"We Once Saw A Cow Admiring The Sunset From The President's Balcony."

Parallels with Marquez's novel The Autumn of the Patriarch are suggested.

Alexander Lukashenko said that the cow's place is in the "palace". Beyond his will, he reemphasized his similarity to the protagonist of Gabriel Marquez's novel The Autumn of the Patriarch.

June 17, at the meeting on agriculture in Minsk district, the ruler reiterated that it would be worthwhile to erect a monument to the cow - as a sign of the merits of this animal in people's lives, and especially during the Great Patriotic War.

Trying to be original, Lukashenko once again demonstrated his retrograde nature. The idea of a cow monument is part of post-war Soviet folklore, the idea is even attributed to writer Mikhail Sholokhov.

But if the idea of such a monument was really relevant then, it can't be said 80 years after the end of the war.

And, by the way, there is a cow monument in Belarus. A bronze sculpture was installed near Minsk Komarovka in 2018.

Another statement by Lukashenko from June 17 looks more curious: "If we want to be healthy, we need to breathe normal air and eat normal food, based on this, the cow, figuratively speaking, should stand in the palace."

These words can make an impression. True, they evoke analogies quite different from what the ruler had hoped for. The cow in the palace is the strongest image from Gabriel Garcia Marquez's famous novel "The Autumn of the Patriarch" about the disastrous consequences for the country during the dictator's rule.

"The patriarch" after many decades at the top of power could afford anything (political repression and terror awaited dissenters). For example, in the presidential palace appeared cows, which the dictator loved so much. Their image in the novel became a symbol of the degradation of power and the decay of the state.

Let us cite a few passages about the late period of the life of the irremovable ruler.

***

"Ambassador Palmerston, one of the last diplomats who presented him with their credentials, told in his memoirs, banned in our country, that it was difficult to imagine a deeper old man, told of the unimaginable disorder that reigned in the presidential palace ... Chickens roamed the hall and tried to peck the ears of the wheat fields depicted on the tapestries, and some cow tore up a canvas depicting the bishop, evidently intending to devour it."

***

"And one day in January we saw a cow watching the sunset from the President's balcony; imagine, a cow on the main balcony of the Fatherland! What an outrage! Isn't it a shitty country?! But then everyone wondered, is it possible that a cow could be on the president's balcony? "

***

***

"And he pounded the table with his fist, as he always did when making a final decision, and then went to bed and slept until it was time to milk the cows".

***

"And only a patrol of gormless youths remained in the fading house, where the cows roamed undisturbed from the lobby to the state council chamber. 'They chewed the tapestry depicting the flowering meadow, my general, ate the archives,' he did not hear."

***

"Then he set fire to all the dried cow cakes, the ones that the cows, roaming around the palace, had heaped up during the day, and, as always, the smell and smoke of burning cow dung awakened in him a memory of his childhood."

***

"And so we ascended to the main floor by a stone staircase covered with an operetically luxurious carpet that had been trampled by cow hooves, and, from the first hall to the last bedroom, we looked into all the rooms, passed through all the servants' quarters, through countless reception rooms, and everywhere roamed the unperturbed cows; they chewed the velvet curtains and munched on the satin upholstery of the chairs, stepping on the holy icons and on the portraits of generals lying on the floor amidst the wreckage of furniture and fresh cow cakes; cows roamed the dining room and the concert hall, defiling it with their mooing - there were cows everywhere."

***

"On that first night without him, we suddenly saw his vast empire, its malarial lakes, its sweltering, fume-stained villages in marshy river deltas, we saw the barbed wire of greed fencing off the provinces that belonged to him, where innumerable herds of cows of a new, magnificent breed were grazing, cows that were born with the hereditary birthmark, the President's personal brand. Not so long ago, we believed that he would indeed live not only until the second, but also until the third coming of the comet."

Andrei Karas, "Salidarnasts"

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