Belarus: The Mistreatment of ‘Paranoia’
A book on paranoia disappeared in Minsk. Two days after it had hit bookshops and internet retailers, it was suddenly “ not available”, with no official explanation given either to the inquiring readers nor the embarrassed sales staff. It is as if the book has never happened. Except, of course, it has, and free electronic versions of the elusive novel are now spawning on the internet.
Paranoia is a novel about love at the times of dictatorship. The love between a man and a woman is described with freshness, subtlety, depth and joy. The background is the dark, sinister world of dictatorship, with their frozen emotions, unspoken truths, and the bizarre understanding of reality so well entrenched in people’s heads that they are unsure which of the thoughts and fears they have are their own and which are planted into their minds by the overbearing political regime.
Formally, the book never mentions Belarus. The dictator is not the president but the secret services minister, and his character is deliberately crafted to differ from the current Belarusian leader. The author opens the novel with a pointed statement that ‘all characters are fictional”. Yet, writing as he is in “reality plus anti-utopia” genre, he cannot help the setting, in which Belarusian capital Minsk is quickly recognisable.
It is easy to see why the Belarusian authorities got tetchy. First, the political regime described in the novel is more dramatic than the country’s current reality. (For example, tn the book, the secret services kill the dissenting youth rather than incarcerating or expelling their activists from universities as it happens in Belarus.) Hence, the novel runs against the message of “changing Belarus” the government is keen to present to Europe and the world outside, to win their trust and investments. Second, the book associates the country with a poignant, worried and lingering feel of a lonely individual, not the happy collectivist atmosphere the authorities are claiming for Belarusian society. Yet, it is not the book but the ban that does the Belarusian authorities disservice.
For a regime that arguably became possible due to a deft crafting of a befitting national ideology, the silent, unexplained prohibition of the “Paranoia” novel is
detrimental. It erodes trust, especially investor trust, that the government is painstakingly and at a great expense to the ailing economy trying to create abroad.
The information about disappearing books, dissenting youth being beaten up by squads of unidentifiable thugs, and of the imposition of discretionary demands on businesses creates a glaring gap with the official governmental pitch. It suggests that the real things in Belarus happen in silence, unpredictably and with no care for an explanation on the part of the authorities. The government’s lack of communication on points of international concern confirms and strengthens this adverse view of the country.
The dearth of common sense and understanding of the borderless reality enabled by the internet and globalisation betrays a sense of paranoia amongst the Belarusian officials themselves. Whilst they have banned books before, this is a first novel that stands of chance of acquiring international mass readership that they had confronted – and dealt with it awkwardly and clumsily. For the regime based on populist national ideology, mistakes in communication are dearer than mishandling of the economy.
Instead of banning the novel, the Belarusian authorities would be much more better off jumping on its bandwagon and celebrating Paranoia. For the first time ever, the country has on offer a cultural product that is timely, interesting and relevant for audiences worldwide.
Paranoia’s strongest point is the poignantly truthful portrayal of the mixed realities and the confused state of mind of people living under a watchful paternalistic state. Unlike under communism, where dissidents could pay a lip service to the political regime while keeping their own understanding of reality to themselves, in the dictatorship-induced paranoia, the individual and social truths mix so well that people lose their judgement, and the fear created by the secret services is multiplied by their own personal phobias so that one does not know where the actual reality begins and ends. The novel puts forward in a convincing and gripping way the argument rarely seen even in political regime literature – that dictatorships are sustained by people themselves, not only secret services and oppressive state apparatus. It demonstrates how real and perceived fears get mixed to stifle liberty and independent judgement, let alone undermine individual action. It implies that regime change begins not at the ballot box but within one’s own mind, a rare and insightful contribution Belarusians can give to the world based on their own experience.
The country’s cultural products are the reflection and consequence of its social and political life. It is only logical that a Belarusian writer has published a book on life under dictatorship. The author is a soft-spoken, quiet intelligent Victor Martinovich, who had previously stricken an improbable position of a journalist critical of the authorities and yet not an outright oppositionist due to his sense of irony; he would much rather be a successful writer than a dissident and does not target the government directly. The authorities’ knee-jerk reaction to ban it, in combination with Martinovich’s compelling prose, is likely to add Paranoia international acclaim and pose new uncomfortable questions for the Belarusian government to face and fend off. The authorities would be much better served if they addressed the novel themselves and communicated their view on it outright, or, even more so, celebrated it as Belarusian contribution to the world. It would leave it at the level of good literature instead of a political cause “Paranoia” has now become.
Natalia Leshchenko, Institute for State Ideologies (INSTID)