On 3-5 July, while the capital of Belarus was swarming with policemen guarding the Day of Independence, an anarchist forum was held in the forest near Minsk. The forum gathered anarchists and the people supporting them from all regions of Belarus as well as from Russia, the Ukraine and Poland.

The day before the initiators of the gathering laid the foundation of the camping: they created a minimum everyday infrastructure and developed the place for holding debate. Afterwards the newly arrived participants took an active part in the camp maintenance: built a stove in the kitchen, brought water to the place, hewed the wood, cooked.

Within the framework of the forum different kinds of discussions, workshops and seminars were held, such as labour movement, antinuclear resistance, transportation, activists’ security, Anarchist Black Cross, methods of antifascism, migration, gender problems, street medics, CIRCA etc. A movie “The Take” about modern forms of labour movement by Canadian journalist and writer Naomi Klein was screened. The participants from the Ukraine and Russia passed on their own experience, local activists tried to solve some practical problems of connections between themselves as well as the consolidation of the like-minded people. Some new printed and multimedia editions were presented incl. those prepared specially for the sections and adapted to the Belarussian situation. Hot debate followed while discussing methods of anarchist actions, for example concerning labour movement, were a controversy between anarcho-syndicalists and autonomists started. Workshops, especially in medical aid, were of great use. The variety of the topics helped people learn many new and useful things, although not always compromise and practical results were obtained.

Serious discussions didn’t prevent the participants from maintaining the camp, communicating and forging relationships. Leisure activities pleased most of the participants – a disco and an acoustic concert of “PolitZek”(“Political Prisoner”) at night gave place to football and other party games during the day.

This event allowed a possibility to discuss some important things and try to decide something together, to feel the ability to create a micro community, to start relationship with new people from different towns and, what is more important, to get inspired and encouraged by the experience of each other directing our efforts to the realization of our dreams and different projects.