site.btaBelarusian Writer: Authoritarian Regimes' Propaganda Aims to Erase Line Between Good and Evil

The goal of propaganda by authoritarian regimes and their distortion of history is to make people lose any sense of distinction between good and evil, a Belarusian writer and investigative journalist Svetlana Alexievich told BTA. She was speaking on Monday from Geneva, where she took part in a discussion alongside the UN Human Rights Council’s Special Rapporteur on the situation in Russia, Mariana Katzarova, who presented a new report on the human rights situation in Russia.

Alexievich, Nobel literature laureate in 2015, said that the authorities pursue two main objectives: first, to neutralize the thinking individuals who could influence others, and second, to impose false ideas on the collective consciousness, ideas the regime itself desires. “An authoritarian regime always seeks to preserve itself,” Alexievich noted. Her works are banned from being included in the school curriculum in Russia. 

Alexievich said that a German journalist had recently told her how, while in Russia, he watched state television for several days and physically felt how his mind was being brainwashed. She noted that recent media analyses of Joseph Goebbels’ wartime narrative and that of Russian propagandists today have revealed striking similarities.

According to Alexievich, fascism is emerging and spreading in Russian and Belarusian society. “I have said it before, and I will repeat it: we are dealing with fascism, fascism that is making its way into our society,” she underlined.

Alexievich said that fascism in Belarus began to take shape even before the 2020 protests against the re-election of President Alexander Lukashenko. “At that time, I saw how the authorities in Belarus trained special police units to fight against their own people. We were still living with the illusion of a nascent democracy, while the authorities were already preparing to defend themselves,” she pointed out. 

Alexievich drew attention to the Russian authorities’ treatment of Ukrainian prisoners of war, describing the condition of those released from custody as “horrifying.”

The discussion accompanying the presentation of the human rights report on Russia addressed a number of disturbing facts and trends concerning the repression of civil society and the distortion of history against the backdrop of the war in Ukraine.

Alongside Alexievich, another prominent writer, Russian author Boris Akunin, also took part in the event. Earlier this year, Akunin, who currently lives in exile in London, was sentenced in absentia in Russia to 14 years in prison on “terrorism” charges over his outspoken opposition to the war in Ukraine.

The conversation also featured Russian journalist Alsu Kurmasheva of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s Tatar-Bashkir service, who was a political prisoner in Russia before being released as part of a landmark prisoner swap with the United States in August last year. Taking part in the discussion also was Ukrainian journalist Vladyslav Yesypenko, who returned to his homeland in June in a prisoner exchange between Moscow and Kyiv after being held for more than four years on the Russian-annexed Crimean peninsula.