Гістарычны шлях нацыі і дзяржавы
Радзім Гарэцкі, Міхась Біч, Уладзімір Конан
Выдавец: Беларускі кнігазбор
Памер: 348с.
Мінск 2001
After an interval of quiet, the mass terrorism in Belorussia organized and carried through by Yezhov, beginning in 1937, exceeded all previous purges in the number of victims. The fact that Belorussia had a common frontier with the Western world led to further expansion
of the arbitrary actions of NKVD frontier troops and of special detachments of the huge garrisons in Belorussia. Thousands were murdered on charges of espionage for Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, and Germany. City and regional detachments of the NKVD also carried out mass murders. The primary targets of their actions were intellectuals. Large-scale deportations of the entire populations of villages in the frontier area were carried out. Almost all, who had been taken prisoner by Germany or Austria during World War I, as well as persons who had returned to the country after emigrating, were arrested.
Simultaneously with the mass murder of Belorussian intellectuals, the nation forever lost a considerable proportion of their national cultural heritage. All scientific works, research studies, literature, music, paintings, ethnographic material, collections, albums, and museum artifacts, produced by those who were arrested, were removed from the libraries and destroyed. Among the works which were destroyed were the following: (1) an anthology of Belorussian national art; (2) Belorussian Archives, a publication containing reports of the Belorussian academic conferences; (3) the works of the first congress of Belorussian archeologists and geographers; (4) the works of the humanities department of the Belorussian Academy of Sciences (philosophy, history, ethnography, archeology, science, law); (5) many works of the poet Ales Harun, who died abroad; and (6) Belorussian fairy tales, stories, and folklore collected and edited by A. Sierzputotiski.
The works of scholars published before the revolution, which were of great academic importance, were also confiscated. For example, the work of history professor M. DoiinarZapolski entitled Essays on the History of the Krivich and Dregovich Territories up to the End of the Twelfth Century (Kiev, 1891) was confiscated and banned.
This short list includes only the most significant of the works of Belorussian scholars which were confiscated. The total number and scope of the Belorussian treasures, destroyed by the Communist regime, cannot be estimated.
The repertoire of the Belorussian theaters was severely revised in 1930. Everything which even distantly recalled the Belorussian national heritage was driven from the stage. The drama Na Kupalle, which is of indubitable artistic value, was removed, as was the play Maseka which deals with the history of the founding of the city of Mogilev. The historical play Kastus Kalinoiiski, which portrays the struggle of the Belorussian people in 1863, was also withdrawn from the repertoire. Even the ancient Belorussian musical instrument, the duda, was banned. At the same time the portraits and statuettes of the Belorussian sixteenth-century scholar F. Skaryna, the founder of printing in the whole of Eastern Europe, printer of the first Belorussian book in Prague 1517, and founder of the first Belorussian printing house in Vilnia in 1522, were destroyed. The Belorussian mobile theater was also closed down and its director, U. Hahibok, was arrested and exiled. It was even claimed that there were elements of Belorussian nationalism in the title of the local magazine Nas Kraj (Our Country'). One of the Communist leaders spoke about this magazine as follows, «The very title should be cast on the rubbish heap of history. The magazine for local studies in Soviet Belorussia will henceforth have the appropriate title Savieckaja Kraina (Soviet Land).»
The Communist leaders charged Belorussian philologists with having cluttered up the language «with various medieval archaisms and bourgeois vulgarisms. The existing Belorussian orthography is grossly encumbered by these National Democratic tendencies and is, therefore, to be changed.» This accusation was followed by repression of Belorussian linguists. On the pretense of further developing the Belorussian language and simplifying the orthography, which in practice meant expelling Belorussian linguistic features from the orthography and altering the grammatical and phonetic rules to accord with those of the Russian language, the Linguistic Institute of the Academy of Sciences was instructed to draw up a draft for the alteration and simplification of the orthography and grammar. The draft was examined by a special commission appointed by the Central Committee of the
Communist Party of Belorussia. The Committee approved the final draft for alterations of the Belorussian orthography and grammar, and these changes were then formulated in a decree of the Council of People’s Commissars of the BSSR, dated August 28, 1933.
The policy of mass destruction of the national intelligentsia on any pretext was continued in subsequent years, and was particularly applied to Western Belorussia. This area, which previously had been a part of Poland, was forcibly united with the BSSR in 1939. Western Belorussia had a population of 4.8 million persons, of whom 78% were Belorussian. The city of Vilnia was the center of the national, political, cultural, and social life of the Belorussian people in Poland. It was the seat of several Belorussian newspapers and Belorussian publishing houses which produced textbooks and literature in the Belorussian language. The Belorussian high school had been kept open in Vilnia. The students at the university consisted to a large extent of Belorussians.
The purge of the most prominent Belorussians began on the third day of the Bolshevik occupation of the city in September 1939. Among those arrested were A. Luckievic, a former Belorussian delegate to the Versailles conference; A. Trcpka, a cultural leader; V. Bahdanovic, a former Belorussian senator; M. Koscievic, author; V. Samojla, journalist; S. Busiel, one of the organizers of the uprising at Slutsk in 1920; and J. Pazniak, editor of the Belorussian newspaper Krynica.
Throughout Western Belorussia prominent leaders of the Belorussian Peasants’ and Workers’ Hramada, the Zmahannie (Union), and leaders of the Belorussian Educational Association were arrested. Those who had taken part in the Slutsk uprising were particularly persecuted.
Peasants who had fled to Western Belorussia during the collectivization period were among those arrested. According to the testimony of Mikola Volacic, author of a study on the population of Western Belorussia and its resettlement in contemporary Poland and the BSSR, as many as 15,000 persons were arrested in the first four months after the seizure of Western Belorussia.
Mass arrests and deportations were made throughout Western Belorussia on February 9 and 10, 1940. Officials of the Forestry Department and Agricultural Administration comprised the bulk of those arrested. The harsh and universal repression of the foresters was evidently caused by a desire to remove those who knew the forests and the location of the arms dumps concealed there by the Polish Army. This action of the NKVD was, as always, accompanied by the arrest and imprisonment of intellectuals. About 140,000 Belorussians were arrested and deported from Western Belorussia by the end of February 1940. A second wave of mass arrests and deportations followed in May of 1940. The families of soldiers, police, civil servants, and other categories were deported. According to data, provided by Mikola Volacic, who interviewed 65 of those arrested, the total number of prisoners subsequently deported was estimated to be about 70,000.
A third wave of arrests and deportations was carried out immediately after the outbreak of the Soviet-German war in June of 1941. These were mass arrests of all categories of the population and included former members of the Western Belorussian Communist Party, which in 1938 had been accused of Trotskyism and subsequently dissolved.
From the very beginning of the occupation of Western Belorussia, the NKVD paid particular attention to the former members of the Belorussian Peasants’ and Workers’ Hramada. This organization had been active in Western Belorussia in the 1920’s and by 1924 had more than 100,000 members. Under its leadership, the Belorussians succeeded in electing several Belorussian deputies and senators to the Polish Sejm. The Hramada was dissolved in 1927 and its leaders were sentenced by a Polish court to long terms of imprisonment. For ten years, the NKVD kept track of the rank and file of the organization, who, when the opportunity arose, were arrested and deported.
It is estimated that 975,000 persons were deported from Western Belorussia and Western Ukraine in 1939-41. Deportation from Western Belorussia amounted to about 305,000 souls of whom at least 100,000 were ethnic Belorussians.
Most of those arrested before the Soviet-German war were imprisoned but some were sentenced to prison convoys destined for Siberia. The majority of those imprisoned eventually died at the hands of the NKVD, while many of those in the convoys died from attacks by German bomber aircraft, and only a handful escaped.
As a consequence of mass discontent resulting from such measures, there was largescale evasion of military service at the beginning of the Soviet-German war, particularly among the agricultural population. For the same reason, members of collective farms broke them up during the early days of the German occupation. Land and tools were distributed to peasants who had returned from exile or who were not kolkhoz-members, or who for other reasons had left the collective farms.
On account of the speed with which Belorussia was occupied by the German Army in 1941, a large number of workers and employees were left to their own devices, and remained in the country rather than evacuate. After the arrival of the Soviet Army in Belorussia in 1944, mass repressions began, which exceeded the scale of the Ezhov purges. Intellectuals who «had remained in the territory occupied by the enemy» were punished with particular brutality. A single example will suffice. The famous composer A. Turankou, a non-Party member, at one time a deputy to the Supreme Soviet of the BSSR, had lost contact with his wife during a German air-raid at the beginning of the war. While searching for her, he had failed to evacuate. Although he had not worked for the Germans, he was sentenced to 10 years in the labor camp at Vorkuta, according to information from a returned inmate.
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