Protest rally in Minsk, Belarus, on August 30, 2020. Photo by Natallia Rak on Flickr. CC BY-NC 2.0. This article by Elena Govor and Raphael Kabo appeared on Transitions Online on September 9, 2021. It is republished as part of a content-sharing partnership and has been abridged and edited to fit the GV style. Protest, opposition, and revolution always have brought songs in their wake. Even after the revolutions themselves recede into the past, these songs continue to sound. The generations who came of age in the Soviet Union grew up on such songs, taking as fact that lyrics from the Russian revolutions of the 20th century were statements of a clearly delineated polarity set out in “The Internationale”: We will build a new world, our world, Those who had nothing will become all. The songs of protest that have become among the most vital symbols of the 2020 Belarusian revolution are far less simple. The forerunner of these songs is the late Soviet-era rock hit “Khochu Peremen” (“I Want Changes”) by Viktor Tsoi, now more commonly known simply as “Peremen!” Tsoi, wrote the song with his underground rock group Kino in 1986, on the eve of the Gorbachev-era perestroika. The lyrics have a modernist, layered quality, reinforced by a shifting rhythm and use of internal rhyme (sadly not replicated in this translation), which make the song unusual as a rock hit: Instead of warmth – the green of glass, Instead of flame – smoke, A day torn from the calendar’s net. These lyrics suggest that “Changes!” was written as an expression of self, and as a recognition of a shared feeling among Tsoi’s circle of young friends, who stood on the verge of being drawn into the routine and alienation of adult life. Cigarette in hand, tea on the table – so the circle closes, And suddenly we are too frightened to change a thing. These words are so coded with personal significance that it seems impossible for the song to have become a crowd sing-along. However, its mass appeal lies in its chorus, which transcends the moody lyricism of the verses: “Changes!” demand our hearts. “Changes!” demand our eyes. In our laughter and our tears, In the beat of the pulse, “Changes!” “We wait for changes!” The chorus describes the moment when the subject, drawn into self-reflexive rumination, breaks free of shackles and forms a demand that is collective rather than individual. The subject – not “them” but “we” – is significant in that it does not present an outside force the protagonist must combat to achieve change; as the line reminds the listener, “everything is in us.” It could be that “Changes!” reached its mass popularity precisely because the revolutions of the last decades have emerged from a desire for an abstract sense of freedom, or, in Russian, volya, with imprecisely defined programs for change, but with a powerful collective yearning to live without falsehood. These political revolutions, including the 2013 Turkish Gezi Park protests, the 2014 Ukrainian Revolution of Dignity, the 2014 Hong Kong Umbrella Revolution, and the 2011-2012 Occupy movement, seek – beyond their equally important, more localized demands – to escape from a world where stability and success are the consequence of living within the unwritten, unspoken rules of the dominant system: being like everyone else, staying in one’s lane. The 2020 Belarus protests are the most recent manifestation of this 21st century revolutionary lineage. A deeply symbolic trigger for public support for the protests became the state’s press ganging of two young DJs, Kirill Galanov and Vladislav Sokolovsky, into entertaining the audience at a government event hastily organized to prevent a pre-vote rally by then-opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya. Forced to do the state’s bidding, the young men resisted this latest misuse of power by playing Tsoi’s “Changes!” The song lasted only a minute before the event manager cut the sound system and the DJs were summarily loaded into a police van, but the song, or rather the heavy-handed treatment of the DJs, acted as a catalyst for the crowd. Images of the DJs, hands outstretched and throwing victory signs, captured on hundreds of phones, quickly became a memetic symbol of the dignity and integrity of the “little man.” Meanwhile, the song continued to blare from the speakers of hundreds of cars cruising around Minsk. In the wake of the DJs’ arrests, as in the time of perestroika, “Changes!” was taken up by Belarusian society as a song of liberation – primarily individual, personal liberation, as intended by its author. Belarusian opposition figure Siarhei Tsikhanouski popularized another song, “Walls,” which after his arrest also served as a soundtrack for the rallies of his wife, Sviatlana.