Three final days of last week were full of surprises. If it's even possible to call noisy the Friday's unsanctioned action of the youth of the capital on Svoboda Square, so only thanks to militia, which carried out formally the president's decree and detained girls and lads, bored on the pavement, in a very strange way. Why in a strange way? That's because incidental people, for example, journalists, got into their "net". On Saturday, to envy of those dreaming of the spring "under hot sauce", the procession passed very quietly and without any incidents. And on Sunday, nature having teased with the first tender sunrays and warm spring wind, came back to winter as if it didn't wish to see spring-97 hot.

The first democratic Constitution of Belarus, which was signed by Mecheslav Grib, the ex-chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the 12th calling, three years ago, gathered in Minsk more than 5 000 people for a sanctioned festive street holiday on Saturday, the 15th of March. There wasn't such a political starfall on Yakub Kolas Square for a long time. There was Mecheslav Grib, Semyon Sharetsky, Victor Gonchar, Ludmila Gryaznova, Yury Zakharenko, Gennady Karpenko, Anatoly Lebedko and others there. Somebody of most quick used the moment and asked the politicians to leave their autographs on a small brochure with big red letters "Constitution". This example turned out to be infecious.

The procession began from Kolas Square and in several minutes the people, of course, went out to the public road. It didn't caused special militia's anger. Regularly reminding with the help of megaphones the rules of carrying out processions in Minsk, not a numerous army of militiamen escorted the procession to the circus, where there were already two cordons of fully-armed special troops. Behind the people with shields, who cut off the traffic on the avenue, there was an excavator, working very energeticly in spite of the day off, and the work-team, having digged a trench across the avenue, was laying tubes. The column obediently turned to Yanka Kupala Street and soom reached the Palace of Sport, where the festive meeting under white-red-white flags took place. Five cordons of militia, who stood along the whole route of movement, remained, fortunately, unclaimed. And the sticks in the hands of the demonstrators turned out to be the staffs of white-red-white flags, under which the Constitution-97 was accepted.

According to preliminary data, militia arrested 20 men during the meeting on Saturday. Besides, the students of the 11th form and the vocational technical school were detained by law-enforcement agencies. They broke off the flags from poles near the Palace of Sport, tore them up and even tried to burn.

Yuriy Sviatokum.

It didn't manage without collisions between those, taking part in a rally and militia last week in Minsk. In the evening of the 14th of March, a worker of the glass plant "Neman" (Grodno region) was detained and then put into an "isolator". He behaved like a hooligan and broke off the shoulder-straps from Major of militia of Zavodskoi reginal department of internal affairs.

Approximately at the same time the law agencies stopped a young businessman in Nemiga Street, who held PR-73, a gum stick. The specialists-experts determined that it was a cold steel, and the detainee waited punishment for its " holding and carrying" in the "isolator".

In the morning of the 16th of March the members of the Third Congress of Peoples of the USSR laid wreaths to the monument to Lenin. The gathered people swung the flags of the republics of the former USSR and held placards:"Youth association- direct action", "Youth with young president"... After a solemn ceremonial a group of 70 men made an unsanctioned procession: from Nezavisimost Square they passed on the pavements along the Sverdlov, Marks, Lenin Streets to Oktyabrskaya,5. Along a quite patriotic route. But the administrative reports were drawn up for two leaders of the new youth social organization "Direct Action".

Tamara Khamitsevich.