Big proclamations are always more likely to be hit in the face by a contradicting reality, but the events at Kyiv Square may as well be the last step into converting Belarusian opposition movement into something that intrinsically becomes part of society. The fact that Tikhanovskaya, nor Tsepkala or Kalesnikava, ever made it to Kyiv Square seems now irrelevant.

Maybe as a consequence of overconfidence or simply of not realising that the audience has developed more acute hearing capabilities, these adjustments sounded as if Siegfried just failed to grab Princess Odette and she smashed her face on the stage. The conductor Lukashenko rushed on to the stage to explain that a woman cannot have the main role in a country where the constitution is not adapted for a fragile woman.

The capability to force political change comes not from the size of the movement alone, but also from the perception that there are other people who would support the same ideas. Chenoweth is clear when she says that 3.5 per cent of the population, who are actively engaged in their respective movement for change, is needed for success to be assured: “do I, part of the 3.5 per cent, perceive that there are 3.49 per cent more out there?”

(…) at dawn on Monday the city awoke out of its lethargy of centuries with the warm, soft breeze of a great man dead and rotting grandeur. Only then did we dare go in without attacking the crumbling walls of reinforced stone, as the more resolute had wished, and without using oxbows to knock the main door off its hinges, as others had proposed, because all that was needed was for someone to give a push and the great armored doors that had resisted the bombards of William Dampier during the building’s heroic days gave way (…)