Viktar Marchuk: “Digital technology can replace paper, but nothing can replace trust.”

This inter­view is part of the col­lec­tion “Voice of the Free­dom Gen­er­a­tion”, a liv­ing tes­ti­mo­ny to the cre­ative and civic pres­ence of those who have not lost their voice even in exile.

Vik­tar Marchuk. Pho­to: from per­son­al archive

The col­lec­tion tells the sto­ry of the lau­re­ates of the “Voice of the Free­dom Gen­er­a­tion” award, found­ed by the Belaru­sian PEN in part­ner­ship with the Human Rights Cen­ter “Vias­na”, the Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists, Press Club Belarus and Free Press for East­ern Europe endow­ment fund. The col­lec­tion will be pre­sent­ed on Novem­ber 15, 2025 at 5:00 PM dur­ing a dis­cus­sion with the lau­re­ates of the “Voice of the Free­dom Gen­er­a­tion” award at the Euro­pean Sol­i­dar­i­ty Cen­ter (Europe­jskie Cen­trum Sol­i­darnoś­ci, Gdańsk, pl. Sol­i­darnoś­ci 1).

I’d go down Dzerzhinsky Avenue and then turn onto Lenin Street, and just behind it, I’d find the Communist Street

You are an archi­tect by more than just edu­ca­tion. You have sev­en­teen years of expe­ri­ence in the pro­fes­sion. Did archi­tec­ture in Sovi­et Brest mir­ror ide­ol­o­gy? Or was the city sim­ply con­struct­ed “from con­crete and brick”?

Noth­ing in the Sovi­et Union was built with­out ide­ol­o­gy. Every­thing had this impli­ca­tion.

But what did it look like? Peo­ple would walk along the streets and see street names such as Lenin, Com­mu­nist, Dzerzhin­sky, Kalin­in,[1] Gorky, and oth­ers. But are the build­ings them­selves and their lay­out also a pro­jec­tion of Sovi­etism?

Both: some things are not sim­ple or straight­for­ward. On the one hand, there were names and sym­bols for­eign to locals. On the oth­er hand, the design­ers’ love and patri­o­tism saved the city. After all, Brest had its own archi­tec­tur­al school sprout­ing from the Civ­il Engi­neer­ing Insti­tute. We were proud of our depart­ment. Some of its grad­u­ates’ works were even fea­tured in the mag­a­zine Arkhitek­tu­ra SSSR. For exam­ple, Brest boast­ed an air­port that received a Union award and an ath­let­ics are­na. Our lumi­nar­ies — Valer Kiske­vich, Mikalai Pushk­ou, and oth­ers — have won inter­na­tion­al com­pe­ti­tions. Includ­ing in Japan. There’s no deny­ing that this is a great suc­cess for a provin­cial town.

Still, did the city gar­ner admi­ra­tion or come across as monot­o­nous and uno­rig­i­nal?

There was basi­cal­ly no vari­ety in hous­ing: pre­fabs, brick build­ings, and stan­dard designs. For me, as some­one born and raised here, Brest has nev­er been unin­ter­est­ing or face­less. I’m in love with it. Judg­ing pro­fes­sion­al­ly, how­ev­er, the archi­tec­ture indeed bore the imprint of the Sovi­et era. It’s impos­si­ble to make progress if you’re restrict­ed by the mate­ri­als and tech­nol­o­gy avail­able to you. Some­thing func­tion­al and some­what beau­ti­ful had to be made out of bricks and pan­els.

Did you com­pare Brest to the neigh­bor­ing Pol­ish cities across the riv­er and the for­est?

It’s hard to believe now, but dur­ing the Sovi­et era, I only vis­it­ed Tere­spol and Biała Pod­las­ka once. I didn’t see much dif­fer­ence. Brest was not infe­ri­or. How­ev­er, Poland has made sig­nif­i­cant progress over the past thir­ty years. If you com­pare today’s War­saw with Brest or even Min­sk, the dif­fer­ence is strik­ing — and notice­able not only to experts but also to ordi­nary peo­ple.

Even though the sit­u­a­tion with mate­ri­als and facil­i­ties has start­ed to improve, and there’s already an estab­lished local school of archi­tec­ture… what’s the catch then?

It is the sys­tem built on cre­ative fears, lim­it­ed ini­tia­tive, and com­pre­hen­sive gov­ern­ment con­trol. How­ev­er, when pri­vate devel­op­ers are involved, more orig­i­nal and bold projects tend to emerge. In gen­er­al, how­ev­er, many new build­ings today are not much dif­fer­ent from Sovi­et-era hous­ing. Yes, glass office build­ings have start­ed to appear, but Warsaw’s city cen­ter has been ele­gant­ly lined with them for a long time.

Did you want to achieve some­thing ground­break­ing back in the late ‘80s?

Of course. But the sys­tem was sup­press­ing us. There was a spe­cif­ic Sovi­et canon. Many projects were reject­ed as too expen­sive or impos­si­ble. That’s why I changed pro­fes­sions. I real­ized there were few oppor­tu­ni­ties, but life in the city was chang­ing and mov­ing for­ward. Many of my col­leagues have also left gov­ern­ment orga­ni­za­tions and set up pri­vate stu­dios. We all lived in hope that the lim­i­ta­tions of the Sovi­et sys­tem would soon dis­ap­pear, allow­ing us to build what­ev­er we deemed nec­es­sary.

Let’s talk about Brest more broad­ly, includ­ing its rep­u­ta­tion for memo­ri­als and mon­u­ments, as well as the recon­struc­tion of its city cen­ter. Did ide­ol­o­gy play a sig­nif­i­cant role here, too?

Absolute­ly. Today, the Sovet­skaya pedes­tri­an street is almost entire­ly ren­o­vat­ed. Old build­ings and hous­es were destroyed, includ­ing some very old, quaint mon­u­ments.

There was a sto­ry about a Brest res­i­dent who refused to be evict­ed from a pri­va­tized build­ing in the city cen­ter. He wasn’t afraid of any­one. “My house is my fortress!” Court hear­ings fol­lowed. The author­i­ties promised to pre­serve the authen­tic walls. As a result, the house was destroyed, and a new hotel was built in its place. No one was going to keep the promise to rebuild what had been demol­ished. This is how the entire Sovet­skaya Street was destroyed. Ide­o­log­i­cal new-builds replaced his­to­ry. A cen­turies-old mem­o­ry was destroyed for the sake of cheap beau­ty and forgery.

Vik­tar Marchuk. Pho­to: from per­son­al archive

What about the law, build­ings of his­tor­i­cal and archi­tec­tur­al mer­it?

The law? Who­ev­er con­trols Themis has rights. State pro­tec­tion doc­u­ments were mean­ing­less — every­thing was destroyed and replaced by new build­ings. But here’s some­thing inter­est­ing: Rus­sians who come to Brest are impressed by this new image. That’s the sto­ry.

What about the famous mon­u­ment ded­i­cat­ed to Brest’s mil­len­ni­um cel­e­bra­tion? It fea­tures columns with bas-relief and stat­ue pan­els, as well as an angel at the top. It seems like a beau­ti­ful idea, but the result is…

Ali­ak­san­dr Palyshenkau led the city exec­u­tive com­mit­tee at that time. He was deter­mined to leave his mark on his­to­ry. And he did. Ten years before the anniver­sary cel­e­bra­tion, con­struc­tion of the mon­u­ment began. A sit­u­a­tion sim­i­lar to today’s debates about who to com­mem­o­rate in the Belaru­sian pan­theon and who to exclude occurred. Rough­ly, Charhinets[2] vs Bykau.[3] Con­se­quent­ly, some promis­ing char­ac­ters who could have been includ­ed in the mon­u­ment were sim­ply removed for some ide­o­log­i­cal rea­sons. I know for sure there were more poten­tial fig­ures in the ini­tial ver­sion than in the final ver­sion. If I am not mis­tak­en, at least two peo­ple did not pass the selec­tion process: Priest Athana­sius of Brest and Jagiel­lo, the Grand Duke of Lithua­nia and King of Poland, who grant­ed the city Magde­burg rights. As a result, Vytau­tas the Great is fea­tured, but Jagiel­lo is not. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, I can’t remem­ber exact­ly which oth­er wor­thy his­tor­i­cal fig­ures were dis­cussed.

And the mon­u­ment itself proved con­tro­ver­sial.

The height was cal­cu­lat­ed rel­a­tive to the sur­round­ing build­ings, which made sense. The build­ing does not dom­i­nate the space. But they made many mis­takes. It was built hur­ried­ly. The monument’s design has under­gone many revi­sions. Their goal was to have it ready in time for the City Day cel­e­bra­tion on July 28, 2009. As a result, more than 70 errors were made on the twelve bas-reliefs fea­tur­ing Belaru­sian text. The let­ter “ў” was sim­ply ignored. We wrote about it in our news­pa­per. It got to the point where Palyshenkau’s name was engraved in a hid­den spot — and with a mis­take. As they joked then, with a “messtake”. He craved fame, and he found it in the most absurd way imag­in­able. The open­ing looked some­what far­ci­cal. Sev­er­al months after this loud cel­e­bra­tion, mis­takes were cor­rect­ed.

I had some experience. But the main thing was that I had no fear

At some point, you left archi­tec­ture to pur­sue a career in jour­nal­ism. After spend­ing sev­en­teen years build­ing hous­es, you start­ed design­ing pages and texts. What made you take this step? Was it dis­ap­point­ment in the pro­fes­sion? Or did you real­ize that the coun­try needs a dif­fer­ent build­ing mate­r­i­al — infor­ma­tion?

I have no regrets regard­ing my cho­sen pro­fes­sion. I was young and full of ener­gy. How­ev­er, the Sovi­et dull­ness and stag­na­tion weighed me down. I want­ed to breathe more freely and do what I thought was nec­es­sary. I left archi­tec­ture to work in a small busi­ness for a while. Then I real­ized: I have my own thoughts and vision, so I must speak out. Oth­er­wise, what kind of free per­son am I? By that time, the inde­pen­dent news­pa­per Brest­sky Kuri­er had already been estab­lished in Brest. My long­time col­league from Zhil­pro­jekt, Mikhail Yanchuk, also found his place in it. He wrote an author’s col­umn once a week. I was cap­ti­vat­ed by this expe­ri­ence. I tried fol­low­ing the same path, and it worked the first time. That’s how my new life began. I thought it was for a while, but I was wrong. How­ev­er, I don’t regret it.

What drew you to jour­nal­ism?

To me, it seemed very sim­i­lar to archi­tec­ture. A cre­ative ele­ment is present here, too, and it is equal­ly impor­tant to have struc­ture and clear log­ic. Like a build­ing, a text must have a foun­da­tion, struc­ture, and shape. There­fore, the tran­si­tion did not feel like a break to me. On the con­trary, I felt like I belonged there.

But you left Brest­sky Kuri­er. Why? Was it a con­flict of con­cepts, frus­tra­tion with the team, or an ambi­tious desire to cre­ate some­thing on your own?

I can blame the dis­ap­point­ment on this. The team was tal­ent­ed and had great poten­tial. I wrote texts and did lay­out work. I even tried my hand at being an exec­u­tive sec­re­tary for a while. But the way the work was orga­nized was com­plete­ly unsat­is­fac­to­ry. I put for­ward a set of reforms, but received no sup­port at all. The fer­vor had waned, the poten­tial had been used up. That’s when I decid­ed to start my own project. I would be my own com­man­der and chief of staff.

And you also would have to write, shoot, and edit on your own. Brest is not Min­sk, which has many jour­nal­ism grad­u­ates. Where did you look for peo­ple? How did you find the resources?

Brest had its own tal­ents — the free­lance writ­ers who pub­lished in Kuri­er, and young peo­ple who were already try­ing their hand at writ­ing and begin­ning to spread their wings. Addi­tion­al­ly, a jour­nal­ism fac­ul­ty was estab­lished at the Ped­a­gog­i­cal Insti­tute in the ear­ly 2000s. As for my orga­ni­za­tion­al skills, I was once the chair­man of the trade union com­mit­tee at Zhil­pro­jekt, which had over a hun­dred employ­ees at the time. So I had some expe­ri­ence. But the main thing was that I had no fear.

Vik­tar Marchuk. Pho­to: from per­son­al archive

At that time, there was already intense com­pe­ti­tion in Brest from news­pa­pers such as Zarya, Kuri­er, Vech­erny Brest, and oth­ers, with a read­er­ship den­si­ty that might even have exceed­ed that of the cap­i­tal. The edi­to­r­i­al offices were home to a mul­ti­tude of renowned jour­nal­ists. Did this affect your zeal? Did you feel sup­port­ed by the “celebri­ties”?

I didn’t expect any help. The main obsta­cle is not gath­er­ing peo­ple, but reg­is­ter­ing a news­pa­per. To accom­plish this, it was nec­es­sary to obtain per­mis­sion from the local author­i­ties. The offi­cials answered, “We already have enough pub­li­ca­tions. Why would we need some­thing else?” It was an almost insur­mount­able obsta­cle. Incred­i­bly, we man­aged to get through it.

Were the rela­tion­ships between pub­li­ca­tions of the “Brest State News­pa­per Empire” also impe­ri­al­ist? Was the main goal to cap­ture as many read­ers and adver­tis­ers as pos­si­ble?

By that time, the state’s monop­oly on infor­ma­tion was no longer ster­ile. There were two pri­vate news­pa­pers, the Kuri­er and the Vechy­or­ka, though the lat­ter was par­tial­ly state-owned. How­ev­er, there was no sup­port from them, nor could there have been. A sim­i­lar phe­nom­e­non occurred in the media busi­ness, as in archi­tec­ture, with many edi­tors-in-chief tran­si­tion­ing from gov­ern­ment pub­li­ca­tions, par­tic­u­lar­ly Zarya. A gen­er­al sen­ti­ment of change in times pre­vailed, accom­pa­nied by a grow­ing sense of free­dom and an increased poten­tial for self-real­iza­tion. I wasn’t alone in this move­ment; I just got start­ed a lit­tle late.

To catch up, I had to study Press Law, draft the char­ter, and write all the doc­u­ments myself. We need­ed mon­ey, so we attract­ed co-founders. We were also lucky to get an essen­tial offi­cial doc­u­ment say­ing, “The Brest City Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee does not object.” It was a key cer­tifi­cate. I brought it to the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion in Min­sk. To be hon­est, I esti­mat­ed the chances of reg­is­tra­tion at fifty-fifty. But they reg­is­tered it! This was the first reg­is­tra­tion of a socio-polit­i­cal inde­pen­dent pub­li­ca­tion in many years before that, by the way.

What a spe­cial day!

Absolute­ly. Upon my return to Brest with the cer­tifi­cate, the city exec­u­tive com­mit­tee was tak­en aback: no one had antic­i­pat­ed it. This is how we start­ed the pub­li­ca­tion.

The first issue was pub­lished on Novem­ber 18, 2002. Do you remem­ber how it was received?

Com­pe­ti­tion was intense: Vechy­or­ka sold 40,000 copies, Kuri­er 17,000, and Zarya just under 30,000. And we start­ed with just 2,000.

Our orders were print­ed on an anti­quat­ed machine that couldn’t even bind 12 pages. I spent hours at the print­ing house before tak­ing every­thing to the edi­to­r­i­al office, where we fold­ed the news­pa­per by hand. The print­ing work­ers would make a “cuck­oo” sign. “You’ll lose mon­ey in two or three months, and then you’ll run away. End of sto­ry.” But we per­se­vered.

So, there was some kind of con­cep­tu­al idea that set the Brest­skaya Gaze­ta apart from the rest?

The idea is straight­for­ward: to write hon­est­ly and con­cise­ly. We pro­vid­ed cov­er­age of events as they unfold­ed. The oth­er pub­li­ca­tions had a fair­ly flex­i­ble back­bone, tra­di­tion­al­ly look­ing to see which way the wind was blow­ing. We relied on integri­ty.

How did you orga­nize the work?

The team was small, with about five staff mem­bers and sev­er­al free­lancers. There were only two com­put­ers: one for lay­out and one for typ­ing. Our first office was locat­ed in a hotel. I deliv­ered news­pa­pers around the city myself.

How­ev­er, Brest had a strong dis­tri­b­u­tion net­work. Was it help­ful in any way?

That’s right, and this is a sig­nif­i­cant advan­tage: At that time, more than 50 pri­vate dis­trib­u­tors were sell­ing the press. Essen­tial­ly, it’s a com­mer­cial sys­tem. Some sold 400–500 copies and made good mon­ey. Like in a scene from a film, peo­ple stood at street cor­ners shout­ing out the day’s front-page head­lines. On Shevchenko and Masherov Boule­vards, for exam­ple. Dur­ing traf­fic jams, they ran between cars, sell­ing the press through the win­dows. It was a live­ly mar­ket. Oth­er cities lacked some­thing like that. We lived off it.

Vik­tar Marchuk. Pho­to: from per­son­al archive

The buy­ers weren’t keen on pay­ing for a new, unfa­mil­iar news­pa­per, were they?

That’s right. The dis­trib­u­tors would come to the print­ing house them­selves to col­lect Vechy­or­ka and Kuri­er. This was not the case for our news­pa­per. I had to beg them to take it for sale. Not every­one agreed. Grad­u­al­ly, how­ev­er, Brest­skaya Gaze­ta became pop­u­lar.

When a dis­trib­u­tor sold 500 copies of Vechy­or­ka in an evening, and only a dozen of yours, didn’t it feel dis­cour­ag­ing? Didn’t you feel a bit tight-fist­ed? Didn’t you ever want to throw away your pen and give up?

No. On the con­trary, it moti­vat­ed me. I thought, “If they can sell that much, then we can too.” Yes, it was hard at times — moments of weak­ness crept in, but I pushed away those fool­ish thoughts. There was a stronger desire to keep going and reach the fin­ish line.

 Let’s go to the square, feed the pigeons!

It’s real­ly like in the army — three-kilo­me­ter run, and whether you can or not, you go for­ward with the whole com­pa­ny! But what about the soul of the news­pa­per itself? What was the atmos­phere like in the edi­to­r­i­al office, and how did it inter­act with the city?

We relied on courage and hon­esty, which lift­ed our spir­its and gave us the brav­ery to be fear­less. We tack­led hot top­ics and didn’t shy away from trou­ble. And the read­ers felt it.

The bat­tery fac­to­ry[4] — a haz­ardous indus­try, your jour­nal­is­tic mis­sion, and the birth­place of Brest’s civ­il soci­ety. Am I cap­tur­ing the essence of that moment cor­rect­ly?

Absolute­ly. Kuri­er was no longer there, and Vechy­or­ka was avoid­ing the top­ic, but we brought it up. The edi­to­r­i­al office has become a meet­ing place for the action group. We orga­nized live streams. Ali­ak­san­dr Kabanau’s[5] famous phrase was first said in the edi­to­r­i­al office: “I’m going to the square to feed the pigeons.” That’s how it all start­ed. Ini­tial­ly, few peo­ple respond­ed to the call. In fact, there were more police offi­cers than par­tic­i­pants. But the protest grad­u­al­ly grew in size.

Then, about 40,000 sig­na­tures oppos­ing the con­struc­tion of the plant were col­lect­ed. For a city of 300,000 peo­ple, that’s impres­sive. What moti­vat­ed you more: the fear of lead pol­lu­tion or the feel­ing of being exclud­ed from the deci­sion-mak­ing process?

Peo­ple were not afraid of repres­sion; they were con­cerned about their children’s health, clean water, and air qual­i­ty. It was gen­uine sol­i­dar­i­ty — firm, imbued with a high sense of civic duty and human dig­ni­ty. I believe the bat­tle over the bat­tery fac­to­ry has become the pro­logue to 2020. The com­mu­ni­ty has dis­cov­ered its own pow­er. It also gave rise to new lead­ers who appeared out of nowhere but knew how to explain com­plex things in sim­ple terms.

The plant was even­tu­al­ly built, though. Is it a defeat or some­thing else?

Soci­ety did not lose, nei­ther in the case of the harm­ful indus­try, nor in the events of 2020. We have gained expe­ri­ence in asso­ci­a­tion, sol­i­dar­i­ty, and joint strug­gle against what peo­ple find unac­cept­able. It won’t go away, even under today’s intense pres­sure. It will sur­vive the chal­leng­ing times. It will have its say.

The author­i­ties do have tools to over­come civ­il resis­tance. How­ev­er, the mere occur­rence of this event — the fact that Brest res­i­dents unit­ed and said “no” — can be con­sid­ered a mile­stone in the devel­op­ment of a civ­il soci­ety.

Absolute­ly. It’s impos­si­ble to win every­thing at once. It’s a process. The expe­ri­ence itself has already become valu­able. It doesn’t appear right away; it devel­ops over time through tri­al and error.

Vik­tar Marchuk. Pho­to: from per­son­al archive

Let me tell you my ver­sion of the sto­ry. It began ear­li­er, back in 2016, when entre­pre­neurs rebelled against Decree No. 222, which par­a­lyzed their work. At that time, Brest was the site of mas­sive protests, which were per­haps the largest in the coun­try. Were these protests dri­ven by mer­can­til­ism, a strug­gle sole­ly for one’s own inter­ests? Or was it a sign of a more pro­found social shift and the growth of self-aware­ness?

I guess the lat­ter. The cit­i­zens of Brest have always been more free­dom-lov­ing and inde­pen­dent. And in this sense, our city is very sim­i­lar to Min­sk.

It turns out that the entre­pre­neurs’ protests and the sub­se­quent strug­gle against the bat­tery fac­to­ry are part of the same whole. This marks the birth of an active civ­il soci­ety. Could Poland’s prox­im­i­ty have played a role? We went there, wit­nessed life on the oth­er side of the bor­der, and won­dered, “Why am I worse off?”

Yes, the prox­im­i­ty to the bor­der and the oppor­tu­ni­ties it offers are essen­tial. We had a small gate­way to Europe, allow­ing us to wit­ness first­hand how rapid­ly and pos­i­tive­ly the neigh­bor­ing coun­try was evolv­ing and leav­ing us behind. How­ev­er, not every­one per­ceived it the same way. Some­one just made a trade and was sat­is­fied with the out­come. Still, most of us still want­ed our home­land to resem­ble Poland. This explains why the protests in Brest and Hrod­na were so active.

Along­side the Euro­pean wave of change, inde­pen­dent media also played a cru­cial role. A robust jour­nal­ism school emerged in Brest in the ear­ly 2000s, and it was the media that sparked the surge in civ­il unrest.

Indeed. The towns­peo­ple felt more like a com­mu­ni­ty thanks to inde­pen­dent news­pa­pers. We have always sup­port­ed ini­tia­tives pro­posed by our read­ers. We pro­vid­ed a plat­form when they came with inter­est­ing offers: round­table dis­cus­sions, live streams. That’s why we were seen as part of the civ­il process. After the author­i­ties shut down the news­pa­per, peo­ple called and asked, “When will you resume pub­lish­ing?” for sev­er­al more months. It was a sign of trust.

The region­al press is often seen as the sec­ond tier com­pared to the met­ro­pol­i­tan press. Per­haps the regions enjoyed more air and free­dom, as well as more risk?

That’s right. This explains why there are so many arrests and instances of per­se­cu­tion in media-rich cities like Brest, Baranavichy, Hantsavichy, and Hrod­na today. Peo­ple trust­ed their own pub­li­ca­tions more than the offi­cial nation­al ones. We pro­vid­ed the audi­ence with truth­ful infor­ma­tion, and they sup­port­ed us in return. Not only finan­cial­ly. The res­i­dents of Brest’s love and devo­tion warmed my soul.

Gather your strength, rise, and start again from zero to thousands of readers

Final­ly, we get to you cross­ing the bor­der. You had to start over after the ban on print­ing, search­es, and equip­ment seizures. How did a new edi­to­r­i­al team emerge in exile from the ruins?

We have indeed built our­selves from the ground up twice: the first time in 2002, and the sec­ond time in 2021. We left with noth­ing but the web­site and social media accounts. How­ev­er, we received sig­nif­i­cant sup­port, which enabled us to rebuild our team and resume our work. I am proud to say that today, we have reached a much high­er lev­el than in Belarus. We now have numer­ous sites, not just one. Life has forced us to stay up to date and flex­i­ble with mul­ti­me­dia.

Go ahead and brag about the facts and fig­ures!

In addi­tion to our web­site, we have ten social media accounts. Today, we have about 780,000 sub­scribers and 30–42 mil­lion view­ers each month. Five years ago, fig­ures like these were unimag­in­able. This is the result of our expan­sion into dif­fer­ent chan­nels. After all, expe­ri­ence has shown that the site is vul­ner­a­ble. It has been blocked sev­er­al times a week, and our domain name has even been tak­en away. I had to trans­fer every­thing to a Euro­pean host­ing ser­vice and con­stant­ly cre­ate new mir­ror sites.

Vik­tar Marchuk. Pho­to: from per­son­al archive

It sure­ly demand­ed retrain­ing both per­son­al­ly and as a team. Was that too much to han­dle? Espe­cial­ly for a chief edi­tor who isn’t in his twen­ties. Where do you source the ener­gy to keep the team going?

Spe­cif­ic tech­ni­cal details are the respon­si­bil­i­ty of oth­er col­leagues. But I also learned a lot of new things. I learned to rollerblade at 55 in Belarus. Then, at 62 and in exile, I learned to edit videos. By the time I was 65, I had even cre­at­ed a video with my avatar gen­er­at­ed by arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence. That’s okay. With lim­it­ed human and mate­r­i­al resources, you have to teach your­self new things.

What keeps you in this pro­fes­sion?

Prob­a­bly the habit of being abreast of events. This job is great because it keeps me busy, men­tal­ly stim­u­lat­ing, and phys­i­cal­ly active. My job is real­ly sat­is­fy­ing, so I’m not grow­ing tired of it. Even if you have to work 12 or even 16 hours a day, this rhythm has become a part of life. I can’t do it any oth­er way. Why not, as long as my health allows? A worka­holic is incur­able.

You could be a retired man on vaca­tion. What moti­vates you to keep up this pace?

Exact­ly: I could have been retired. How­ev­er, I was forced to leave the coun­try a few months before I could legal­ly apply for retire­ment ben­e­fits. So I also have per­son­al scores to set­tle with today’s Belaru­sian author­i­ties. I hope to demand what’s mine at the right time.

While it is essen­tial, it is not the pri­ma­ry moti­va­tor. More sig­nif­i­cant is anoth­er thing: I see that many thou­sands of peo­ple con­tin­ue to read, watch, and react to our texts and videos. So they still need us.

There­fore, I want to see them face-to-face, not just through a screen. My dream is for Belarus to become a free and peace­ful Euro­pean coun­try where peo­ple can live with­out suf­fer­ing. And as long as I can, I will work for that real­i­ty.

If some­one were to cre­ate a por­trait of Brest today in col­lab­o­ra­tion with arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, what do you think would be the dom­i­nant theme of that art­work?

Peo­ple who didn’t give up. In 2020, I saw crowds adorned with white-red-white ban­ners. I think the flag bear­ers have remained. They were silenced, yet they didn’t change. The Brest vol­cano has just gone dor­mant. But it will def­i­nite­ly wake up.

Vik­tar Marchuk. Pho­to: from per­son­al archive

Let’s imag­ine that Belarus is free and peace­ful. Poland lift­ed the bar­ri­er, and the light turned green to enter Belarus! What does return­ing home mean to you?

I can’t wait to get back to the place where I was born and spent most of my life. I want to fin­ish my life in my home­land, where my par­ents and broth­er are buried.

I dream of walk­ing down my favorite streets with my grand­chil­dren. I have four of them, and they were all born out­side of Belarus. They have nev­er been to Brest. I real­ly want to show them my beau­ti­ful city and tell them where every­thing was and how we lived. It’s such a sim­ple human desire.

I hope that one day there will be no Lenin Street, Com­mu­nist Street, or Dzerzhin­sky Street. After all, we have our own out­stand­ing and wor­thy per­son­al­i­ties from both the dis­tant past and the present.

Here are three final ques­tions. First, is Brest a city of the future or a rel­ic of the past?

The city of the future, built on the foun­da­tion of a bright past.

Sec­ond, what do you think will guar­an­tee the sur­vival of jour­nal­ism — the tra­di­tion­al print­ed for­mat, the increas­ing­ly dom­i­nant dig­i­tal one, or the trust of your peers and audi­ence?

The trust. If some­one likes a pub­li­ca­tion, they reach out for it today, tomor­row, and the day after tomor­row. With­out emo­tion­al con­tact, there is no audi­ence.

Third, is there still a seed of com­mu­ni­ty left at home that could retake root after the repres­sion?

I’m sure there is. It’s just that the seed is dor­mant now because it’s win­ter. But it will def­i­nite­ly sprout.

The project “Voice of the Free­dom Gen­er­a­tion” is co-financed by the Pol­ish Coop­er­a­tion for Devel­op­ment Pro­gram of the Min­istry of For­eign Affairs of the Repub­lic of Poland. The pub­li­ca­tion reflects exclu­sive­ly the author’s views and can­not be equat­ed with the offi­cial posi­tion of the Min­istry of For­eign Affairs of the Repub­lic of Poland.

[1] Mikhail Kalin­in was a Sovi­et politi­cian and Russ­ian Old Bol­she­vik rev­o­lu­tion­ary who served as the nom­i­nal head of state of the Sovi­et Union from 1919 until his res­ig­na­tion in 1946. 

[2] Mikalai Charhinets is a Belaru­sian politi­cian and writer, repeat­ed­ly crit­i­cized for his pro-gov­ern­ment stance and pro­pa­gan­dis­tic lit­er­ary works. As head of the Pub­lic Moral­i­ty Coun­cil and the Union of Writ­ers of Belarus, he has been asso­ci­at­ed with cen­sor­ship and sup­port for authors loy­al to the Lukashen­ka regime.

[3] Vasil Bykau was a Belaru­sian dis­si­dent and oppo­si­tion politi­cian, junior lieu­tenant, and author of nov­els and novel­las about World War II.

[4] Brest bat­tery plant – a major local envi­ron­men­tal con­flict. Res­i­dents protest­ed week­ly on the main square, pre­tend­ing to feed pigeons to bypass the ban on unau­tho­rized ral­lies. Despite Lukashenka’s unful­filled promise of a ref­er­en­dum, the plant opened in 2021 and announced a pro­longed shut­down with staff cuts in 2025.

[5] Ali­ak­san­dr Kabanau – vlog­ger from Brest, author of the People’s Reporter YouTube chan­nel, and press sec­re­tary for Svi­at­lana Tsikhanouskaya’s nom­i­na­tion group. Before the elec­tion, he was exten­sive­ly cov­er­ing the bat­tery fac­to­ry protests in Brest. Arrest­ed in June 2020, he was sen­tenced to three years in prison for “orga­niz­ing actions that con­sti­tute a severe breach of pub­lic order” and “insult­ing a gov­ern­ment offi­cial.” Released in Decem­ber 2022 after serv­ing the full term with his health severe­ly dete­ri­o­rat­ed, Kabanau left Belarus.