The 12 pages of the continued political comics illustrate how the situation unwound in Belarus after the presidential elections in December 2010. All the latest developments – i.e. political repressions, balance-of-payments and economic crises, a bomb attack in Minsk subway, etc. – are described from two viewpoints: the first one shows how they are interpreted by the state propaganda machine, the other presents information taken from independent mass media and blogs.

The author of the graphic novel is Marina Naprushkina, 29, a Belarusian Berlin-based political artist and activist. “The Convincing Victory: two stories on what really happened” is part of a bigger project, The Office for Anti-Propaganda, which analyzes mechanisms of political propaganda. The idea of political comics came to Ms. Naprushkina as a reflection to the drastic gap in the presentation of the events of 2010 Presidential Election Day by Belarusian state-run and independent mass media. The first issue of the comics, published in early February 2011, portrayed the story of presidential elections itself. Based on the positive feedback received from the novel’s readers both inside and outside Belarus, and due to further unfolding political repressions in the country, the author decided to continue publication of the political comics.

Marina Naprushkina designed the second issue of the graphic novel “The Convincing Victory: two stories on what really happened” with help of Joshua Rowe, Gulnara Nasyrova, Olga Kopenkina and Tobias Weihmann.

The graphic novel is available in English and Russian.