Belarusian cultural expert Budkin says officials live in Russian cultural space

By conducting mass dismissals in the cultural field, the Belarusian regime has launched irreversible processes. Head of the Belarusian Council of Culture Siarhey Budkin says that the authorities do not understand and have never understood the role of culture in society:

"For them, it was something they did for fun like singing with Baskau at the Slavonic Bazaar. It was not seen as a kind of nation-forming phenomenon from which everything grows: the values of people, their well-being, their understanding of themselves in this country, and so on. I think it is tragic that the cultural sphere was underestimated from the beginning. This led to problems with education and with the cultural development of people on the whole."

According to Budkin, basically, all the representatives of the regime live in the Russian cultural environment. They can't live in the Belarusian field, because then they wouldn't be able to organize such repressions against their own people. We have a fight on the cultural level.

"While in the past there was at least something instilled through the school curriculum and alternative sources, where teenagers could find information, now it's all scrubbed to zero. Anyone who could talk about any other scenarios, other versions of history as part of the lessons, are either imprisoned or fired. It turns out that the regime has nothing to raise Belarusians on because it is a culture that provides such a foundation for identification.

Who are the people growing up? Who are the people who leave schools and universities now? How do they understand Belarus? What is Belarus? It is something that began with the formation of the BSSR? I think that these people do not even ask such questions because any kind of reflection is inadmissible for the regime.

That's why obedient robots come out of educational institutions -- and that's a big problem. Budkin says that if this drags on, there is a threat to our existence as a nation.

"Anything those people who have left or stayed underground can do in terms of preserving culture is extremely important: even any three-person apartment events. If there are a thousand such apartment events all over Belarus, it will be our response to the total destruction and extermination of everything Belarusian."