Quiet Heroes

In memory of a Charter reader.

I want to tell you about a reader. In memory of him and in gratitude. “Daddy tried hard,” his son wrote six years ago, publishing a photo of his father on Facebook. He meant daddy's work. But now we can say in the past tense not only about work: he tried hard.

The readers of the Charter'97 are special people. They (or rather, you) are our co-authors, comrades, co-founders and, of course, our greatest asset. I love reading comments to news and author's columns on the website — these comments often help find a new important topic, inspire and are often more accurate and sharp than the texts themselves.

For many years, one of our most active readers and commentators was a man with the nickname “Mikhail, son of David”. He responded to many articles and always to the point. Well, he is no more. And now we can reveal his incognito and tell about him.

This man's name was Mikhail Malochnikau. In my opinion, he is a legendary figure. He was the CEO of Pressbol CJSC in the nineties. Moreover, he headed it in 1994, already being a successful businessman. In the mid-nineties, a salary of $150 was considered high, while in Malochnikau’s company, employees earned $700. He created jobs, helped those in need, was generous and noble. And in 1997, he was imprisoned.

A different man came out of prison. And it was not that his business was successfully seized. While Mikhail was in prison, his wife Sviatlana, whom he loved madly, fell seriously ill and died. And he himself suffered a stroke and went blind in his left eye. But he did not forgive the regime for his lost years, his lost health, or the opportunities and money that were taken away, but for his wife's death. That was already personal. Not an insult, but a deadly feud.

Then Malochnikau met another woman, who became his second wife and gave birth to a son. The boy was born with a disability. He had difficulty walking, and from early childhood it was clear that he would be home-schooled. And then Mikhail began to teach little Misha chess. The child's world did not shrink to the confines of the apartment, but expanded to infinity, because chess is the Universe.

Mikhail and his wife took their son to a children's sports school, and from the age of six he participated in tournaments. And then he began to win. And he stopped playing with his father, because he beat him with ease.

Malochnikau was a little naive. He was always thinking about how to change the government, and one day, about ten years ago, he decided that the opposition needed to work with the Orthodox Church: if the metropolitan addressed the Belarusians before Easter and called for a strike, then it would certainly begin, and the regime would fall. The fall of the regime was what he was waiting for more than anything else in the world. He didn't live to see it.

He was ill for a long and painful time. The kind state assigned a disability pension of 377 rubles to him. Mikhail desperately fought for his life — he really wanted to live to see the changes. He wrote to me that everyone in his family was long-lived, and thanks to sports he had a strong, resilient heart, and he would live to see the changes, he would definitely live to see them.

The resilient heart stopped a month ago, two weeks before his 65th birthday. There will be no more comments on the Charter from Mikhail, son of David. We have lost a devoted, smart, noble reader who was a hero. Because surviving a stroke in prison and the death of a wife is heroism. Living in Belarus with a disability is heroism. Achieving a full life and victories in tournaments for a child with disabilities is heroism. Believing that you will live to see the changes when you are completely blind and can barely move is heroism.

We don't know many of our heroes — those who live in spite of everything, do the impossible and don't give up. I knew Mikhail and that's why I was able to tell his story. But I have no doubt that each of us has such friends — quiet heroes who fight alone for themselves and their loved ones and are not crushed even after the regime ran over their lives with a tank. And we can only be proud that the Charter has such readers, and Belarus has such citizens. Steadfast, courageous, unaware that they are heroes. Because today, living in Belarus, if you are not a riot policeman, is real heroism.

Iryna Khalip, exclusively for Charter97.org

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