Belarusian author Tanya Armimovich: Garden in the head

She writes from the “back edge of the double edge”, explains the author Tanya Armimovich in his recently published “manifesto without a garden”. Even in the “East” there is a hierarchy that determines its past, present and future. Armimovich was born in Minsk in 1984, on the periphery of the Soviet Empire, later studied theater and culture. Meanwhile, she lived in the center, in St. Petersburg, where she worked on theater projects.

But in order to survive there, she would have to come to terms with her pronunciation of the Russian, which the Belarusian influences influenced, she writes in her poetic and combat essay, in which she connected her personal and history of oppression of people in Belarus. “If you want a great future, you must study the language of the empire and leave your province.”

What use is the post -colonial theoretical concepts from the west here, which are binary in white and black, depending on the color of the skin, in the oppressors and depressed? They do not describe the experience of a woman from the periphery (postal) of the Soviet region.

In fact, she is “red”, writes Armimovich. This once meant the Polish playwright of Dorota Masshuska. “We are not white enough, not black enough, we do not have an imperial myth in the back, and the colonial is not interested in anyone,” says “Manifesto without a garden.”

Coronapandemia was a happy time for them, said Armimovich. “I sat in the village in self -reporting and began to plant – shrubs, vegetables. Decorative plants, flowers. ” On the edge of the periphery, to the Belarusian protest, in the summer of 2020, which must change everything, she went on a trip to herself. In a conversation, she explains the pelvis that in the days of paralysis with the help of poor headings of the garden, in a figurative sense or concrete, one can understand the inner human feeling.

From great politics to small and reverse

Archimovich’s voice is calm, but decisive, the view under the screen of her dark short hairstyle is known. Again and again she breaks between her offers. Before she finally says: “The garden can help slow down, find balance so that you can act again later.” For them, the movement passes from great politics to small, personal and vice versa.

While coronapandemia created a feeling of isolation in Western societies, people in Belarus have finally learned about “we,” the author writes. The dictator Lukaschenko denied the virus, said Belarus: inside, vodka and a visit to the sauna will already protect them. Then they noticed that they themselves have to train the network of solidarity in order to survive.

Lukaschenko suffocated after false presidential elections in the summer of 2020 in excessive state authority, which Armimovich describes in detail in his “Manifesto without a garden” with evidence demonstrators: details. In view of this violence, only poetry in various forms, the creative experience of self -efficiency – for what he chooses in her manifesto, the metaphor garden helps. “Imagination is the most important tool for resistance,” she explains TAZ, but the lack of oppressed, without a garden.

Scientists: Protection inside

Today, Armimovich lives in the exile of more and more worse repressions under Lukaschenko. As a doctoral student, she explores the project “Protection of academic circles in risk” at the University of Erfurt, which devotes himself to the problems of pupport scientists: inside Europe, it also concerns this. Again and again you meet here. She does not know, she writes why the Western Marxists are so fascinated by the Soviet Union, which actually had nothing to do with the idea that distributed it.

The residential model “Kommunalka”, which is from the Soviet and partially distributed in post -shaped areas, for example, an apartment separated with many strangers is not “the basis for the social development of the same” as acquaintance with the English language, which once conveyed real socialism to socialism, but constituting from continuous.

The pelvis describes it that she does not consider a classic academician, but considers science as inspiration for her art and activity. This is reflected in her letter. In her kaleidoscopic memories and poetic thoughts about her personal and collective history, she tells a number of references to feminist and political theories, such as the thesis of Donna Kharava, that reality is an active verb. Armimovich, who describes himself in his essay as an “evil woman”, no longer wants others to determine their life – even if it is through its origin from one of the violence to be characterized by an authoritarian state.

Two years after the birth of Armimovich in Chernobyl, the reactor accident occurred, which not only polluted the north of Ukraine, but also in large parts of Belarus. But the Soviet leadership denied the danger.

Silence after disasters

The author reports the silence, which is still in families about this. Chernobyl “did not exist”, as well as repressions against Belarus: inside and other ethnic groups under Stalin.

This is the experience of violence that is passed down from generation to generation, as well as the passivity associated with it. Armimovich describes the fate of the Belarusian poet Larissa Henijush, who was deported and was tortured by Soviets from Czechoslovakia for her political free spirit after the Second World War. In Northern Russia, she survived a cruel warehouse. Her father was shot dead, her mother and sisters were expelled to Kazakhstan.

Henijush’s memoirs, in which she recorded her story, could not be published until 1993. To this day, the Belarusian authorities prohibit their memories. The history of the empire did not end in the collapse of the Soviet Union, Armimovich said in an interview.

On June 21, a long time from Belarus: 14 political prisoners were surprisingly released after visiting the special envoy of the United States Keit Kellogg in Minsk. She is very happy, says Armimovich, because everyone thinks. At the same time, one should not forget that thousands are still caught that the authorities in Belarus are not ready for change. “You could freeze ten, but another fifty. And even this beginning.