the total­i­tar­i­an regime was rein­stalled in Belarus, free­dom remained in resis­tance to it, in the inde­pen­dent media, in the Novy Chas. That sweet feel­ing of free word! I feel it at a phys­i­cal lev­el.

P.S.

We end­ed our con­ver­sa­tion on this emo­tion­al civic note – as befits peo­ple who have been tire­less­ly build­ing their long human and pro­fes­sion­al way.

But before say­ing good bye, Ali­ak­sei sud­den­ly smiled:

You know, I was being talked out of becom­ing a jour­nal­ist, and in fact did get talked out, and still, I am here!

It turned out that he start­ed writ­ing to a dis­trict news­pa­per when he was still a school­boy, and after grad­u­at­ing from high school was not sure – his­to­ry or jour­nal­ism? And so an  expe­ri­enced writer of the dis­trict paper sin­cere­ly advised: “Stop this jour­nal­ism non­sense. Go and get a nor­mal pro­fes­sion, and if it real­ly gets to you, you can always find a job at a news­pa­per with any edu­ca­tion. But if you get a jour­nal­ism major, you will not get any oth­er job!”

Such is our pro­fes­sion­al secret.

^1. Sur­name Karol trans­lates from Belaru­sian as King. Among the Belaru­sian jour­nal­ists, Mr Karol’s sur­name also became his affec­tion­ate nick­name, for the qual­i­ties lat­er described in this inter­view.

^2. Zgo­da was a news­pa­per cre­at­ed by Mr Karol in 1992. Its name trans­lates from Belaru­sian as Con­cord

^3. Novy Chas is the sec­ond news­pa­per cre­at­ed by Mr Karol and the one he head­ed at the time of this inter­view and till his death in Sep­tem­ber 2015. Novy Chas trans­lates from Belaru­sian and The New Times