As has already been stated, Nasha Niva was an early casualty of the First World War (its editor, Yanka Kupala, passing his wartime in an army roadmaking squad, a circumstance doubtless attributable not so much to Tsarist incompetence but to the time-honoured military principle of a job for every man, and every man in the wrong job!). War passed into Revolution, and the forces of Revolution signed its separate peace with the Central Powers. Unlike her southern neighbour, Ukraine, Belarus had not yet made her bid for self-determination, and so was not represented by a separate signature on this treaty, but by March 1918 the independence movement was in full flood, and on March 25th (traditionally, in Belarus, the first day of spring), the Belarusian National Republic was proclaimed in Minsk.

Although this first initiative was short-lived, and indeed, hardly noticed in the world at large, it had an enormous effect on future history. For Lenin and his Bolshevik colleagues decided to counter it by establishing a Belarusian Soviet state, closely linked to, yet formally distinct from Russia. Accordingly, on January 1, 1919 the Belarusian Soviet Socialist Republic was officially proclaimed in Smolensk - a city just to the east of today's Belarusian frontier. From that date onwards, the Revolutionary Wars give the next few years a confused picture of conquest and reconquest, invasion and counter-thrust best left to the military and not the literary historians.

However, when the smoke of war clears, we see the former Russian empire replaced, not by a single Soviet Socialist state but by what - at least in theory - was a Union of formally equal partners. In fact, both by sheer size and by what may be termed historical legacy, the Russian Soviet Federal Socialist Republic was the dominant force - so much so that, unlike its smaller partners, it did not, until the dying days of Soviet power, have its own 'head of state' distinct from that of the whole Union.

However, the new-fledged Belarusian SSR did not include the entire ethnic Belarusian territory. The Belarusian lands were partitioned, with the western territories going to the reborn Polish state, leaving a number of Belarusian writers now living beyond the new frontier. Within the Belarusian SSR, the literary scene of the 1920s was an exciting one of currents and cross-currents, of literary group at logger-heads with literary group, as poets, playwrights and novelists sought, each in his own way and through his own talent to adjust himself to the new post-Revolutionary situation, to come to terms with the unpalatable fact (as had the English Romantics before them) that no Revolution can produce the millennium overnight, and to set about the new problems of the creation of a culture 'socialist in content and national in form' - a phrase adopted by Stalin in his report to the Sixteenth Party Congress in 1930, but actually coined some years earlier by the 'Excelsior' group of writers in Minsk. Even to read the names of these groups gives an immediate picture of the busy activity of Belarusian literature in this period: Excelsior, Revival, Vitaism…

But this period of activity was followed by one of quiescence; the years of plenty by years of dearth. The 'Stalinization' of culture throughout the Soviet Union proved particularly to creativity and works of the imagination; in retrospect, it seems that the censors were more fearful of the covert symbolism that might lurk in poetry and imaginative fiction than of overtly critical prose works. Many writers abandoned poetry entirely, notably Biadulia, who produced in these years a lively and spirited autobiography. Others turned to translation work, or to the relatively uncontroversial field of children's literature. Some fell victim to Stalin's purges, and their works vanished in to oblivion, until they were 'rehabilitated' (all too often, alas, only posthumously), 'thaw' of the mid-fifties. Even the great Yanka Kupala, since 1924 'People's Poet of Belarus', sank into virtual inactivity. His one major work of this period was the long narrative The Fate of Taras, written in 1939 to commemorate the 125th anniversary of the birth of the Ukrainian national poet, Taras Shevchenko, the author, incidentally, whose life and works have undoubtedly had more effect on Belarusian poetry than any one other non-Belarusian.

The Second World War produced, at first, no great changes in the Belarusian poetic scene. True, under the terms of the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, Western Belarus was detached from what had been Poland and incorporated into the Belarusian SSR, bringing with it a number of writers who had developed their talents under Polish rule - notably among them Maksim Tank. However, when, in June 1941, Hitler launched an attack on his erstwhile Soviet ally, Belarus suffered the first onslaught. A number of prominent Belarusian writers perished during the war years. Others, who at the end of the war found themselves beyond the frontiers of the Soviet Union, decided to remain there - a prudent choice, since Stalin deemed that all such people (whether prisoners or slave-labourers of the Nazis, or fighting for the Allies in the army of General Wladyslaw Anders) were potential spies, traitors, or at the very least, dangerous carriers of capitalist ideology, who, if they returned must be sent to the gulag, if only as a precautionary measure.

The War left Belarus a two-fold literary legacy. On the one hand, there was a considerable output of emotional but simplistic 'patriotic' writing (common to all countries in a war situation, and which, except for the greatest, normally raises a blush of embarrassment under peacetime conditions). In addition, it provided a setting and framework within which, for several decades to come, Belarusian writers could explore those complexities of the human psyche that form the foundation of enduring literature.

This new genre of reflective World War II literature was initiated by the novelist and short-story writer Vasyl Bykau, of whom The Times (of London) was to write in its obituary

'Unlike the vast majority of Soviet 'war' literature, Bykau avoided the grandiose and the stereotypes of Soviet heroes; he focused rather on the individual psychology of individual characters, mixed motives, and the grim realism of war. Nor was he afraid to contrast the stoicism and heroism of the individual soldier with the brutality of the Stalinist regime. As a result, although, Bykau was awarded many major Soviet prizes and honours, these did not save him from accusations of defaming the Soviet system, and the attentions of the Soviet censorship, which on a number of occasions demanded often pettifogging changes to ensure political correctness.'

In spite of the censors, Bykau's innovative approach rapidly brought him best-seller status - and inspired other authors to choose a war setting for their works. The popularity of the theme with Belarusian readers and writers had a number of strands. Firstly, the wartime setting itself clarifies and simplifies the issues involved. In the face of a life-or-death struggle for the survival of individual or community pares away the non-essentials; both reader and writer can focus on the fundamentals of the human condition. At the same time, what Soviet historiography termed the 'Great Patriotic War' was largely immune to the all-too-frequent rewriting of 'official' Soviet history, which could overnight convert yesterday's hero into today's villain (and which at each such change swept into oblivion works, whether of fact or fiction, which had taken the now-incorrect 'line'). Moreover, although, naturally, the ordinary Belarusian citizen was only too aware of how many of his or her own circle - relatives, friends, work-mates - had perished… to most of the population it came as a huge shock when, in the mid-1960s, official statistics were at last published, and revealed that one quarter of the population of Belarus had been lost. Part, at least, of the continuing popularity of war stories among both writers and readers was surely a desire to pay tribute to the missing 'every fourth one!.'

And finally, for authors unwilling to compromise their careers by criticising the current Soviet reality - nor their consciences by praising the all-too-often fictitious 'achievements' claimed by the propagandists, choosing a war theme meant that they could produce a work which was politically acceptable ('good' Soviets versus 'evil' Nazis) yet which avoided the dilemmas and dangers inherent in contemporary themes. One should not suppose, however, that all Belarusian authors who chose war themes were playing for political safety. As The Times noted, Bykau draw clear (but politically hazardous) distinction between the individual soldier and the regime. Others challenged the official interpretation of World War II history on a point that was never overtly stated - and yet well understood in literary circles - the holocaust of the Jews. The Soviet historiographers did not deny that Jews had perished at the hands of the Nazis; they took the line, though, that they had been killed - not because being Jews, but simply as soldiers or partisans or hostages, or known Communist activists - or simply as civilians who unfortunately were in the wrong place at the wrong time… and in no way different from their gentile fellow soldiers/partisans/hostages/Communists/civilians. But Belarus had been part of the heartland of East-European Jewry - and for centuries Belarusians and Jews had lived side-by-side. The Belarusian authors of 'war' stories were not, however, prepared to ignore the fate of their former symbiotes. During the 196-s and 1970s a number of major prose-writers wrote unequivocally of the fate of the Jews - making it clear that, for example, to openly proclaim oneself a Jew was tantamount to committing suicide (Lidzia Arabiey) and that the Nazi extermination policy included Jewish children no less than adults (Ivan Shamiakin).

This focus on the War did not, of course, mean that other themes and genres were neglected. The famous literary 'thaw' in the Soviet Union of the mid-1950s had its effect in Belarus as elsewhere. Literary journals were founded or refurbished, new poets took up their pens, old names suddenly appeared in print again. As death claimed the last of the Nasha Niva authors, others were waiting to take up the torch. Varied in theme and outlook, from satiric humour to the traditional bitter-sweet of melancholy, from the fields of Belarus to the planets and back again, each issue of literary journals such as Polymia and Maladosc promised and brought something new, something different. Even after the fall of Nikita Khrushchev (October 1964), this new impetus did not come to a halt. In particular, a new generation of younger poets, Viartsinski, Ipatava, Semashkevich and many others brought a new fluidity and mastery of language, and a fresh and more intimate approach to their subjects whether traditional or modern.

This new impetus survived what have now become known in Soviet History as the Years of Stagnation, under Leonid Brezhnev and his successor-gerontocrats Yury Andropov and Konstantin Chernenko… Then, ironically, just as a new leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, proclaimed his liberalizing reforms of 'Glasnost-Perestroika-Demokratizatsiya' ('Openness-Restructuring-Democratization'), a new tragedy struck Belarus.

Back in 1926, the poet Uladzimier Dubouka had symbolized Belarus in a manner that posed a considerable problem for the translator… He saw the country as a wild briar-rose, which would survive the attacks both of the wind which threatened to blow it apart and the weeds which threatened to choke it… Or rather, 'weed'… For Dubouka named a particular weed which was hard to render into English… The 'botanical name' Artemisia, recalling the Greek virgin huntrress goddess had connotations of grace and beauty that did not fit the context, the demotic 'mugwort' was a comic demon from C.S.Lewis's Screwtape Letters. The plant's cultivated near relative - 'wormwood' was another Lewis demon, with additional loaded and inappropriate connotations (a prison on the outskirts of London - and the Biblical 'gall and wormwood'). But could the translator reasonably keep the Belarusian name? It seemed hardly possible… an obscure word that - without a footnote - would have no significance to the outside world! Until, alas, 1986; for the name of that weed was also the name of a town just across the frontier with Ukraine, a town near which there was a nuclear power plant…Chernobyl… And on the night of 25/26 April 1986, the wind was from the south-east… An estimated seventy per cent of the fallout from the wrecked power-station came down on Belarus, seriously contaminating a quarter of the country's territory, with consequences for the long-term health of the population that still, almost 20 years after the accident, are still constantly being revised - upwards.

And so - 1991, and the collapse of the Soviet Union - and Belarus found itself an independent state. For Belarusian literature, this meant, among other things, the return to the literary canon of authors such as Natallia Arsenneva, Vintsuk Advazhny, Ryhor Krushyna and Ales Salavei, emigres whose work had long been proscribed in the Soviet Union. As early as 1992, Tuha pa Radzimy was published in Belarus - a thick anthology of appeared, containing not only works written in exile, but also the works of the emigres written before they left their homeland - but which, once they left, was deemed by the ideologues inappropriate for Soviet eyes. (The appearance of this book so soon after independence strongly suggests that work had begun on assembling it even before the final disintegration of the USSR). A Belarusian chapter of the international writers' organization PEN was set up with, appropriately, Vasyl Bykau as its first chairman, and other Belarusian writers began to appear on the world literary stage, notably Valzhyna Mort, winner of the 'Crystal Vilenica 2004' poetry prize at the Vilenica poetry festival in Slovenia.

Today, as the centenary approaches of the founding of Nasha Niva, and the literary upsurge it generated, one may safely say that Belarusian literature, born in adversity and nourished in hardship, has grown to fruition and can well take its stand as a worthy member of the literatures of Europe - and, indeed, the world.

Vera Rich, London

25.III.1968 / 24.VI.2005

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