– We can only show your hands and books. And your voice will only be behind the scenes.
- No, please. You don't need anything at all.
We say goodbye.
One less material. “It’s okay,” I reassure myself, “there are still other interviews, more than a dozen videotapes.”
Early spring has arrived. There is still snow outside. The evening of the presidential elections in Belarus. Cold. I'm returning home from the candidate's headquarters, where I worked. I’m going to change into something warm and go to the square. I go into the apartment and turn on the light. I put the kettle on the stove. A minute later the doorbell rings. With a bad feeling I go to open it.
A team with Kalashnikovs bursts into the apartment. They shove some kind of search warrant in my face. Papers from cupboards fly across the floor of the apartment. Everything is run by a nasty little KGB man. The team deftly packs computers, books, flash cards, and disks.
- What is this? – one of them suddenly points to the packaging.
- Here are the tapes.
- We'll take it too.
- Listen, why do you need them? This has nothing to do with politics. There are twenty hours of video footage here. My job.
– What kind of video?
– Materials about the history of the church in Soviet times.
“Let’s check,” he orders the operator.
He puts the mini-cassette in his cell. Includes. The screen lights up, showing a gray-haired man, and the message echoes throughout the room:
– We published illegal literature like this...
With these words, the camera is turned off, and the boss looks at me questioningly. I, angry that the interview began precisely on these words, understand that the entire stack of our tapes is moving to the head office of the KGB of the Republic of Belarus for a long time, and maybe forever...
Thank God, after six months the tapes were returned, as were the computers and everything else. In large plastic bags, closed and marked with special seals.
And we, continuing our work, agree on a meeting with Sergei Sharapa. He takes us to one of the nine-story buildings on Pushkin Avenue in Minsk. We approach the entrance, and Sergei points up with his hand:
“There, on the ninth floor, one family gave us their three-room apartment. And we set up a printing house there.
“We organized a whole network of groups that were engaged in this work,” he continues. “At first we typed on the Yatran typewriter.” We made our first books and brochures on it. And then more, more, more... I got a job at a government printing house and worked there for two years to learn the technology. And so, over time, having made machines, we established a mass production of underground Christian literature. Our circulation was up to ten thousand copies.
We worked here without a break, days and nights—we just needed literature. It was very much needed, and in large quantities. We printed in a variety of languages, and sent it throughout the Soviet Union... However, it must be said that we also received help from abroad. First of all, printing materials: paint, matrices. But there were also ready-made books. One day, just a whole truckload of Bibles was smuggled here. We were only told in which forest, where and when to wait. They gave us conventional signs. We arrived at the location and successfully picked up the cargo. I don’t even know who did it, because it was impossible to know any names, and none of us asked for such information...
Then we go to Sergei Sharapa’s house, and he takes out books, brochures, and postcards from somewhere and lays them out on the table. There are Bibles, Christian fiction, and spiritual and educational publications here.
I'm wondering what the Soviet folding card for November 7th, with carnations, is doing in between all this. I open it, expecting to read some old congratulations on the day of the communist revolution. But it turns out that here, on thin sheets of paper, is the printed Gospel of Luke.
“And this is another version of conspiracy,” Sergei smiles, looking at me. – You see, when she lies, she looks just like a postcard. And if you put it between books, it won’t attract attention at all.
The publisher leaves and, in the end, brings out what I have been looking for for a long time: a press.
He properly refills the matrix and tensions the spring:
– Such things are not forgotten over the years.
And then he takes out a whole international of books, and fonts for typing. Here you can find the Belarusian language, Ukrainian, Russian, Georgian and Ossetian.
The sun reflects in thick, oily reflections on the multilingual tin. And I understand that, indeed, as it is written in the Gospel, “the gifts and calling of God are unchangeable.”
Once upon a time, in the 16th century, here on this land, the first Christian books were printed, which were then distributed throughout Eastern Europe. Under the communists, it was also from here that underground Christian literature spread en masse throughout the USSR.
This means that our prospects are also good now.
