This conversation became an incredible opportunity to learn more about a cause that embodies struggle \u2014 for life, for freedom, for equality and peace. We are all somewhere nearby, yet not truly together. Each person\u2019s role in this fight can become more meaningful if we start to notice and support one another. My interviewee, Tony Lashden, is a queer-fem writer, poet, and activist, and a member of PEN Belarus. I thank Tony for this thoughtful and important dialogue.<\/p>\n
\n
\n
Everyone will leave, And I, like the last fucked-up one, will stay Clutching the switch At the airport with blue fingers<\/p>\n
I’m not going anywhere I’m not going<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
\u2014 Tony Lashden<\/p>\n
\n
Recently, during one of the literary events, you read your poem \u201cEveryone will leave, I will stay.\u201d<\/em> You read it from the heart, as if those distant emotions were still fresh. How did such honest lines come to be?<\/h3>\n
It was 2020. I decided to stay in Minsk. At that time, I was sleeping only about three hours a night because there was so much human rights work to be done. And everyone was saying I had<\/em> to leave. But I stayed in Minsk until the summer of 2021. It was an easy choice in the sense that I simply didn\u2019t want<\/em> to leave. I didn\u2019t want to leave under pressure. That was my protest against a reality in which so many people were forced to abandon their homes. And when it finally became completely impossible to hold on to my life in Minsk, I moved to Kyiv.<\/p>\n\n
Please tell us about the beginning of Tony Lashden\u2019s path as an activist.<\/h3>\n
That\u2019s a good question. I\u2019ll begin the answer from today. I brought a small figurine of a dog to our meeting \u2014 his name is Eric. He belongs to Nasta Loika, who is now imprisoned under charges of \u201cextremist activity.\u201d Nasta is a close friend of mine. This year, as I\u2019ve become more publicly visible, I\u2019ve been taking Eric to all my interviews and events to speak about political prisoners who are currently behind bars \u2014 and, more broadly, about the difficult situation in Belarus.<\/p>\n
My main activism now is more invisible: I create support services for people affected by various forms of violence, I work with feminist writing, and I advocate for women\u2019s and LGBTQ+ rights. But 10 or 11 years ago, the context I worked in was very different, and so was my activism. In 2011, when I started studying at Belarusian State University, I became interested in gender studies. At the time \u2014 and still \u2014 gender studies did not officially exist as a scientific field in Belarus. Gender equality and feminism were deeply unpopular topics. Only about ten visible activists were involved in this work: Iryna Salamatsina, Iryna Alkhouka, Alena Autushka\u2026 We were separated by time and the themes we focused on. They were actively working on legal reform to support women \u2014 something that felt very distant to me at the time. I was more interested in spreading feminism and introducing it to my peers.<\/p>\n
I translated a lot on feminist theory and gender studies. That\u2019s how my activism began. If you want to learn \u2014 translate, search, study on your own! And to this day, making thematic literature more accessible remains an important part of my work. For instance, the most recent collection I worked on, \u201cRoots \/ Leaves\u201d<\/em>, was made available in digital form and can be downloaded for free.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
2011 marked the beginning of your activism. But what came before that? How did you imagine your path back in school \u2014 your profession, your life?<\/h3>\n
I really wanted to be a writer. But everywhere I turned, I heard that a writer\u2019s life was marginal, that there\u2019s no money in it. People kept saying that writing was just a hobby, and that you also needed to have some real<\/em> skills. So I started writing as a journalist and worked that way for many years. In the end, I think getting a profession was very useful for me.<\/p>\n
Now that I\u2019m focused on literature, I do have financial support.<\/p>\n
\n
You lived and studied in several countries. In one interview, you spoke about your first experience of participating in a feminist march \u2014 2015, Sweden. Why did you choose Sweden for your further studies?<\/h3>\n
At the Belarusian State University, my major included an exchange program that allowed us to spend a semester abroad. So I went to Sweden. At the time, Scandinavian life felt like a perfect fit for me: people respected each other\u2019s personal boundaries, and gender equality \u2014 as well as equality for vulnerable groups \u2014 seemed to have been achieved. Sweden already had a Feminist Foreign Policy<\/strong>, which definitely contributed to the perception of the country as very progressive in these areas \u2014 especially compared to Belarus, where at my university I was told things like: \u201cWhat gender stereotypes? Let\u2019s write your thesis about how social advertising strengthens family values!\u201d<\/em> Abroad, I was just relieved I didn\u2019t have to constantly prove something or explain myself.<\/p>\n
Of course, later, when I returned there for my master\u2019s degree, I began to see the cracks. In reality, Sweden has deeply embedded structures of xenophobia and racism. And interestingly, they\u2019re maintained in similar ways to Belarus. For instance, Swedish society sees itself as highly tolerant, believing that racism has already been resolved. The same kind of narrative exists in Belarus, where there\u2019s a constant emphasis on the country\u2019s tolerance and openness. But in practice, it\u2019s not true. People who face discrimination in Sweden\u2019s migration system \u2014 and as a result experience poverty and homelessness \u2014 are in an incredibly vulnerable position. The longer I lived there, the harder it became to turn a blind eye or pretend it wasn\u2019t happening.<\/p>\n
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Based on your experience living in Sweden, can you compare the life paths of Belarusian and Swedish women?<\/h3>\n
I\u2019m a non-binary person, so my answer is primarily based on observing others. My personal experience in Belarus was that of growing up in a middle-class family with relatively stable finances. I was very lucky with where I lived in Minsk and with my social environment. There isn\u2019t one single archetype of a Belarusian woman we can point to. People are extremely diverse. The same is true for women in Sweden.<\/p>\n
But of course, there\u2019s a fundamental difference between life in Sweden and life in Belarus. Take the feminist march, for example. I went there carrying a traumatic memory of participating in similar events before. I was seriously thinking: What will I do if I get arrested in Sweden?<\/em> The march was completely surrounded by police \u2014 but they were doing their job: protecting the participants and ensuring their safety. There were lots of people \u2014 mothers with young children, men, the migrant community, LGBTQ+ folks. That day I felt just how different our lives are. People there will never truly understand what it\u2019s like to feel physical fear<\/em> when stepping into a march or protest.<\/p>\n
What is the history of the feminist movement in Belarus? Can we say that it\u2019s something new for our country?<\/h3>\n
In my view, no \u2014 we can\u2019t say that. Belarus has had its own feminism clearly since the early 20th century. It\u2019s crucial that we reclaim that history for ourselves. Public feminists in Belarus have always existed, and still do. And public visibility continues to be a serious risk for women. Today, we can see this with our own eyes: those who actively expressed their social and political positions ended up in horrific conditions, with the state threatening their children and parents. We don\u2019t have to look far \u2014 there was already a strong feminist movement in Belarus in the 1990s. But in the 2010s, the historical continuity was broken because many people had to stop their work and flee to safer countries. A new wave of activists came to take their place. These broken intergenerational links between feminist activists in Belarus \u2014 that\u2019s a real problem.<\/p>\n
While studying gender at the European College of Liberal Arts in Minsk, I met one of its co-founders, and one of the country\u2019s most well-known feminists \u2014 Iryna Salamatsina. She not only helped us understand gender topics but also introduced us to different feminist voices. That\u2019s when I realized how many such women there actually were. Now, in exile, there are far fewer opportunities to build those connections. But the struggle continues \u2014 people like Volha Shparaha (a PEN Belarus member), Yulia Mitskevich, Volha Harbunova, Nasta Bazar, Ksiusha Malyukova and many others carry it forward. They all worked successfully in Belarus in the 2010s and early 2020s but were forced to leave.<\/p>\n
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Were the women\u2019s protests of 2020 a feminist project?<\/h3>\n
I\u2019d say they were important not so much for feminists<\/em> specifically, but for Belarusian women in general. It was a women\u2019s project. And why does that distinction matter to me? Because women joined the protests not through feminist beliefs, but in response to violence \u2014 against their loved ones and against society. That experience is extremely valuable for all of us. It proves our ability to unite around shared values: life, freedom, the rejection of violence. What mattered to me was that even if those women weren\u2019t ready to call themselves feminists, we still stood side by side, we supported one another. That\u2019s when I truly felt that there was a place for me in this country.<\/p>\n\n
And the so-called Belarusian Women\u2019s Union, which is currently very active and visible \u2014 is that feminism?<\/h3>\n
I don\u2019t believe so. It really depends on how you define feminism. To me, feminism is a political perspective<\/em> that recognizes the existence of a system called patriarchy<\/strong>, in which women are marginalized. Economically \u2014 they earn less for the same work; socially \u2014 they have fewer chances to hold powerful, influential positions or to speak publicly on important topics; culturally \u2014 their creative output is often seen as less valuable than that of men.<\/p>\n
In Belarus, there are plenty of organizations that aren\u2019t willing to talk about the existence of such a system or the discrimination it creates \u2014 they refuse to work with the roots of the problem. The organization in question has a pretty clear stance: they\u2019re not interested in any of the above. Their narrative is centered entirely on the \u201cwoman-as-mother, woman-as-homemaker\u201d idea.<\/p>\n
And yet, if you look at global gender equality rankings, Belarus appears to be right up there with Sweden. It\u2019s true \u2014 there are many women in parliament and in high-level positions\u2026 But do they really have power? It seems like they don\u2019t. They don\u2019t solve urgent problems in society. You can have a group of forty-nine women and one man, and yet that one man is the one making all the decisions. That\u2019s exactly how it works in Belarus.<\/p>\n
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Let\u2019s move to your creative work. Do you remember how it started? What inspired you in the very beginning?<\/h3>\n
My first writings were poems \u2014 and like most first poems, they were pretty bad. When I showed them to my parents, they laughed. That shame closed off poetry for me for many years. Sabina Brylo once said that her early works were \u201cpure Akhmatova,\u201d and mine were the same. I kept diaries, but I didn\u2019t write publicly. I attended lots of literary events in Minsk.<\/p>\n
One day, I walked into the Logvinov bookstore, which was near Victory Square at the time, and I saw a poetry collection by Nasta Mancevich titled \u201cBirds.\u201d<\/em> That book changed my life. I thought: If there are lesbian poets in Belarus, then maybe not everything is lost for me either.<\/em><\/p>\n\n
You also write prose. Your most recent book just came out. \u201cblack forest\u201d<\/em> \u2014 who is this book for?<\/h3>\n
It\u2019s primarily for those who didn\u2019t personally live through 2020, 2021, and 2022 \u2014 or for those who are searching for a language to speak about this painful experience. black forest<\/em> is written in Russian, with occasional Belarusian passages. It\u2019s accessible to readers who don\u2019t speak Belarusian, and I\u2019m deeply moved to see how it resonates with people in Central Asia, in the Caucasus, and among the Indigenous peoples of Russia. For them, it\u2019s not just a book about linguistic blending or the integration of cultural and political experiences \u2014 it\u2019s also about how to build strategies of resistance to Russian imperialism.<\/p>\n
It’s worth noting that at the time of this interview\u2019s publication, the Belarusian publishing house \u201cMiane Nema\u201d<\/em> has released a print version of black forest.<\/em><\/p>\n
The book is available for purchase through the Belarusian publisher Miane Nema.<\/em><\/p>\n\u0424\u043e\u0442\u0430: \u0432\u044b\u0434\u0430\u0432\u0435\u0446\u0442\u0432\u0430 \u00ab\u041c\u044f\u043d\u0435 \u041d\u044f\u043c\u0430\u00bb<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
If I may, I\u2019d like to share some exciting news with our readers. We can officially confirm that Tony Lashden will be moderating the women\u2019s panel during the Hu\u010dna Fest<\/em> on the \u201cCloser to You\u201d literary stage, a program curated by PEN Belarus in collaboration with the Free Belarus Centre. The discussion will focus specifically on Belarusian women\u2019s literature. With that in mind, here\u2019s a question: are today\u2019s Belarusian writers still capable of turning their creative work into manifestos, as their predecessors did in the last century?<\/h3>\n
I believe that to write a manifesto, we need a space where people can gather and talk about what truly matters to them. I don\u2019t think the current absence of a manifesto is due to a lack of revolutionary voices capable of writing one. Look, for instance, at the community of women writers connected to Rastjazhenne<\/em> \u2014 an archive of feminist writing, a collective of Belarusian authors who use literature to seek feminist alternatives within Belarusian culture and literature. That group includes around 50 incredibly talented and vibrant writers, scattered across the globe: Ukraine, Poland, New Zealand, Australia, Germany, and more.<\/p>\n
A manifesto requires attentiveness and respect for each person\u2019s views. As an activist, I can say that the best way to build this kind of work is to gather physically, to come together and ask what values we share as a community \u2014 to ask why we are here. And when that contact exists, it\u2019s much easier to build mutual respect and understanding.<\/p>\n
So I have a proposal: let\u2019s organize writers\u2019 camps! Let\u2019s bring together young authors and poets. They won\u2019t just write manifestos \u2014 they\u2019ll come up with so much more. It\u2019s no secret that young writers often lack resources. So this is my dream \u2014 addressed to the patrons and supporters of Belarusian literature.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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