Growing up as a naive schoolboy in the 1990s, I was surrounded by the Belarusian language and Belarusian culture. My generation had been saturated by a wave of hasty Belarusification, and like many I saw this as something quite normal.<\/p>\n
We read in our history textbooks and were told in literature lessons about how the Belarusian people had lived and suffered, how wretched their lives had been, how they had risen up and fought, only to be clapped in irons, how they had hit back and rebelled, again and again\u2026 These stories worked until, as a young teenager, you started making contact with the \u2018people\u2019 outside the family, school and group of kids you played with in the yards surrounding your block of flats. You suddenly caught yourself thinking: are these really the people who threw off their chains and strove for freedom? Something wasn\u2019t quite right. After all, your everyday reality wasn\u2019t all that free, at least not according to the independent press that was sold in kiosks all over the city during the 1990s and the 2000s.<\/p>\n
Nor did Belarus remotely resemble what the founding fathers of our nation had envisaged in the first third of the twentieth century. There was no hiding the fact that we had a Belarus that was Russian through and through. If you looked closer at the social aspect and questions of wellbeing, to me as a fifteen-year-old schoolboy it was apparent that the popular struggle was not over, and that victory was something you could only dream of. But how many people were actually concerned by this, and where were they?<\/p>\n
It was then that a terrible doubt pierced your fragile young mind: Did our people ever rise up at any point in their history? Did they ever desire anything else, did they ever achieve anything together as a nation? Before 2020, reality persisted in trying to convince you that no one here had ever thought of themselves as a member of a community, that there was no nation as such, merely a random collection of people who after the collapse of the Soviet Union found themselves within the borders of the former Belarusian Soviet Socialist Republic. Whether I wanted to or not, that is what I came to believe in and actually saw.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.eurozine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Lis_MZKT_special_vehicle.jpg\")
<\/p>\nMinsk, August 2020. Source: Wikimedia Commons<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n That\u2019s how, over the years, together with your mates, acquaintances and comrades, you came to inflate a bubble of your own devising \u2013 a slightly romantic one maybe, but certainly not boring \u2013 and pad it out comfortably. This is precisely why the events of 2020 came as such a shock for many.<\/p>\n Suddenly it turned out that a community really did exist, that people can mobilise \u2013 when the stars are aligned, when each individual, by contributing in some small way, can join the common cause. It was not so much that they could join, but that they actually did<\/em> join without invitation or having to be enticed. An all-embracing hope, inspiration and a desire \u2018to be called human\u2019 \u2013 as the Belarusian poet, Janka Kupala, put it<\/a> over one hundred years ago \u2013 magically transformed into action.<\/p>\n I don\u2019t know if our classic Belarusian writers, the fathers (or their precursors) of the nation, ever witnessed anything like that, if they ever saw the fruits of their labour, or if they were writing not for their contemporaries but for us, blindly placing their faith in a people they would never see. Whatever the answer, it was in 2020 that I learned for myself the real meaning of the phrase: \u2018the people will rise up\u2019.<\/p>\n A few days after the \u2018elections\u2019 I was talking to an elderly lady. Around us the whole of Miensk was buzzing. The city resounded with explosions, was drowned in the hooting of cars, brooded angrily as people surged the blocked streets. A spectacle both magnificent and scary. It had made a deep impression on her. With tears in her eyes and a lump in her throat she said, \u2018This is it, this is what we were waiting for throughout the \u201990s.\u2019<\/p>\n Elation and pain, a sense of shock almost impossible to control. Happening right before your eyes is something you had stopped hoping for. You had lost all faith, you had consciously extinguished your hopes, you had deliberately averted your eyes so as not to behold yet another disappointment. According to your previous logic, what you see now simply ought not to be. But here it is. You are dazzled by the very fact of its existence. You hold your breath. You want to hurl yourself headfirst into the maelstrom of events, and at the same time freeze and stand stock still in order not to jinx it.<\/p>\n These events have led me to believe in the possibility of the whole of our national myth: from Bahu\u0161evi\u010d to Karatkievi\u010d, from Ciotka to Nina Bahinskaja. For me hope <\/em>is no longer an abstract concept; I have seen its physical incarnation, I know its scent, I know what it feels like. What should not have happened did happen, and that means it can happen again.<\/p>\n We cannot know today what form the Second Coming will take. A new chance, a window of opportunity \u2013 call it what you like. Those who bring it about and those for whom it is intended may be completely different. They will be young, they may be people I don\u2019t like, they may be completely unaware of the ruins of everything Belarusian on which they grew up, and how long ago it became entangled with the poison ivy of the r\u00fasskiy mir<\/em>. However, I believe in the life force and power of the young; in their ability strike their own sparks and burn down the grievance of Janka Kupala\u2019s poem<\/a> \u2013 and then Truth and Justice will come forth into the world.<\/p>\n I dream of finding myself in the same spot as that elderly lady, to be able to see and repeat: \u2018This is it, this is what we were waiting for in 2020.\u2019 And I dream of living to see it.<\/p>\n *<\/p>\n These are just dreams, unfortunately. I held out in Belarus until the middle of 2023, then fate carried me off to Poland. The banal story of an average statistic. It doesn\u2019t matter how many of us there are, one hundred thousand or half a million. We too exist, whether or not we are noticed in the countries in which we found refuge, and whether or not we are remembered in our homeland.<\/p>\n By taking advantage of the achievements of the modern world, this wave of new emigration is trying to deceive time and space. We aren\u2019t completely absent from the RB, but our presence within our new countries is only fragmentary. It\u2019s as though a group photo of us all, taken hurriedly on a Polaroid camera, is slowly fading, while the photo of us in our new place is not yet fully developed, however much you shake it.<\/p>\n There is someone who left almost five years ago, who sold his property and took his family with him: you can barely make out his profile. Then there are those who keep in touch with the homeland and receive guests from there. And there are those who risk everything to visit Belarus, a country half-occupied by Russia.<\/p>\n The other day, over a cup of coffee, a friend of mine quoted a mutual acquaintance, who said that it was time for us to take a close look at the local cemeteries and decide where we want to be buried, be it Warsaw, Vilnius, Berlin\u2026<\/p>\n I recalled Natallia Hardzijenka\u2019s and Liavon Jurevi\u010d\u2019s A Book of Cemeteries; Belarusian Burials in the World<\/em>. It was published at the end of 2023 with the support of the Belarusian Institute of the Sciences and the Arts, an organisation founded in the 1950s in the USA by members of the postwar Belarusian emigration. People who knew they would die in a foreign land.<\/p>\n The 600-page encyclopaedia compiles colour photographs of motley Belarusian graves from thirteen countries with headstones in a variety of languages: from Australia and Chile to Great Britain and Sweden. The illustrations are accompanied by the biographies of those buried, some just a few lines long, others consisting of several paragraphs. There is nothing in the book about Poland, Lithuania and Russia, yet it is in these countries\u2019 soil where most of us probably rest. I\u2019ve no idea if it would be realistic to try to describe and count all the Belarusians who were thrown out of their country and now lie scattered all over the world, alone in the last 100 to 150 years.<\/p>\n And now, here we are, casually chatting about how we should start choosing ourselves a cemetery.<\/p>\n We had the impression that by no means all Belarusian emigres wish to lie in a foreign land, and that if they had the choice, they would choose to be buried in their own country. It isn\u2019t just that their relatives and friends live in Belarus, or that they wish to lie alongside their ancestors, but that they simply wish \u2018to lie at home\u2019. To a good number of emigres this question will seem of no particular significance, but they are who researchers and encyclopaedists will occupy themselves with when they get around to compiling the fifth or the tenth volume of The Book of Cemeteries.<\/em><\/p>\n That\u2019s why, whenever I am asked whether there is any hope for emigres (primarily political) to be able to return, I always answer with absolute certainty that yes, there is. On this point I am full of optimism.<\/p>\n Previously it was virtually impossible to return a body to its native land; it was either too expensive, or it took too long and there was no way of doing it. And anyway, the borders were closes; the hatches of the submarine known as the USSR were battened down. For that reason, most people had no means of knowing whether there was still anywhere to take the body to, if there were still village burial grounds or cemeteries attached to churches that hadn\u2019t been wrecked by war or simply ploughed up.<\/p>\n These days, however, it is perfectly realistic to think of repatriating a body to Belarus. True, it\u2019s cheaper to send a body off on its last journey from some country close by, like Poland or Lithuania. But anything is possible. Just set aside a thousand euros or so. If necessary, ask your relatives and neighbours to have a whip round.<\/p>\n The question of where I wanted to be buried turned out to be a matter of principle. I had never thought of the subject before, and the fact that I did took me by surprise. It had always seemed natural and obvious that I would be laid to rest somewhere in the expanses of my blue-eyed homeland, that flying above me there would be a honking goose, and that the wind would be moaning eerily, but still be close to my heart.<\/p>\n It isn\u2019t a question of where I will actually be buried. It would not be a bad idea, of course, to pile on the pathos and find a fine spot for my mortal remains. The Ukrainian poet Taras Shevchenko wrote in his poem \u2018Testament\u2019<\/a> that, \u2018When I die, then make my grave\/High on an ancient mound,\/In my own beloved Ukraine\u2019. The poem also mentions the steppe and the \u2018blustering river\u2019 Dnipro.<\/p>\n The philosopher and poet Ihnat Abdziralovi\u010d asked to be buried not in a cemetery, but somewhere \u2018by the roadside on a green hilltop\u2026\u2019 The poet Larysa Hieniu\u0161, a survivor of Stalin\u2019s prison camps, wrote that she should be buried in her native oak grove \u2018where all is green around\u2019.<\/p>\n At school I won a prize in a competition called \u2018Earth Day\u2019, organised by the Green Cross, and was lucky enough to take part in a series of writing classes. Another of the participants had written a poem that began with, \u2018Bury me on the banks of the Vilija river\u2026\u2019 This may not been how the line actually went, but that\u2019s how it pierced my romantically-inclined adolescent body through my faux leather raincoat. It would be no bad thing, I thought, to be buried somewhere along the river Nioman; after all, that\u2019s the region my ancestors on both sides came from. I\u2019ve only visited the area a few times, but I still view it as the Promised Land.<\/p>\n These childish games aside, I will be satisfied with any healthy-looking tree somewhere close to Miensk on a spot set aside for the purpose by the local authorities. To be honest, any little place on the expanses of the RB will suit me down to the ground.<\/p>\n *<\/p>\n This is the first part of my testament. The second part is an inalienable condition: the epitaph on the cross above my grave is to be in the Belarusian language. This is what I want, what I earnestly request, what I demand.<\/p>\n Dear traveller, should you chance to pass by and see my epitaph written in any other tongue, scratch it out at once with a key or write over it with a permanent marker. If you have neither key nor marker, then rip the inscription away. In short: I enjoin you under these extreme circumstances to defile my grave.<\/p>\n Ever since I was a schoolboy cemeteries have made me feel sad and uneasy. Not because beneath my feet the dead are whispering to each other, but because no matter who or what we were in life, we\u2019ll all end up there. Did you like to read Alie\u015b Razana\u016d for the good of your soul? Did you speak the mix of Russian and Belarusian we call trasianka<\/em> and only rarely venture out of the Kamaro\u016dski Market district of Miensk? Did you use to switch from Russian to the local dialect on the rare occasion you went back home, so as not to annoy your family with your posh talk? Did you lecture at a university, were you a writer, historian, artist and staunch supporter of the Belarusian national revival? It doesn\u2019t matter. All this will be erased once you get put in the local graveyard. In Belarus, Death is a priori <\/em>Russophone.<\/p>\n When you\u2019re dead, you still have to stand up (if that\u2019s the right word) for your language and nationality. This is because the state undertaker sneakily exploits the grief of its Belarusian-speaking clients, who for their part consider it inappropriate and even embarrassing to put pressure on the undertaker\u2019s employees, who do not have Belarusian letters on their computers. And so the epitaph is written in the \u2018normal\u2019 way, i.e. in Russian. \u2018It\u2019s only temporary, when you get around to putting up a headstone you can have it written in that language of yours, if that\u2019s what you want.\u2019 And then something that was supposed to be temporary ends up lasting for years. When the grandchildren and distant relatives of the deceased get around to paying for a headstone, they don\u2019t even bother to think about the language. And so everything follows the standard pattern. Everyone does the same, there\u2019s no need to be clever.<\/p>\n I can give you a very recent example: the geologist Radzim Harecki now lies buried in Miensk\u2019s Northern Cemetery. He was the son of Ha\u016dryla Harecki, one of the founders of the Belarusian Academy of Sciences, a man devoted to the Belarusian Idea. A victim of Stalin\u2019s repression in the 1930s, Harecki Snr. spent years in the Gulag and was rehabilitated only in 1958. Radzim was also a nephew of Maksim Harecki, author of many classics of Belarusian literature, shot by the NKVD in 1938. What we now have is a temporary cross adorned with Radzim\u2019s name in Russian: Garetskiy Radim Gavrilovich<\/em>. It\u2019s important to note that in his lifetime, he insisted even in the second official state language (Russian) on using the \u2018belarusified\u2019 variant of his surname: Ga<\/em>retskiy. Not Go<\/em>retskiy, which is how the surname of his father and grandfather was registered. This Belarusian aka\u0144nie<\/em>\u00a0is all that is left to the deceased.<\/p>\n In Siarhiej Prylucki\u2019s recent collection of poetry Ni\u010doha niastra\u0161naha <\/em>(\u2018There\u2019s every reason to be afraid\u2019), an old woman from Bucha in Ukraine begs everyone she meets with the words \u2018I died yesterday \u2013 bury me like a human being.\u2019 There we have it. I also wish to be buried like a human being, and to dream that in death I will be a better variant of my current self \u2013 buried at home and with an epitaph in the Belarusian language over my grave.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n The English translation of this article was supported by the S. Fischer Foundation. The Belarusian original<\/a> and German translation<\/a> are published in dekoder. The Swedish version<\/a> is published by PEN Sweden.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
![Wikimedia Commons<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\nThat\u2019s how, over the years, together with your mates, acquaintances and comrades, you came to inflate a bubble of your own devising \u2013 a slightly romantic one maybe, but certainly not boring \u2013 and pad it out comfortably. This is precisely why the events of 2020 came as such a shock for many.<\/p>\nSuddenly it turned out that a community really did exist, that people can mobilise \u2013 when the stars are aligned, when each individual, by contributing in some small way, can join the common cause. It was not so much that they could join, but that they actually did<\/em> join without invitation or having to be enticed. An all-embracing hope, inspiration and a desire \u2018to be called human\u2019 \u2013 as the Belarusian poet, Janka Kupala, put it<\/a> over one hundred years ago \u2013 magically transformed into action.<\/p>\nI don\u2019t know if our classic Belarusian writers, the fathers (or their precursors) of the nation, ever witnessed anything like that, if they ever saw the fruits of their labour, or if they were writing not for their contemporaries but for us, blindly placing their faith in a people they would never see. Whatever the answer, it was in 2020 that I learned for myself the real meaning of the phrase: \u2018the people will rise up\u2019.<\/p>\nA few days after the \u2018elections\u2019 I was talking to an elderly lady. Around us the whole of Miensk was buzzing. The city resounded with explosions, was drowned in the hooting of cars, brooded angrily as people surged the blocked streets. A spectacle both magnificent and scary. It had made a deep impression on her. With tears in her eyes and a lump in her throat she said, \u2018This is it, this is what we were waiting for throughout the \u201990s.\u2019<\/p>\nElation and pain, a sense of shock almost impossible to control. Happening right before your eyes is something you had stopped hoping for. You had lost all faith, you had consciously extinguished your hopes, you had deliberately averted your eyes so as not to behold yet another disappointment. According to your previous logic, what you see now simply ought not to be. But here it is. You are dazzled by the very fact of its existence. You hold your breath. You want to hurl yourself headfirst into the maelstrom of events, and at the same time freeze and stand stock still in order not to jinx it.<\/p>\nThese events have led me to believe in the possibility of the whole of our national myth: from Bahu\u0161evi\u010d to Karatkievi\u010d, from Ciotka to Nina Bahinskaja. For me hope <\/em>is no longer an abstract concept; I have seen its physical incarnation, I know its scent, I know what it feels like. What should not have happened did happen, and that means it can happen again.<\/p>\nWe cannot know today what form the Second Coming will take. A new chance, a window of opportunity \u2013 call it what you like. Those who bring it about and those for whom it is intended may be completely different. They will be young, they may be people I don\u2019t like, they may be completely unaware of the ruins of everything Belarusian on which they grew up, and how long ago it became entangled with the poison ivy of the r\u00fasskiy mir<\/em>. However, I believe in the life force and power of the young; in their ability strike their own sparks and burn down the grievance of Janka Kupala\u2019s poem<\/a> \u2013 and then Truth and Justice will come forth into the world.<\/p>\nI dream of finding myself in the same spot as that elderly lady, to be able to see and repeat: \u2018This is it, this is what we were waiting for in 2020.\u2019 And I dream of living to see it.<\/p>\n*<\/p>\nThese are just dreams, unfortunately. I held out in Belarus until the middle of 2023, then fate carried me off to Poland. The banal story of an average statistic. It doesn\u2019t matter how many of us there are, one hundred thousand or half a million. We too exist, whether or not we are noticed in the countries in which we found refuge, and whether or not we are remembered in our homeland.<\/p>\nBy taking advantage of the achievements of the modern world, this wave of new emigration is trying to deceive time and space. We aren\u2019t completely absent from the RB, but our presence within our new countries is only fragmentary. It\u2019s as though a group photo of us all, taken hurriedly on a Polaroid camera, is slowly fading, while the photo of us in our new place is not yet fully developed, however much you shake it.<\/p>\nThere is someone who left almost five years ago, who sold his property and took his family with him: you can barely make out his profile. Then there are those who keep in touch with the homeland and receive guests from there. And there are those who risk everything to visit Belarus, a country half-occupied by Russia.<\/p>\nThe other day, over a cup of coffee, a friend of mine quoted a mutual acquaintance, who said that it was time for us to take a close look at the local cemeteries and decide where we want to be buried, be it Warsaw, Vilnius, Berlin\u2026<\/p>\nI recalled Natallia Hardzijenka\u2019s and Liavon Jurevi\u010d\u2019s A Book of Cemeteries; Belarusian Burials in the World<\/em>. It was published at the end of 2023 with the support of the Belarusian Institute of the Sciences and the Arts, an organisation founded in the 1950s in the USA by members of the postwar Belarusian emigration. People who knew they would die in a foreign land.<\/p>\nThe 600-page encyclopaedia compiles colour photographs of motley Belarusian graves from thirteen countries with headstones in a variety of languages: from Australia and Chile to Great Britain and Sweden. The illustrations are accompanied by the biographies of those buried, some just a few lines long, others consisting of several paragraphs. There is nothing in the book about Poland, Lithuania and Russia, yet it is in these countries\u2019 soil where most of us probably rest. I\u2019ve no idea if it would be realistic to try to describe and count all the Belarusians who were thrown out of their country and now lie scattered all over the world, alone in the last 100 to 150 years.<\/p>\nAnd now, here we are, casually chatting about how we should start choosing ourselves a cemetery.<\/p>\nWe had the impression that by no means all Belarusian emigres wish to lie in a foreign land, and that if they had the choice, they would choose to be buried in their own country. It isn\u2019t just that their relatives and friends live in Belarus, or that they wish to lie alongside their ancestors, but that they simply wish \u2018to lie at home\u2019. To a good number of emigres this question will seem of no particular significance, but they are who researchers and encyclopaedists will occupy themselves with when they get around to compiling the fifth or the tenth volume of The Book of Cemeteries.<\/em><\/p>\nThat\u2019s why, whenever I am asked whether there is any hope for emigres (primarily political) to be able to return, I always answer with absolute certainty that yes, there is. On this point I am full of optimism.<\/p>\nPreviously it was virtually impossible to return a body to its native land; it was either too expensive, or it took too long and there was no way of doing it. And anyway, the borders were closes; the hatches of the submarine known as the USSR were battened down. For that reason, most people had no means of knowing whether there was still anywhere to take the body to, if there were still village burial grounds or cemeteries attached to churches that hadn\u2019t been wrecked by war or simply ploughed up.<\/p>\nThese days, however, it is perfectly realistic to think of repatriating a body to Belarus. True, it\u2019s cheaper to send a body off on its last journey from some country close by, like Poland or Lithuania. But anything is possible. Just set aside a thousand euros or so. If necessary, ask your relatives and neighbours to have a whip round.<\/p>\nThe question of where I wanted to be buried turned out to be a matter of principle. I had never thought of the subject before, and the fact that I did took me by surprise. It had always seemed natural and obvious that I would be laid to rest somewhere in the expanses of my blue-eyed homeland, that flying above me there would be a honking goose, and that the wind would be moaning eerily, but still be close to my heart.<\/p>\nIt isn\u2019t a question of where I will actually be buried. It would not be a bad idea, of course, to pile on the pathos and find a fine spot for my mortal remains. The Ukrainian poet Taras Shevchenko wrote in his poem \u2018Testament\u2019<\/a> that, \u2018When I die, then make my grave\/High on an ancient mound,\/In my own beloved Ukraine\u2019. The poem also mentions the steppe and the \u2018blustering river\u2019 Dnipro.<\/p>\nThe philosopher and poet Ihnat Abdziralovi\u010d asked to be buried not in a cemetery, but somewhere \u2018by the roadside on a green hilltop\u2026\u2019 The poet Larysa Hieniu\u0161, a survivor of Stalin\u2019s prison camps, wrote that she should be buried in her native oak grove \u2018where all is green around\u2019.<\/p>\nAt school I won a prize in a competition called \u2018Earth Day\u2019, organised by the Green Cross, and was lucky enough to take part in a series of writing classes. Another of the participants had written a poem that began with, \u2018Bury me on the banks of the Vilija river\u2026\u2019 This may not been how the line actually went, but that\u2019s how it pierced my romantically-inclined adolescent body through my faux leather raincoat. It would be no bad thing, I thought, to be buried somewhere along the river Nioman; after all, that\u2019s the region my ancestors on both sides came from. I\u2019ve only visited the area a few times, but I still view it as the Promised Land.<\/p>\nThese childish games aside, I will be satisfied with any healthy-looking tree somewhere close to Miensk on a spot set aside for the purpose by the local authorities. To be honest, any little place on the expanses of the RB will suit me down to the ground.<\/p>\n*<\/p>\nThis is the first part of my testament. The second part is an inalienable condition: the epitaph on the cross above my grave is to be in the Belarusian language. This is what I want, what I earnestly request, what I demand.<\/p>\nDear traveller, should you chance to pass by and see my epitaph written in any other tongue, scratch it out at once with a key or write over it with a permanent marker. If you have neither key nor marker, then rip the inscription away. In short: I enjoin you under these extreme circumstances to defile my grave.<\/p>\nEver since I was a schoolboy cemeteries have made me feel sad and uneasy. Not because beneath my feet the dead are whispering to each other, but because no matter who or what we were in life, we\u2019ll all end up there. Did you like to read Alie\u015b Razana\u016d for the good of your soul? Did you speak the mix of Russian and Belarusian we call trasianka<\/em> and only rarely venture out of the Kamaro\u016dski Market district of Miensk? Did you use to switch from Russian to the local dialect on the rare occasion you went back home, so as not to annoy your family with your posh talk? Did you lecture at a university, were you a writer, historian, artist and staunch supporter of the Belarusian national revival? It doesn\u2019t matter. All this will be erased once you get put in the local graveyard. In Belarus, Death is a priori <\/em>Russophone.<\/p>\nWhen you\u2019re dead, you still have to stand up (if that\u2019s the right word) for your language and nationality. This is because the state undertaker sneakily exploits the grief of its Belarusian-speaking clients, who for their part consider it inappropriate and even embarrassing to put pressure on the undertaker\u2019s employees, who do not have Belarusian letters on their computers. And so the epitaph is written in the \u2018normal\u2019 way, i.e. in Russian. \u2018It\u2019s only temporary, when you get around to putting up a headstone you can have it written in that language of yours, if that\u2019s what you want.\u2019 And then something that was supposed to be temporary ends up lasting for years. When the grandchildren and distant relatives of the deceased get around to paying for a headstone, they don\u2019t even bother to think about the language. And so everything follows the standard pattern. Everyone does the same, there\u2019s no need to be clever.<\/p>\nI can give you a very recent example: the geologist Radzim Harecki now lies buried in Miensk\u2019s Northern Cemetery. He was the son of Ha\u016dryla Harecki, one of the founders of the Belarusian Academy of Sciences, a man devoted to the Belarusian Idea. A victim of Stalin\u2019s repression in the 1930s, Harecki Snr. spent years in the Gulag and was rehabilitated only in 1958. Radzim was also a nephew of Maksim Harecki, author of many classics of Belarusian literature, shot by the NKVD in 1938. What we now have is a temporary cross adorned with Radzim\u2019s name in Russian: Garetskiy Radim Gavrilovich<\/em>. It\u2019s important to note that in his lifetime, he insisted even in the second official state language (Russian) on using the \u2018belarusified\u2019 variant of his surname: Ga<\/em>retskiy. Not Go<\/em>retskiy, which is how the surname of his father and grandfather was registered. This Belarusian aka\u0144nie<\/em>\u00a0is all that is left to the deceased.<\/p>\nIn Siarhiej Prylucki\u2019s recent collection of poetry Ni\u010doha niastra\u0161naha <\/em>(\u2018There\u2019s every reason to be afraid\u2019), an old woman from Bucha in Ukraine begs everyone she meets with the words \u2018I died yesterday \u2013 bury me like a human being.\u2019 There we have it. I also wish to be buried like a human being, and to dream that in death I will be a better variant of my current self \u2013 buried at home and with an epitaph in the Belarusian language over my grave.<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\nThe English translation of this article was supported by the S. Fischer Foundation. The Belarusian original<\/a> and German translation<\/a> are published in dekoder. The Swedish version<\/a> is published by PEN Sweden.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n[ad_2]\nSource link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"[ad_1] Growing up as a naive schoolboy in the 1990s, I was surrounded by the Belarusian language and Belarusian culture. My generation had been saturated<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":347136,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[154],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347135"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=347135"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347135\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/347136"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=347135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=347135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=347135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}](\"https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/File:Lis_MZKT_special_vehicle.jpg\"){kind=link}