On March 29, 2021, police raided the home of artist Ales Pushkin in the settlement of Babry, in western Belarus. Pushkin wasn't home: A professional restorer, he was working at the 19th-century Bulgakov Palace in Zhilichi, southeast of Minsk.
"I have gold on my hands," he told RFE/RL's Belarus Service when journalists called for his comment on the search of his home. "I'm about to gild the entablature."
"It is a strange situation," he added. "But I guess it is possible the police will come here to Zhilichi and pull me by my legs down from the scaffolding."
And that's exactly what happened. He was detained in the palace chapel.
Pushkin was arrested on March 30, 2021, charged with the "rehabilitation of Nazism" for displaying a portrait of anti-Soviet Belarusian nationalist Yauhen Zhikhar at an exhibition in the western city of Hrodno. He was later charged additionally with inciting hatred and desecrating state symbols.
Pushkin and his supporters maintained he was being persecuted for his long-standing opposition to Belarusian strongman leader Alyaksandr Lukashenka, who launched a sweeping crackdown on dissent following mass protests in the wake of the deeply disputed August 2020 presidential election he claimed to have won by a landslide.
The human rights group Vyasna, the Belarusian Association of Journalists, and the Belarusian Helsinki Committee recognized Pushkin as a political prisoner and called for his release. But on March 30, 2022, he was sentenced to five years in prison.
On the night of July 10-11, Pushkin died under unexplained circumstances following surgery at a prison hospital. According to RFE/RL's sources, he had lost 20 kilograms in recent weeks and in letters had complained of kidney pain and requested a truss. He was 57.
'Indomitable Spirit'
"Belarus has lost a talented and fearless man," exiled opposition leader Svyatlana Tsikhanouskaya wrote on Telegram on July 11.
"Ales was imprisoned for his creativity, which was the embodiment of the indomitable spirit of the Belarusian people," she continued. "He dreamed of a free and democratic Belarus."
Ales Pushkin was born in Babry on August 6, 1965. He was devoted to art from an early age and began his career specializing in monumental, decorative pieces while studying at the Belarusian State Theater and Art Institute. He was drafted into the Soviet Army in 1984 and served in the war in Afghanistan.
After being demobilized, he resumed his painting and performing career and became involved in the Belarusian nationalist movement, promoting the revival of the language and historical national symbols. He qualified as a professional art restorer and began a lifetime of work restoring Belarus's architectural heritage, particularly churches.
He was arrested for the first time in 1988 for helping to organize a nationalist demonstration. He was jailed for five days.
A Load Of Manure
On March 25, 1989, he organized a demonstration to mark the 71st anniversary of the declaration of an independent Belarusian state. It was the first public celebration of the date. He and more than 100 others were arrested, and Pushkin was later given a two-year suspended prison sentence.
After that, he regularly staged politically charged performance-art actions, mostly in connection with the March 25 anniversary. In March 1993, he opened one of Belarus's first private art galleries in the city of Vitsebsk.
In July 1999, Pushkin carried out one of his best-known performances when he overturned a cartload of manure outside Lukashenka's offices. He then carefully placed a wooden sign on the pile expressing gratitude to the dictator "for his labor." He added a portrait of Lukashenka, who was a state farm chief in the Soviet era, and drove a pitchfork through it.
He was arrested on the spot and later given a two-year suspended sentence.
He was arrested several times in connection with the elections in 2006 and 2010 -- part of a series of votes, deemed undemocratic by international observers, that Lukashenka has used to remain in power since 1994.
In addition to his performances, Pushkin continued his painting and restoration work. In 1996, he unveiled a monumental mural of The Last Judgement at a newly rebuilt church in his native Babry. The faces of some of the condemned sinners in the painting resembled Lukashenka, the head of the Belarusian Orthodox Church, and other senior state figures, creating a scandal when it was shown on television. The offending portion of the mural was quickly painted over.
'He Knew What Awaited Him'
When mass demonstrations broke out after the August 2020 election, in which Lukashenka claimed to have won a sixth presidential term despite strong evidence of widespread fraud, Pushkin was an active participant. He was arrested in Minsk, beaten by police, and held for several days.
"For years he consistently maintained his views," art historian Syarhey Khareuski told RFE/RL. "He organized entire exhibitions, including in state institutions. We have to honor his determination. He knew what awaited him, but he walked toward it consciously."
Days before his March 2021 arrest, Pushkin was in Kyiv when he learned that a criminal case had been opened against him. Nonetheless he made the decision to return to Belarus, even after Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba personally urged him to stay.
"I have known Ales a long time, since 1992, I think," fellow artist Andrey Dureyka told RFE/RL in an interview in March 2022. "As an artist, as an activist working in the political context, he is one of the best-known and most outstanding figures in modern Belarusian art. His influence has been enormous."
Another artist, Henadz Drozdov, told RFE/RL he had exchanged letters with Pushkin while he was being investigated and tried in 2021-22.
"I got the impression he was being heavily censored," Drozdov said in March 2022. "He wrote to me that he now feared only God."
Pushkin left behind a wife, Yanina, and two children.
