"Why are you silent?" the letter says. "Why don't you speak up when you see them trampling this proud little country? We are still your brothers.”
With these words, Belarusian writer and Nobel laureate Svetlana Aleksievich addressed the cultural elite of neighboring Russia, urging them to support the protesters in her country.
She asked them to convince the Kremlin not to help Alexander Lukashenko, the president of Belarus, whose legitimacy is disputed by the opposition, the European Union and the United States of America.
Lukashenko declared victory in the August 9 election, despite opposition claims that he rigged the election results.
The European Union then announced that it does not recognize Lukashenka as the president of Belarus, just a day after he organized a surprise inauguration and took the presidential oath, starting his sixth term in office.
After the election, his opponents began to organize protests, which continue to this day. Lukashenko, after several weeks of protests, traveled to Russia, from where he returned with the support of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
That support was expressed in the form of a loan of 1,5 billion dollars and a statement that the Russian police are ready to react if the protests get out of control.
Meanwhile, almost all leading opposition politicians either left Belarus for neighboring countries or were detained, such as Maria Kolesnikova. One of the few who remained and who is free is the Belarusian Nobel laureate Svetlana Aleksievich. She is the last of the main members of the opposition Coordination Council still at large.
European ambassadors and journalists visited her at the beginning of September in her home in Minsk, after "unknown masked persons" tried to break into her apartment.
A fearless critic of the Kremlin
To a certain extent, Svetlana Aleksievich did not really succeed in her intention to awaken Russian intellectuals. However, Alekseevich was not completely ignored - Lyudmila Ulicka, one of the most famous Russian writers, answered her publicly. Ulicka expressed her admiration for the protesters and her belief that what Belarus is going through will one day happen in Russia as well.
The Russian writer, otherwise a big critic of Putin and an advocate of freedom of speech, spoke to the BBC in Russian about the protests in Belarus and her hopes for the future of Russia. Ulicka is probably one of the most respected Russian writers in the world.
She won the Russian Booker in 2002, the Simon de Beauvoir prize in 2011, and was awarded the French Legion of Honor. Her novels have been translated into more than 25 languages - the most famous are "Jacob's Ladder" and "The Green Tent".
However, in addition to her literary success, Ulicka is known - and perhaps unique in this respect - for her loud and fearless criticism of the Kremlin.
And that goes for any government that Russia has had in the past decades.
"Not only Stalinism, to the series of leaders that followed Stalin, to the post-Soviet, to Putin," she says.
But she can imagine a brighter future.
A model for the future
Ulicka does not talk twisted. It is clear, she says, that Belarusian protesters can no longer tolerate Lukashenka, "intoxicated by power, uneducated and limited".
She also believes that what Belarus is currently experiencing could one day happen to Russia as well.
"I send you greetings from the bottom of my heart, I wish you health and strength, I want you to live in a country freed from an incompetent and disgusting government.
"And as for me, my dear, I want the same for myself," she tells the BBC, quoting part of a letter she wrote to Aleksievich.
"For us (in Russia), the events of the previous weeks in Belarus represent a model for the near future. And that's a good model," she says.
She praised, as she stated, the dignified behavior of the demonstrators protesting on the streets of Minsk, even though the Belarusian authorities forbid gatherings.
"A peaceful protest, without smashing windows or burning cars, awakened by the evil appetite of the government, which is represented by a talentless dictator," she stated. Ulicka says that the events in Belarus deeply moved her and her friends.
"We are closely following everything that is happening," he points out.
"We know about the arrests, we know about the new, wonderful leaders, and we are aware that your country has experienced something that could happen in our country tomorrow."
Persistent opposition
Ulicka says that the Russian opposition has lacked unity for a long time and that is why it could not effectively oppose the authorities.
Belarus has also struggled with a similar problem for years, and attempts to oust Alexander Lukashenko during his 26-year rule failed on several occasions. However, now a new type of opposition has emerged - it seems spontaneous - without one prominent leader and more persistent, but with a strong desire for change.
Lukashenko needs Russian support to fend off this new threat to his long reign.
The last member on the loose
Aleksijevic is a writer and investigative journalist who received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2015.
When announcing the winner of the award in Stockholm, the chair of the Swedish Academy, Sara Danijus, called her writing "a monument to the courage and suffering of our time." She lives in Minsk, the capital of Belarus, and has been active in opposition protests, which erupted after the disputed August 9 election.
In a letter published on the Internet, she, as the last member of the Coordinating Council of the Belarusian opposition who is at large, appealed for help from the international community.
Her opposition friends and associates, she said, "are all in prison or expelled from the country."
At the end of August, the Belarusian authorities summoned her for questioning, but she was later released.
A group of Western diplomats appeared at the apartment of Svetlana Aleksievich, after she reported that unknown people were ringing her doorbell. They stayed with her day and night, sharing joint photos with the writer on social networks.
However, she points out that the arrests and abuses will not sway the opposition.
"First they took away our country, and now they are taking away the best among us. But hundreds of others will come and take the places of those who have been taken from our ranks.
"Lukashenko says he will not talk 'with the street.'
"But the streets are full of hundreds of thousands of people who come out to protest every Sunday and every day. It's not a street, it's an entire country," she says.
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