Belarus

When I was in Poland a few years ago, I had an intense yearning to go further east. There was plenty of information in my guidebooks on the Baltics, on Bulgaria, Romania, the Ukraine… but next to nothing on Belarus. This had the effect of intensifying my curiosity about the country, though it’s only now that I’ve had a real chance to follow up on this. What better time than their 3 July Independence Day? They adopted their Independence Day in 1996—Belarus declared independence from the then-Soviet Union on 27 July in 1991, and independence was first established in 25 August in 1991, and completed on 25 December the same year. I’ve always loved name of its capital—Minsk. There is something so suggestive about the word.

Prior to being part of the Soviet Union, Belarus variously belonged to the Duchy of Polatsk, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Russian empire—there was a short-lived Belarusian People’s Republic for a period from 1918-19, but real, continued independence was a long time coming.

The region has been settled since the 6th century when Slavic peoples arrived. The region was part of Kievan Rus’ for a time, until that state was again split into independent principalities—and the principalities didn’t fare well in the 13th century Mongol invasion. Following the invasion the region became part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and so the period of belonging to someone else really began.

The first independence of the country was declared during the negotiations of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk—but not long after the German defeat they became the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic, and after the region was redivided when the Polish-Soviet war ended, the country became a founding republic in the USSR.

World War II wasn’t an easy time for anyone, but of the SSRs, Belarus was the hardest hit, remaining in German hands till 1944—the Germans destroyed 209 of the country’s 290 cities, and an estimated quarter to one-third of the population died. The population only returned to its pre-war level in 1971.

These days Belarus is a presidential republic, with a Council of the Republic and a House of Representatives forming the upper and lower houses respectively. Alexander Lukashenko has been the president since 1994—I’m guessing his name is familiar to most, though you may not have been able to place it exactly. I know it’s a name I catch in BBC reports or small corners of the World News pages from time to time.

Currently, 98 out of the 110 members of the House of Representatives aren’t affiliated with any political party—interesting—and the other 12 members are split between three parties, but most belong to the Communist Party of Belarus. The most recent presidential elections were deemed unfair—Lukashenko won with 80 percent of the vote, while one of his opponents was detained and beaten by police during protests. Lukashenko himself has apparently been forthcoming in his descriptions of his rule: “an authoritarian ruling style,” is the self-proclaimed verdict. There is concern over the human rights of Belarusian citizens.

Today’s poem is by the poet Mikhas Bajaryn, and was translated from the Belarusian by Valzhyna Mort. The piece comes from New European Poets.


[creating a homer is less complicated than you might imagine]

creating a homer is less complicated than you might imagine
all you need is exquisite taste and some patience
a pair of scissors there are still countries almost unknown
otherwise there are words with vague meanings enough beautiful names and
besides
abundance of archives and forgotten poets
at least a week at max half a century will be needed to montage and live
and to form a circle of incurably blind madmen
that everybody would take for a school on rhode or khias island
it would be good to keep it all a secret but especially the slogan
homer gets only the best and then everything will work out.


—Mikhas Bajaryn
translated from the Belarusian by Valzhyna Mort
from New European Poets