NARRATIVE – After her husband’s arrest, the activist ran for the 2020 presidential election “for love”. Starting this Tuesday, she will be tried in absentia for “treason” and “conspiracy”.
“A fate is not a punishment,” wrote Camus. However, Svetlana Tikhanovskaïa’s is like a long Way of the Cross. When this child of the Soviet Union was born one fine day in September 1982, there was nothing to indicate that she would go on to become the muse of a country that carries its communist legacy with it like a ball and chain. Born of humble parents in a medium-sized town in the Soviet Socialist Republic of Belarus, a few tens of kilometers from the Ukrainian border, Svetlana Tikhanovskaïa led a banal and uneventful childhood and adolescence.
However, as of this Tuesday, January 17, she is being tried in absentia on several charges, including “high treason”, “conspiracy to seize power unconstitutionally” and “founding and directing an extremist organization”. The price for daring to take over the reins of the opposition in the last presidential election of 2020.
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Her life changes when she meets Sergei in the early 2000s: she is a student at the Mozyr Pedagogical University and is expected to become a translator and English teacher, he is the owner of a nightclub. It was “love at first sight,” she will say later. After their wedding, Sergei starts on YouTube. He quickly became famous for his videos denouncing the fabulous salaries of Belarusian politicians at a time when President Alexander Lukashenko has ruled with an iron fist since 1994.
A life of sacrifice
In 2020, the loud-mouthed YouTuber decides to go even further. In the presidential election, without any illusions, he faces the man he boldly dubbed “cockroach”. For several weeks, he travels all over Belarus to ask uncomfortable questions. But three months before the election, Sergei Tikhanovski sees his candidacy rejected. He was arrested and sentenced to 18 years in prison for, among other things, “organizing mass riots” and “inciting hatred in society”. “Lukashenko saw him as a threat,” Svetlana Tikhanovskaïa recently told Figaro. Since then she has not seen her husband.
Sergei Tikhanovski during the sentencing hearing in December 2021. Sergei Kholodilin / BELTA / AFP
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“For love,” the young woman then decides to present herself in her place and continue her fight. To everyone’s surprise, his candidacy was accepted. Power probably considered her less dangerous than her husband. “I’m giving up my quiet life for (Sergei), for all of us,” she explained later at one of her last campaign events in Minsk in front of more than 60,000 people. “I’m tired of having to endure everything, I’m tired of being silent, I’m tired of being afraid. I didn’t want to be a politician. But fate decreed that I had to be at the forefront of arbitrariness and injustice.”
I hope that those who are happy to call me a “housewife” and say that I refuse to work understand what they are talking about.
Svetlana Tikhanovskaya from the Svobodnye Novosti Plus newspaper
At that time, the young woman stopped working to take care of her two children, now 12 and 7 years old. She is particularly devoted to her eldest son, who is deaf, and has been scouring rehab clinics for a number of years to help him overcome his disability. “I hope that those who boast about calling me a ‘housewife’ and saying that I refuse to work will realize what they are talking about,” she confided to the newspaper Svobodnye Novosti Plus during the election campaign. in response to those, including Lukashenko herself, who poke fun at her status as a housewife.
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fear in the stomach”
But the autocrat quickly stops smiling at the sight of this “poor little thing”, as he calls it. Because her program is vague, Svetlana Tikhanovskaïa quickly wins the support of Belarusians. First thanks to some popular ideas, such as the release of political prisoners, the development of a constitutional referendum or the organization of new free elections. But also thanks to her charisma and her personality: the population understands that this woman of the people is risking her life to want to defend them.
The candidate gathered huge crowds during the election campaign. Sergei GAPON / AFP
In fact, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya is leading her campaign with horror. She later confessed to receiving numerous messages threatening to throw her in jail or send her children to an orphanage. “I woke up every morning fearing a police search. During that time, I lost contact with the outside world,” she told Czech broadcaster Current Time. In the end, she sends her two children to Lithuania for security reasons.
To continue the fight for her husband
Unsurprisingly, the miracle did not happen on August 9, 2020: Alexander Lukashenko was re-elected with 80.2% of the votes. Svetlana Tikhanovskaïa received only 9.9% of the votes. The candidate had already predicted “shameless fraud” and is therefore claiming victory: “Power must think about how it can delegate power to us. I see myself as a winner.” After this defeat in danger, she quickly fled her homeland and joined her children in Lithuania, where she now lives in exile. But her struggle continues behind her: in the days after the election throws a huge demonstration movement hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets.
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Before the presidential election, the opponent told anyone who would listen that if she lost, she would “go back to her kitchen to cook steaks.” But his fate decreed otherwise. Having become the muse of an unfinished “revolution” against her will, Svetlana Tikhanovskaïa now travels the world to mobilize against the regime of Alexander Lukashenko. But also, as she will say in 2021 to defend her husband, “this man I love and who has become a leader for millions of Belarusians”.
Svetlana Tikhanovskaïa waves a photo of her husband in Prague in June 2021. ROMAN VONDROUS / CTK / POOL / AFP